Recenriy a band of two hu ed and fifty Hei Fans arrived in Peking from the Western paris of Szechuen. They take the name of La Sze, or" Aboriginal Officers." They are under the charge of native chiefs, and these chiefs are responsible to the Chinese uthorilies of the province for the main. tounuce of order and the fulfilment of all recognized obligations, Among these obligations is -that of. visiting Peking once in twelve years with tribute, The localities from which this caravan of tubule-bearers comes are scattered over the country from Yun= nan to Kongo, all along the Weatern border of Szechuen. The name In Sze was much more extensively used in the Ming dynasty than it is now. Than, it embraced all the aboriginal tribes whe= ther in Hokuang, Kueichow, Yanuan or Szechuen in all their varieties of race, The Chinese historians never had of course the aid of ethnology to guide them discriminating between subject peoples by rheic languages, custome, physical characteristics and religions beliefs, but they have collected the materials for judging, and we now know generally speaking in what category to place the different races with whom travellers meet in Western China, The Lolos of Szechuen are allied to the Burmese, and the T'a Sze Intely in Peking are, being Hsi Fans, to be viewedns Tibetans, Bat the Barmeso and Tibetans are really akin, as their languages shew, and they may be called the Mou-Bod family or Western Himalaic, according as the ethnological inquirer prefers to detormine his nomeuclataro by mountain chai the' most prominent race names ling among the people themselves, As the Tibetans and Hei Fans prefer Bod for their race name, 0 the Burmese prefer Mon, the word which. is found disguised slightly in the Chinese name Mien-tion, The rest of the abos riginal tribes in Western China and in the Southern provinces, whether Miao or Yao or T'ang, seem all to belong to the Enstern Himalaio branch or that of the Siamese, the Laos tribes, the Shan tribes of the Peninsula, the Li tribes of Hainan, and the Cambodians and Cochin Chinese, Mr. E. Colborno Baber's book cou. tains a mass of information on the Lolos, and also on the Hei Fai Humour renders his narrative irresistibly amuse ing, 60 that it is @ book to be safely recommended for perusal, He repre+ sents the Hei Fans as inferior in bodily appearance, in vigour, and in mental development to the Lolos. The Lolos live in their own mountains apart, seem ing to be a nation, while the Hsi Fans are scattered tribes, whose nataral homo is Tibet. They congregate in large numbers in Ta-chien too, and its neigh" bourhood, where they are within a short distance of Tibet.' They are short in stature, are fond of red clothing, and, as to shape, adopt Chinese fashions to no small degree. Their faces are rounder than the Chinese, their heads smaller, their noses less stunted, and, while small, stand out ton point. Their eyes, too, are small, placed in a line, and have a bright black lustre, Much of country is virgin forest, not yot touched by the woodman's axe, growing on the broad slopes of snow-topped mountains where they exercise lordship over the land and act as masters when the Chinese agricultural colonists come
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.