skull-cap. The women wear a long cloth tied in a knot across the
breast. During festivals both men and women load themselves with silk
robes, fans, peacock's feathers, and gold and silver ornaments of
great value, procured from Assam, many of which are said to be
extremely curious, but I regret to say that I never saw any of them.
On these occasions spirits are drunk, and dancing kept up all night:
the dance is described as a slow ungraceful motion, the women being
tightly swathed in cloths.

All their materials are brought from Assam; the only articles in
constant use, of their own manufacture, being a rude sword or knife
with a wooden handle and a long, narrow, straight blade of iron, and
the baskets with head-straps, like those used by the Lepchas, but
much neater; also a netted bag of pine-apple fibre (said to come from
Silhet) which holds a clasp-knife, comb, flint, steel, and betel-nut
box. They are much addicted to chewing pawn (betel-nut, pepper
leaves, and lime) all day long, and their red saliva looks like blood
on the paths. Besides the sword I have described, they carry bows and
arrows, and rarely a lance, and a bamboo wicker-work shield.

We found the Khasias to be sulky intractable fellows, contrasting
unpleasantly with the Lepchas; wanting in quickness, frankness, and
desire to please, and obtrusively independent in manner; nevertheless
we had a head man who was very much the reverse of this, and whom we
had never any cause to blame. Their language is, I believe,
Indo-Chinese and monosyllabic: it is disagreeably nasal and guttural,
and there are several dialects and accents in contiguous villages.
All inflections are made by prefixing syllables, and when using the
Hindoo language, the future is invariably substituted for the past
tense. They count up to a hundred, and estimate distances by the