The Lobos, despite the fine personal fea tures described, and a respectable body of laws, formalities and courtesies, are without much civilization. They have no roads or bridges or wheeled vehicles, and almost no industry or trade among themselves. Their best houses even are the rudest of plank-built huts, and contain no furniture except some chests and cupboards; in the centre is a stone fireplace, the smoke from which escapes where the rain comes in, for the roof is simply unmatched hoards held in place by big stones. Around the lord's house are clustered the even worse huts of his and the whole is usually enclosed by a defensive wall, for robber-raids are frequent. The villages are walled. Rice is cultivated in the valleys where irrigation is possible, and elsewhere oats, barley, buckwheat and potatoes. The low degree of social cul ture is a result of isolation and hardships, rather than of stupidity, for in old times the Lobos had the art of writing, which seems to have been •general among them, using the equivalent of very ancient Chinese characters. Certain nobles and a class of learned men among 'them still preserve and copy ancient manuscripts of a genealogical and religious nature; and many such documents are sacredly guarded in Lobo communities in Yunnan, where carved inscriptions in the Lolo language may be found. A collection of these literary relics
was taken to France
the D'011one expedi tion, and a French-Lolo dictionary has been compiled. French missionaries have reached the independent Lobos, and interested them in Western knowledge; and preparations are mak ing, with the help of one of the most influential "princes," to express their language in Roman letters, and to print books for these benighted but 'quick-witted people, to whose many ster ling qualities every European who has become acquainted with them willingly testifies. A period of regeneration therefore seems to be at hand for the Lobo race. Consult Davies, R. H.,