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tour with Mills in Ao country |
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One had to be careful in avoiding the path leading through the cemetery to the villages, each placed on a hill for defence in the inter-village wars of pre-British days. The Aos built a platform of plaited bamboo raised on poles and roofed over for their corpses. These erections were in a row side by side. When a corpse had rotted entirely and the bones fallen to the ground the place in the row was reckoned as vacant for another corpse so a stench usually greeted anyone passing through. |