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Chapter Seventeen. Pangsha Burns |
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houses and peculiar drums in Pangsha |
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The houses are built of bamboo. They are rather small, and now that the fires have gone out, quite dark and difficult to search. Here the roofs are not slate-covered but thatched with palm leaves, like the houses of the Konyaks. At the end of one of the khel stands a house, larger than the others, which must certainly be a morung. It has a high pointed gable and a carved main-post and a little distance away a huge wooden drum lies in the open. But the drum is not like the drums of the Konyaks. It has a peculiar form, tubular and open on both sides, and is overshadowed by a low tree, hung with whole bundles of heads, many of which are still partly covered with skin and hair and are apparently trophies of the latest raid. |
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All these heads convince me that we do no wrong to Pangsha in plundering the village, for what, after all, is the plundering of an evacuated village compared to the massacre of Saochu and Kejok? For every pig our porters spear today, five human heads at least were cut off on that raid. |
