VAGA HILLS. 149 tiger skin, and protected behind by a board. When proceeding on a foray, they invariably carry a large stock of sharp-pointed bamboos a few inches in length, intended to be stuck in the ground to retard the pursuit of an eneny. Of recent years, many have succeeded in obtaining guns or muskets, and the possession of firearms is the supreme desire of every Nágá. Although the importation of arms and ammunition is prohibited, the Nágás manage to obtain supplies of native manufactured guns from Manipur. The Angámi villages are invariably built on the summits of the hills, and are strongly fortified with stone walls, stockades, and ditches. The approaches, also, are formed by a species of covered way, so constructed as to admit but one person at a time, and guarded by massive doors, and sentries. The number of houses in a village varies from 20 to 1000. They are built with long gable roofs, and eaves almost touching the ground. In dimensions, they are sometimes 50 feet long by 30 feet broad, and are generally divided into only two rooms. The religious ideas of the Nágás are of a very vague order. Some say they believe that if they have led good and worthy lives in this world, their spirits will fly away and become stars ; but that those who have lived evilly are compelled after death to pass through seven separate existences as spirits, and are finally transformed into bees. Others, again, seem to have no idea whatever of a future state, and when questioned on the subject reply, 'Our bodies rot in the grave, and there is an end of it; who know's more?' In common with the aborigines of Central India, they are extremely superstitious in the matter of omens; and all their ceremonies and sacrifices are directed, not towards a benevolent supreme power, but to appease the wrath of numerous malignant spirits and demons. Their mode of taking an oath is to place a spear-head or the muzzle of a gun between their teeth, and to imprecate on themselves destruction by that weapon if they are not speaking the truth. They inter their dead in a special burying-ground, and over the grave of a chief erect a stone tomb 3 or 4 feet high. The Nágás cannot be said to possess any organized form of polity. Each community has certain chiefs called peumás; but the authority of these chiefs is little more than nominal, and the office is not hereditary. Their one maxim of jurisprudence is that blood once shed can never be expiated, except by the death of the murderer or one of his nearest relatives. Hence blood-feuds last from generation to generation. A noticeable feature in these internal quarrels is that the whole of one village is seldom at war with the whole of another village; but clan is at feud with clan, and it may thus happen that a single village contains two hostile clans within its walls, with a neutral clan living between on good terms with both. The Nágás are fond of hunting, and esteem the flesh of the elephant as a great delicacy. They secure their game by
