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284 hills were picturesque enough, and the rolling grass lands of Zululand were instinct with romance; yet neither Afghan nor Zulu can claim a tithe of the superstitious obscurity of the dwellers on the Naga hills, or affect pretensions to half their traditions. Indeed, what people on earth would dare to measure pedigrees with the snake-folk, or count ancestors against a race who claim to have a lineal descent from before the creation of man?

There are gaps, it is true, in the chain that would suffice to break even a herald’s heart; but what else could be expected in the family trees of tribes that were old when the children of the Sun and the Moon, in the first generation, found them possessing the earth? Their progenitors flourished even before time and space had established their empire, and they count among the events of their national history the birth of the Creator.

Before history commences, and when gods were half men, and men were demigods, the Nagas inhabited India. They were contemporaries of the pygmies who fought with the partridge-folk for possession of the Ganges’ banks; contemporaries of the monkey races that furnished long-tailed contingents to the conquering army of Rama, and gave deities to India; contemporaries of Garud, king of the bird-gods, and of Indra and Krishna, and all the merry-making pantheon of Vedic Hindostan. But there came from over the hill passes on the northwest, which nowadays men call the Khyber and the Kurram, nation after nation of Aryans, who, as moon-children and sun-children, fell upon the aborigines, and drove them from every spot worth possessing.

They hunted them to the tops of the mountains, and