Being without a written character in which to preserve their traditions, cut off from all civilizing influence of the outside world, and occupied merely in growing crops enough to support themselves, the recollection of their connection with their original ancestors has died out. It is not then surprising that they should now consider themselves a totally distinct race from the parent stock. Inter-tribal wars, and the practice of slave raiding so common among the wilder members of the Indo-Chinese family, have helped to still further widen the breach. In fact it may be considered remarkable that after being separated for hundreds, and perhaps in some case for thousands, of years, the languages of two distant tribes of the same family should bear to each other the marked general resemblance which is still to be found.
The hilly nature of the country and the consequent lack of good means of communication have also naturally militated against the formation of any large kingdoms with effective control over the mountainous districts. Directly we get to a flat country with good roads and navigable rivers, we find the tribal distinctions disappear, and the whole of the inhabitants are welded into a homogeneous people under a settled government, speaking one language.
Burmese as heard throughout the Irrawaddy valley is the same everywhere. A traveler from Rangoon to Bhamo will find one language spoken throughout his journey, but an expedition of the same length in the hilly country to the east or to the west of the Irrawaddy valley would bring him into contact with twenty mutually unintelligible tongues.
The same state of things applies to Siam and Tonking—one nation speaking one language in the flat country and a Tower of Babel in the hills (loc. cit., pp. 332-883).
CHAPTER XVII
GORALS AND SEROWS
Gorals and serows belong to the subfamily Rupicaprinæ which is an early mountain-living offshoot of the Bovidæ; it also includes the chamois, takin, and the so-called Rocky Mountain goat of America. The animals are commonly referred to as "goat-antelopes" in order to express the intermediate position which they apparently hold between the goats and antelopes. They are also sometimes called the Rupicaprine antelopes from the scientific name of the chamois (Rupicapra).
The horns of all members of the group are finely ridged, subcylindrical and are present in both sexes, being almost as long in the female as in the male. Although no one would suspect that the gorals are more closely related to the takins than to the serows, which they resemble superficially, such seems to be the case, but the cranial differences between the two genera are to a certain extent bridged over by the skull of the small Japanese serow (Capricornulus crispus). This species is most interesting because of its intermediate position. In size it is larger than a goral but smaller than a serow; its long coat and its horns resemble those of a goral but it has the face gland and short tail of a serow. It is found in Japan, Manchuria and southern Siberia.
The principal external difference between the gorals and serows, besides that of size, is in the fact that the serows have a short tail and a well developed face gland, which opens in front of the eyes by a small orifice, while the gorals have a long tail and no such gland.
