BEIJING, Jan. 12, (UPI) -- Chinese authorities have stumbled on a previously unknown tribe living high in the mountains of western Tibet, a report said Friday.

People's Armed Police on patrol in remote Nimu county discovered the tribe encamped in a primeval forest at an altitude of 4,800 meters (15, 840 feet), the Xinmin Evening News said. Ou Zhu, political commissar for Nimu county, was quoted as saying the tribe of 300 people spoke an unknown language, probably related to Tibetan. Ou said the first eyewitness report confirming stories of a lost tribe was in 1994 from a hunter who had lost his way in the mountains and came upon the enclave. The hunter returned to the Nimu county seat telling of a short, stocky people who covered themselves in furs and leaves and lived in a dense evergreen forest of giant pine and cypress trees. Because of its remote location, the tribe was still not registered under the county's administrative jurisdiction, Ou said. Authorities in the Tibetan capital Lhasa confirmed the report, but said under new security regulations they are restricted from giving information about ethnic minorities in the region to the foreign media.