Notes of a Journey on the Upper Mekong, Siam

by H. Warington Smyth

MUANG NAN TO MUANG CHIENG KONG.

From Muang Nan my orders were to find the best route I could over the watershed to M. Chieng Kong in the Mekong valley. As usual, the information obtainable was very meagre. One trail goes west from Nan till the valley of the Nam Ing is reached, when that stream is followed down north; a second follows the Nam Nan northward, and crosses the range north-north-westerly up the stream flowing down from M. Yao; the third, which I selected, as showing one more of the Nam Nan valley, follows that river up as far north as M. Ngob (lat. 19° 29'), when the direction becomes north-westerly over the rough country which brings one to M. Chieng Hon and M. Chieng Kob.

Leaving Nan on February 1, we followed a good tract among low but precipitous and picturesque limestone hills, into a curiously disforested country, where the only growth was bamboo, until we dropped suddenly upon the river once more at Pak Ngao, where we camped on the sandbank. We had by this time picked up, as one does in the East, a considerable following. A Commissioner had been sent across from Chieng Mai to accompany me up to Chieng Kong. What his actual duties were I never discovered; he was very useful, however, in helping me in various ways, but I would willingly have done without him, for he was evidently one of that class of officials who grind the people very tight when their superiors are out of sight. Another, the brother of Chow Sa, by name Chow Benn Yenn, who was with me all the time from Muang Sa until I reached Bangkok again, was the greatest contrast to the former. He was a small, neatly made fellow of about twenty-one, a splendid forest man, who, though a great swell in these parts, travelled with only three or four lads with him, and could walk the whole expedition off their legs. He knew and could imitate exactly every forest sound, and as he trotted along the trail he gathered all kinds of unlikely looking plants, which in the evening made excellent additions to our curry. He was a born sportsman, and far more at his ease sleeping out at night under his plaid, with his lads stretched round him, than under any form of roof. The lads with him—for they were mere boys—were like him, and treated him with the usual freedom and familiarity peculiar to the Laos, but which if an order was given, disappeared before complete obedience; and if the Chow wanted a drink of water or half a handful of kao neo, they would go miles or give their last crumbs to supply him, and many were the generous and willing kindnesses I had to thank them for.

We had also an official with his sons and a few men to carry their loads from Nan, who acted as guides and a kind of walking letter of introduction everywhere. They were a remarkably handsome lot, but the old fellow himself used to come in very done up after the day's march. Yet, like all the rest, he was never put out by hunger or weariness, and would take his bag off his shoulder, throw down his long dhâp, and squat on his heels and laugh again to think that he should be tired and the youngsters not.

From Pak Ngao, where we saw a few dug-outs shooting past down the rapids, we next day passed over more of this disforested limestone country, the dip of the rocks being westerly and very steep (50° to 60°), until we forded the river below M. Saipum. We passed through a number of villages, with very pretty whitewashed monasteries, and high palisades round them; the view to the north-east was a novel one, for the usual foreground of yellow fields, with its dykes and ditches, and its many watch-houses reared high on piles, was backed not by forest, but by open expanses, with trees here and there, or low bamboo scrub, and a dwarf range of bare hills behind. There is a red sandstone which seems to underlie the limestone, and wherever that rock outcrops, the soil is excessively thin and poor, and the denuding power of the rains is very marked. That often accounts for low scrub jungle; but where that is not present, as in the limestone country we had just crossed, the absence of forest must, I fancy, be due to fires; and no doubt when a fire is lit for the purpose of clearing ground for the hill rice, it will, with a good breeze, clear square miles instead of acres. I saw a great deal of this burning going on subsequently in the Mekong valley, and I never saw results commensurate with the destruction caused.

The sala at M. Lim, where we slept, is on the east bank, the town being opposite, and the "Chow Muang" or Governor came wading over with the water up to his neck, and his clothes in a bundle on his head. There are numbers of very fine ducks here, but, as usual, we had great difficulty in getting any in exchange for money. They have not great use for money here, as they themselves say, and they prefer their ducks. This happens constantly, especially when buying rice. Each village has enough for its consumption for the year, and very often no more; and naturally they prefer to keep the necessaries of life to having comparatively useless silver buried under their house. As the country is opened up, this will no doubt change, but at present it is not worth their while to grow more than they can consume themselves.

Again, a few irresponsible travellers have been in the habit of provisioning themselves at the expense of the villages without paying, and the consequence is that when a European appears (or, indeed, often a Siamese official), there is a general stampede into the jungle, and everything is hidden away, for they expect nothing but robbery at his hands. Until, after infinite pains, they are persuaded that they will be dealt honestly by, and treated with the consideration which the wildest from their own hills would never fail to show, you can get nothing but negatives, and small blame to them. It is humiliating in the extreme, after travelling with men for some weeks, to be asked one night over the camp fire why the nai farang (the foreign master) doesn't kick and thrash the men on the march, or flog the Chow Muang into handing over all the rice in the village, and do other not less objectionable things. Yet such is the conduct expected of one, as a matter of course, from the past repute of the farang which travels far, and no doubt also does suffer from exaggeration. Still, it shows what our methods too often have been. With these people you get the measure you mete to them; firmness is first of all necessary, but brutality is lowering to all concerned, and never has done anything but harm, and is more far-reaching than the contemptible authors of it understand.

Another day's march through a good deal of evergreen brings one, after crossing the Nam Pur, flowing in from the east, to M. Chieng Kan. An hour further north is M. Chieng Klan; and the confusion of the two names is endless. The latter is the better stopping-place, though the former is very prettily situated, on the bank of the Nam Nan, among very fine clumps of bamboo and a great many banana palms and sugar-cane plantations. Of the latter every man slings a couple of stalks over his shoulder for the day's journey, and most refreshing they are. The cakes of brown sugar made from them, of which one generally takes a piece or two to give a taste to the kao neo, are not considered good for the digestion, and quite rightly, and so only, just enough is taken at a time to give a taste. The sugar from the sugar palm of the plains, however, never has any evil results, and as it has a pleasant flavour, when we got back to it in the Khorat plateau, we consumed large quantities.

[Illustration: A HILL MONASTERY, M. LE.]

The next day M. Le was reached over sandy, undulating jungle country. On foot one could easily have reached M. Ngob, but the elephants could not do it, being, as I mentioned before, in bad condition. I was not loth to rest the night here, it being one of the most beautiful of the hill-enclosed valleys we had been in. From the sala we looked out over the terraced paddy fields, with the winding silver of the river below, and abruptly beyond it shoulder upon shoulder of heavily timbered ranges rising into the peaks which divided us from the Chieng Hon plain to' the west and north-west. Eastward, and just over us, were low steep hills, on a spur of which was a small hill monastery, whence the bells on the gables sent down a gentle tinkling as they were swayed by the strong south-westerly breeze which was sweeping a watery rustling sound out of the bamboos and coconut palms.

The salas being small, the people of the village ran up in half an hour one of their bamboo lean-to shelters for the men, but the Laos as usual seemed to prefer lighting a fire and lying out in the open round it m their cloaks, there being always one man sitting up on watch and supplying fuel when necessary.

M. Ngob is in a narrow hollow, which I should not care to visit in hot weather, for the wind hardly gets into the place. We had nearly a whole day's rest here. A mule caravan of Haws came in from the north and rendered the otherwise peaceful air hideous with their loud, hoarse talking. But for them a Laos village is singularly quiet; no sounds but the quack, quack of the fat ducks who share the pools in the stream with a few laughing children, the grunts of a family of pigs, the occasional trumpet of an elephant who has been up to some playful game or other of which the master does not approve, and the steady thump, thump of the small foot rice mills, which the women work apparently from morn till night.

Before sunrise, as the sonorous chant rises from the wat, these mills are at work too, and often the last thing at night one hears them still. Mr. McCarthy has described them, but I may just mention that they consist of a piece of tree-trunk hollowed into a funnel-shape, into which the rice is put, and a long lever worked at the outer end by the foot, the woman stepping on and off, fitted with a hammer-head of wood, of which several of different sizes are used. And while the mother works her loom close by, the two daughters will work the mill and chat and chaff the passers-by.

Minimum readings for the last four days, 52°, 55°, 57°, 58° Fahr. The maximum in one of these salas is generally about 82° for this month at 2 to 3 p.m. The winds were now south-westerly, very strong, with bright fierce sun, but cumuli lying on the higher peaks after 4 p.m., sometimes a slight shower falling from them.

One mile north-west from M. Ngob, the Nam Nan,[2] here known as the Nam Ngob (and actually the people did not know that it was the same river as the Nam Nan below), runs over shallow pebble beds, where we forded to the west side. This day's march is a very good example of the kind of travelling to be done. The tracks over the hills are either in the bed of the "hoays," or streams, far down in a perpetual night, where the coldness of the water chills the feet and legs through and through; or, after a steep climb, high up on narrow spurs leading to the central range, where the forest is thick enough to keep off all the wind but not the rays of the sun after 10 a.m. Once on these ridges no water is to be had for half a day, and the stick of sugar-cane or water-bottle of cold tea, the best of all beverages, is worth its weight in gold. However, drinking on the march is a ruinous habit. The Laos sensibly rinse the mouth when they can, and only drink at the end of the day.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM M. LE, LOOKING NORTH-WEST ACROSS THE NAM NAN
AND WATERSHED OF MEINAM KHONG.]

Following up Hoay Sakeng over red sandstone rocks, the track then climbs on to a long ridge, leading, with many rises and falls, to a small gap in the range, about 1100 feet above the river. We met on the way four pack oxen coming, with their pretty deep-toned bell, down the path, and on reaching the summit had a most glorious view of the thick forests of the Chieng Hon valley, with the small clearings here and there and surrounded on all sides, as far as one could see in the dim haze which accompanies the south-west wind, by hill ranges. Twenty minutes down a steep drop at a run brought us into a different climate and the most perfect valley I was ever in. Far above, the sun glistened here and there on the wide-spreading fronds of huge tree-ferns; for the rest; we were almost in darkness, with orchids and great twisted creepers climbing on the tree-trunks dim above us. The stream is known as Hoay Tok, and down its bed we stumbled, cutting ourselves about on the rough outcrops, the strike of which, with a steep westerly dip, was at right angles to our course, and made most unpleasant travelling. Two hours more across a partially cultivated plain, and we passed another Haw caravan encamped, and reached the sala. The elephants did not arrive until 5 p.m., it having taken them twelve hours to reach M. Chieng Hon.

At M. Pechai I had bought some ponies. There are not many there, and the choice was limited, while the price, forty to sixty ticals, was heavy. These animals, as long as we were in flat country, were useful, but they were not good mountaineers, and I found travelling on foot much pleasanter, while, as a general rule, the more exercise men get in these jungles, the healthier they are. On this day each one of my Siamese assistants had a fall, for they, as a rule, stuck to their ponies' backs, whatever the trail was like; this often means getting one's face and hands tremendously knocked about, frequent dismountings, slow progress, and endless bother, while it also stands in the way of surveying or careful observation of the lie of the ground.

There was a very heavy, damp mist when we pushed on next day through the Dong Choi, a magnificent forest, which almost covers this plateau with the scenery of Hoay Tok continued, only on a larger and more imposing scale. The size of the ferns, and especially of the hart's-tongues, which clung in masses, with clumps of orchids, far up on the bare trunks of the trees which form the roofing of branch and leaf above, was quite astonishing to me.

Camp was made by a small sala in a wild clearing at Sala Pangue, from which the sun was early excluded by the hills and forest on the west, which we were to cross on the morrow. The tired elephants had a well-earned afternoon's rest. To give them time to get in before sunset, next day we got under way at 3.30 a.m., every six or eight men having a torch about eight feet long of split bamboo. These early marches are a sort of scrambling dream, and should not be resorted to except under compulsion, as, although the cool morning air is pleasant for the first hour, every one soon gets very done up, and stumbles on hazily. Sunrise puts new life into one, but the want of the early morning sleep makes one feel the heat of the day far more. Moreover, of course, nothing of the country is seen. We rose for an hour and a half up over hills, and one or two of the ponies had some tremendous falls, and were soon left struggling behind. At sunrise we were descending once more among the wildest and most rugged scenes into the valley of Nam Pote, and were now fairly in the Mekong drainage. This was another of the wonderful valleys which are so common here; and the temperature was just over 10° Fahr. below that of the hill ridges when we left them at 6 a.m. About 8.30, after crossing and recrossing the stream about thirty times, and being regularly chilled, I stopped at a small sala, and was glad to bask in the sun. An hour and a half later the others came up, and we breakfasted. Chow Benn Yenn's sharp eyes had seen some deer and two tigers, but they were off in a moment. Where the former is the latter follows, but neither will stay when he detects the sound of man coming through the forest. The tiger takes the greatest trouble to avoid a man, unless very famished. Often then he is rendered bold enough to attack a solitary man, when squatting down to eat his kao neo, and it is thus that accidents occur; but he will seldom face two men, and that is why one always meets the Laos in couples, if not in greater numbers.

At 10.30 we continued down the valley; rock apparently red sandstone, but so decomposed at its outcrop as to give no clue of reliable character. Passed numbers of wild banana trees, which do not bear fruit. They are very aggravating to tired men, who hear the cry of a jungle fowl, and coming round a corner see the broad leaves of the bananas; naturally we jump forward, thinking to get a rest and a bunch of bananas, and, perhaps, a fowl or some eggs for the evening's supper, but find nothing and no sign of man or fowl.

The course is roughly north-west until the hills fall back, and the valley opens on a flat piece of paddy land, bounded north and south by lofty limestone rocks, with, to the west, a barrier caused by a steep north and south ridge, over which lies M. Kob, but round which a long detour has to be made to the north-west, down the Nam Pote valley, to where the Nam Kob meets it. Passing Ban Tam, Ban Prow, and Ban Faek, prosperous-looking villages, we reached the junction at one o'clock. After a brief rest in the shade, in another hour and a half, after fording Nam Kob pretty frequently (making about the ninetieth time we had been in the water that day), we reached the sala of M. Kob. The others began to arrive about four o'clock, and the elephants at 6.30, looking very sorry; and we had to give them a complete rest next day.

[Illustration: Map—Route from Muang Ngob on the Nam Nan to Muang
Chieng Kong on the Mekong River From a Compass Survey by H. Warington
Smyth, F.G.S. 1893.]

From the character of the scenery here, and at the top of the Nam Pote, where we struck it, I imagine the hills we came down among were limestones overlying the sandstone again; all round the Muang are the wildest and most fantastic peaks, and, with the steep heights hanging immediately over it, it was more like a Norwegian valley than anything I have seen.

The wats here are very simple, the houses neat, but small; bricks are baked in the valley, and the rice-mills thump cheerily and echo off the hills all day. There were some pack oxen, which came over from the westward; but the Laos who drove them, whether from distrust of us or not, I do not know, would not converse with any of us. The bells of these caravans as they go trotting down the valleys are beautiful. First goes a large, deep-toned bell, swinging between the packs of the leader; the next is a third above it; and the rear is brought up by a treble bell. The little oxen trot in their order without other guidance than that of the bells and an occasional shout, one man leading, another to every five animals, and one to bring up the rear. The baskets are hung on each side of the hump, with often an ornamental erection between them; there are fore and aft stays of leather, and these prevent the packs coming off when the animals are climbing. We had met some before—and met and used others afterwards; however pretty they look as they trot along, their bells tinkling far over land and forest, they are not pleasant to travel with, especially in the rains, when streams are all in flood, for it is impossible to keep anything they carry at all dry.

While we were resting here a fire occurred, and two houses were burnt to the ground in about seven minutes. My Siamese, I must say, worked very well and pluckily, the Laos seeming quite dazed by the catastrophe. We cut down a row of banana palms, split up the trunks, and threw them on the flames, by the water and moisture in them beating down the fire, so that two neighbouring houses were saved, with the outhouses, in which, in huge bins, the rice was stored. For this last the poor fellows who only arrived home at night to find their houses burned, were most grateful; they came to thank us, and I was very much struck with the conduct of my people, who, beginning with my boat-boy, a Mon, or Peguan (who at the fire and on every other occasion had shown himself a very smart, handy, and good-hearted fellow), selected what clothes they could spare, and sent the two Laos men away loaded with raiment, and with tears of thankfulness in their eyes. It gives an additional pleasure to work with men who can act like that.

Thermometer readings on the march from Sala Pangue were—3 a.m., 42° Fahr.; 5.30 a.m., on the hills, 60°; 6.30 a.m., in Nam Pote valley, 50°; 9 a.m., ditto, 59°; noon, in the shade. Ban Faek, 87° Fahr. My aneroids had both been injured by my careless people, and I could get no reliable heights.

From M. Kob the trail follows up the Nam Tan in a general south-south-west direction, and crosses a low watershed into the bed of the Hoay Chang Kong, another rocky stream disastrous to foot gear. It then crosses low ridges and jungle, passing several small villages to Ban Ton Kluay, 6½ hours' walk, though most of the people took 8, and the elephants over 9.

Thermometer minimum—54° at sunrise in heavy damp mist; strong south-westerly breeze at noon; thick haze all day.

Six hours from here, over flat country, past M. Chieng Len, and in a general north-north-west direction from that place is M. Ngau, which gives its name to the Nam Ngau flowing north-north-east to the Mekong, and meeting it half a day's boat journey below Chieng Kong. We met a number of traders from the north carrying their loads; they were smoking long-stemmed pipes, and looked very Burmese in face. They wore blue sailor-looking trousers, with red trimmings round the ankle, where they were very loose, and small blue jackets with bead trimmings, while some had marvellously wide straw hats; with their uniformity of dress and its high colouring they made a very pretty picture crossing the yellow paddy fields.

The Chet Muang at Chieng Len was in trouble with the Nan authorities because he is, unfortunately, under the disaffected Chow Sa, and far away from there as he is, and utterly ignorant, as he protested, of his proceedings, it seemed likely that he would be involved in the disgrace of his chief.

From M. Ngau the trail crosses the upper end of the long range which forms the watershed of the Nam Ing and Nam Ngau, along the western side of which for three days we travelled, sleeping at Muang Ing and Ban Pakeng. From the latter place, leaving at a quarter to two in the morning. Ban Lung was reached at a quarter to seven. Here we forded Nam Ing, and crossed a burning plain almost entirely devoid of vegetation for four hours more, and then in a huge and very comfortable sala disposed of the contents of our haversacks with the pleasant feeling of having reached our goal. Chow Benn Yenn meanwhile had left us for a day or two's visiting at some other villages east of Nam Ing which owed allegiance to Chow Sa. Consequently, when I got in, there were only the Laos guide, my Mon boatman, and two lusty young Siamese servants who had kept up; and, absurd as it may seem to Western ideas, the Chieng Kong people took some hours to believe that I was come on genuine Government business; for a man is measured in these parts according to the number of his following, and until the men and elephants turned up I was often looked at askance. This was sometimes very amusing and sometimes not, especially when trying to procure coconuts or bananas! The sense of hospitality was, however, generally quick to prevail.

The three days from Muang Ngau were through forest, the villages lying mostly on our west in the flat land nearer the river. We passed several forest fires, which where they approached the trail made very hot travelling.

The barrenness of the country between the Nam Ing at Ban Lung and Chieng Kong seems to have been originally caused by fires. The only cultivation was by a muddy stream at Ban Satan, a name which struck me as particularly appropriate in such a wilderness. There is an absence of water, I was afterwards told, which prevents cultivation of any value, and owing to this the Burmese gem-diggers have given up trying to follow indications of stones on this side.

The first view of the Mekong fairly took one's breath away, the water here spreading out into a wide placid river of half a mile in width, winding slowly away among a few sandbanks until lost in the hills to the south-east. Across, on the north, lies a long low series of hills, from which the gem-bearing Hoays seem all to take their rise.

Thermometer minimum last four days—59°, 64°, 60°, 58°; maximum in sala, 90°, very thick haze all day, with strong breezes from south towards noon.

[Footnote 2: The river evidently takes its rise from Doi Luang (a large hill mass south of M. Hongsawadi), 19° 35' N., 101° 24' E.]