“My companions, full of ardor, determined to explore the inner recesses of the cave, and accordingly lighted their torches and proceeded further into the bowels of the earth, whilst I enjoyed a quiet smoke amongst the gods. Down they went, creeping through low, narrow passages, over rocks, and along ledges, with chasms and pits lining their path as the cave expanded—bottomless as far as they could judge by the faint light of their torches, but really not more than twenty or thirty feet deep—until they could get no further, and had to return, having proceeded about the eighth of a mile.”
That night brought us to the Mê Fāng River. The narrative proceeds:
“Here we spent the most unpleasant night we had yet spent, as we were troubled with rain, heat, and mosquitoes. We were told that game was plentiful. Wild cattle larger than buffaloes come in droves from the hills to graze in the plain, while the rhinoceros and the elephant roam about the plains.
“At our next stopping-place, after we had settled ourselves in an empty house, a villager came to inform us that the house belonged to the Chief of Mûang Fāng, and that anybody that slept in it would have his head cut off. As rain was threatening, we determined to risk the penalty, and we were soon glad that we had done so, as the rain poured down in torrents.”
There is a small deer called tamnê, which twenty years ago was very abundant in all the northern provinces. They are not found in the very tall grass of the river-bottoms, but in grass about waist-high thickly covering the higher plains. They have their beds in this grass by day, and graze at night. They are lower than the grass, and never leap so as to show the body, but glide smoothly along as if swimming, discovering their presence only through the parting and waving of the grass. Sometimes you get right upon them before they will run.
One Saturday we got Mr. Hallett interested in some survey or calculations not requiring the aid of an interpreter, and Mr. Martin and I had our first deer hunt. We took six of our elephants, and, going out about an hour’s ride or more from the city, we formed in open order abreast, about forty yards apart, and in perfect silence moved forward over the plain. The hunter thus starts his own game. He sits on the back, or, better still, on the neck of his elephant, with gun cocked, ready for a shot at the first noise or movement in the grass. We started about a dozen of the deer, and emptied many cartridges, but came back to camp with no meat—much to Mr. Hallett’s disgust.
Mûang Fāng, like Chieng Sên, was rich in images of all sizes and materials. I never saw finer bronze ones. It was a favourite field from which Siamese princes and officials could get a supply otherwise unattainable in those days. Of course, they have a right to them. But when a German traveller undertook a wholesale speculation in the images of Buddha, it was quite another matter, and he got into serious difficulty with the government.
Soon after our return to Chiengmai, Mr. Hallett left us for Bangkok. From his long residence in Burma and from his close connection with the mission and missionaries during his expedition among what he calls the Shan States, he understood the methods and results of missionary work better than most visitors who have written upon the subject. The kind words of the dedication of his book, though often quoted, may well conclude this chapter.
“To the American Missionaries in Burma and Siam and the Shan States I dedicate this book, as a mark of the high esteem in which I hold the noble work the American Baptist Mission and the American Presbyterian Mission are accomplishing in civilizing and Christianizing the people of Indo-China.”