"About ten miles from Pechaburi I found several villages inhabited by Laotians, who have been settled there for two or three generations. Their costumes consist of a long shirt and black pantaloons, like those of the Cochin-Chinese, and they have the Siamese tuft of hair. The women wear the same head-dress as the Cambodians. Their songs, and their way of drinking through bamboo pipes, from large jars, a fermented liquor made from rice and herbs, recalled to my mind what I had seen among the savage Stiêns. I also found among them the same baskets and instruments used by those tribes.
"The young girls are fair compared to the Siamese, and their features are pretty; but they soon grow coarse and lose all their charms. Isolated in their villages, these Laotians have preserved their language and customs, and they never mingle with the Siamese."
To any one who has had experience of the Siamese mosquitoes, it is delightful to find such thorough appreciation of them as Mouhot exhibits. In number and in ferocity they are unsurpassed. A prolonged and varied observation of the habits of this insect, in New Jersey and elsewhere, enables this editor to say that the mosquitoes of Siam are easily chief among their kind. The memory of one night at Paknam is still vivid and dreadful. So multitudinous, so irresistible, so intolerable were the swarms of these sanguinary enemies that not only comfort, but health and even life itself seemed jeopardized, as the irritation was fast bringing on a state of fever. There seemed no way but to flee. Orders were given to get up steam in the little steamer which had brought us from Bangkok, and we made all possible haste out of reach of the shore and anchored miles distant in the safe waters of the gulf till morning.
Mouhot remained for four months among the mountains of Pechaburi, "known by the names of Makaon Khao, Panam Knot, Khao Tamoune, and Khao Samroun, the last two of which are 1,700 and 1,900 feet above the level of the sea." He needed the repose after the fatigue of his long journey, and by way of preparation for his new and arduous explorations of the Laos country, from which, as the result proved, he was never to come back. He returned to Bangkok, and after a brief season of preparation and farewell, he started for the interior.
CHAPTER XV.
THE TRIBES OF NORTHERN SIAM
Until recent years little has been known or said of the inhabitants who occupy the remoter districts of Siam. Owing to its debilitating climate and the many dangers of travel in jungle and wilderness, explorers have thus far made but meagre contributions to our knowledge of the shy and savage tribes in the north and west. In spite of our ignorance, however, it is admitted that these various races found in the Indo-Chinese peninsula present problems of great ethnological interest, the solution of which will some day explain the origins of many language and race puzzles now quite insoluble. To most foreigners, Siam is the city of Bangkok and its neighborhood; yet, to obtain a fair conception of the kingdom, as one of the foremost states of Asia, we must understand the variety and extent of the country, a few glimpses of which we may have through the reports of those who have penetrated its wilds.
For the most part, we are told by Mr. McCarthy, whose six years' experience in superintending the government survey, entitles him to respect as an authority, "the people settle on the banks of the rivers and are employed chiefly in cultivating rice. There are but few villages distant from the large rivers, and in the mountainous parts of the kingdom the towns and villages are built in open flat valleys, picturesquely surrounded by the mountains, which are clothed with forests from top to bottom, the undergrowth being so heavy that one seldom or never sees any sport which would change the monotony of daily trudging through mountains, where one's view is confined to within ten yards around. There is one peculiar feature in this population of different nationalities, and that is that they do not amalgamate with one another; thus it comes about that near Bangkok itself villages of Burmans and Annamites are found living in separate communities, preserving their own language and customs."
The region to the west of the Meinam is mostly mountainous and a perfect wilderness of jungle, the country being sparsely inhabited. A short distance from the broad valley the high range appears which forms the water-shed between the Gulf of Siam and the Bay of Bengal. The portion of this range which lies above the Malay peninsula appears to be drained on its eastern slope, not by the "Mother of Waters" itself, but by its neighbor, the Mei-Klong, running almost parallel with it from the heights of the Karen country to the Gulf. "This river to Kanburi," says Dr. Collins, an American missionary who was the first to cross the wild district between Bangkok and Maulmein, "is an exceedingly winding, broad, clear, shallow stream, with a slow current and well-defined banks, on which are a few villages and many separated habitations. The best land seemed to be in the hands of Chinese, who cultivate tobacco, sugar-cane, cotton, and rice. Many of the Chinese located on the banks of this river, as in other parts of Siam, have married native women and form the best element of the population. Quite a number are Roman Catholics, while all are sober, industrious, orderly, and prosperous."