Surely there is something besides savagery here.

[Footnote 1: M.= Muang.]

PART II.

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.