The first day from Chieng Kong we brought up on the south bank, at the mouth of the Nam Ngau I have already mentioned; and I was two nights away with only two or three men visiting some gold washings in the bed of the river. The percentage is extremely small, and is the same in character though not so rich as in the Mekong sands. The usual small fee of two rupees a year is paid by each man. They work waist deep in the cold rushing stream, and cannot go on for more than ten minutes at a time. A basket is sunk under water with one foot upon it, and the gravel from the bank prized out into it with the usual iron-shod bamboo; it is then lifted out, carried ashore, and washed. This operation, here and throughout the Mekong district, is done by a man standing in the water, with a wooden tray in front of him, shaped like a Chinaman's peaked hat, the diameter 30 inches, and depth at the centre 5 inches. As it floats on the water, moored by a string to a stone, the basket of gravel is emptied into it, and the larger stones picked out. A rotary motion is given to the pan by the continual shifting of the hands from right to left; at the same time the water is expelled, or dipped up, and sent running round the edge by a depression of the rim being sent round "against the sun," until all the light material is gone. What remains is usually a little magnetic iron ore, with a speck or two of very fine "float" gold for every four baskets of 14 inches diameter and 3½ inches depth. It is then washed carefully into a small oblong box, in which it is carried home and handed over to the women who, I am told (for I never saw it done), use mercury obtained from Chinese merchants for the subsequent freeing of the gold. On the way to Nongkhai we met several gangs of men, generally seven or eight in number, living in their boats and engaged in washing in this way in the sands of the river, in which, according to all I could gather, the gold seems to be redeposited in small quantities by every year's flood season.
[Illustration of Chinese peaked hat]
What the gold prospects of the country are, there have been no sufficient trials to show, but with the advent of the French on the banks of the river we may soon know something more on this head. The Laos consider they do very well if they get 2 hun per man in a day (5 hun = 1 fuang or 1/8 tical); but their work is very intermittent, and the search for gold seems to have the proverbial effect upon them, for in several cases I found their assertions were not over-truthful.
Up such rivers as the Nam Beng, Nam Ngau, Nam Oo, and Nam Suung, the gold seems to be in old water deposits which extend beyond the present stream beds, and will probably be found to cover considerable areas in the valley bottoms.
Both calcite and quartz exist in great abundance in the mountain ranges we came in contact with, and to the denudation of these two minerals a great deal of the alluvial gold presumably owes its origin, as well as perhaps from the crystalline limestones. I was, however, unable ever to lay hands on an undoubted gold-bearing vein of either character, nor could I get any information of occurrence of the metal, except in alluvial sands and gravels. Some large nuggets have been found up the Nam Beng and Nam Oo, and up the former river a Chinaman from Luang Prabang had tried systematic working of a kind. After six months' work he lost 200 ticals; and when a Chinaman loses money, especially in a country where money will go so far, the chances are that no one else will make their fortunes. I subsequently found at Pak Beng that the Kache he had employed had swallowed all the decent-sized gold obtained! This is another instance of the difficulties the miner has to meet with in Siam; and with fevers, superstition, robbery, and physical difficulties, the list is a rather alarming one.
This valley of the Nam Ngau is inhabited by people known as Lus. They wear their heads shaved, except for the top tuft, like all the Nan men, with enormously loose and wide blue trousers, often trimmed round the ankle with red; short blue jackets with beads and touches of red; and red, green, or white turbans. They are magnificently made men, with very pleasant countenances, tattooed as usual from knee to waist, but, when clothed, more like the stage-pirate; in fact, a gang of them, with the long dhâps and an old flintlock or two among them, standing chatting, laughing, and smoking their long-stemmed pipes, would make an ideal buccaneer's crew.
At Ban Muang, where we slept each night, the people were the most friendly I had met; some fifty of them came out to greet us on our arrival, and we had an orchestra of four flutes in the evening to play us to sleep. The children and women were extremely pretty. Some distance south of this place the forest already mentioned as Pe Kung Ngau begins. Men travelling in it, and even the people living on its skirts, are subject to a very violent fever, which causes complete prostration in a few hours, and is generally fatal. The face and breast become quite yellow, presumably owing to the stoppage of the bile-duct.
A big dyke has lately been cut from the Nam Ngau to take the water to the eastern side of the valley for purposes of irrigation. Its depth and width are about 10 feet, and it must be some miles long. All the men from the villages turned out to work, and it proved a heavy undertaking. This valley seems to be all under Muang Sa, and Chow Benn Yenn found himself among his friends.
[Illustration: THE LEADING MULE.]
We met another gang of Haws, who made night hideous by discovering the mules had strayed, and every man and boy among them shrieking, howling, beating gongs, and firing guns by way of attracting them back to the camp. It was a pleasant night, with one of my men raving and shouting with fever till dawn.