Round this building outside runs a rectangular cloister, which faces inwards, and here, at one time, the monks were living among the statues which stand round the walls, many of these 3 and more feet high, while the walls too are ornamented with niches similar to those inside the main building. In the centre of each side there is a gateway surmounted by a gable, there being also similar ornaments at each corner. The beauty and the retired air of the court inside could not be surpassed, and the effect of the green grass, the white walls, the low-reaching red-tiled roofs, and the deep shadows is charming; there is nothing flat, nothing vulgarly gaudy, and very little that is out of repair. And here, as is most noticeable in the remains of the other buildings about, the proportions are perfect. In this the ruined remains of Wieng Chan surpass all the other buildings I have seen in Siam, and bear witness to a true artistic sense in the builders. Though the old city is not inhabited, and the site thereof seems under a curse, the villages along the bank of the river, both above and below, have a flourishing appearance, and the paths along the river, with their cool shade, were full of people.

[Illustration: SOUTH-WEST ANGLE, WAT SUSAKET, WIENG CHAN.]

Leaving Wieng Chan, we had our last and most curious experience of the Meinam Kong and its wanton ways. A vast mass of heavy thunderclouds lay to the east, south-east, and south, and into this, as happens in the rainy season, a strong draught of air, first from south-west, then west, and then north-west, was blowing. This began to freshen, and with two square sails I got rigged to my ship we made very good way, until it began blowing really hard and a sea got up, the water being here over half a mile in width, with 2, 3, and 5-fathom soundings; we then had to strike sail, while astern a vast cloud of sand, twigs, leaves, and even pebbles, came sweeping along with a roar. The other three boats were, when we saw them last, just broaching to, all close together. The Laos, who face rapids or elephants with composure, quite lost their heads, and the only use to be made of them was to set them to hang on to the deck-house, which was being carried out of the ship. She tried very hard to swamp herself, for when the squall came up the strength was terrific, and the seas hollow and breaking solidly. However, by keeping her stern to it, we shot on through the thick darkness, frequently belaboured with missiles, and after a great deal of difficulty in weathering a lee shore we got round a point and brought up, after two rattan ropes had been carried away. Meantime many dug-outs passed us waterlogged and adrift, and when at last the wind got to the north and fell not a boat was in sight. Except our own, every other craft in the river had been swamped, including our other three boats, which were carried broadside into the lee shore we had got round, and had a handsome battering. Everything in them was full of water, while the men escaped and sat on shore till it was all over, and when they arrived at Ban Bar, where we lay for the night, they did not seem to have enjoyed the fun at all.

This village is more Siamese than Laos in appearance; there are numbers of Chinamen of unprepossessing appearance and manners, who kept shops and pariahs. The latter was a nuisance we had been comparatively free from; in fact, on the upper river, at Chieng Kong, there were very decent breeds to be seen, and Chow Benn Yenn got from one of his villages a beautiful black-and-tan collie, exactly like a good specimen at home, with the exception that he had a short tail like a manx cat. It was a beautiful dog and a capital sporting animal. The long black-haired and black-tongued "Chow" dog we saw several times, and also small, brown, long-haired animals with high, curled tails. A peculiarity about these dogs was that, being accustomed to the Laos kao neo, when we got back to Siam and kao chow (the ordinary rice), they would have none of it.

The next day we reached Nongkhai, and were very cordially welcomed by Krom Prachak, a brother of the king, who is Commissioner. The town owes its existence to the fall of Wieng Chan, and is scattered along the south bank; there is a considerable number of Chinamen keeping shops here, and to them and its character as the official centre, it owes its importance. The houses extend all along the river-side for a mile and a half, mostly well shaded by areca and coconut palms. Here once more, on the great plain lying to the south, we saw the tall, gaunt sugar palms standing against the sky, and again saw the kiens, or ox-carts, with their long, black hoods, wending their slow way in single file, the groaning, grunting, and shrieking, which accompanies their every movement and jerk, coming slowly down the wind. Here once more, sad to say, we came across a character most of us have known in Siam—the kamoë, or thief—and we hadn't been an hour in the place before he had begun work. Here, too, we again heard the horrid sound of chains, dragged along the hot, dusty road by wretched, emaciated creatures carrying water—hardly strong enough to lift the chains at their ankles. And here, again, were, among the decent houses, dirty, squalid cottages and drunkenness. The fact is, the cattle-driving people of the plains become by their occupation different in character to the mountaineers; it was very noticeable, striking right upon them here, how much more stolid and less expressive their faces are, how black and muddy—or dusty if the rain keeps off—they become in their long, slow rides upon their carts, and, in general, how like their own sleepy, blinking buffaloes they become—as, too, one may see in the great plains of India. The circumstances and conditions of life are all different; and drinking slow-running mud, which they euphemistically call water, sloshing laboriously through seas of reeking bog and swamp, and enduring the tormenting bites of innumerable huge flies, which attack elephants, buffaloes, oxen, horses, and men indiscriminately, but untiringly, must result in a differently developed man from that built up by mountain marches, high aloft on dry hillsides or deep down in cold stream beds, leaping from rock to stone or plunging into the rushing water, where life is a perfect fight. Not that the plains are always so disagreeable; given the dry, cool months of December and January, travelling in them becomes a luxury; but there is never the same exhilarating air or the same pure water.

The Commissioner's house is at the western end of the town, surrounded by the sheds of the military detachment. At the back a very pretty garden is being made; and this and a new straight road, inland of the present street and parallel with it, are the works of construction on hand. The ground on each side of the new road—which, by its unlovely straightness, carried one far away to similar ugliness in civilized lands, and was the only unnatural thing we saw—is being eagerly applied for by the Chinese; but a great drawback must for some time be the absence of shade. The river is undoubtedly cutting into the soft laterite bank here, and in a few years the old site will go down with a run.

Prince Prachak is a reformer; he is very keen in "reforming the Laos," but is grieved to find they don't want to be reformed. He says—what is very true—that their work is always desultory (one month they plant rice, another they go fishing, another they wash gold in the sands), and that they will not settle down into trades. They prefer, too, to play music on their kans in the evenings to doing more useful things, and are, in fact, lazy. But I fear it is not surprising, and that it will be some time before the Laos take to trades.

The Chinese shopkeepers import their goods from Bangkok through Khorat, and the journey, in the matter of shoes or felt hats from London, increases the price about one salung at the first place, and two by the time they reach Nongkhai. They show for sale calico goods of all colours and patterns (as one sees in Bangkok for "panungs," "pahs," etc.), shoes, sandals, belts, pots and pans, matches, Chinese umbrellas, and teapots, the first mostly English, and as they sell these well, they tell you with a grin they soon make their fortunes and retire.

The wats are wretched little places, ill built and ill kept, the most interesting thing being the bell of the principal wat, which is a huge hollowed timber, some 3 feet in diameter and 7 feet high, hung to a crossbar at the top. Struck end on with a stout pole, the sound is deep and sonorous. This form, but usually smaller, is often used in Siam, and for attaching to the necks of elephants or oxen (which invariably have a bell), there are clappers hung on a string on each side, which keep up a continual tinkle. Fixed on a bent bamboo, the same form of bell is used by fishermen on the shore end of their set lines to give warning of a big fish or other disturbance. There is always a slit up, about a quarter of the way, slightly wider at the top, on each side.

[Illustration: BELL.]