The centre of the town we found not yet recovered from an extensive fire; all round the four sides run the lofty red-brick walls, with gates in the centre of each side, protected by round towers at the flanks, in which laterite blocks have been extensively used. The whole is much dilapidated and overgrown, and the moat outside has become nearly filled up. The Commissioner had then 3000 men at work clearing it out again. This will probably enormously benefit the town, which at present may be described as an accumulation of houses, mainly in ruins, jungle patches, and swamps, on every side of which rises the great mound on which the walls stand, and which effectually shuts in every drop of water, and in the rains transforms the whole area into a lake. With openings made under the walls to drain off the water into the moat, and with a raising of the level inside, an enormous improvement will be effected. As the town stands well on a slight rise above the plain level, and is surrounded with similar ridges covered only with beautiful turf going miles towards the south, south-west, and south-east, it may become a healthy and attractive place. The plain around is dotted with villages; for many miles the soil certainly produces a fine clean rice and abundance of fruit. Going out in the morning along any of the great trails to the west, north, or east, one passes among crowds of camped kiens, and among villages and markets, the latter always held along one side of the road. At the time we were there mangoes were in full swing, and all the women's baskets full of them, bananas, coconuts, ready-rolled cigarettes, brown cakes of palm sugar of an excellent quality, and very often the fruit of the sugar palm, which is very much enjoyed. To the south and west the trails are really like beautiful roads, for they go through a pretty red sand soil, leading to the flat-bedded sandstones of the hills, which makes good walking, and, even when swamped with a foot of water, never causes mud. On the north and east, however, on slightly lower ground, these sandy ridges are less frequent; the villages, when possible, are built on them for health and convenience, while the paddy is grown below. The trails on these sides, passing chiefly through this low land, are in the rains two or three feet deep in thick, clinging mud.
If the houses of the Thai (in which for the moment we may include the Siamese and Laos together) are in the city badly situated in swamp and jungle, and badly kept in repair, the houses of the Chinese are very different; they are the flourishing part of the community. There are some thousands of them here and in the neighbourhood, nearly all shopkeepers, and outside the west gate, and along the main trail on each side, they have a regular village. The street is narrow between the open shop-fronts, and the road paved with baulks of timber. They drive a large trade among the people coming in from the distant parts, in calico stuffs, coloured sarongs and panungs, brasswork for betel boxes, trays, etc., umbrellas, sandals (the latter soles of leather with a strap coming up inside the great toe, and dividing and passing off on each side, which are used all over the north); hats of straw, felt, or strips of palm leaf; bells for oxen, tins of Swiss milk, matches, needles and threads, wire and nails, cheap chains, a few tools of European type, coloured yarns, white jackets and singlets, towels, and even soap: all are imported from Bangkok. Yet, with the present difficulties of transport through the Dong Phya Yen, the Chinamen are doing a flourishing business.
[Illustration: SANDAL]
The Chinese houses are peculiar; a rectangular building being first built of large unbaked mud bricks, with pillars rising like chimneys at each end. Outside, several feet higher, and resting on these pillars, is constructed a yah kah, or grass roof. Big fires are kindled inside to dry the place; and the result is a very cool dwelling. The grass roofing is brought very often far out, overhanging the front, and this makes a shop front with the house behind.
These houses are usually on the roadsides, the two principal ones running north and south, and east and west, connecting the gates, and meeting about the centre. The latter road is about a mile long, the former less. The central market is carried on all day in a large roofed building near the centre of the city, and all up the road sit the yellow-faced Chinamen smoking their long-stemmed pipes in the shop fronts, and with the aid of their wives (generally Siamese, and good business women) bargaining with the long-haired, dark burned men from the plains, to whom the beauties of the shops in Khorat are a great delight. From these main roads one may have quite an extensive ride or walk without going outside the walls, in lovely lanes, lying deep down between high banks of shrubs and grasses (and sometimes 4 feet deep in water). These lanes are quite a feature of the country outside, too, and, with the long grassy slopes referred to above, would make Khorat the centre of delightful excursions in the cool months.
The journey from Khorat to Saraburi on the Nam Sak, whence Bangkok can be reached in two days, occupies as a rule six or seven days only. But when, after the main body had come up and had a day's rest, we bade good-bye to the unceasing kindness of the Commissioner, and at the end of the first day's march, which had begun pleasantly through lanes and villages, found ourselves up to our necks in water, it was evident we should take longer. We had to trend to the southward to get upon the high ground out of the water, and with constant delays, owing to the impassable state of the rivers, it was fourteen days before we got to Saraburi.
Leaving the beautiful villages outside Khorat, deep in their thick clusters of areca palms, which in places form perfect forests of tall stems supporting the arched roof of leaves far overhead, and making a perpetual cool shade, we had two days alternately over flat sandstone beds and flooded lowlands, where the water was for hours at a time up to our thighs, and at one place for half a mile up to our necks. Our nights were wretched, as the rain was perpetual, and the waggons could not arrive at the monasteries, where we put up, till long after midnight; the men lay sleeping round, hungry and damp, lots of them too tired to eat their supper when we got it ready, about 2 a.m.
These monasteries, built, as they were in days of old in our own Fen country, upon little islands, are often the only things above the vast surrounding lakes of water. The houses in the villages, built high on piles, keep dry. Raised above the ground some two or three feet, are generally long timber walks, made of solid felled trees, the top side being slightly shaved down, on which the monks may walk out dry and clean in the morning rounds to get their food. These walks are attached to the wats in all the plains of the country, and when the traveller strikes one, he knows a wat, with its welcome sala or resthouse, is near.
The trail follows the Khorat river to nearly its source in the limestones of the "Dong Phya Yen" forest; it then strikes across the forest, descending the spurs of the plateau to the elbow made by the Nam Sak, which turns away at Keng Koi in a west-south-westerly direction to the Meinam. This trail in the forest is greatly worn by the pack oxen, by which alone the thick forest can be penetrated, and in the rains is a series of narrow tracks winding in and out between the trees, consisting of frightfully slippery mud. The oxen have a way of walking in each other's footsteps, and the result is a series of ridges, like those on a sandbank at low water; but the ridges are greasy mud, and the depressions deep pitfalls. Thus in the wet weather the oxen constantly have heavy falls, and no one can get through without finding himself often on his nose or on his back.
The forest proper begins at Chanteuk, a small village, in the neighbourhood of which are some copper mines. These are open works, and as no one has worked there lately, were, when we passed through, brim full of water. On the Khorat side of this place are two fords, to cross which huge tree-trunks lie over the water, the growth along the bamboo being extraordinarily dense. Between them is a sala, which fortunately was in moderate condition, as we were delayed there two days in pouring rain, the river having risen ten feet in one night, as I measured next morning. Our quinine was nearly at an end; one man was quite prostrated with fever; and our eight days' store of rice was nearly done, all our chickens gone, the horses useless with sore backs, and the thirty-eight oxen carrying the packs suffering with coughs and sores. To get out we built two rafts; one was carried away on her first journey, the ropes going; and the other proved so slow that, as the distance was some hundred yards in the then state of the water, it would have taken us two days to get all over. But, to our great satisfaction, the river fell.