CHAPTER X.
Sojourn of Three Months among the Savage Stiêns—Manners of this Tribe—Products of the Country—Fauna—Manners of the Annamites.
THE SAVAGE STIENS.
I resided nearly three months among the savage Stiêns. Is this too short a period to enable me to form an opinion of them? One would think so, on hearing Father Guilloux repeat often that, although he has lived here two years, he is yet far from knowing all their superstitions and devilries.
We are surrounded by forests, which are infested with elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceros, tigers, and wild boars, and the ground all about the pools is covered with their footprints. We live almost as in a besieged place, every moment dreading some attack of the enemy, and keeping our guns constantly loaded. Sometimes they come close to our quarters, and we cannot go even a few steps into the woods without hearing them. As a general rule, however, they fly from the approach of man, and in order to get a shot it is necessary to lie in wait either amongst the branches of a tree or hidden amid the brushwood near the spots where they come to drink.
Scorpions, centipedes, and, above all, serpents, were the enemies we most dreaded, and against which precautions were chiefly requisite; but the mosquitoes and the leeches, though less dangerous, were the most troublesome and most inveterate plagues. During the rainy season you cannot be too much on your guard; going to bed or getting up, you are ever in peril of putting hand or foot on some venomous snake. I have killed more than one in my house with a gun or a hatchet. As I write, I am obliged to be continually on the watch, fearing to see one reappear on which I trod this evening, but which made his exit without hurting me. From time to time, also, I stop to listen to the roaring of a tiger, who is wandering round our dwelling and looking longingly at the pigs through their fence of planks and bamboos. Again, I hear a rhinoceros breaking down the bamboos which oppose his progress towards the brambles encircling our garden, on which he intends to banquet.
The savage Stiêns who inhabit this region have probably the same origin as those who people the mountains and the table-land which separate the kingdoms of Siam and Cambodia from that of Annam, and which extend along the great river from 11° north lat. and between 106° and 108° east long. They form as many separate communities as there are villages, and seem to be a race distinct from all the people who surround them. I am myself inclined to believe them to be the aborigines of the country, and to suppose that they have been driven back from the sea and the rivers to the districts now occupied by them by the successive invasions of the Thibetans, who have spread themselves over Laos, Siam, and Cambodia, and nothing that I can discover leads to any other supposition.[21]
Drawn by M. Bocourt, from a Sketch by M. Mouhot.
SAVAGE STIEN.