To Samuel Stevens, Esq.
[To be communicated to the Royal Geographical Society.]
Louang Prabang, 1st August, 1861. Lat. 20° 50′, long. 102° 35′ 3″, merid. Greenwich.
Dear Mr. Stevens,
Being entirely cut off from all communication with Bangkok, from which I am nearly 700 miles distant, is the only reason why you have not heard from me for so long a time.
In January last I quitted the Siamese province of Saraburi, where during four months I had been making active exertions in order to enable me to penetrate into Western Laos, and to explore the basin of the Mekon. Unluckily in March I was forced, after having at great expense proceeded 350 miles, to return to Bangkok, in order to claim more assistance and protection than had hitherto been accorded to me, and a passport to counteract the difficulties continually thrown in my way by the mandarins, a class not less jealous and greedy here than in China. A letter of recommendation which had been voluntarily given to me (on my departure in October, 1860) by the Khrôme Louang Wougsâ, who is considered to be the prince best disposed towards Europeans in all Siam, and who has the superintendence of all the country which I intended to visit, turned out after all to be only a kind of letter of Bellerophon’s. In spite of all my entreaties and valuable presents I obtained nothing better; still I set off again.
I have passed three times through the forest of the Dong Phya Phia, which separates Korat from the ancient Siamese provinces of the south and east. This thick jungle covers a space of thirty miles in breadth,—that is to say, the chain of mountains which separates the basin of the Mekon from that of the Menam.
After passing the mountains you reach a sandy and generally arid plain, where nothing is to be seen but resinous trees of stunted growth, bamboos, underwood, and sometimes only grass; but in some places a richer soil permits cultivation, and there fields of rice and bananas have been established. I found in this district both oligist and magnetic iron.
In the bed of a torrent I also discovered gold and copper in two different places. This district is rich and abundant in precious minerals, neglected or unknown until now, except by a small tribe of 400 or 500 Kariens, without doubt a remnant of the aborigines, who a short time ago, in order to preserve their independence, retired into almost inaccessible places, thirty or forty miles eastward of the tracts traversed by the caravans. Monkeys, panthers, elephants, and other wild beasts are the only inhabitants of this mountain, which the natives regard as the abode of death on account of its insalubrity.