As for the Laotians, I have found them, although superstitious, very courageous, especially those who traverse this forest eight or ten times a year. Some of them even venture to awake the “King of Fire” by bringing down game or shooting at robbers: yet death, even in the best season, carries off one or two out of every ten who travel here. I think the number of those who fall victims to this terrible journey must be considerable in the rainy season, when every torrent overflows its bounds; the whole soil is soaked, the pathways nothing but bogs, and the rice-grounds covered with several feet of water. After five or six days’ walking through all this, with feet in the mud, the body in a profuse perspiration, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, hot as a stove and reeking with putrid miasma, what wonder that many sink and die?
ARRIVAL AT KORAT.
Two Chinese in our caravan arrived at Korat in a frightful state of fever. One I was able to save by administering quinine in good time, but the other, who appeared the strongest, was dead almost as soon as I heard of his being ill.
We halted at five o’clock in the evening and encamped on a little hill, where, in the absence of grass, our poor oxen could only appease their hunger with leaves from the shrubs. The river, which flows down from these hills, is the same which runs near Korat, and on the opposite bank was encamped another caravan with more than 200 oxen.
TRIBE OF KARIANS.
In a gorge of the mountain, and on the almost inaccessible heights, I found a small tribe of Karians who formerly inhabited the environs of Patawi, and who, for the sake of preserving their independence, live here in seclusion; for the dread of fever prevents the Siamese from penetrating to their haunts. They have neither temples nor priests; they raise magnificent crops of rice, and cultivate several kinds of bananas, which are only found among tribes of the same origin. Many of the inhabitants of the neighbouring districts appear to be ignorant of their very existence. It is true they are of migratory habits; others say that they pay a tribute in gum-lac, but the Governor of Korat and several chiefs of the province of Saraburi, seemed to me profoundly ignorant on the subject.
The following morning, an hour before sunrise, after having counted the oxen dead from fatigue and exhaustion, which would serve for food to the wild beasts, and repacked our goods, we resumed our march. Towards eleven o’clock, having quitted Dong Phya Phai, we entered a long tract of ground filled with brushwood and tall grass and swarming with deer, and here, before long, we halted near a stream.
The next day, after making a détour of some miles to the north to find a pass, we ascended a new chain of hills running parallel to the last, and covered with blocks of sandstone; and here the vegetation was extremely luxuriant. The air was fresh and pure, and, thanks to repeated ablutions in the running streams, those of the party whose feet had suffered most at the beginning of the journey found them greatly improved.
