During our stay at Lakon, great preparations were being made for the reception and comfort of one of the King of Siam’s brothers, Prince Bigit, who was on his way to Zimmé, viâ Lakon. The prince had been sent by the king to meet Mr Gould, who had been appointed British Vice-Consul to the Zimmé Shan (Ping) States, and to uphold the claim of Siam to some valuable teak-forests lying to the north-west of Raheng, in the valley of the Meh Tien, which were claimed by the chief of Zimmé as lying within his territories. Thousands of baskets of rice had been purchased by the officials in the neighbouring principalities, besides fowls, ducks, &c., from miles around, to feed the prince and his numerous retainers. Everything eatable was therefore very high-priced at Lakon, and it was nearly impossible to procure fowls, or even vegetables. One or two such visits would cause a famine in the land.
At daylight the next morning, April 16, we left the city, and after crossing the Meh Wung (350 feet wide, 10 feet deep, with 1¼ foot of water in the bed), continued for thirty minutes through the suburbs of the town, where several temporary buildings were being erected for the Siamese prince and his retinue. The suburbs, which line the river, and extend some distance inland, are extensive, and I think must contain fully double the population within the city walls. The river was alive with people—men, women, and children—fishing in lines with drop and fling nets.
We then proceeded in a direction a little to the north of east, and for five miles passed through, or near, extensive rice-plains, noticing many large villages fringing their borders. For the next three miles we marched through a plain in which many great thyt-si (black-varnish trees) were growing, all of which had great nicks cut out of their trunk, having their rounded bottoms charred for the sap-varnish to drip into. The loud rattle of the numerous cicadas in this part of the journey was nearly deafening.
These famous singers, celebrated by Homer and Virgil, are numerous in Burmah and the Shan States both in individuals and species, and are considered a delicacy by the Karens. Their notes are full, shrill, and continuous, swelling up like an Æolian harp so as to fill the air. According to Dr Mason, a celebrated missionary, botanist, and zoologist, who resided for the greater part of his life in Burmah, “The instrument on which this gay minstrel performs is a unique piece of mechanism—a perfect melodeon possessed only by the male, and which he carries about between his abdomen and hind legs. It consists of two pairs of plates comprising a shield for the box concealed beneath. Under these plates is a delicate iridescent covering, tensely stretched over the cavity, like the head of a drum; and attached to its inner surface are several musical strings, secured at their opposite extremities to another membrane at the posterior end of the box. The music is produced by the alternate contraction and expansion of these strings, which draw the tense concave covering downwards, with a rapid receding, the sounds issuing from two key-holes of the instrument, strikingly analogous to the action of the melodeon.”
After leaving the varnish-trees, we crossed the Meh How near a village of the same name, and proceeded for a mile through a rice-plain, two miles in width, to the Hong Htan, the stream of the palm-trees (200 feet wide, 7 feet deep, with 9 inches of water in its bed), and halted for the night at a sala, or rest-house, in the village of Hang Sat, which is situated on the farther bank of the stream. Quartz gravel formed the bed of the stream, which rises in a great spur, some twenty miles to the north-west. Hang Sat lies forty-three miles from Zimmé, and 889 feet above the level of the sea.
Two great battles are said to have occurred in this neighbourhood in 1774, when the Zimmé Shans threw off the Burmese yoke. The first was between the Burmese and the Shans; the second between a Burmese army and a joint force of Shans and Siamese, who were led by two Siamese generals. These subsequently became first and second Kings of Siam.[[12]]
From the camp we had a splendid view of the main range of hills which divides the waters of the Meh Wung from those of the Meh Ping, its crest cutting the sky twelve miles distant to the west, and could see the entrance of the pass we were about to traverse lying nearly due west of us, and ten miles farther north the low dip in the hills forming its summit. To the north-west a great spur called Loi Koon Htan, that gives rise to the Hong Htan, ended about five miles off.
Our sala was only walled on three sides; and the rain falling heavily in the evening, and driving in upon us, nearly wetted us to the skin before we could rig up some plaids as a screen for our protection.
Next morning we were unable to start as early as we wished, because two of the elephants had broken their ankle-shackles in the night, and had strayed some distance before they were tracked and brought back. Rangoon creeper, the Chinese honeysuckle, abounded in the neighbourhood of the camp, and was in full flower. We continued for half a mile through the rice-plain, and then entered the forest. Two miles farther, after crossing the Meh Pan, we traversed some slightly rising ground, and descended to the Meh Sun close to its debouchment into the plain.
The Meh Sun, which we were about to follow for ten miles to its source, runs in a narrow valley bordered on either side by a teak-clad, table-topped mountain-spur trending in the direction of the stream, which runs from north-west to south-east.