Loi Chang Hong is remarkable for its castellated appearance, three grand semicircular buttresses and one of smaller diameter rising 1200 to 1500 feet from the edge of the river. Near the top of the precipice is a great cave about 100 feet high, and on the opposite bank the cliff protrudes for some distance over the stream.
The scenery in the neighbourhood is the boldest and most beautiful in its grandeur that I have ever seen. The cliffs are tinted with red, orange, and dark-grey. Great stalactites stand out and droop in clusters from their face, whilst their summit is crowned by large trees, which, dwarfed by the distance, appear smaller and smaller as the depth of the defile increases. Pale puffball-shaped yellow blossoms of a stunted tree like a willow, shed their fragrance from the banks, where small bays are formed by streams conveying the drainage of the country. Beautiful grottoes have been fretted out by the current near the foot of the cliffs, and are covered with moss and ferns which drip drops of the clearest water from every spray.
The cliffs on the west bank are here 3000 feet high, and rise in great telescoped precipices. At 141 miles the hill on the west retires, leaving a narrow plain for about a mile. On the opposite side of the river, the cliff towers up seemingly to more than a mile in height, the trees on its summit looking like small bushes from the boat. This great precipice is named Loi Keng Soi, and from a chink in its face a waterfall comes leaping and dashing down. Its last great leap is a sheer descent of 500 feet. A short distance beyond the waterfall, far up the cliff, the figure of a gigantic horse is seen standing in a natural niche. When it was sculptured and by whom, tradition fails to tell.
On the west bank of the river, near the end of the cliff where the hill retires and forms a small valley, is a pagoda, and two others are seen cresting the low part of the next hill, which gradually rises into a great cliff near the thirteenth and fourteenth rapids, down which we had to be roped. This cliff is surmounted by three ear-like pinnacles: 2000 feet of rock had lately fallen into the river from the face of the precipice on the opposite bank.
Before leaving the pagodas the boatmen went off in a body to make their offerings and worship. The demons in the defile are evidently much dreaded by the Shans, for at our various halting-places offerings, accompanied by lighted tapers and libations, were habitually made to the local demons before the men ate their meals.
It is no wonder that the deep ravines of this great defile are full of terrifying potentialities to people ridden by such nightmare superstitions as are believed in by the Shans. Such places, according to them, are infested by Pee Pa or jungle demons, the spirits of human beings who have died when absent from their homes. These endeavour to cause the death of others by the same means as caused their own. Their victims have to join the company or clan of demons to which the successful demon belongs. Thus the clan increases in numbers, and is ever becoming more potent for mischief.
The way in which the Pee Pa allure travellers to their death varies according to their tribe. The Pee Pok-ka-long cause deep sleep to fall upon weary travellers, and then lead tigers to kill them. At other times they allure them to a tiger’s den by imitating a human voice. Or they enter the body of a wild pig, stag, or even a reptile, and entice the traveller to follow them to meet his death. The Pee Ta-Moi have power over the atmosphere, and cause sudden darkness in order to force a traveller to camp in a dangerous locality infested by wild beasts. The Pee Ee-Koi produce fever with their breath.
Pee Pok-ka-long (jungle demons).
The Pee Song Nang,[[23]] who are more feared than the other Pee Pa, are the spirits of two dissolute princesses, who, after leaving their father’s palace on the sly, were lost in the forest, and perished. These spirits, like those in the spell-bound forest in Milton’s “Comus,” have