Leaving early the next morning, we continued through the plain, which was much cut up by irrigation-channels, and had evidently at one time been under cultivation, and halted for breakfast on the outer fortifications of the centre one of the three ancient cities of Manola, which lay on our left.
View of Loi Chang Ngo at 4.49 P.M. 20th March.
The three cities of Manola, “the silver mountains,” are said to have been built by the Tay-wa-boot, or male angels. They are each about half a mile in diameter, and are erected on separate knolls. The ditch of the one visited by me was 100 feet wide, and 40 feet deep from the top of the inner rampart. Great trees, some over 100 feet high, growing on the fortifications, indicated that the city must have been deserted for two or three hundred years. Close to the city, at the eastern suburb of Ban Kyoo Pow, a tiger had seized a cow the previous night, on the banks of the Meh Chun, and both had rolled into the river; the tiger was so surprised that it allowed the cow to escape. The owner, hearing the noise, fired off his gun to scare the tiger.
The people of the neighbouring village complained of the ravages committed by wild pigs; thirty of these animals had rooted up part of their crops the previous year. According to the villagers, the enormous plain we were passing through was entirely under cultivation previous to A.D. 1794–97, when Viang Chang and Luang Prabang besieged Kiang Hsen; but now the greater part of it is covered with elephant-grass, and forms the haunt of vast herds of deer, black cattle larger than buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and other wild animals. Wild elephants are at times seen in the unsettled parts of the plain, but none had been captured recently.
Phya In or Indra.
There were no ruins in the city; but after leaving it I noticed in a teak-forest, near the village of Ban Pa Sak, the remains of a pagoda and temple. A mile and a half to the right of the village is a hillock called Loi Koo, or the hill of the royal sepulchre. Continuing through the plain, we came to the village of Meh Tsun Tsoor, where a tiger had endeavoured to carry off cattle the previous night, but had been frightened away by the villagers. We halted for the night at Pang Mau Pong, or the camp of Dr Pong, a celebrated hunter.
Loi Chang Ngo (the hill where the elephant became drowsy) commences about four miles north of the camp, from which there is a fine view of it, as well as of Loi Saun ka-tee (the hillock to the north of Kiang Hsen), and some distant precipitous hills lying to the east of the Meh Kong. Loi Chang Ngo derives its name from the following legend: Before the destruction of Muang Nŏng by Phya Then, or Indra, the sacred white elephant left the city, and went trumpeting to Chang Hsen; hence its name (Chang, an elephant; Hsen, trumpeting). From Kiang Hsen it proceeded to Loi Chang Ngo, and disappeared. It is supposed to be slumbering there still.
The legend of Muang Nŏng relates that Phya Then was incensed at the inhabitants of the city eating white eels—most white animals, except white men and white cats, are considered sacred by the Shans—and submerged the city, turning the site into a lake. Only a hunter’s house, which was built on the outskirts, remained. He had asked the people for some of the fish, but had been refused. The name Phya In, used by the Zimmé Shans for Indra, seems to be a compromise between the Phya Then of the Burmese Shans (which is doubtless derived from the Tien of the Chinese) and the Indra of the natives of India.