Leaving our boats, elephants and a buffalo-cart are engaged. We step from the veranda of the hut perched on poles to the elephant’s head and into the howdah. The driver sits astride his neck, guiding when needful with an iron-pointed staff. A military road from Kabin leads to the borders of Cochin-China. Sesupon, the first Cambodian town, on the frontier of provinces wrested by Siam from Cambodia a century ago, is first reached. Some of the people, including the Siamese governor and officials, speak both languages.
It is possibly harvest-time; in the fields the reapers are among their crops. Some of the plains are covered with tall grass ten feet high. There are perhaps burnt patches or a spark has just started a fire, and the flames, swept on by the wind, are roaring, crackling and sending up dense columns of smoke in their wake. As we pass under the overarching branches of trees in the forest our elephant keeps an eye the while ahead, and when some lower limb would strike the howdah he halts, raises his trunk and breaks it off. We toil up and over the watershed and down a steep bank to the river’s brink through the tall grass and bamboos, our beast sometimes sliding on his haunches, then bracing and feeling the way with his trunk, or plunging into the soft ooze of the river, wading through water so deep that nothing but the howdah and elephant’s head and trunk appear above the surface, and then climbing with slow but sure steps up a bank at least forty-five degrees steep.
Overtaken at night away from a town, we encamp under the trees. Our attendants make an enclosure with the cart and branches of trees, placing the cattle inside. We cook and eat our evening meal, making a great fire and boiling the coffee and rice over the bright coals. Our bivouac is underneath the stars on branches piled high above the malarious surface of the ground. The natives watch in turn, keeping up the fire to drive off wild beasts. Elephants prowl in droves outside the enclosure and cries of jackals disturb our dreams. Possibly in the morning tiger-tracks are pointed out to us.
On the higher waters of the Sesupon River, running south to the lake, are the first traces of the ancient Cambodian civilization in the shape of a ruined shrine buried beneath overgrown jungle; other ruins are found in more than forty different localities up to the confines of China.
Diverging to the north-east, evening finds us sheltered in a sala near the quaint old town of Panomsok. To the north are the first altitudes of the upland steppes of Laos. After such toilsome days and nights of exposure, crossing some sunny eminences and ancient stone bridges, we finally reach Siamrap, situated on a small stream about ten miles from the head of Thalay Sap.
It is a walled city, the teakwood gates thickly studded with large iron nails, the gateways surmounted by curious pointed towers. Houses similar to those of the middle class in Bangkok, the court-house and governor’s residence, are the only substantial buildings. Extensive, straggling suburbs extend southward for several miles on either bank of the river. The province has from eight to ten thousand inhabitants, all Cambodians. Dr. McFarland reports: “We found but two or three persons who understood the Siamese language. The governor was a rather intelligent young Cambodian who had been educated at Bangkok, and of course spoke Siamese. He was pleasant, affable and very fond of foreigners.”
The communication with Panompen, the Cambodian capital, is by boat down the river and crossing to the lower end of the lake, then by the river which connects the lake with the Mekong. From Siamrap to Panompen requires six days by boat.
Half a dozen miles north of Siamrap, in the midst of a lonely forest, we come upon the celebrated ruins of Nagkon Thom, or Angkor the Great, and Nagkon Wat, the City of Monasteries, is a few miles off. The city ruins to-day are little more than piles of stone among the jungles. The outer wall, built of immense volcanic rocks, is best preserved. The natives say an entire day is necessary to circumambulate the walls. A mutilated statue of the traditional leper king is seated on a stone platform near the gate of the inner wall, protected by a grass thatch. The pedestal has an ancient inscription on stone. The ruins are in the charge of a provincial officer, who lives in a lodge near the palace. There are some old towers still standing.
Some thirty miles distant are the Richi Mountains, said to contain the quarries from which the supply of stone was obtained. A broad causeway, still in serviceable repair, leads to the foot of these hills. Mr. Thomson tried to go there, but the thick jungle made it impossible to penetrate to the quarries even on elephants, although the officer who accompanied him made a series of offerings at several ruined shrines in order to propitiate the malignant spirits supposed to infest these wilds.
Concerning Angkor the Great ancient tradition speaks in most extravagant terms, as being of “great extent, with miles of royal treasure-houses, thousands of war-elephants, millions of foot-soldiers and innumerable tributary princes.” A road through the forest connects this once royal city with Nagkon Wat. Along this road a side-path leads to an observatory, overgrown with shrubs and vines, standing on a terraced hill and commanding a wide view of the surrounding region.