The Mekong is one of the most remarkable streams of Asia. It rises in Thibet, passes through Western Yunnan parallel with the Yangtse and Salween, till, breaking through the mountains not far from each other, the Yangtse flows across China and the Salween to the Bay of Bengal, while the Mekong, crossing Laos and Cambodia, after a somewhat devious course of at least two thousand miles reaches the Cochin-China delta.
The broken character of the Laos country gives the Mekong in its rapid descent from plateau to plateau during its upper course the velocity of a mountain-torrent as it tears along, with a noise like the roaring of the sea, through deep gorges overshadowed by rocky defiles. In Upper Laos the river is from six to eight hundred feet wide, and has in the dry season an average depth of twenty feet, while the banks are some twenty-five feet above the water, the difference between the ordinary height and floodmark being very great. The rainy season begins in April with the melting snow; the water rises gradually from that time to July or August, when the country is flooded.
It was at Garnier’s suggestion that the great French commission of exploration was sent up this river through Laos and Yunnan to Thibet, 1866–68. Garnier being considered too young, the chief command was entrusted to Captain Doudart Lagrée. De Carné (the brilliant journalist of the Deux Mondes) formed a third, and an armed escort accompanied them. The pluck and resolute endurance of this gallant band of Frenchmen, who during two years of exposure and hardships toiled over some five thousand miles of a country almost unknown to Europeans, command our admiration. Garnier took nearly all the observations, and shortly after the death of Lagrée assumed command and conducted the expedition safely to its close. De Carné describes the Mekong as “an impassable river, broken at least thrice by furious cataracts, and having a current against which nothing can navigate.” M. Mouhot, the pioneer of European explorers in this valley, says that his boatmen sometimes sought fire at night where they had cooked their rice in the morning. He went as far as Looang Prabang, the north-eastern Laos province tributary to Siam, where he died. Here the channel is very wide and lake-like in its windings through a sort of circular upland valley some nine miles in diameter and shut in by mountains north and south, reminding one of the beautiful lake-scenery of Como and Geneva. “If it were not for the blaze of a tropical sun, or if the noonday heat were even tempered by a breeze, this Laos town would be a little paradise,” is one of the latest entries in Mouhot’s journal.
If there is almost an excess of grandeur in the upper courses of the Mekong, the general aspect of the scenery as it reaches the comparatively low level of Siam and Cambodia is sombre rather than gay, though there is something imposing in the rapidity of so large a volume of water. Few boats are to be seen, and the banks are almost barren on account of the undermining of the forests, trees constantly falling with a crash into the stream. For some two hundred miles from its mouth the river is nearly three miles wide, and is studded with islands, several of which are eight or nine miles long and more than a mile broad. The discovery of the impracticability of the Mekong for inland communication with Laos and China has robbed the French delta of much of its supposed value.
Cambodia. Anam. Laos.
TYPES OF WOMEN OF FARTHER INDIA.
The bulk of the Laos tribes are spread over the north-eastern valley of the Mekong, from 21° to 13° north latitude. This extensive region is a sort of terra incognita, reported to be thickly settled except along the regions contiguous to the Tonquin Mountains, where the villages are exposed to sudden raids from the wild tribes known as “inhabitants of the heights,” who sometimes strike hands with the Chinese refugees in making a foray over the border, carrying off the peasants as slaves and driving away cattle, with whatever in the shape of plunder can be moved. The caravans of pack-traders from Ssumao on the Yunnan frontier bring back large loads of the celebrated so-called Puekr tea and cotton; whence it is inferred this plain must be fertile and extensively cultivated.
Talā Sap (Sweet-water Lake), the great lake of Cambodia, forms a sort of back-water to the river Mekong, with which its lower end connects by the Udong. It belongs partly to Siam and partly to Cambodia. It is one of those sheets of water called in Bengal jhéts—viz. a shallow depression in an alluvial plain, retaining part of the annual overflow throughout the entire year, hence subject to great variations of extent and depth. In the dry season the average depth is four feet, and the highest floods entirely submerge even the forests on its banks. It takes about five days to traverse the lake when full.
Extensive fishing-villages, erected on piles, stud the lake, reminding Mr. Thomson of “the pre-historic lake-dwellings of Switzerland.” The houses are above a bamboo platform common to the entire settlement and used for drying fish. This lake is an object of superstitious veneration to the natives, the fish furnishing them with the most important source of their livelihood. Enormous quantities are exported, dried or alive in cages, while immense supplies are furnished to Anamese villages to be boiled down into oil, thus giving lucrative employment to thousands.