NATURAL PILLAR IN THE MOUNTAINS OF LAKON.
From this remarkable spectacle the French savants proceeded to inspect a superb grotto excavated in the great wall of cliff, near the two pillar-like masses. By climbing some rocks they obtained an entry into it, and found it to form a spacious hall, varying from forty to eighty feet in height, of great depth, with a rounded, vaulted roof. The ground was thick with stalagmites; while stalactites of the most various shapes depended from the vault, and glittered, like so many mirrors, in the light of torches.
PALM-WINE.
A day or two afterwards, Garnier and his friends, in returning from a walk in the environs of Lakon, encountered some Laotians carrying vessels of bamboo, filled with a liquid which at first they supposed to be water. On tasting it, however, they discovered that it was the wine of the country; sweet-flavoured, and by no means disagreeable to the palate; not unlike, indeed, the product of some of the Rhenish vineyards. It was palm-wine, freshly made; and to enjoy its bouquet and full flavour it should be drunk in this condition, for it will not keep more than four-and-twenty hours without fermentation. The Laotians offered to conduct the strangers to a neighbouring plantation, where they might observe the different processes of its manufacture. The offer was accepted, and the party soon arrived at a clearing which was thickly planted with great borassus palms. HOW THE WINE IS COLLECTED. To collect the wine,—which is, in fact, the sap of the tree,—nothing more is necessary than to make an incision in the middle of the head of the tree, at the point where the leaves branch off, and suspend beneath a bamboo, into which the sap falls, drop by drop. In order to reach the summit of these huge palms, which are straight and smooth as the main-mast of a ship, the Laotians have invented a simple and ingenious process. They transform the palm into a veritable ladder, by attaching to the trunk, with small strips of flexible ratan, projecting laths of bamboo, which, jutting out to right and left at intervals of twelve to fourteen inches, form so many “rungs,” and enable the ascent of the tree to be rapidly and easily accomplished.
TAPPING THE BORASSUS PALM.
A RUINED CITY.