We next find our unwearied travellers undertaking a journey to Chaudoc, which is situated near the mouth of the Mekong. On both banks of the river, but more particularly on the right bank, are arranged the numerous Annamite huts; and above them frown the grim walls of a fort, which is in itself of the size of a small town. The province, of which Chaudoc is the capital, includes one hundred and five villages, and has a population of eighty-nine thousand souls, of whom eight thousand are Cambodians and sixteen thousand Malays.
VINH-LONG.
AT VINH-LONG.
Five days later Dr. Morice was at Vinh-Long, the fort of which is equal in magnitude to that of Chaudoc. In the rear of the great muddy moats and embankments of earth, sustained by huge piles, rise the officers’ barracks, and the entrenched redoubt containing the soldiers’ quarters and the hospital. Bamboos and tall grasses have overgrown a portion of the immense enclosure, and in their tangled mass enormous pythons are frequently killed, while the najas lie asleep in the dank inextricable vegetation of the trenches. The town itself is not without a certain agreeableness of aspect; its broad, straight streets are shaded by gigantic cocoa-nut palms.
THE “BLACK LADY.”
Still continuing his explorations in the districts watered by the mouths of the Mekong, which forms a considerable delta, traversed by innumerable canals and branches, Dr. Morice arrived at Tayninh, which lies to the east of Saigon. It lines the river-bank for some distance; the houses of the Annamite population being built, not of mud and clay, as in the western districts of Cochin-China, but of good solid timber, and with much care and good taste. Their roofs are also of better construction: instead of the leaves of the water-palm, a close fine thatch is used, to which the action of the atmosphere soon gives a pleasant tint of age. Flourishing coffee-plantations surround the town, in the rear of which spread the shadows of a mighty forest, that spreads far up the sides of a chain of granite mountains of moderate elevation. The highest of these is the “Black Lady” (Nui-ba-dinh). On the summit, in a picturesque nook, stands a celebrated pagoda, the cells of its bonzes being excavated out of the neighbouring rock. The pagoda owes its repute to the neighbourhood of a miraculous spring; and this spring rejoices in a legend, which may be told as follows:—