# Further India/Ubon to Luang Prabang—Mouhot and Other Explorers

​CHAPTER IX
UBON TO LUANG PRABANG—MOUHOT AND OTHER EXPLORERS
DURING the two months spent by Francis Gar- nier in making the flying visit to Pnom Penh described in the preceding chapter, the rest of the expedition had continued its explorations around. Ubon and to the north. The province of Ubon at this time supported a population estimated at 80,000 souls, and the chief object of interest was the salt-pans which supply the natives of the district with a large part of their livelihood. A patch of country some forty miles in length, on the plateau of Ubon, appears to cover great reservoirs of brine, and each dry season the salt is precipitated on the surface in the form of a white, powdery dust. This is collected by the natives, cleansed in water, and is once more precipitated in a purified condition in large caldrons, which are exposed to the rays of the sun. A single worker wins about fifteen pounds per diem, and the in- dustry is in full swing for a period of three months. As soon as the dry season shows signs of breaking, the ground from the surface of which the salt has been gathered is sown with rice; good crops are obtained, and the soil thus yields, as it were, two harvests annually to its owners.
On January 15th, Delaporte left Ubon and descended the Se-Mun, for the purpose of surveying the Mekong ​from the mouth of the former river to Kamarat. The rainy season had not yet begun, and the exposed bed of the Mekong was seen to be a mass of enormous rocks and boulders which lay about in wonderful confusion, piled one upon another like a heap of gigantic pebbles, amid which the river made its way in numberless shrunken. streams. In places its channel was barely 200 feet in no part did its width exceed 1,000 yards. At its narrowest and deepest, soundings could not find bottom at 300 feet. Each narrowing of the fairway pro- duced rapids, the ascent of which was difficult and even dangerous, while here and there the current ran grandly between sheer cliffs of water-worn rock. The river, in fact, was now running through a mountainous zone, which it enters a little below Chieng Kang, and its course from that point to the mouth of the Se-Mun is beset with difficulties. None the less, it is freely used for the big rafts upon which the Laos people transport their goods down-stream, and it is also navigable for native craft of light calibre.
De Lagrée, meanwhile, and the rest of the party, had left Ubon on January 20th, with fifteen bullock-carts and fifty Laotine porters, bound upon an overland march to Kamarat. Four days' tramp over a flat and often sandy plain, covered with rice-fields and clearings, and traversed by an unmade cart-track, brought him to Muong Amnat, thirty-five miles due north of Ubon. Here the cultivation of silk-worms and of the coccus lacca were found to be the principal industries of the natives, and here too de
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Alexandre Henri Mouhot
Frenchmen, who insisted upon paying for services ren- dered to them, occasioned considerable surprise through- out their journey. The chiefs openly lamented the waste of good brass wire upon mere peasants, and thought that if such things were going cheap, they themselves should have been selected as the recipients. The porters could barely comprehend a love of justice which declined to de- fraud the labourer of his hire, and which at the same time restricted his indubitable rights; for when performing a like service for Siamese officials they had always been permitted to rob the villagers of the whole countryside, and this de Lagrée would by no means allow. On the whole it may be questioned whether the justice of the white man impressed the natives as anything more admirable than an inexplicable eccentricity. The point is interesting because it illustrates in an amusing fashion the divergent views of the East and the West, and the frequency with which the principles of the latter fail to make any appeal to the understanding or admiration of the former.
From Amnat the way led through wild and sparsely peopled country, separated from the Mekong by a belt of forest, to a district broken by gentle undulations, where the previously sandy soil, bespattered with out-crops of iron-stone, is replaced by rice-fields. On January 30th the travellers found Delaporte awaiting them at Kamarat. This place, the point at which the proposed railway will cross the Mekong, is situated on the right bank, as indeed, since the subjugation of Laos by Siam at the beginning ​of last century, are all the principal villages in the valley above the Khon rapids.
Using Kamarat as his base, de Lagrée undertook a short journey of exploration into the valley of the Se Bang-Ilien, a left bank tributary of the Mekong which falls into the latter river opposite to Kamarat. He was absent eight days, and during that period travelled on elephants to Lahanam, where he found the Se Bang-Hien measuring 900 yards across. Thence he proceeded up the valley to Muong San Kon, below the mouth of the Som Phon, and so across marshy country, to Phong; then east and north to Ban Najo and Lomnu; and so south to Kamarat via Ban Tang Sum and Laha Kok. From Ban Najo the country traversed was populous, and the short trip served to fill in a small blank upon the map. Its interest, however, was mainly ethnological, de Lagrée making the acquaintance of three remarkable tribes, the Sue, the Phu Tai and the Khas Denong. These "sav- ages," and especially the Sue, are comparatively civilised, and the last named, it is worthy of note, practise a form of ancestor worship, while their dialect is apparently a variant of Kambodian.
During this journey de Lagrée also succeeded in estab- lishing the fact that up to 1831 Annam had exercised con- trol over the whole of the country situated on the left bank of the Mekong between the sixteenth and seventeenth parallels of latitude; this region had paid tribute regularly to the Court of Hue. The information was of political im- portance in view of the position which France has since acquired in the Kingdom of Annam. De Lagrée ascer​tained that up to the time mentioned trade routes to the Annamite capital had been in constant use, and that the prosperity of the district had been considerable. In 1831, the Siamese, fresh from their reduction of the Laos States on the right bank of the river, invaded the country on the left bank, but were defeated by the Annamites. They returned to the charge, however, and this time they transported the entire population across the Mekong, leaving the left bank a desert. In this devastated and depopulated area the Annamite armies could not operate, and at a later period the Siamese began quietly to colo- nise the abandoned territory afresh. The absence of pity, which distinguishes the Oriental as opposed to the Occi- dental, stands him in good stead when he is bent upon conquest. No consideration bred of sympathy with human suffering,-let those who endure it be never so innocent and helpless, let the scale upon which it is con- ceived be neverso great,-causes him to stay his hand when ruthless action will bring about the result at which he aims. It is appalling to think of the misery which the removal of the entire population from one bank to the other must have inflicted upon its victims-agriculturists who lived from season to season by such harvests as they could garner; but by no other means, it is probable, could the Siamese have possessed themselves of the country which they coveted, and from which they had already been driven when they attempted to seize it by force.
Kamarat was left on February 13th, by boat, and the ascent of the Mekong, the bed of which is here strewn ​with great sandstone outcrops and obstructed by numer- ous flights of rapids, was begun anew. At Keng Kabao the boats of the expedition had to be unloaded before they could be hauled up the falls, but a little above this point, at Ban Thasaku, the river was found running through an immense plain covered with forest, and as it widened out the difficulties which it presented to naviga- tion ceased for a space.
On February 15th, Ban Nuk was reached, a big village below which is the handsome temple of Tong Bao, with a façade inlaid with porcelain; and a week later the party landed at Peu Nom, a pyramidal structure which is one of the most famous Buddhist shrines in all the Laos. country. The upper portion is obviously modern, but its base, the work of a Kambodian princess the wife of a King of Vien Chan, dates from early in the seventeenth century, and is believed to have been built upon the site of a far older pyramid.
Leaving Peu Nom on February 24th, the expedition made its way up-stream to Lakon, opposite to which vil- lage some enormous limestone bluffs spring suddenly from the plain; from these the natives prepare large quantities of quicklime, both for building purposes and as an ingredient of the betel-quid. Here a small Annamite colony was met with, and the near neighbourhood of Annam suggested to Garnier the possibility of opening communications with the sea vià Hue, an idea which has since been furthered by the labours of other explorers. Huten was reached on March 6th, and thence de Lagrée and Joubert ascended the Nam Hin Bun for two days, ​and visited some lead mines situated in the valley of the Ban Haten.
De Lagrée, on his return, found Garnier at Hutien with the precious passports in his possession, and on the mor- row the journey up the Mekong was resumed. At San- laburi, at the mouth of the Sum Kam, the boats of the expedition were changed, and by March 16th the explorers found themselves once more passing through forest country, though four days later Bun Kang, “a large and beautiful town," was reached, and the surround- ing district was found to be richer and more civilised than lower Laos. The Mekong River, which had been flow- ing from the west since above Lakon, was now discovered to be running definitely from that direction, and its wind- ings so enormously increased the distance from point to point that cart-tracks were used by the natives in prefer- ence to boats, though a few monster rafts continued from time to time to loaf down-stream. On March 23rd, a more thickly populated country was entered, and Nong Kun, opposite to the important tributary, the Se Ngum, was reached. This river is navigable for six days' journey from its junction with the Mekong, but time prevented its exploration by the expedition.
At Pon Pisai, on March 24th, boats were once more changed, and a day and a half brought the party to Nong Kai, near which is situated the ruined city of Vien Chan, once the capital of a united Laos. The river to this point had frequently been difficult of navigation, but the rapids of Hang Hong are the only very formidable obstacles, necessitating a complete cessation of traffic for ​some weeks at a time at certain seasons of the year. The rains had not yet come, and the heat was intense, the thermometer registering 92° F., even after sundown.
Nong Kai itself, founded after the destruction of Vien Chan, is a very important place, the largest town which the travellers had seen since their departure from Pnom Penh nine months earlier. The Governor of Nong Kai treated the party with courtesy, and undertook to send one of the interpreters, named Seguin, overland to Bangkok, as de Lagrée had decided to dispense with his services. At a later period this man was able to furnish Garnier with some useful information concerning the country traversed by him between Nong Kai and the Siamese capital.
On April 2nd, the ruins of Vien Chan were visited. Though the town was not destroyed and forcibly aban- doned until 1828, it was already completely overgrown with jungle. From an architectural and archæological point of view this place is not more interesting than Bangkok or Ayuthia, and it claims our attention solely on account of its historical associations and the tragedy of its destruction. It was formerly the capital of a Laotine kingdom, which, founded in the thirteenth cen- tury, extended from the Khon rapids to the twentieth par- allel of latitude, thus including Luang Prabang itself. In 1528 revolutions drove from the throne the last member of the dynasty which had ruled over this great state, and thereafter a subdivision of its territories ensued. The Laos people were further weakened by protracted wars with the Gueos-hill-tribes whose identity is uncertain― and in a weak moment the aid of Siam was invoked. ​From that time the influence of Siam increased, and by the middle of the eighteenth century the subjugation of the whole of Laos was an accomplished fact. In 1767 Ayuthia was sacked by the Burmese, and Laos, which had endured the yoke of Siam with little gladness, took the opportunity to revolt. The insurrection failed, and all went on as before until early in the nineteenth century. About 1820 the King of Vien Chan, finding that he and his people were being mercilessly pillaged by the Siamese officer accredited to his Court, and having failed to obtain redress from Bangkok, caused the obnoxious official to be assassinated. A large Siamese army was at once sent against Vien Chan. Its ruler, King Anu, tried to raise the whole of Laos against the common enemy, but Luang Prabang prudently declined to take any hand in the matter. Vien Chan was taken and destroyed; its population was expelled; large numbers of people were burned alive in barns, and all manner of barbarities were practised by the invaders with the object of impressing the wrath of Siam upon the memory of the vanquished. Anu himself sought refuge in Annam, but his rendition having been obtained, he was brought to Bangkok and imprisoned in a cage, in which he presently died a mis- erable death. His son, having contrived to escape, and having thereafter been recaptured, committed suicide by precipitating himself from the summit of the pagoda in which he was incarcerated. Some of the survivors of this tragedy were used to populate the new town of Nong Kai; others were driven off in herds to more distant places; while others again were distributed as slaves ​among the victors. Hundreds died of hunger, or fell by the way on that awful march which was to lead them to a lifelong captivity. Vien Chan, wrecked and shattered, was left to the forest and to the wild things of the jungle, after everything portable had been looted from it. The dream of an independent Laos was ended for ever. To this day children are cowed into obedience throughout the Laos country by the whispered name of the Praya Mitop, the Siamese General who commanded this bloody punitive expedition.
The dread of being overtaken by the rains caused de Lagrée to push on from Vien Chan with as little delay as possible, and twenty miles up-stream a narrow gorge suc- ceeded by difficult rapids was encountered. Progress was slow, and on April 8th the rapid of Keng Kan neces- sitated the abandonment of the boats, the explorers walk- ing up the left bank to Sanghao, limping bare-shod over burning rocks and through thorny jungles, and taking five painful hours to cover a distance of six miles. New boats were obtained, and at Ban Kuklao, reached on April 11th, other craft which had been sent to meet them were found. Next day the last of the rapids was passed, and at Chieng Kang the Mekong once more expanded as the explorers won free from the mountainous zone through which for so many miles they had been following it.
For some time the Frenchmen had been greatly per- turbed by rumours of a party of English explorers, some forty strong, which was said to have cut in above them from Burma. So far the members of de Lagrée's expe- dition had been passing, for the most part, through ​country which, though it had not been examined in de- tail, had already been visited by Europeans. In only a few places had they been able to look around them with that peculiar pride and triumph which belong to the white man who knows that for him has been reserved from the beginning the tremendous privilege of gazing, the first of all his kind, upon scenes never beheld before by European eyes. That joy of joys to one bitten by the love of wandering was to be theirs when they should win free at last of the places over which their fellows had scored a trail; but if an English expedition of imposing numbers, and presumably far better equipped than them- selves, had slipped in ahead of them, this experience was like to be indefinitely postponed. They never dreamed of questioning the accuracy of the report: it was felt to be vraisemblable, to be completely in keeping with the ubiquitous character, the unblushing intrusiveness of the Englishman. They could only set their teeth and de- termine to die rather than to suffer themselves to be out- done, while they said bitter things of England and of Fate, and Garnier's anglophobia revived of a sudden with some- thing of its old passionate force. Intense thereforc was their relief when, shortly after leaving Chieng Kang, they met three rafts journeying down-stream, on board one of which was a Dutchman, named Duyshart, a surveyor in the employ of the Siamese Government, who turned out to be the egg from which, through the incubation of the native imagination, this monstrous canard had been. hatched. This man, the record of whose journey and surveys seems to have been engulfed in the files of one ​of the Government Departments at Bangkok, had ascended the Menam to Chieng Mai, had thence struck across country to the Mekong, striking it at Chieng Khong, about 130 miles above Luang Prabang, and had rafted down the river from that point. This prolonged the dis- tance which the Frenchmen would have to cover before they could pass into utterly unexplored country, but this fact notwithstanding, the transformation of an English expedition into a single Dutchman raised their spirits and sent them on their way rejoicing.
On April 16th, the boundary of the province of Luang Prabang was crossed, and on the morrow Pak Lai, which had previously been visited by Mouhot who had come thither from Muong Lui, was reached. This was the first point on the Mekong at which Mouhot's route had been cut by that of the expedition, and Garnier found that the former explorer had misplaced it by sixty-four geographical milcs, an error which repeated itself with more or less persistency in all his latitudes. The correc- tion which Garnier was now able to make was one of considerable importance, and necessitated a material rectification of the maps compiled from Mouhot's notes. From Pak Lai there is a cart-track along the right bank of the Mekong, now little used but formerly a highway over which annual Chinese caravans passed from Yun-nan to Ken Tao, a province between Muong Lui and Pak Lai. To-day Chieng Mai and Muong Nan communicate with Yun-nan via Chieng Tong, the route partially explored by McLeod in 1837.
Some distance above Pak Lai the expedition passed ​through uninhabited forest country, where the river is obstructed by rapids every few miles; above this stretch the stream flowed for some distance between magnificent marble cliffs, while limestone bluffs reappeared on its banks. The rapid of Keng Luong necessitated the un- loading of the boats, and this operation had to be re- peated at Keng Saniok. At Ban Koksai, a Laotine village, the hills in the vicinity were found to be peopled by the wild tribes called Khmus, whose numbers and spirit have enabled them to occupy towards their more civilised neighbours a position vastly superior to that of most of the hill-folk of southeastern Asia. These wild folk are, as it were, the rats of humanity, but while the Khas of lower Laos and the Sâkai of the Malay Penin- sula are the timid and defenceless water-rats, the Khmus may be likened to the old, grey, English house-rat, and have like him an excellent notion of how to stick up for themselves.
On April 29th, Luang Prabang was reached, the larg- est town which the Frenchmen had met with since their departure from Cochin-China. Garnier estimated the population of this place at 8,000 souls; that of the prov- ince at not less than 150,000. It owed its prosperity partly to the fall of Vien Chan, when Luang Prabang stood neutral, and partly to the fact that it alone among the States of Laos had fallen less effectually than any of its neighbours under the yoke of Bangkok. Founded in the eighteenth century, it did not come into prominence until after the decline of the power of Vien Chan, and its prudent rulers were content with a much-tempered form ​of independence, paying tribute to China and Annam as well as to Siam. The result of this policy is that, after all the vicissitudes which have befallen its neighbours, Luang Prabang remained the most important trade-centre of the Mekong Valley above Cochin-China, and this in spite of the fact that it does not possess natural advan- tages equal to those of lower Laos.
Although, even when continuing their ascent of the Mekong above Luang Prabang, the travellers were not yet traversing country never previously visited by white men, their arrival at this, the last and greatest of the towns of Siamese Laos, presents a convenient opportu- nity for taking a rapid glance at the explorations which had been effected in the Hinterland of Indo-China by Europeans prior to the coming of the French mission.
The earliest of these was undertaken by the Dutch traders led by Gerard van Wusthof' in 1641, of which frequent mention has already incidentally been made. The account of it was originally published in Flemish, nor was it rendered into any other tongue until M. P. Voelkel translated it for Francis Garnier, who printed it with his own notes in the Bulletin de la Société de Gto- graphie in 1871. This has caused the narrative which tells of the first visit paid to Laos by white men to be very generally overlooked, nor indeed is the relation it- self of any extraordinary interest from a geographical or even from an historical point of view. It appears that in March, 1641, certain Laotine merchants visited Batavia
1 Vide Supra, pp. 93, et seq. ​on board one of the Dutch Company's ships, and that their coming suggested to the Governor, Van Dieman, the idea of despatching a mission to their country for the purpose of establishing trade relations with its inhabit- ants. For this duty Gerard van Wusthof, a sub-factor, was selected, the party under his leadership consisting of four Dutchmen, a servant, and one Malay. A start up the Mekong was made on July 20th, 1641; the party travelled by boat, and Sambor was reached on August 5. Boetzong, which may be identified with Stung-Treng, at the mouth of the Se-Kong, was reached on August 17th, and when on the 19th the party found itself among the maze of islands which here divide the river into many branches, Wusthof believed that he had left upon his west the mouth of a huge stream which took its rise in Burma. How this mistake arose it is im- possible to understand, but it must be remembered that long after Wusthof's day the belief prevailed that the Me- kong took its rise close to the Bay of Bengal, while even later the theory was entertained that the Mekong and the Menam were joined together in the interior by a water- way was widely accepted. Earlier still it was thought that the Mekong had an out-flow in the Bay of Bengal itself.
On August 25th an island was reached, called by Wusthof Saxenham, which would appear to be the island of Sitandong, to this day an important place, situated above the Khon rapids. On September 25th, Ocmum-obviously Pak Mun, the mouth of the Mun River, was reached, the country above Khong being
1 Vide Supra, p. 123. ​wilder and less thickly populated than Garnier afterwards found it. On October 18th, the party spent the night at Lochan, which is probably to be identified with Lakon. "The Laos-folk," says Wusthof, "regard Lochan as a great town, although it is no bigger than Harderwijk. We walked in the streets by the light of the moon. This town is quite the most dreadfully pagan place there is in the world;" for the worthy Dutchman was horrified at the behaviour of his native companions, though he adds characteristically, " Much gold is found here at a cheap price."
On the night of November 3rd, orders were received from the capital that the mission was to halt at a mile from the town of Vien Chan (Wincian, Wusthof calls it), and on the morning of the 16th, the party was conveyed on elephants to the temple without the city, to which it is joined by an avenue of trees; in this temple the audience with the King of Vien Chan was to be given to them. The King treated them with kindness. Wusthof himself, whose term of service with the Company was near its ex- piration, obtained permission to depart alone on his re- turn journey, and after some delay he was able to set forth, charged with certain pacific messages from the King of Vien Chan to the Court of Kambodia, which he undertook to deliver.
Here his individual narrative is interrupted by a de- scription of the Kingdom of Laos. From this it may be gathered that Wusthof's notions of the geography of the country were vague and inaccurate, and that his under- standing of the teachings of Buddhism was even less ex​act. It shows us, however, that at this period the King- dom whose capital was Vien Chan was one of considera- ble power and importance: that it reckoned itself, and was reckoned by its neighbours, to stand on an equal footing with Siam, with Kambodia and with Tongking; that it was rich and prosperous; and that it was distin- guished then, as now, by the religious zeal of its people which manifests itself in the number and the beauty of the temples, pagodas and pyramids scattered through the country, and in the immense influence exerted over them by the innumerable bonzes who make it their business to live by the gospel and upon the faithful.
On December 14th, Wusthof's comrades, left behind at Vien Chan, did not receive their permission to depart until August 11th, nearly nine months after their first audience with the King, a characteristically inaccessible Oriental monarch of whom they do not appear to have sub- sequently seen anything.
The Dutchmen reached Bassak on the 17th, Septem- ber, at which point their narrative ends.
The Dutch merchants also mention that during their stay at Vien Chan a "Portuguese" priest named Leria visited the capital and tried unsuccessfully to obtain per- mission to preach Christianity to the pagan population. This man was not in truth a Portuguese, being a native of Piedmont. He was a Jesuit, and his full name was Giovanni Maria Leria. To him belongs the distinction of being, not only the first, but up to the latter half of the nineteenth century, the only Christian priest who had endeavoured to spread his religion through the Laos ​country. He met with tremendous opposition from the bonzes, but in spite of this continued to reside in Laos for five years, and did not leave Vien Chan till Decem- ber, 1647.
The next traveller, with whose journeys in Indo-China we need concern ourselves, is Henri Mouhot, of whom mention has already been made in connection with the Khmer ruins at Angkor. A native of France, brought up in that country, he had resided successively in Russia, in England and at Jersey: by profession a photographer in the days when photography was a new art, he had cultivated his taste for natural history, devoting himself particularly to ornithology and conchology. In 1858 he went out to Siam on a mission which received practical encouragement from the learned societies of England and France, his object being to explore the little known coun- tries of Indo-China and to examine the problems of their ethnology, and their flora and fauna. Making his head- quarters at Bangkok, he first ascended the Menam to Ayuthia, the ancient capital of Saam, and paid a visit to the famous temple of Prabat Moi, which he describes as having about it little that is remarkable. Its chief dis- tinction, however, and the fact which makes it celebrated and holy throughout Indo-China, is the footprint pre- served in its sanctuary which is piously believed by the faithful to be that of Buddha himself.
After visiting Saraburi and ascending the Menam to
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