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authorwww-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>2026-05-06 15:28:35 -0700
committerwww-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>2026-05-06 15:28:35 -0700
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+ <title>East of Siam | Project Gutenberg</title>
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+ </head>
+
+ <body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78626 ***</div>
+
+
+<div class='tnotes covernote'>
+
+<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class='c000'>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_inside_front.jpg' alt='Endpaper' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_inside_front2.jpg' alt='Century VAGABOND BOOKS of TRAVEL' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter ph1'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+ <div>EAST OF SIAM</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div id='Frontispiece' class='c002 figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_frontispiece.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>There was a young lady of Laos</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='titlepage'>
+
+<div>
+ <h1 class='c003'>EAST OF SIAM<br> <span class='xlarge'><i>Ramblings in the five divisions of French Indo-China</i></span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+ <div>BY</div>
+ <div><span class='xlarge'>HARRY A. FRANCK</span></div>
+ <div class='c004'><span class='small'>Author of “A Vagabond Journey Around the World,” “Roving through Southern China,” “Vagabonding Down the Andes,” “Four Months Afoot in Spain,” etc.</span></div>
+ <div class='c004'>ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS</div>
+ <div>OUT-OF-THE-WAY PHOTOGRAPHS</div>
+ <div>BY THE AUTHOR</div>
+ <div class='c004'>GROSSET &#38; DUNLAP</div>
+ <div><i>Publishers</i>&#8196; &#8196; ::&#8196; ::&#8196; &#8196; <i>New York</i></div>
+ <div class='c004'>By arrangement with the D. Appleton-Century Company</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+ <div><span class='small'>Copyright, 1926, by</span></div>
+ <div><span class='small'><span class='sc'>The Century Co.</span></span></div>
+ <div class='c002'><span class='small'>Printed in U. S. A.</span></div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+ <div><span class='sc'>To</span></div>
+ <div><span class='sc'>The Hospitable French Colonials</span></div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>PROLOGUE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Those of us who had the good fortune to take part
+in that great adventure known as the World War
+can scarcely have failed to notice, among the many kinds
+of French colonial troops, some little men in khaki and brass-topped
+mushroom hats, most of them with black teeth. It
+was not until five years after the Comedy of Versailles that
+my perpetual wandering over the face of the globe brought
+me to the land from which they came—Annam, “Kingdom
+of the Eminent South.” There was not only the motive
+of satisfying, by seeing them at home, the curiosity raised
+by these little brown men in the French army; as far back
+as I can remember I had felt inquisitive toward that
+strangely shaped spot on the map, that slender country which
+drips like a stalactite of candle-grease down from the southeast
+corner of China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides, during all my two years of roving about the
+once Celestial Empire I heard frequently of the wonders
+of the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia. So one day in early
+January, a propitious season, I dropped down to Saïgon,
+visited those astounding remnants of the past, and returned
+overland all the way to Canton. Later, toward the end
+of April, I brought my family to Hanoï for a month of
+Parisian change on the way to Yünnanfu, and took advantage
+of the opportunity to journey through Laos, largest,
+most interesting, and least known of the five divisions of
+France’s Indo-Chinese empire. So in the end I traveled
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>not merely the length and breadth of Annam but saw all
+five parts of that dumb-bell-shaped land east of Siam which
+the French consider their most important colony in the Far
+East.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So unusual was my luck during those travels that only
+my overwhelming modesty has kept me from entitling this
+unpretentious tale of them “Hobnobbing with Kings”; and
+so very interesting a trip was it to me personally that in
+the face of my hard-earned knowledge that our ever more
+herd-minded general public is as fearful of the unknown
+and the unfamiliar as the most superstitious of wild tribes,
+and would much rather read of the deeply tourist-trodden
+streets of Rome and Paris, I have insisted on performing
+this unassuming task.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Those two well separated months were more than a mere
+vacation from Chinese travel. To jaunt through French Indo-China
+is to see a sample of what China itself would probably
+be under European control, white-man rule—were any
+nation powerful enough to accomplish that many times larger
+task—as Formosa suggests what it might be under the
+Japanese. I hope I have at least made it clear that Indo-China
+is not in any sense China, but the living line of
+division between two ancient and very different masses of
+Oriental civilization, even as its name signifies.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r'>
+ <div class='linegroup'>
+ <div class='group'>
+ <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Harry A. Franck.</span></div>
+ </div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+ <tr>
+ <th class='c008'>CHAPTER</th>
+ <th class='c009'>&#160;</th>
+ <th class='c010'>PAGE</th>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>I</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Equatorward</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>II</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>On into Cambodia</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_28'>28</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>III</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>The Jungle-Guarded Ruins of Angkor</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_46'>46</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>IV</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>The Cambodians at Home</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_74'>74</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>V</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Northward from Saïgon</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_86'>86</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>VI</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Through Annam to Its Capital</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_103'>103</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>VII</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Marooned in Hué</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_124'>124</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>VIII</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>An Imperial Happy New Year</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_147'>147</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>IX</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>The People of the Eminent South</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_166'>166</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>X</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Hurrying on to the Northern Capital</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_185'>185</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XI</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Hanoï and the Tonkin</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_201'>201</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XII</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>The French in Indo-China</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_219'>219</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XIII</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Over the Mountains to Laos</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_244'>244</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XIV</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>En Panne!</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_260'>260</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XV</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Down-stream to Luang Prabang</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_278'>278</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XVI</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Knighted in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_296'>296</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XVII</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Speeding Southward</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_323'>323</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c008'>XVIII</td>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='sc'>Vientiane and Back to Hanoï</span></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_347'>347</a></td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>There was a young lady of Laos</td>
+ <td class='c010'><i><a href='#Frontispiece'>Frontispiece</a></i></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <th class='c009'></th>
+ <th class='c010'>FACING PAGE</th>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Cholon architecture is neither exactly French nor Chinese</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_018'>18</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A funeral procession in Cholon, Chinese suburb of Saïgon</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_018'>18</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A decreasing form of conveyance in Cochinchina</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_019'>19</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Unlike China proper, great sections of Indo-China are covered with magnificent virgin jungle-forests</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_019'>19</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>One may still crawl about Angkor by elephant, though Fords are much more à la mode</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_082'>82</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Buddhist priests took their saffron-clad ease in the shade along the great moat of Angkor-Vat, beyond the tourist bungalows in the background</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_082'>82</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A rural Cambodian family at home</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_083'>83</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Motor-buses link together the railways of Indo-China, crossing broad sandy river-banks on strips of woven bamboo splints</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_098'>98</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>In Annam prisoners working in the streets wear a light remnant of the old neck-torturing Chinese <i><span lang="fr">canque</span></i></td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_098'>98</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>In the “Marble Mountains” are many grottoes, some of them elaborately fitted up as temples</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_099'>99</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>An Annamese summoning a ferry from across one of the many rivers which still offer no bridges to automobiles</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_099'>99</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>An Annamese girl, chaperoned by her small brother, sells her wares in the market-place of Hué</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_114'>114</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xii'>xii</span>When it rains in Annam, as it does on every provocation, a simple straw raincoat covers either sex among the masses</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_114'>114</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Like the southern Chinese the Annamese are expert boatmen because they learn their calling long before they reach the dignity of clothing</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_115'>115</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Swinging in the village squares is a favorite diversion of the Annamese populace during the lunar New Year’s season</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_115'>115</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Overlooking, from his flagpole, the palaces of the emperor of Annam</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_130'>130</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>China itself cannot outdo the old bronze urns before the main palace of the Annamese emperor</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_130'>130</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The throne-room of the emperor of Annam, on the afternoon before the New Year’s ceremony</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_131'>131</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The waterfront of Hué, capital of Annam, offers a contrast between its native craft and the French bridge</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_146'>146</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Once a visitor surreptitiously snapped this glimpse of the mandarins of Annam kowtowing before their emperor on New Year’s Day</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_146'>146</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The scores of homes of mandarins within the “citadel” of Hué were all richly decorated for the lunar New Year</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_147'>147</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Inside the “citadel” and near the sumptuous palaces of the emperor of Annam are the perhaps more comfortable homes of his humble subjects</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_147'>147</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>An Annamese mandarin all dressed up for his New Year’s honors to his emperor; his servant behind</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_162'>162</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Servants of the mandarins carry home after the ceremony the ancient Ming accoutrements of their masters</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_162'>162</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Emperor Khai-dinh of Annam on his French-supported throne</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_163'>163</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Some of the most effective of Annamese tombs are covered with pictures and designs made of broken porcelain dishes set in cement</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_163'>163</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>With each new year the Annamese clear of vegetation the graves of their ancestors, back to remote generations</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_194'>194</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>I asked a living caretaker to fill the place of one of these of stone which guard the entrance to a royal tomb of Annam</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_194'>194</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>In the heart of Hanoï, northern capital of French Indo-China, stands a delightfully picturesque lake of goodly dimensions</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_195'>195</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Annamese girls hold Sunday morning flower-market at this corner of the city-girdled lake of Hanoï</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_195'>195</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The ladies of Annam lose any claim they have to beauty when they open their mouths on black-enameled teeth</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_210'>210</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Thi-ba, who did her best as guardian of our children, was equally set against bobbed hair and skirts</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_210'>210</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>For days one may steam in and out among the fantastic rock islands of the Bay of Along</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_211'>211</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Tropical vegetation sometimes commandeers sustenance on the rock peaks</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_211'>211</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The women of Tonkin combine hat, sunshade, and umbrella in one unwieldy contraption</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_258'>258</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The Muong women wear little above the waist, except the loads they carry</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_258'>258</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The guard turned out to greet my companion, the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> of Vinh, at the first village on the way to Laos</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_259'>259</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The Muong chief of our noonday village came in state, bringing eggs and native fire-water</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_259'>259</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The chief sport of the mountain-dwelling Miao of Laos is the making of assorted neck-rings of silver dollars that might better be spent for shirting</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_274'>274</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The Miao woman of Laos take no back seat for their men</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_275'>275</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A Kha woman of the semi-wild tribe that is said to be the aboriginal race of mountainous Laos</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_275'>275</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Wind-sieved rice is the principal food of the rural inhabitants of Luang Prabang</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_306'>306</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xiv'>xiv</span>With a silk scarf worn loosely over a shoulder the women of Luang Prabang capital are more coquettish than their waistless sisters of the country districts</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_306'>306</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The palace of the king of Luang Prabang sits placidly on the bank of the upper Mekong</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_307'>307</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>The king turned out his chief dancing-girls and masked male entertainers for my approval</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_307'>307</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Knighted in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_322'>322</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Two royal elephants saw me off from the palace, the youngster showing a desire to make me depart on the run</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_323'>323</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A Miao woman on her travels carries bed and food</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_323'>323</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A Kha home in the mountains of Luang Prabang</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_338'>338</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Grandfather and grandmother of the primitive Khas tend the children while the intermediate generation seeks the family livelihood in the hills</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_338'>338</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Wherever his habitat, the water-buffalo is happiest when immersed to the nostrils in a mud-hole</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_339'>339</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>One group of the many Laosian carriers who bore my few belongings across Luang Prabang</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_339'>339</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>This ancient monument in Vientiane, French capital of Laos, is the most curious remnant of its regal days</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_354'>354</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>A door of a ruined palace or temple of Vientiane</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_354'>354</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Within the ruined temple the Buddhas sit, in the infinitely patient attitude of the East, crumbling away under the rains and disappearing beneath the encroaching jungle</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_355'>355</a></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class='c009'>Though the French have brought automobiles to Vientiane, this ancient form of conveyance still predominates</td>
+ <td class='c010'><a href='#i_355'>355</a></td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter ph1'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+ <div>EAST OF SIAM</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER I<br> <span class='c011'>EQUATORWARD</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>One of my jaunts up-country in Kwangtung Province
+dragged, and I missed the French liner at Hong Kong.
+Luckily the <i>Panama Maru</i>, bound on one of the trips around
+the world that bring her back to her home berth in Kobe
+every seven months, also made Saïgon her next stop. We
+sailed early in the afternoon of one of those brilliant days
+that double the blue intensity of Hong Kong harbor. The
+Japanese freighter served no free wine with her meals and
+had none of that interior ornateness that suggests the Paris
+Opéra gone to sea. But perhaps for that very reason she
+was more successfully mopped and dusted; and the Nipponese
+atmosphere aboard was more interesting than the
+cosmopolitan scent of the fortnightly Messageries steamer to
+Marseilles. True, she made barely ten knots an hour. But
+the French could hardly have served better food; the two
+“boys” were unspoiled, and Captain Ichikawa was a friendly
+little soul, even inviting me to make free of the chart-room.
+The quiet, all but noiseless, efficiency of his crew was a
+startling contrast to the incessantly shrieking chaos of
+Chinese craft. The three or four first-class cabins opened
+abruptly upon the dining-room rather than upon the deck;
+yet even the baby in one of them was Japanese, like everything
+and everybody on board except myself, and seemed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>never to cry. A lone Japanese would certainly not have
+been more courteously treated on an American boat than
+was the sole non-Nipponese being on this.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is often said that the Japanese are not individualistic
+in personality. There were certainly as many types as passengers,
+however, gathered about our table. The energetic
+son of Tokyo, now in business in Saïgon, who shared my
+cabin, was tall and handsome, as agreeable a companion in
+cramped quarters as any American man of commerce, and
+he spoke both French and English perfectly. On the other
+hand the peanut-headed undersized youth across the table
+looked and acted like the “nut” his cranium suggested. Then
+there was a medical graduate going out, with the assistance
+of the mikado’s government, to practise upon the Japanese
+laborers on the coffee plantations of São Paulo—who one
+evening managed to tell me in near-English that he had
+read, both in my tongue and his own, all the published plays
+of Eugene O’Neill. He would give much to see them played,
+he added, but had never seen a Western drama on the
+stage. The two women who sometimes graced our board
+were as different as were the quiet brown and gorgeous-figured
+red kimonos they respectively wore on such occasions.
+Even the half-dozen officers rounding out the tri-daily
+gathering were divided by as distinct lines of demarcation
+as are their colleagues of any nationality.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Gently we rolled southward, with a drift to the west,
+over a densely blue tropical sea. It grew too warm, first
+in our open-on-the-dining-room cabins, then on the deck
+itself. Summer curtains and awnings appeared; electric
+fans took up their duties once more, and in one cabin at
+least spun all the night through. The third morning brought
+one of those lazy perfect days when loafing in a deck-chair
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>seems the nearest tangible approach to heaven. We sighted
+the coast of Annam that afternoon, hazy, almost mountainous,
+apparently as treeless as China itself, and had it always
+in sight thereafter, a lighthouse winking at us all through
+the evening. If possible the weather was even more peerless
+on the fourth day; the sea, flat as a floor, blue as if
+saturated with indigo, was covered with light ripples that
+made it look like a vast piece of watered silk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Unfortunately it had not turned tropical quickly enough
+to save one of our fellow-passengers. A youngster who
+had taken pneumonia during the crossing from Japan to
+the coast of China died during the third night. Another
+child had gone the same way, two days out of Nagasaki,
+and many in the general quarters below the main-deck still
+had heavy colds. This boy of three had been the only
+son of one of the score of families going out third-class to
+Brazil. The funeral, at which the captain personally requested
+my presence, took place on the fourth evening. Most
+of the passengers and such of the crew as could be spared
+stood about a kind of altar improvised on the poop. First
+the captain, then others stepped up and bowed low before
+this, repeating some sort of litany that ended with the
+sprinkling of incense. Last of all came the parents, to go
+impersonally through the same ceremony. They did not
+weep, though their drawn faces showed that they had given
+way in private to grief to which it would be bad Japanese
+form to yield in public. The Buddhist service was as
+simple as it was quiet, wholly un-Chinese, without a sob
+or a loud voice, even as the little box wrapped in the flag
+of the rising sun floated away astern in the moonlight. It
+was as much that atmosphere of the uselessness of giving
+way to the inevitable, I think, as the fact that I had left
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>behind in Canton a three-year-old son of my own, which
+made me so depressed that I was still pacing the deck at
+midnight.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>By that time we had anchored at the mouth of the Mekong,
+near a lighthouse. Off again at dawn, I sat, after a last
+salt bath, wearing the few garments that Japanese custom
+permits, in a delicious tropical morning breeze as the steamer
+made its way up a tide-water river with dead-flat banks of
+low, apparently uninhabited jungle stretching as far away
+as could be seen in any direction. The stream was as
+wide as the misnamed Pearl River at Canton, but clean
+and blue, flecked here and there with a tiny boat top-heavy
+with its clean-white pointed sail; and it wound so
+constantly all the fifty miles from the mouth to Saïgon that
+we headed again and again to every point of the compass.
+The low jungled banks gave way to brown plains with
+patches of palms, low thatch houses, and what looked like
+haystacks scattered far and wide. The inevitable Socony
+plant appeared, and some distance beyond we ran down at
+last the flat evasive town, the steeples of which had betrayed
+its location, now to port, now to starboard, again
+over our stern, like the ears of some startled jack-rabbit
+trying in vain to dodge its pursuers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was a reminder of Martinique about the already
+sweltering city half seen beyond a wharf dotted with white
+helmets. I had rather expected to be called upon as interpreter,
+but the fat, bored-with-the-tropics French doctor
+who sweated up the steep gang-plank knew some English,
+though he spoke it more laboriously than did our captain
+and several of my fellow-passengers. There was something
+amusing in seeing these people of two nations which
+have no overwhelming love for us of the English-speaking
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>races forced to use our tongue in their intercourse. In his
+perpetually bored way the port doctor was very insistent
+that every Japanese on board show proof of a recent vaccination,
+though only my cabin-mate was landing; but when
+I began to do likewise he waved me politely aside and
+took my word for it in a way that implied that as a Caucasian
+I was in a class by myself. An equally courteous, if
+less bored, official pocketed my passport and gave me the
+freedom of the half-way station between Hong Kong and
+Singapore.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Before the dock lay behind me I regretted the habitual
+lack of foresight that had led me to bring only an extra
+winter suit instead of half a dozen white ones, and was
+praising the superior wisdom of the thoughtful wife in
+Canton who had insisted on my taking along a tropical
+helmet in January. Luckily other travelers seem to be
+in the habit of misjudging the winter climate of Saïgon,
+and Chinese tailors at the foot of the principal street are
+used to correcting such oversights in a hurry. Though it
+was Sunday they promised me a <i><span lang="fr">complet</span></i> or two of duck
+within two days, at twelve <i><span lang="fr">piastres</span></i> each—and while I am
+on the subject let me mention that the piastre of Indo-China
+is equal to the “Mex” dollar of Hong Kong and China,
+averaging a little more than half our own, and not given
+to fluctuating with the franc.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Rue Catinat, grilling now beneath the late morning
+sun, drew me inland. Mingled with its all too plain evidence
+of propinquity to the equator was that of a considerable
+relationship to Paris. Between window-displays that
+might have come almost intact from the Rue de la Paix,
+black and brown fellows in red fezzes, locally known as
+Malabars, squatted in booths raised well above the narrow
+sidewalks—money-changers, sellers of tobacco, and the like.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>Here and there a Hindu merchant stared out into the white
+light of the gently yet perspiringly mounting street. Here
+Sunday was no British Sabbath. Annamese waiters bustled
+about the marble tables of hotel cafés well peopled with
+white men and women instantly recognizable as French.
+Business as usual seemed to be the motto of all but the
+most important establishments. Yet even the diaphanously
+clad Oriental strollers of various origins shuffled along in
+the narrow streak of shade before one row of shop-fronts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Saïgon’s main street flowed out before long into a sun-stewed
+square with a cathedral trebly hot in its red brick
+garb. The view from its tower across the well streeted
+city, almost forested above the section of wharves and commerce,
+would have been worth a less perspiring climb.
+Farther on, the American to whom I had a letter lived in
+simple bachelor splendor in a low house of thick walls and
+disproportionately large rooms. Languid with long tropical
+residence, this former captain in the Philippine constabulary
+who now represented our great oil corporation seemed
+to recognize no pastime except the lolling in a reclining-chair
+with a cold drink within easy reach. I am no suitable
+companion in the consumption of British whisky—that could
+be had in this stronghold of its French rivals only by something
+closely resembling smuggling—and I drifted down
+toward the port again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All Saïgon sizzled now in noonday repose. Not merely
+on Sunday, I later learned, are all offices, all shops except
+those of the heat-impervious Orientals, closed from eleven
+until two for the daily siesta. One of the shocks due the
+rare hurried business man or tourist from the West who
+drifts into Saïgon is to find it virtually dead daily from
+the early French lunch-hour until the sun nears the western
+tree-tops. Here and there an enervated rickshaw-man
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>dragged his empty vehicle slowly behind him. A few dozing
+Hindus, a fez-wearer or two asleep with open eyes on his
+haunches among his wares, were visible in the unbroken
+rows of shops. Heaps of coolies reposed under the trees
+of other streets, under raised porches, their thin legs tangled
+together, open-mouthed like dead fish. Otherwise the streets
+were empty; not a European was outdoors. All the governing
+race were asleep in the breeze of electric fans, such
+garments as they still wore pasted to their bodies. Had
+one of them spied me wandering the streets at this hour
+I should no doubt have been taken for mad.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The new-comer soon finds that he too is better for his
+siesta, and that there is nothing to be gained in going without
+it, for there is little that he can do and no one whom he can
+see. No wonder the white residents all seemed tropicalized,
+if I may coin a word greatly needed in any attempt to
+describe life in Saïgon. Two or three hours of broken
+nap, and they must get up again, wearier than ever, spirits
+and body alike languid and stiff; for work or its substitute
+begins anew. One by one each leaves his house, jumps into
+a rickshaw with burning cushions, and goes to shut himself
+up once more in office or shop. There only the tropically
+experienced and the well-to-do can manage a comfortable
+coolness in which those not used to the equator as a close
+neighbor can either think or work. The streets begin again
+to swarm with <i><span lang="fr">pousse-pousses</span></i>—for in spite of the all too
+evident fact that it is pulled the French insist on calling
+the rickshaw a “push-push,” perhaps in memory of the
+converted baby-carriage from which this now widespread
+vehicle was fashioned. Thinner, more washed-out in appearance
+than more northerly men of their laborious calling,
+the pullers nevertheless charge madly down upon every
+possible client, just as in China. But here they are more
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>orderly, a trifle cleaner perhaps, with an air of being kept
+closely within bounds by foreign rules as well as by the
+climate. Less cheery than their Chinese prototypes, they
+seem more optimistic. The rickshaw-man of Indo-China
+holds out both hands at the end of his run, as if expecting
+such a fortune for his services to one of the dominant
+race that one hand would not hold it. But his optimism
+rarely materializes, and no dispute with one of the race that
+rules over his land seems to be worth the effort in such a
+climate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meanwhile, unable to adapt myself so quickly to the do-nothing
+of tropical midday, I had wandered to the end of
+the town. It was the same old France, even this far afield—outwardly
+imposing buildings generously adorned with
+plump naked females in stone, and within, dusty bureaucracy
+where the buying of a postage-stamp is a transaction,
+with much bookkeeping involved. Saïgon is in theory the
+capital of all Indo-China, though in practice the governors-general
+have all preferred somewhat more northerly Hanoï.
+Their palace here, like the cathedral, the Postes et Télégraphes,
+the Municipal Theater, and all the other examples
+of elaborate French architecture misplaced in the tropics,
+is set off in its grass-covered square at the end of some
+broad avenue. Palatial European residences with an atmosphere
+of lavishness emphasize the conspicuous scarcity of
+native buildings, whether towers, temples, ancient gates or
+palaces, or high-class dwellings. For that matter the native
+residents seem few, at least until one reaches the outskirts,
+though Saïgon was an important center before the French
+came.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Farther out are big brick barracks, where young French
+soldiers conscious of no color-line mingle freely with colonial
+troops ranging from black Malgaches to pale-yellow
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>Annamese. Wide tree-lined roads lead on to the Botanical
+Gardens, in which men and women Parisian in dress and
+manners drive or stroll in the semi-coolness of evening;
+and just across the arroyo bounding it on the farther side
+is the bush—jungle and thatched huts and primitive living,
+where one glimpses hammocks in hovels of faded thatch on
+bare ground among banana-plants that carry the mind back
+to rural tropical South America.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>European health used to be so bad in Saïgon that French
+residents often had the experience of playing baccarat with
+a friend one evening and accompanying him next morning
+to Bangkok—not the capital of Siam but the Saïgon cemetery
+for foreigners, popularly so-called among them from
+the street that leads to it. The story is still told of a misinformed
+French journalist in France who was moved to
+protest at the extravagance of sending all the dead to Siam,
+“in order not to alarm the population.” To-day conditions
+are better, as healthful as could be expected for wine-drinkers
+in an equatorial country. But the French seem less
+at home here than the Annamese in their black two-piece
+garments, shiny as oil-cloth, their wooden clogs scraping
+noisily on the cement sidewalks, on the stone-faced roadways
+beyond, splotched with the red saliva of this race
+of betel-nut chewers. Their hair, usually in topknots that
+peer from beneath black band-turbans, the black-enameled
+teeth they consider so becoming, and the betel-nut that drips
+blood-red over their lips they have in common with their
+more wealthy compatriots in coats of transparent black gauze
+over light-colored gowns.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With sunset comes the great French rite, <i><span lang="fr">l’apéritif</span></i>. Men
+in fresh white and women in their best summer frocks
+gather on the terrace—in other words most of the public
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>sidewalk, with slight respect for pedestrians—of the Hôtel
+Continental, a scene suggesting the Café de la Paix of Paris
+in a tropical setting. The awnings are trussed up, and
+the night life, the chief life of Saïgon, at least of the visible
+variety, grows with the evening. The very common-sense
+custom of the European men in going bareheaded after
+sunset is a delightful relief from the heavy sweat-begetting
+cork helmet. All the Frenchman’s comforts of home, from
+creamy curaçao of oil-like texture to rich green <i><span lang="fr">absinthe
+frappée</span></i>, are trotted forth by Annamese “boys” in white
+gowns, topped by their inevitable band-turban, jet-black as
+the coarse hair most of them wear in a Psyche knot. All
+manner of French colonial types join the appetite-seeking
+throng—the anemic rounder, the sturdy colonist in his
+black shovel-beard, the humped bureaucrat in his pince-nez.
+Rare indeed is the man who is not accompanied by at least
+one member of the fair sex who could have come from
+nowhere but France, garb, manner, and all, in spite of her
+pallor and reduced vivacity born of tropical residence.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As a hostelry the Continental was full. But one of the
+most agreeable surprises about Indo-China, at least to the
+man who comes there from wandering in China itself, is
+the number of its hotels with all the comforts of Paris.
+They are very French hotels indeed, from the menu to
+the thrifty eagle-eyed madame behind the bottle-flanked zinc
+counter, even though the midday <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i> cannot of course
+be served out on the sidewalk. Rooms may be spacious
+or small, but they are always furnished with a big double
+bed, symbol of the Frenchman’s horror of sleeping alone.
+This is unfailingly flanked by the <i><span lang="fr">bidet</span></i>, in enameled tin on
+loose wooden legs or of the latest bath-tub style. Bath-tubs
+themselves are rare, but in a land where perspiration
+drips at every crook of a finger the shower-baths, often in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>a cement-paved corner of the room itself, are alone worth
+the price of admission. All this and more I found at exceedingly
+reasonable rates at the Hôtel de la Rotonde, just
+across the street from the starting-place of the biweekly
+steamer to Pnom Penh.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Autobuses leave Saïgon in various directions; toy-like
+French automobiles may be had for the hiring. Where
+the former, and sometimes the latter, leave off, one may
+descend to thatch-topped carts behind humped cattle, or climb
+into queer little vehicles something like the jaunting-cars of
+Ireland. The well-to-do natives of Cochinchina seem still
+to prefer the <i><span lang="fr">malabar</span></i>, a horse-drawn box on four wheels, so
+named from the Indian immigrants who appear to have
+brought it with them. The bus ride to Thudam disclosed
+an industrial school where the old Annamese arts that show
+signs of dying out, such as inlaying furniture and bric-a-brac
+with mother-of-pearl, are being retaught under French
+principals. Annamese boys of the working class are recommended
+to it by the village elders and are paid a bit while
+learning. In such matters as these, and the good roads
+leading to them, French rule is visibly an advantage. The
+rather dusty ride out to the Falls of Trian is also one of
+those worth while among the radiating routes covering little
+Cochinchina. On almost any of them mangosteen trees
+stand forth to make one’s mouth water, though it has
+never been my luck, thanks to persistent off seasons, to taste
+this untransportable vegetable ice-cream, reputed the finest
+fruit in captivity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Smallest and oldest of the five divisions of French Indo-China,
+Cochinchina is the only colony among them. The
+others are “protectorates,” though the difference is hardly
+visible to the naked eye. But at least its strictly colonial
+status simplifies the task of its governor. He came from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>Mauritius and was part negro, according to the official
+propagandist for more tourists who insisted on taking me
+to call on him. I should hardly have suspected it in his
+cool and deeply shaded offices, and certainly not from a later
+glimpse in more social circles of his beautiful French wife
+of queenly dignity. A colonial governor ranks high in the
+matrimonial market of France, whatever his complexion.
+But if I fancied there was no color prejudice in this motley
+dependency I was disabused by the secret scorn my companion
+expressed, as we left the palace, for the African
+strain in the superior to whom he had been so deferential
+in official intercourse, though he himself seemed to go out
+of his way to mention his own Annamese wife and half-caste
+children. To each nationality its peculiar point of view.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Trains, trolleys, autobuses, automobiles, rickshaws, <i><span lang="fr">malabars</span></i>,
+and boats, not to mention pedestrians, ply constantly
+between Saïgon and Cholon, its rich Chinese suburb. Tiresomely
+Chinese in many of its details, this wealthy city
+testifies to French tutelage. Instead of shoulder-wide
+streets garnished with roaming pigs and untended garbage,
+there are good pavements, and a modern water-supply in
+place of the bucket-brigades from river or mud-hole. Still
+no Elysium, it is immaculate compared to China proper.
+Here live Chinese who own costly automobiles; here diamonds
+and other valuable jewelry are widely worn in public;
+here where it is safe to indulge such inclination under foreign
+rule, is altered the impression one carries away from the
+bandit- and soldier-ridden old empire to the north, that the
+Celestials are the antithesis of the Hindus in this matter of
+personal adornment. In every shop, whether of a grocer or
+a seller of porcelains, of medicines or of silks, there is a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>mighty heaping up of wares, and six clerks where we would
+have one. Among them an old man fat and cheery of aspect
+as the Laughing Buddha at the entrance to Chinese temples,
+naked except for thin cotton trousers and slippers, sits
+manipulating the balls of his calculating-board. Flat, dry,
+lacquered ducks, transparent at the edges, hang along cords
+like bats taking their day’s repose. Pigs blown up like
+their toy counterparts of rubber, lie at their ease, polished
+and hairless, with outstretched legs, grinning their deathly
+grin at the passing throng. Now and again a funeral goes
+by, gaudy and noisy as if the chief actor were among the
+graves of his ancestors, but more richly ornate and lacking
+the usual tawdriness, like the town itself compared to old
+China. But those who have been there then say that the
+time to see Cholon is during the week of Têt, as the lunar
+New Year is called in Indo-China, when the canvas and cardboard
+dragon is promenaded through the streets, opening his
+enormous maw and twisting his long disgusting body, in
+which a score of sweating coolies are hidden.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In Indo-China one seldom speaks of going to the grocery;
+it is rather, “I am going to the Chinaman’s.” The Annamese,
+and still more so the other races that make up the
+native population, are lazy, or at least languid as merchants,
+and the Chinese get the business and the riches.
+To speak of retail commerce is to mean the Chinese, and
+in larger matters they are by no means outsiders. For a
+hundred and fifty years they have been installed at Cholon,
+and from there they have spread over all Cochinchina, all
+Indo-China for that matter. They arrive thin and in rags,
+and leave, if at all, fat and placid; and as fast as they
+get rich other gaunt wretches take their places at the foot of
+the ladder. It is as if they were being perpetually passed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>through a fattening-machine; and if some of them have no
+luck, lack sufficient cuteness, there is the recompense of
+opium to make a plank as comfortable as a rich man’s bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>More or less respected by the people they feed upon, they
+are discreetly or insolently superior to them, depending on
+their individual status of the moment. Formerly they made
+great fortunes quickly in rice. That way is hampered now,
+because the government sends out rice quotations that reach
+even the peasants. But still they get rich. So greatly
+are they the gainers that Indo-China has been called a
+“Chinese colony administered by Frenchmen.” Economically
+the Celestial is master of the country; his activity, his intelligence
+in business affairs, his commercial cleverness, his
+very temperament would make him so, even without the
+great advantages of a population given to gambling and
+gifted with a lack of forethought that make for usury
+at high rates. Thirty-six per cent is legal interest even in
+the French courts of Indo-China, and the wily Chinese often
+gets everything merely for lending ten piastres—land, house,
+furniture, sometimes the whole family as slaves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A gambling game known as “the thirty-six animals”
+sweeps through all the villages, especially of Cambodia,
+like <i><span lang="fr">o bicho</span></i> in Brazil. In Cambodia, as in Siam, as in
+China, slavery has been legally abolished, but it continues
+to flourish. In the old days the work of the slave for debt
+covered only the interest; it never paid the principal and
+set him free. To-day the peasant who borrows in a lean
+year or after a bad wager may hope that at least his children
+will get out of the meshes of the spider-faced Chinese
+lender.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Even from the political point of view the Chinese are a
+privileged class in Indo-China. Though they have no diplomatic
+representatives of their own, they virtually have the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>rights of extraterritoriality under the protection of the
+French. Every Chinese in the colony must belong to a <i><span lang="fr">congrégation</span></i>,
+a kind of association that is responsible to the
+state for all its members, civilly and pecuniarily. Each man
+between the ages of eighteen and sixty pays a tax of from
+6.60 to 200 piastres, depending on the category to which he
+belongs. There are six of these categories, with bankers
+and merchants in the highest class and coolies in the lowest.
+Though they pay this to the “congregation,” it really goes
+to the government. This is no bright French idea, but was
+the lot of all Chinese living in Annam long before the
+French came. Besides this varying head-tax there is a
+“prestation tax”—whatever that may be—of from two to
+fifty piastres a year; and any Chinese who wishes to travel
+beyond the town in which he is registered must pay for a
+<i><span lang="fr">laisser-passer</span></i>, good for two weeks and twice renewable, so
+that those who are always traveling contribute considerably
+to the government during the year. Women, children, the
+sick, and men over sixty pay only a yearly tax of one
+piastre, and may travel when and where they wish; but even
+the son of a Chinese by an Annamese woman, and born in
+the colony, remains a Chinese and must belong to some
+“congregation.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese of Cholon and of Indo-China in general
+rarely speak a word of Annamese or of French and of
+course no English; nor for that matter do they speak
+Chinese, for they all come from the southern coastal country
+where dialects reign. Canton, Amoy, Swatow, and
+Hainan furnish the chief “congregations.” Such intriguing
+names as Hai Chin and Hung Long Tom are to be seen
+on their shop signs. Except for the Cantonese, who usually
+bring wives with them, nearly all these happily expatriated
+Celestials take temporary native wives, usually Annamese.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>But they <i>never</i>—the italics are those of a French writer—leave
+temporary wife and children behind without assuring
+their livelihood. The same cannot be said of the French
+in Indo-China—nor, the French might retort, of Americans
+in the Philippines.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>If I had come too early to see Cholon in the throes of
+the Chinese New Year, at least I was just in time to attend
+the most important annual celebration of another alien
+group that fattens on the native population. Every January
+the Chettys, a Hindu caste of bankers and usurers to
+be found in all the ports of the Far East, give a great
+fête in honor of their protectress, the Goddess Souppramanya.
+It was the most barbaric spectacle I have ever
+seen in many years of globe-trotting. In the evening all
+Indians of this class in Saïgon, from mere street-booth
+money-changers to big bankers, enveloped themselves in
+their curtain-like muslin costume, with a spongy towel about
+the neck, and formed a procession to their temple in the
+Rue Ohier. This Pagode des Chettys—one must get used
+to the French way of saying <i><span lang="fr">pagode</span></i> for temple and <i><span lang="fr">tour</span></i> for
+pagoda—is rich and elaborate for its setting, though only
+mildly so compared to such structures in India. The contrast
+between its ornamental tower and the <i><span lang="fr">défense d’afficher</span></i>
+signs lavished upon its bright pink walls is not likely to
+escape even the languid passer-by lolling in his <i><span lang="fr">pousse-pousse</span></i>.</p>
+
+<div id='i_018' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_018a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Cholon architecture is neither exactly French nor Chinese</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_018b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A funeral procession in Cholon, Chinese suburb of Saïgon</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_019' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_019a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A decreasing form of conveyance in Cochinchina</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_019b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Unlike China proper, great sections of Indo-China are covered with magnificent virgin jungle-forests</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>Unlike what would have happened in India, here there
+seemed to be no objection to my presence; the worshipers
+in fact gave me subtle hints that they were rather pleased
+at my attention, though the stern watchman at the door
+waved away natives of the colony. There may have been
+great inner meaning, plethoras of mysticism quite beyond
+my simple ken, in the ensuing ceremony, but to me it
+was rather a shock to know that what are popularly accepted
+as our fellow-Aryans could be so crassly superstitious.
+Yet such things no doubt are all a matter of
+degree and inherited point of view; the unfamiliar always
+has a hint of the grotesque, even of the hideous.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Great Hindu bankers naturally wear many diamonds;
+otherwise these overfed worshipers were only in white flowing
+loin-cloths, some with a fold of cheese-cloth over one
+shoulder. With three fingers each further prepared himself
+by smearing on his forehead, his flabby arms, and the
+hairy chest that attested his Aryan blood, whitish stuff
+mixed by low-caste members of his race from cow-dung
+and other ingredients. Hindu musicians supplied an absolutely
+unbroken caterwauling splendidly in keeping with the
+rest of the insane ceremony. One of them in particular
+should easily have won the world record for long-windedness.
+For a full hour, if not indeed much longer, he kept
+his cheeks blown out to their capacity without an instant
+of interlude, thereby keeping a barbaric kind of fife miauling
+without cessation and at the same time beating a drum
+incessantly with his fingers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One by one the fat, bediamonded, all but naked bankers
+stood before the opened shrine, itself a vision of untold
+riches, sometimes singly, sometimes in small groups, and
+with their hands high above their heads shook and twisted
+and contorted themselves like madmen suffering the extremes
+of torture. The object of these revolting attempts of all
+too solid flesh to resemble a snake in the throes of pain
+or anger were, as nearly as I could gather, to deceive the
+goddess into the belief that the worshipers were acutely
+suffering at sight of her divine splendor, or that they were
+ready to suffer any agony in her honor. One by one
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>they threw themselves on the cement pavement laid in small
+brightly colored squares and writhed and squirmed, twisting
+their heads fiercely from side to side, rolling over and
+over, in a way to make mere groveling a pastime, the sweat
+of torture and of an equatorial climate pouring from their
+brown bodies until the floor was wet beneath them. The
+paunchiest creature of them all, his fingers covered with
+diamonds large enough, in the vernacular of the day, to
+choke a horse, his dough-like face riddled with the marks
+of smallpox, doubly repulsive with his great hairy naked
+paunch, went through contortions nauseating to the hardiest
+stomach. His voluntary convulsions suggested that he was
+the chief of the caste, as his diamonds implied that he
+was the leader in successful usury. If only our bankers
+and money-lenders had to do some such penance annually
+instead of merely going to church weekly in a silk hat and a
+limousine!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At length their divinity, Souppramanya, which like any
+American worthy of attention looked easily worth the million
+repute and her incredibly bejeweled appearance credit
+her with, was taken down from her niche. A dozen men in
+loin-cloths carried the idol to her silver chariot; two great
+cream-colored sacred bulls, or, more exactly, steers, wearing
+fancily embroidered robes over their single humps, were
+led forth from their sumptuous stables within the temple,
+and the second phase of the ceremony began. Between two
+rows of torches, surrounded by oriflammes, sacred parasols
+in gay colors, and inexhaustible musicians, the extravagant
+equipage of the goddess set out around the walled inclosure
+of the altar. Huger than water-buffaloes of the fields,
+their sleek fawn-colored hides shining, their expression that
+of their human prototypes haughty with generations of
+adulation, the sacred cattle trod slowly at the head of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>worshipers, their spoiled-aristocrat dignity unruffled by the
+frequent slipping of their silver shoes on the smooth hard
+pavement, or at the sometimes painful pulling at the cords
+attached to their perforated nostrils. Sacred as they were,
+such coercion by their idolizers was evidently necessary to
+keep them in order, and this they endured as if even sacred
+beings were not wholly free from the pull of circumstances.
+Behind, surrounded by a milling throng of naked smeared
+Hindu men and boys writhing with religious fervor, came
+the martyr without whom the ceremony would be in vain.
+He had prayed and fasted for a week in order to be able
+to endure his suffering. Lances pricking his feet, an
+enormous pin thrust through his tongue, he drew a little
+chariot fastened to him by traces ending in silver hooks
+that dug deeply into his flesh. His eyes twisted in their
+orbits, foam driveled from his lips, a figure horrible to behold,
+urged on by the clamors of the frenzied money-lenders,
+who now and then still threw themselves in abject contortions
+on the pavement. The crowd jostled and pitilessly
+crowded upon a second martyr, who had transformed himself
+into a pincushion, with needles and pins sticking out of
+his flesh in every direction. It was an astonishing as well as
+a revolting spectacle, a vision of fanatical India such as I
+had never seen in India itself, doubly surprising because of
+the freedom with which we two white men and a Frenchwoman
+were allowed to mingle with the worshipers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Two, three, four times the barbaric procession made the
+circuit of the temple. A curious noise that seemed to come
+from within the chariot puzzled me, until I managed to
+crowd closely enough to discover that the ambulating altar
+contained a little motor which lighted it with electricity!
+The gaunt Hindu in charge of this howled and writhed with
+the others; but in a fold of his loin-cloth bulged two or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>three electric-light bulbs to replace those that might burn
+out.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then quickly the whole performance subsided. The regal-mannered
+steers were led back to their stalls; the swollen
+cheeks of the musicians deflated in a final piercing yowl;
+the goddess was carried back to her permanent throne. In
+a twinkling the frenzied bankers returned to the placid every-day
+behavior of their calling, and went to squat on the
+floor in a raised place too sacred for ordinary beings, where
+low-caste Indians began to pass trays of food among them.
+This consisted mainly of cocoanuts cut in two and filled
+with bananas, red fruits, and several unrecognizable forms
+of Hindu delicacies. The hairy-paunched favorites of fortune
+helped themselves more than generously; the small fry,
+and the children scattered among them, got only handsful
+of sticky rice, carelessly tossed to them by the servers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This spectacle was repeated every evening for ten days.
+It was very easy to guess what might have befallen those
+who had dared to wear such diamonds or publicly parade
+such idols in China, or for that matter in our own expensively
+policed land. Here no fear of robbery seemed to
+trouble the pious Chettys, most opulent of the thousands of
+castes of India. All the evening there had hovered near
+me a man from Pondicherry, that tiny patch of India still
+ruled by the French. Dressed in the tailored garb of Europeans
+in the tropics, his decidedly Aryan features merely a
+glossy brown instead of white, speaking perfect French,
+he seemed far removed from the men of his race who writhed
+on the floor in their diamonds and loin-cloths. The ceremony
+was evidently commonplace to him, for he showed no
+surprise even at the height of it. His fervor seemed to
+be political rather than religious, and like many a man of
+color in the French colonies he was almost boisterously
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>Francophil. A dozen times during the evening his voice
+rose high enough above the fanatical tumult to assure me
+in as many ways of expressing it that India would be the
+happiest land on earth if only France rather than England
+held it.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The ease with which I got permission to visit the Saïgon
+establishment where opium is prepared for sale implied that
+the French made no secret, whether or not they saw anything
+wrong in it, of their official sponsoring of this traffic.
+Opium is a government monopoly in Indo-China, with a
+similar establishment in Tonkin to the north. In a big airy
+room of armory-like ceiling, a hundred or more feet long
+and half as wide, a score of Annamese were at work. What
+with the heat of caldrons and of the climate, and the sickeningly
+sweetish smell of the drug, their labor with heavy
+ladles was no sinecure. In fact the whole personnel works
+only three hours out of the twenty-four, eighteen hours a
+week. The poppy-juice comes from India—at the northern
+establishment especially southwestern China now supplies
+great quantities, but this is of course not officially
+admitted—in balls of the size of a cocoanut, or resembling
+still more closely the Brazil-nut in its native state, for the
+shell is nearly an inch thick—but made of leaves. These
+leaves are eventually sold to the natives, who chew them with
+their betel-nut, no doubt getting some opium-like effect from
+the soaking of poppy-juice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The brown jelly-like substance inside is dumped into huge
+brass pans over fires and ladled constantly as it boils, sweat
+running literally in streams from the workers. When it
+has cooled and been well kneaded the resultant dough is
+placed in other such pans and rubbed down into a concave
+cake two or three inches thick. This in turn is placed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>upside down over a very hot charcoal brazier, and every
+minute or two a workman peels off a skin of the thickness
+of leather and throws it into still another pan. When
+all the cake has been skinned away, the leather-like layers
+in the new pan are treated with water, for they would
+otherwise be brittle as glass, and are worked again into a
+very brown dough which gradually swells to fill the pan.
+Handfuls of specially prepared interior of bamboos, soft
+and resembling vermicelli, are then thrust into the mass,
+and brown water runs slowly from these through cloth
+filters into buckets. Only this liquid is of any value, the
+residue being thrown away, useless even as fertilizer.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Reduced to a semiliquid form once more, this final product
+is placed in iron barrels, a single one of which is worth
+twenty thousand piastres. The stuff may now be sold at
+any time, though if possible it is allowed to settle six
+months or more, for like wine and marriage the longer it
+is kept the better it becomes. Then in the form of a paste
+closely resembling russet shoe-blacking it is put up in tins
+of five, ten, twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred grams each.
+The first retails at barely two piastres, so that every rickshaw-man
+and errand-boy may afford it; the largest, at
+twenty-five. The de luxe opium is put up in purple boxes,
+a special mark on the very best of them indicating that
+they are reserved for the king of Cambodia. Great quantities
+of this best purple variety are sent to the old Cambodian
+sovereign each December, as the Christmas present of the
+government. His royal colleague, the emperor of Annam,
+is supplied from the Hanoï establishment. The ordinary
+tins, with no marks upon them except a cryptic number, are
+placed in heavy wooden boxes simply marked “Benares”—other
+code names distinguishing the better grades—and go
+out in great loads to all parts of the colony. The stuff is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>sold in these tins to any one who can pay for it, in every
+little <i><span lang="fr">débit</span></i> distinguished by an “O.R.,” for “Opium Régie”
+on signs similar to those indicating authority to retail for
+the French tobacco monopoly. What with government
+preparation, license fees, and the like, the drug brings an
+enormous profit to the government; that is, to France.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The official who took it upon himself to get me started
+right in my sight-seeing called the opium monopoly “the
+shame of Indo-China”; and some other French residents
+felt, or professed to feel, the same way about it. But
+even he insisted that if it were not thus openly sold and
+regulated the people would smuggle it in; and if it were
+prohibited entirely there would be a revolution! So there
+would be, though perhaps not in just the sense the speaker
+meant to imply.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We all know that France takes a somewhat different
+view of “vices” than do we of the English-speaking races.
+The French attitude seems to be, let vice flourish and abound,
+that each may learn to save himself from temptation, or
+decide for himself how much indulgence he can allow without
+serious personal harm. There are hints that this may
+perhaps be as effective in the end as our own growing custom
+of forcible suppression. Even in novels based on life in
+Indo-China the French attitude toward opium seems to be
+about what ours as a nation is toward tobacco. Many,
+some say three fourths, of the eighteen thousand French
+in the colony smoke opium, as do most of the various indigenous
+races, many Chinese, and some Hindu residents.
+There are not a few French residents of the better class
+who contend that it does no great harm. Among the
+natives, men with the opium habit are treated with indulgence,
+but the women “never” smoke it; any who did so
+would be considered the lowest of human creatures. On
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>the whole the Japanese seem to have handled the problem
+better in Formosa, for they at least strive to keep their own
+people free from the habit, and are systematically reducing
+consumption within their own territory, rather than trying
+to increase it. The smoking of opium, a Chinese importation,
+was not a common vice in Indo-China, unless perhaps
+among the Annamese, before the French came. In
+Cambodia and among some of the other gentler races that
+make up the protected federation, market-days and big
+gatherings are needed to overcome the inertia toward the
+habit even to-day. But the government forces it upon the
+people for the benefit of the treasury; and the development
+of obligatory military service has spread it everywhere.
+Lists of villages are sent out by diligent functionaries with
+the information that they are not consuming their pro rata
+of opium, just as great business houses in other lands protest
+to their agents that such and such territory should
+take more of their goods, and local officials are told to
+urge shopkeepers with the “O.R.” license to add to their
+stocks and push them over the counter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The opium monopoly in Indo-China is by no means airtight.
+In Laos there are many Miao who grow the poppy
+up in their hills far inland, and as they can get little more
+than half as much for their product from the French
+monopoly officials as from the Chinese constantly engaged
+in illicit opium traffic, only a fraction of that grown and
+really sold by the Miao is ever reckoned in government reports.
+The Chinese smugglers have their own <i><span lang="fr">pirogues</span></i>,
+slender swift boats for the inland rivers, and with these
+they are constantly getting opium out of the country, mainly
+by way of Siam. Luang Prabang reports only eight hundred
+thousand piastres’ worth of opium a year, yet every
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>one knows that far more is smuggled out of that kingdom
+than is sold to the government monopoly, and so easily
+that customs officers are kept on the Laos-Siam and Laos-China
+frontiers chiefly for appearance’s sake.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER II<br> <span class='c011'>ON INTO CAMBODIA</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>The French move freely in and out of Indo-China
+without passports, but all “foreigners” are tightly
+bound with red tape. Germans and Russians are not yet
+admitted at all, and even harmless tourists are treated as
+suspicious characters. In these days of rapid transmission
+of information, and its more exciting sister, misinformation,
+it was something of a surprise to find, five full years after
+the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, that news had not
+yet reached the colonial bureaucrats even of this far-flung
+dependency that the World War was over. Having been
+officially robbed of my passport upon landing, as happens
+to all <i><span lang="fr">étrangers</span></i>, I could recover it only by appearing next
+morning at a police office and filling in on both sides a
+large form designed to bring out in elaborate detail all
+the past, present, and future history of the signer. One
+question in particular was puzzling: “Have you ever been
+in the enemy country?” Since I had been laboring under
+the impression that France was just then at peace with all
+the world, I asked the official in charge of my case to
+elucidate. He seemed to betray a hint of annoyance
+beneath his perfectly Gallic exterior, and finally explained
+that the forms were still those used in war days. “The
+high cost of printing, you know....”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One question naturally leads to another: were a few
+months of helping his countrymen to hold the bridge-heads
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>on the Rhine to be counted against me? But he seemed
+to be growing suspicious of my straight face; besides, since
+he was the one functionary in the passport division who
+flattered himself on speaking some English, his attention
+was largely taken up with seeing that I did not address
+him in French, or that I at least should not sully the carefully
+Anglicized form by answering some of its questions
+in that tongue. How could that one of his colleagues whose
+laborious monthly duty it is to translate a dozen or more
+of these forms for foreigners back into French, as the
+beginning of a lengthy <i><span lang="fr">dossier</span></i> on each such individual
+admitted to the colony, meet any suspicion that his berth
+should be abolished, if foreigners were allowed to do their
+own translating? The expense of putting those forms into
+English, back in war days, would moreover hardly be justified
+if they were not used for foreigners as intended; hence
+nothing more natural than that even those foreigners whose
+French is far more fluent than their English should be
+compelled to give their history on these translated forms,
+even though the official beside me had to help them to turn
+their French into English.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had been too long familiar with French bureaucracy
+to suppose that my passport would be returned at once,
+merely for a bare hour of filling in a questionnaire. Naturally
+this had to be taken to men higher up, “for study,”
+before so final an action could be taken. But I could prepare
+to take the evening steamer to Cambodia “in all tranquillity,”
+the philologist of the passport bureau assured me—in
+his own tongue now, no doubt because the information
+was unofficial. My passport would be handed me on the
+steamer before she sailed, he confided. His manner was
+such that it was hard to keep from flattering myself that
+my notoriously honest face had led him to make an admission
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>to me which he would never have dreamed of making
+to an ordinary traveler.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He had spoken truly too; the passport was returned,
+even as he had foretold, and the manner of its returning
+showed how valuable are the services rendered by the swarms
+of officials who look after such matters. I had strolled
+across from my hotel to the steamer <i>Mekong</i> long enough
+before to be already deep in deck-chair conversation with
+the charming young American lady and her merely more
+elderly chaperon, whom our tropic-emaciated consul had
+told me to expect among my traveling-companions, when a
+young man in what looked like a disguised uniform began
+pacing the deck shouting for “Monsieur Ügh,” as nearly
+as his cross between a grunt and a word can be rendered
+in English. The fourth or fifth time he disturbed the absorbing
+pleasure of meeting one’s own people, of the preferable
+sex at that, unexpectedly in a far distant land, I noticed that
+he waved in one hand an American passport. About the
+same moment my returning wits confided to me that the
+noise he was making so incessantly was the Frenchman’s
+most sincere attempt to pronounce the name “Hughes.” In
+a whole-hearted desire to help him out of what was evidently
+on the verge of becoming a troublesome duty, I rose
+and asked the shouter’s permission to look at the document.
+It was my own passport. I thanked him cordially for the
+two forms of relief this discovery brought, and returned
+to my conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Before long my attention was distracted once more by
+another stentorian voice, this time calling for “Mademoiselle
+Ügh!” I offered my services again—and retrieved the
+passport of the young lady beside me, whose name was
+no more Hughes than is my own. Barely had she stowed
+it away in that intricate way ladies have of risking their
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>valuable possessions when a third voice, paging “Madame
+Ügh!” began to punctuate the summer night. I recognized
+the man who had despoiled me of my passport before allowing
+me to land from the <i>Panama Maru</i>. It was natural
+that the same official could not be expected to hand out
+more than one of the documents that evening, with so few
+to go round. Besides, this man had hardly had three days
+in which to recover from the task of receiving me into the
+country. It caused me no great surprise to find that the
+paper he now flourished about his head belonged to the
+elder of the two ladies beside me, though her deceased
+husband had borne a name not even remotely suggestive of
+the prolific family Hughes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Priceless sources of information must the voluminous
+<i><span lang="fr">dossiers</span></i> of visitors to Indo-China be, so carefully compiled
+by the division of police inspection charged with drawing
+up and “studying” them. It was not until I had time later
+to do some studying of my own that I examined my passport,
+with its square yard or less of stamping and annotation
+by the French authorities, in an effort to solve the
+mystery of the name under which we had evidently all
+three been registered in the annals of Indo-China. Only
+then did I notice that even more prominent, on the face
+of the official permissions so generously granted by our
+Department of State for American citizens to proceed abroad,
+than the name of the holder, was that of one Charles E.
+Hughes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Ah, well, what are colonies and “protectorates” and mandated
+territory and spheres of influence for if not to provide
+posts for more officials? The episode might soon have been
+forgotten in the glories of a tropical night, had not so much
+surprise been shown by the passport officials and the ship’s
+company that Monsieur and Madame Hughes had booked
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>separate cabins. Our passports were again taken away from
+us in Pnom Penh, restamped and returned to us there,
+stamped and registered once more upon our return to Saïgon,
+and my own was manhandled I know not how many more
+times in sundry places before my travels in Indo-China were
+over; but I neglected to obtain exact figures on the increase
+of the Hughes family before finally leaving France’s rich
+Far-Eastern possession behind. In contrast to all this, I
+was asked to show my passport once during two years of
+roving in China, and the asker was quite contented with
+a visiting card instead.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a noisy night about our frail little cabins on the
+<i><span lang="fr">Mekong</span></i>, and dawn found us anchored at Mytho, to which
+we could easily have taken a train from Saïgon that morning
+in time to board the craft before she pushed off again. Because
+the Messageries Fluviales have a monopoly on the
+rivers of Indo-China against which even the French, of unofficial
+standing, protest loudly but in vain, travelers pay
+high for the thirty-six-hour journey from the capital of
+Cochinchina to that of Cambodia on these rather uncomfortable
+little river steamers. But again, why trouble with
+colonies and protectorates if they give no monopolies? For
+that matter the French steamers between Marseilles and
+Shanghai charge more for the passage from Hong Kong
+or Singapore to Saïgon than between those two British ports,
+where competition reigns.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All day we plowed our way, with frequent stops, up a
+wide river through a dead-flat palm-tree and banana country.
+Between halts there was little of interest except our
+fellow-passengers, and even they were not particularly unique.
+Eight travelers lolled in the breeze under the tarpaulin above
+the first-class deck, to which our complexions confined those
+of us of so-called European race. Besides the young American
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>lady and her chaperoning compatriot, there was an English
+couple to whom tropical travel was an ordeal to be
+endured only because Angkor is something one must see.
+Made miserable by every deviation from the accustomed ways
+of their foggy native land, Mr. and Mrs.—shall we say
+Piffton-Smith? no matter what, so long as we do not forget
+the hyphen and disgrace them by the mere name of Smith—suffered
+acutely from everything: the French food, the
+French meal-hours, the French language, the delightful climate,
+even the friendly little ants in the cabins. What a
+pity one cannot find everything just as it is at home when
+off on one’s travels in quest of the strange and the different!
+Only by constant mention of their youthful daughter, Lady
+So-and-so, recently married to the far from youthful governor
+of—er—a British crown colony, could Mrs. Piffton-Smith
+endure the martyrdom at all. One must not forget
+that daughter any more than the hyphen, though for that
+matter there was little danger of doing either; trust Mrs.
+Piffton-Smith for that. It was evident that no one in the
+family had ever been a Lady before.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But let us be charitable; perhaps it is not merely the women
+of foot-bound China who have more cause for complaint
+than the favored sex. While we mere men had to use our
+oven-like little cabin only as dressing-rooms between a day
+of loafing and a night of sleeping on the cot-provided deck,
+the ladies were cruelly confined during their nightgowned
+hours. Three lively young French officers on a furlough
+from their regiments, one of whom spoke excellent English,
+completed the cabin passenger list. French soon came to
+seem the natural tongue, so that the Piffton-Smiths had new
+cause for complaint in being left out of the conversation.
+Under the back awning behind the orange-box “staterooms”
+was a much larger collection of passengers, untroubled with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>cabins, cots, or the fear of creasing their garments. As
+the day wore on, the human type there gradually changed.
+The throng grew less Chinese as Annamese travelers wandered
+ashore at the frequent stopping-places, became more
+Hindu, more Aryan, the eyes large and straight, with well
+defined eyebrows, mustaches shading the lips of the men,
+some with almost Russian beards. Those rare inhabitants
+of the banks, half seen through the trees and reeds, also took
+on Aryan features, for all their chocolate color.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Daylight found us at Pnom Penh, capital of the French
+protectorate of Cambodia. It was a calm, well kept little
+city, with hardly any of the hubbub of China and none of
+its filth—at least within sight. The air was less deadening
+than at Saïgon, less charged with electricity and water-vapor,
+though still so hot that there was no joy in doing
+anything equal to the joy of doing nothing. Half a dozen
+wide streets, much shaded by trees, invited the stroller about
+a town in many ways quite up-to-date, pleasant as it was with
+tropical languor. Pnom Penh has been called the Little
+Bangkok, as Saïgon is the Little Paris. I was at last completely
+beyond Chinese civilization, though there were some
+Chinese residents, mainly merchants; most of the commerce
+of Cambodia is in Celestial hands. White people were not
+numerous, but there were plenty of other foreigners—black
+and brown French soldiers from other colonies, representatives
+of nearly all the lands of the Far East. Yet all other
+races stood out merely as individuals among the Cambodians,
+so closely related to the Siamese in clothing, language, the
+uneven pompadour hair-cuts of the women. With rather
+stupid faces from the mouths of which dripped betel-nut
+juice, above perhaps the ugliest female costumes in the
+world, ending in the inevitable <i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i>, a kind of pants-skirt
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>drawn up between the legs and tucked in behind, they were
+far from attractive. Gentle effeminate-looking men with
+long bobbed hair or black tresses wound together in a knot
+at the back of the neck meandered about between the shafts
+of rickshaws or toiled slowly about the steamer-landing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first men in the flowing saffron robes of Gautama
+whom I had seen in the two decades since my Siamese journey—though
+I had seen Buddhist priests and to spare—stood
+out against the less gaudily garbed laymen. The
+bonzes are the bosses of the country—always of course after
+the French. There had been sixty thousand of them in
+Cambodia the year before, for the Cambodians are very religious.
+But they pay no taxes, and under the French they
+are gradually being <i><span lang="fr">supprimés</span></i>, so that now they were reduced
+to 42,250, according to official statistics. Still, these
+languid beings in bright yellow robes, often set off by red,
+rose, purple, and other draperies, with shaven heads and
+Hindu skins, were by no means scarce. Groups of them with
+their begging-bowls stood before many a shop and house
+while the sun was still low, sauntering on to make their silent
+plea to others after a handful of rice or a saucer of cooked
+fish had been poured into their bowls by the pious inmates.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was something very French about Pnom Penh, for
+all its very Oriental aspect. French bread was on sale
+everywhere; the “Grand Hôtel, N. Manolis, Propriétaire,”
+might, like all the others in Indo-China, have been in Paris—except
+for the heat—tourist prices and all. Here again were
+the same marble-topped tables, the same zinc <i><span lang="fr">comptoir</span></i> presided
+over by a sharp-eyed and caustic-minded matron, the
+same flimsy newspapers in awkward holders, the same letter-paper
+headed by an advertisement of the Maison Dubonnet.
+Fortunately we were sailing again that evening and needed
+its monopolistic accommodations only in the way of food
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>and drink. Midday, with its lassitude, its invincible somnolence,
+followed so closely upon the déjeuner, however,
+that its shelter, and at least the repose offered by its chairs,
+with the marble-topped tables serving as props, were essential.
+The most ardent sight-seer could hardly have found
+pleasure in roaming about Pnom Penh with the unclouded
+equatorial sun directly overhead. Dinner in the evening
+was to the strains of a native orchestra that might have
+done worse, and a veritable stage-lighting effect was produced
+by the swirling wings of the big electric fans suspended
+from the ceiling amid clouds of insects.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Pressed by his more belligerent neighbors, Norodom, king
+of Cambodia, placed his country under the protection of the
+French in 1863, and since then the nominal ruler is merely a
+play king. The real boss is the <i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i> sent out
+from France. It goes without saying that the royal figurehead
+is surrounded by all the riches and sumptuous state
+which the French and his own doting subjects can supply
+him, while the “protector” does all the work. The arrangement
+seems to be much like that between the couple who
+agreed that one should decide all the small questions and
+the other all the large, and so far there have been no small
+questions in Cambodian affairs. Old pagodas of the Burmese
+rather than the Chinese style stand forth here and there
+in the older part of the capital as a reminder of independent
+days when a head fell at the motion of the kingly finger. But
+most of Pnom Penh dates from the years of the protectorate.
+Little more than half a century has passed since Norodom
+confided his country to France, and already much that the
+French built in the capital has taken on an air of age, under
+the perpetually burning sun and the seasonal rains that
+drive vegetation to super-vegetable performance. The beautifully
+straight streets traced by the French, so out of proportion
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>with the population that passes along them, are
+green with grass outside the busiest section. In the far outskirts
+hover the thatched huts, often on stilts, of the mass
+of the population.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The gilded steeples of the throne-room, however, within
+the great royal inclosure, infallibly draw the eye that catches
+them. This and several others of the palaces are so new
+that they were not finished when the World War broke out,
+and two of them still had scaffolds about their needle-pointed
+spires and along their swift golden roofs. Inside the outer
+wall of the inclosure runs a long series of life-sized paintings
+from the sacred texts, before which groups of pilgrims bow
+down in worship, and squat in contented repose during the
+hours of siesta. One of the palaces has a silver floor thirty-six
+by a hundred and twenty feet, the solid silver <i><span lang="fr">dalles</span></i> half
+an inch thick. A gold Buddha, studded with diamonds, that
+is said to be worth sixty million piastres is among the many
+precious things, as well as much tinsel, inside the plain
+bright-yellow walls of the palaces, to which there are no real
+barricades. Cases containing jewels of great price in the
+Silver Temple are not locked, but are protected merely by
+pasted strips of paper, with the name of the guardian written
+on them. The Cambodians still consider their king so
+sacred that they never steal his possessions, and alien thieves
+seem never to get this far afield. Of the far-famed Footprint
+of Buddha within its own special pagoda there is nothing
+to say except that it is about six feet long, in solid rock,
+studded with jewels, with the toes all exactly of the same
+length.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Our day in Pnom Penh was well chosen, for in the afternoon
+the king had a dance performed in the wall-less pavilion
+of the palace grounds for the pleasure of visiting French
+and British officers. It was a far different dance from those
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>which kings of Europe give in honor of visitors. While the
+white strangers in town sat as at a tennis tournament beneath
+the shade of the pavilion roof in seats provided for
+those who do not naturally squat, two girls, the youngest
+hardly in her teens, appeared in the center of the floor.
+Among his other playthings the octogenarian king chooses
+annually two hundred and forty girls from the prettiest of
+the upper class, to be trained to dance before him. But
+either his eyesight is poor, the choice extremely limited, or
+he had deliberately set out to insult these guests foisted upon
+him by the French rulers, for even a popular novelist could
+not have called this chosen pair beautiful. Flour, or some
+white powder closely resembling it, covered their faces in
+ghastly thoroughness, faces in which not the suggestion of
+an expression seemed to be permitted by the rules of Cambodian
+dancing, and flour in which streams of sweat cut
+strange arabesques during the ceremony. On their heads
+were replicas of the very pointed steeples of the throne-room;
+costumes gaudy with gold and many colors, quite
+unlike the every-day dress of Cambodian women, somewhat
+resembling in fact the garb of a Spanish toreador, covered
+them from neck to knees. Two big silver anklets clinked
+above each of their bare feet. It was a costume by no means
+scanty enough for the climate, and if the truth must be told
+at all costs there was a conspicuous call for soap and water
+just where their floured faces joined the gaudily garbed
+bodies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Dancing? Yes, perhaps, for want of a word more exactly
+descriptive. It really was posturing, more or less to the
+rhythm of an orchestra of native players on strange instruments
+squatted on the floor at one end of the open pavilion.
+There was never a quick movement, not a hint of animation
+in the white faces, though there was considerable expression
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>in the lithe arms and posturing bodies; more, no doubt, than
+we ignorant Western spectators suspected. But it was impossible
+to picture the youths in an American dance-hall even
+suspecting, to say nothing of admitting, that this was dancing.
+Through it all an old woman tossed from the side-lines,
+like a football coach, hints to the perspiring and apparently
+stiffly embarrassed performers. Little by little all the rabble
+in town sneaked up, noiseless on bare feet, and squatted just
+within the shade along one side of the pavilion. Cambodia’s
+king, one gathered, was democratic in his attitude. The
+only element of the population lacking before the ceremony
+ended were the priests in their yellow robes; like their colleagues
+of Spain on the day of the bull-fight, they may not
+morally mingle with the laymen during such ceremonies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Old King Sisowath himself was not there, except perhaps
+in spirit. His eighty-four years made him chary of excitement.
+But before we went off to the later afternoon band
+concert in a park at the other side of town we had seen his
+crown, his seven parasols in as many different colors for each
+day of the week, his two even more gaudy ones for fête days,
+his two palanquins for state and ordinary occasions, and all
+those other baubles which the tourist so often mistakes for
+the rewards of travel. The Cambodian sovereign mounts
+his throne only once in his life, even so long a life as
+Sisowath’s—at his coronation. On other days he holds audience
+sitting on a cushion at the foot of it. Yet barefooted
+servants wandered about dusting and fingering everything,
+reminding one that even emperors must have charwomen.
+Crude, violent colors were much in evidence. When the king
+goes forth in state both he and his chair are so covered with
+gold and precious stones that the eye quails before him in
+this equatorial sunlight. Poor old figurehead! Little did
+Norodom dream to what depths his demand for French protection
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>would so soon sink his successors. Nothing is more
+symbolical of the real position of old Sisowath than the
+well known story of how his favorite concubine yielded to
+the urgings of a young French official on the steamer bringing
+his Majesty back from Paris a few years ago, and of
+the king’s impotence to punish either of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The <i><span lang="fr">Barsac</span></i> was somewhat more comfortable than the
+<i><span lang="fr">Mekong</span></i>, though the mother of Lady So-and-so would not
+admit it. No doubt this was because it confined itself almost
+entirely to carrying visitors to Angkor rather than making
+its passengers adjuncts of its freight. A pilot in the head-dress
+of a Chinese nurse-maid, a sailor adorned with a West
+Indian bandana, short-haired women and all but naked men
+paddling about in dugout canoes of very fat belly and narrow
+upturned ends, sometimes with a supercilious drone in
+a yellow robe among them, mildly enlivened the early hours
+next morning. The larger boats were pushed along by one
+oar in the hands of a standing boatman, or boat-woman, as
+in China, and Venice. Flocks of white birds almost like seagulls
+skimmed across the yellowish water; all was pleasant
+as long as we kept moving; only the breezeless halts were
+painful.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was in fact a beautiful day’s sail up across the Tonlé
+Sap, the Great Lake formed by the Mekong in high-water
+time, now nearing its close. This mid-January excursion was
+indeed probably the last to Angkor for the season, unless
+later travelers succeeded in making the journey by automobile
+along the new road soon to be completed. In place of
+houses on pole legs, twelve or fifteen feet above the ground,
+there came floating villages, scores of houses tightly bound
+together. Enormous quantities of fish are taken in the receding
+waters, and as the lake at its height covers vast areas
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>the population is reduced to this form of earning a livelihood.
+The fish heads are boiled for oil, the highly offensive
+scent of which now and then reached our nostrils, and the
+fish, gutted and salted, are sent to China and Singapore.
+Once the sea covered this region, with only an island where
+there is now a part of the mainland, so that salt-water fish
+are still caught in the lake, and in the flood season freshwater
+fish are taken far out in the ocean.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All day we steamed through a veritable Gatun Lake, now
+with jungle and an occasional floating village on one side,
+now with a hazy range of hills far off on the left, sometimes
+with nothing but the yellowish waters as far as the eye could
+see. Occasionally there was not even a junk in sight, no
+more trace of man than before his appearance among the
+terrestrial fauna; at other times the great expanse, broad as
+a sea, was flecked with sail-boats with almost diamond-shaped
+sails. But the flooded forest was not dead or dying
+as at Gatun, for the waters recede in time each year to save
+it from extinction.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We were to have reached Angkor toward the noon following
+our evening departure from Pnom Penh; but I for one
+was glad we spent all the day sailing across the Great Lake,
+if only for the sunset. The lake was flat as glass, one side
+lost on an ocean-like horizon, the other a low distant endless
+line of trees. A delicate lilac spread along all the rim
+of the sky; then on the western side the limpid air became
+pink, and almost suddenly everything was tinged with this
+color: the surface of the lake itself, the entire circle of
+horizon, every tiniest fleck of cloud in the sky above. Ahead,
+a line of beautiful green showed the endlessness of the
+drowned forest; on the west, in contrast, there came a quick
+heaping up of masses of dark, chaotic, terrifying, gigantic
+things which stood upright and seemed to weigh upon the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>waters, like fantastic blocks of mountains, standing out as
+clearly as if their summits were painted along the clear sky,
+yet looking as if they were preparing for a formidable crumbling
+away, such as one might fancy the end of the world to
+be. Gradually, like some mammoth holocaust, the blood-red
+sun burned its way down into the clouds massed along the
+western horizon, clouds which outdid themselves in strange
+shapes, from impossible crags, on which trees seemed to be
+falling in rapid succession, to snow-clads farther off; and
+then, after it had been gone entirely for a while and one
+thought it had disappeared below the edge of the earth, the
+sun reappeared, a demon face red with rage peering forth as
+from a cave, from which it advanced down to the very water’s
+edge, spilling blood far out across the lake. Then red chaos,
+and purple, and lilac, and finally soft mauve night.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Not long afterward we got off into sampans with happy
+laughing rowers and went away through the inundated forest,
+among great trees bathing clear to their upper branches, the
+water under their armpits, or only their heads emerging, like
+modest women. Higher rose the ever thicker forest close
+about us; we found ourselves ascending a narrowing stream;
+and at length, soon after the moon appeared, we bumped
+against something more or less resembling a pier. It was
+the end of an excellent road, raised high on an embankment
+for some distance, and we climbed into—ah, well, it is a
+small commonplace world at best, this twentieth-century
+globe, even in its most distant recesses—into what our English
+friends called motor-cars, though they were those more
+than familiar things built by an inventive and once eccentric
+but now widely known ex-Sunday-school teacher of Detroit,
+and were off for a moonlight ride behind a careful chauffeur
+who wore no shoes. It was a tepid night, dotted with fireflies,
+the musical silence forming an undertone to the droning
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>of the cars broken now and again by the soughing of big
+water-wheels raising water from the small river that turned
+them. In the palm-tree jungle on either side we made out
+many little houses on slender legs, the inhabitants of both
+sexes lolling or strolling in a single piece each of Scotchy
+plaid wrapped about them like a short skirt.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was nearly eleven at night when we reached the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>,
+a comfortable spreading bungalow erected by the French for
+the accommodation of the fussy modern visitors to Angkor.
+Two decades ago Pierre Loti took all day along that road
+in a jolting two-wheeled ox-cart, and put up in the stilt-legged
+shack of Buddhist monks. But we had arrived at a
+lucky moment, as was evident from the sounds of revelry
+by night that came to us from beyond the moat just across
+the road from the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>. It was a supernaturally broad moat,
+looking at least a hundred yards wide in the light of the full
+moon that drifted lazily across a great building rising to
+pointed towers that bulked forth out of the night far beyond.
+An ancient stone causeway across it led to this gigantic structure
+of Angkor-Vat, before the partly ruined front doorway
+of which a torch-lighted throng was gathered. Visitors who
+had come before us, headed by a French novelist and the
+queenly wife of the governor of Cochinchina, had sent to
+Siem Réap at the edge of the Great Lake for Cambodian
+dancers, and with them had come fifty boys bearing torches
+and most of the native population of the district.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were a score of girls in the gaudy garments and
+the steeple-shaped head-dress of the calling, chewing betel-nut,
+and giggling like a bevy of New York typists as they
+danced, though the rules call for silence and wholly expressionless
+faces. Banked behind a dozen seated Europeans
+in white, and forming a compact circle around them and
+the dancers, two or three hundred natives of both sexes
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>squatted or stood, many with naked youngsters between their
+knees. Small boys with blazing torches outlined the inner
+arc of the circle; the little torch-bearers squatted on the flagstones
+formed an enchanted circle of flames tapering upward
+to smoke about the dancers. Some of the spectators had
+taken places on the steps and the balustrade of the bridge;
+other half-naked Cambodians, and Annamese with their
+effeminate knots of hair, gave the gathering a ragged fringe.
+The ancient temple seemed to have returned to life, the days
+of very long ago to live again; it was easy to imagine these
+living dancers the descendants of those carved in stone on
+the pillars in the background, for all their black teeth and
+what looked like blood-dripping mouths.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Annamese spectators were solemn, like men so impressed
+with their own importance that they dare not break
+their dignity; the Cambodians were simple happy children,
+taking the joys of life as they come and giving no more
+thought to to-morrow than to stone-dead yesterday. The
+croaking of frogs in the broad shallow moat mingled with
+that of some loud-voiced species of cricket; birds of the night
+passed overhead with a startled cry—or was it applause?—at
+the strange scene below, profaning the great doorway of
+the dead temple. Beneath the brilliant tropical moon that
+all but blotted out the Southern Cross well above the horizon,
+the floured faces of the dancers took on, now a ghastly, now
+a clownish aspect, as they posed and postured, moving noiselessly
+in their bare feet slowly to and fro on the century-worn
+stone pavement. Dressed like the Hindu gods they
+seemed to be impersonating, they undulated back and forth
+on the glass-smooth stones, their supple arms waving as if
+they were mere antennæ without rigidity anywhere, in contrast
+to their stiffly immovable bodies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was a story to be read, evidently, in their deliberate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>pantomiming, a solemn if not a tragic tale, for all the occasional
+bursts of embarrassed or prankish giggling, like plantation
+darkies at a cotton-field celebration. One gathered that
+a demon with several faces wished to carry off Siva, beautiful
+lady-love of Rama, and when the two rivals of the ancient
+legend faced each other with threatening gestures all the
+childish part of the audience began to shriek, as at the meeting
+of hero and villain in a Punch-and-Judy show or at the
+movies. Indeed the spectacle was insured against flagging
+interest by the behavior of the rapt happy throng in the
+flickering light before the ancient temple more than by the
+dancers it encircled. Young and old seemed to follow the
+story easily; to us Westerners without their background of
+ancient legends and Oriental symbolism it was merely a
+picturesque scene, made doubly fantastic by the circle of
+torches and weird with the thump of tom-toms that lasted
+deep into the night.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER III<br> <span class='c011'>THE JUNGLE-GUARDED RUINS OF ANGKOR</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Soon after sunrise next morning Fords carried us off to
+some of the more distant ruins of the ancient city buried
+in tropical forest. With the heart of the day unbearable in
+the sunshine, it is wise as well as customary to get under
+way early at Angkor, and French breakfasts are brief, if
+not quite to the point. An excellent road, considering the
+place and the climate, set off close along the sides of the
+moat, then shot off at a tangent at the second corner. An
+abnormally broad moat it still seemed, wide as the Panama
+Canal even by sunlight; and it was all but covered with water-cress
+and beautiful white and pink lilies, or their tropical
+counterparts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To visit Angkor is no longer a proof of prowess, except
+of the Ford-endurance needed to make the circuit of ruins
+covering forty kilometers of throttling forest-jungle. Even
+as recently as the beginning of the present century visitors
+had to scramble through the wilderness about Angkor as
+best they could. To-day there is a network of good roads,
+French even to their sign-boards, to all the important ruins,
+with so few ox-carts or other native traffic on them now
+that they are almost as commonplace as our national highways—until
+suddenly they burst out again upon some other
+mammoth ruin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Described by a Chinese traveler two hundred years before
+America was officially discovered, and many times since,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>Angkor is still little known to the world at large, though it
+is perhaps the greatest collection of ruins on earth. Neither
+Java nor India can show so extensive and so perfectly preserved
+an architectural ensemble; Machu Picchu, similarly
+lost in dense tropical forest, though high up among the great
+ranges of the Andes instead of down at the dead-flat sea-level
+of Angkor, is a mere village by comparison. Once
+this Khmer city, buried for centuries and long left to desolation,
+was one of the splendors of the world. Its monuments
+still tell the story of the luxury of its royal and military
+life; its carvings give an inventory of its riches, from
+jewels to dancing-girls. The least observing must soon
+realize that this was once the heart of a magnificent kingdom;
+and what an immense city it was—and is. Angkor-Thom
+was larger than the Rome of Augustus; the great
+temple of Angkor-Vat alone has a space four times as large
+as the Place de la Concorde, which is larger than Columbus
+Circle.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It seems that about the time of Alexander the Macedonian
+a people apparently detached many centuries before from
+the great Aryan race migrated from the direction of India
+and came to plant itself on the shores of this great river, the
+lower Mekong. Others say that when India and Burma were
+being conquered by barbarians at about the time of Christ
+these Khmer came down from northeast Burma, hillmen
+with a virility that has since died out, so that they in their
+turn have now long since been conquered, as they subjugated
+and mixed with the unspoiled aborigines of this region, “men
+with little eyes who worshiped serpents.” On what queer
+bases are civilizations built! Just as the old Nile, with its
+silt alone, caused a marvelous civilization to grow up in its
+narrow valley, here the Mekong, spreading out its waters
+year after year, deposited the richness that prepared the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>wealthy empire of the Khmer. The city of Angkor-Thom
+(Angkor the Great), capital of this empire, reached the
+nadir of its glory between the ninth and twelfth centuries
+of our era. The Khmer brought with them the gods of
+Brahmanism, the beautiful legends of the Ramayana, which
+seem to have come to them through the Hindus at about the
+time of Christ, and as their opulence grew in this fertile
+delta of the Mekong each king vied with his predecessors
+in clearing away the forest and in building everywhere
+magnificently decorated palaces, and gigantic temples
+chiseled with thousands of figures.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some centuries later—no one knows exactly when, for
+the existence of this once important people is largely effaced
+from the memory of man—the powerful sovereigns of
+Angkor saw arrive from the West missionaries in bright
+yellow robes, bearers of a new light at which the Asiatic world
+was just then marveling. The savage temples of Brahma
+became Buddhist temples; the statues of their altars changed
+their attitudes, lowering their eyes and softening their faces
+with gentle smiles. The Khmer empire of the Mekong delta
+appears to have started on the downward path during our
+thirteenth century. The history of its rapid and mysterious
+decline has never been fully written, and the invading forest
+guards the secret of most of it. There are evidences of a
+connection between it and the history of China; for it was
+not long after the Tai or Laos race that we commonly call
+the Siamese, masters even of Canton until 1053 <span class='fss'>A.D.</span>, were
+driven out of what is now southwestern China by a series
+of battles along the West River, that the Khmers were in
+their turn dispossessed by this hardier though fleeing people.
+Time had moved swiftly with them. At least in the art of
+their monuments the Khmer were at their height during the
+twelfth century, and by the fourteenth they were so weak,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>perhaps because of the softening influence of tropical living,
+that they fled before the Siamese and founded a new capital
+to the southward. The little Cambodia of to-day, conserver
+of complicated rites the sense of which is almost completely
+lost, is the last remnant of this once powerful empire of the
+Khmer, which for more than five hundred years has ebbed
+away, until it has been all but extinguished under the silence
+of trees and mosses.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From the end of the fourteenth century Angkor belonged
+to Siam, which changed its name and set over it a king of
+its own. Since then the great palaces and temples had been
+left to time and tropical vegetation, until little more than half
+a century ago the first European discovered, ruin by ruin,
+this marvelous city lost in inextricable jungle. This rediscovery
+is credited to Henri Mouhot, in 1861; but it was
+not until 1910 that the uncovering of the ruins began. Annamese
+armies had long invaded Cochinchina, then a part of
+Cambodia, and to save herself from complete destruction
+the weakened nation became a protectorate of France, barely
+a year after Mouhot’s explorations. Angkor still belonged
+to Siam; but some wise Frenchman seems to have discovered
+that it was formerly a part of Cambodia and insisted on a
+return to the ancient <i><span lang="fr">status quo</span></i>; or on applying that doctrine
+of “self-determination” on which unimperialistic France is
+so strongly set. At any rate Siam was “induced,” by the
+treaty of 1907, to “give back” to Cambodia all Battambang
+Province, including the Angkor region. Then communication
+was opened to the ruins, which had been at the mercy of
+the elements for nearly a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet they were not so badly ruined as they might have
+been. When the Khmer fled before the Siamese of the fourteenth
+century they could hardly have expected that their
+architectural marvels would merely be swallowed up by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>voracious forest, but rather that they would be destroyed
+root and branch; and probably for generations they thought
+this had happened. But even the destroying of such massive
+works of stone is hard labor in an equatorial land, and the
+Siamese confined themselves to the destruction of the buildings
+of a political nature and left untouched the temples and
+other religious monuments. Buddhism was less respectful,
+for all its gentleness, and caused many of the Brahman glories
+to disappear, or replaced them with Buddhist statues and
+tawdry trappings.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>There are monuments vying in size and artistry with
+the best the ancient world has to offer, scattered through all
+the forest-jungle over nearly twenty square miles. The
+French have done a splendid job in uncovering and restoring
+these marvels of the past. We of the land of boasted
+efficiency would probably have cleared away and restored
+too much, for comfort and convenience’ sake, and spoiled the
+effect. In places even the French archæologists have in
+their professional zeal driven off the forest too ruthlessly, and
+left some ruins in the sad state of nudity of a stone quarry.
+But in most cases they have been thoughtful as well as careful.
+Great green plumes waved high over our heads as we
+sped along by road or strolled by side-trail to mammoth ruin
+after ruin. Trees that would be giants beside any of those
+of northern climes except our redwoods carried without apparent
+effort mighty loads of vines and parasites that would
+have stifled the sturdiest elm or oak. All this vegetation gave
+one the feeling of being so completely surrounded that he
+might never get out of it again; yet it was not such a forest-riotous
+wilderness as I had expected, and it was hard to believe
+that herds of wild elephants were trampling it down
+only a few miles away. Here and there were expanses of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>natural half-clearing; white birds in flocks escorted water-buffaloes
+through swamps that might almost have been
+passable by Ford.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet there was a greater rage for destruction among the
+plants than had ever been shown by the Siamese. The Prince
+of Death, Siva of the Brahmans, has given to each beast the
+special enemy which eats it, to each creature its destroying
+microbes; and he seems to have foreseen that puny man
+would try to prolong himself a little by constructing durable
+things, and imagined a thousand destructive agents to annihilate
+his efforts. Huge trees which the French call <i><span lang="fr">fromagers</span></i>—though
+I saw no cheese upon them, and our own
+name of “silk-cotton tree” seems more justified—their trunks
+as if whitewashed, or spotted with leprosy, or, more exactly
+still, as if they had been painted in lilac and cream by some
+fantastic-minded artist, roam the ruins with their buttress
+roots. Queerly grown in and over the great stone piles like
+inquisitive serpents, these roots have in some cases wandered
+thirty yards away in search of sustenance. Laocoön roots
+lifted great stones in their embrace; one had disdainfully
+shoved aside a huge pillar and taken on the job of supporting
+the mass of masonry itself. The banyan, with its aerial roots,
+does not overthrow the ruins; it gathers them, strains them
+to its bosom, as it were, so that enormous heaps of rocks that
+would otherwise long since have fallen apart still maintain
+the form the Khmer gave them. Trickery rather than force
+characterizes even the vegetation here in the tropics, though
+the trees too have learned to fight when necessary. The more
+brutal <i><span lang="fr">fromager</span></i> bursts walls asunder by the slow force of its
+growing trunk, squeezes ancient buildings to death like the
+boa-constrictor, swallows them in its great maw. Especially
+what the French call the “fig-tree of ruins” is irresistible; it
+reigns as master to-day at Angkor. In the beginning it was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>only a little seed, sowed by the wind on a frieze or the top
+of a tower. But from there its roots, like steel cables, have
+insinuated themselves between the stones, descending by a
+sure instinct toward the earth; and having at last reached it,
+they have grown quickly from its nourishing soil and become
+enormous, disrupting, unbalancing everything, opening thick
+walls from top to bottom, sometimes completely destroying
+the edifice. Among the palaces, above the temples it has so
+patiently disintegrated, it spreads its pale smooth branches
+with their serpent spottings, and shades the débris with its
+superb broad domes of foliage as with great green parasols.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here and there along the roads and trails magnificent trees
+have been mutilated by man, rare and furtive as he is in
+these parts. Deep holes are burned in many a trunk in order
+to collect in earthenware pots resin for the making of candles,
+as the Landais of France gather pitch from their pine-trees.
+Now and then the road is straddled by stone gateways above
+which smile huge human faces with long tresses of lianas.
+But for all the centuries they have had free play, neither the
+slow encroachment of the forest and jungle nor the heavy
+dissolving rains have been able to wipe out the impression
+of Angkor-Thom as a city of splendid architecture, or the
+ironic bonhomie, as Pierre Loti calls it, of these mammoth
+stone faces, much more disquieting than the grimaces of the
+monsters of China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though they were remarkable architects, the Khmer were
+rather poor masons. They knew no more of how to build a
+vault than by piling up huge stone after stone in horizontal
+layers, each reaching a little farther out toward the center.
+Their arches are crude, made of immense stones laid one on
+top of another, and instead of a keystone they simply placed
+a larger stone on top. Their total work is all the more surprising,
+and its duration that much more marvelous, their
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>roofs, though they must always have leaked, as they do now,
+all the more wonderful because the Khmer so little knew how
+to build them. Some have been shored up by the French;
+some of them were evidently repillared by the builders themselves.
+Yet scores still stand, after nearly a thousand years,
+without any such assistance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Most of the stones themselves are not so well fitted as at
+Machu Picchu in the Andes; but the decorations on them
+outdo anything the ancient civilizations of the Western Hemisphere
+have to offer. The greatest art of the Khmer was their
+taste in sculpture, the finish of their execution, their treating
+of colossal things with the care and delicacy of jewels.
+Everywhere are figures, bas-reliefs, carvings without end, so
+delicately chiseled that one might think them lace pasted upon
+the stone, façades as carefully worked as the most patient
+embroideries. The stones all have round holes in them, suggesting
+how they may have been carried to the places they
+were needed. The reddish, comparatively soft, sandstone or
+composite of which much of Angkor-Thom was built is common
+in this part of the world. A French geologist asserts
+that it is old lava. Yet the task of building such a city even
+with that was a task indeed in such a climate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All that first morning, and the next, we kept coming upon
+new masses of striking architecture in the forest. Now and
+again the modern road ran beneath towers bearing on each
+of their four sides mammoth human faces, always alike and
+said to represent Brahma. Many single faces were carved on
+eight, ten, a dozen huge stones awkwardly put together.
+These Cambodian <i><span lang="fr">préasats</span></i>, as archæologists call them,
+whether or not they are adorned with the quadruple face of
+Brahma, are as characteristic of Khmer art as the palm-tree
+is of the Cambodian landscape. In one place the road was
+flanked by a great stone balustrade, a hundred yards long,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>and by the remnants of what was once another, each in the
+form of a gigantic cobra with raised head, upheld in the
+arms of a score of mammoth stone men. The cobra-head
+motif everywhere suggested a former ardent worship of
+snakes; human figures with a beak in place of a nose were
+almost as common. One great wall was covered with a procession
+of life-size elephants; beyond were walls formed
+inside and out of thousands of closely set Hindu figures.
+Here and there were suggestions of the Maya ruins of Central
+America, but this probably proves merely that minds which
+have reached a similar development run in similar channels,
+rather than that tropical people of a millennium ago crossed
+the great ocean.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The tourist-minded Fords rushed us about all the Saturday
+and Sunday mornings following our arrival, but left us to
+our own devices the rest of the four days. The <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> where
+they duly deposited us again after each flight outdid the best
+hotels of Indo-China, except that the roosters housed just
+behind it might have been spared. But guests of course must
+have their eggs and their roast chicken, and no Frenchman
+would be so cruel as to deprive even a hen of its mate. Every
+living being, European or native, retired immediately after
+the eleven o’clock <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i> and did not rise again until two
+or three in the afternoon. To think of doing anything else
+was all but impossible, to say nothing of actually doing it.
+Not even the Cambodians, used to this climate at least for
+centuries, seemed able to endure those burning hours out of
+doors. For all my tropical experience I soon found that the
+only way to bear life during that atrocious period was to revert
+to the reputed costume of Adam before the unfortunate
+apple episode, turn the electric fan squarely upon my recumbent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>form inside the mosquito-net, and succumb to the
+fond hope of perhaps getting a nap.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Those of us who knew nothing of real hardships also
+fancied we suffered one other terrible infliction in that otherwise
+comfortable bungalow. The French food naturally was
+good, with neither wine nor ice lacking, but the principal meal
+was made so miserable by swarms of mosquitoes under the
+tables that poor Mrs. Piffton-Smith—though of course she
+would violently resent the adjective—had to wear even at
+dinner the oven-like riding-boots she endured among the ruins
+out of an abject fear of “reptiles,” though, except for the
+stone cobras, the less imaginative of us never saw so much
+as a fleeing serpent’s tail. If there were duly presented newcomers
+at table she mitigated her martyrdom somewhat by
+frequent references to her daughter Lady So-and-so, wife of
+Lord So-and-so, governor of—and so on. But few travelers
+came after us; Mrs. P.-S. naturally knew no French, and
+obviously she could not speak to strangers without the formal
+introduction that was often lacking; and those of us who
+had long since learned that extraordinary daughter by heart
+were not, I fear, very sympathetic listeners even to new
+anecdotes concerning the Lady of the family. Those of the
+women who had no such antidote for those mosquito-tortured
+hours wrapped napkins, newspapers, anything at all, about
+their legs, and burned under the table joss-sticks enough to
+supply a Chinese temple, being unjustly denied the male privilege
+of relieving their nerves by such remarks as now and
+then rose from a man who, driven beyond endurance, tried a
+slap or two—and left a splotch of blood on his white trousers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After my first drenched nap I set out to roam through
+Angkor-Vat, most striking of all the ruins scattered over
+that twenty square miles of tropical forest. Vat, by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>way, is the Cambodian and Siamese word for temple. Just
+across the lake-like moat, with its shimmering watery carpet
+of lilies and water-cress, on the outer shore of which the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>
+sits, the mighty building was heaped into the sky in the
+center of the only real clearing in the region. From the big
+stone doorway of long ago through which one emerges upon
+the great stone bridge and causeway leading to it, the central
+mass ahead bore a certain resemblance to the Kremlin; yet
+that is small beside it. The enormous stone slabs of the
+causeway were worn smooth as polished marble, in places
+even hollowed out, by the feet of men and women and elephants
+already dead a thousand years. For the few shod
+tourists who have followed it during the past decade can
+scarcely have made more impression on those cyclopean
+blocks than do the bare feet of pilgrims and of the bonzes
+in their yellow robes who still patter along it. Strange processions
+indeed must have trodden this aged causeway,
+flanked by a massive railing of gigantic stone cobras standing
+sentinel with raised heads—seven heads each, spread out
+like fans, the necks swollen as when the deadly snake is
+ready to strike.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Life had become endurable again, yet the afternoon heat
+from the stones blazed upon all day by an unclouded equatorial
+sun was a succession of physical blows as distinct as
+my heavy Western footsteps along the causeway toward the
+basilic phantom ahead. Once inside the inner inclosure,
+this gigantic edifice dominated everything, a more impressive
+sight, in its way, than the Taj Mahal itself, as beautiful,
+almost as symmetrical, losing mainly by over-elaboration.
+Nowhere in the world perhaps has man piled up so many
+stones as in this mountain-temple. Crushing masses of sculptured
+rocks, terraces, stone-carved bas-reliefs, stairways leading
+swiftly upward into towers that seem to scrape the cloudless
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>heavens, gave me a feeling akin to depression. At first
+sight all one’s impressions were jumbled together; disorder
+and confusion seemed to emanate from this hill of chiseled
+blocks. It is not simple in its lines, like Thebes and Baalbek,
+like Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal, but has the exuberance,
+the dismaying complications of Hindu art, so that it
+is not merely by its enormity that it staggers the beholder.
+He who tries to see it all at once suffers the fatigue so common
+in museums; one must come back often, each time studying
+a little of it in detail, and then gradually a perfect symmetry
+asserts itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Two monsters, darkened by centuries and bearded with
+lichen, though under the French they are now shaved from
+time to time, guard the front entrance to the temple itself,
+like dragons stationed before legendary grottoes. The base
+of this mighty pyramid of a structure is more than a kilometer
+square, and completely about it runs a great gallery that
+stretches far to right and to left from the four entrances on
+as many sides of the building. Beneath the tropical sky without
+a fleck of cloud that never for an instant left us during
+those four Angkor days the mountain-temple glowed with a
+golden-brown radiance, so that the greenish demi-day that
+suddenly replaced the glaring sunshine outside gave one the
+impression of entering a subterranean passage, though on the
+outside there are merely massive pillars. Those galleries surrounding
+the main structure are nearly three quarters of a
+mile in length, and for the entire circuit every inch of the
+wall is carved with an endless bas-relief giving the whole
+history of the Khmer up to the building of Angkor-Vat, the
+whole story of the greatest Hindu legend. For the incredible
+chiseled painting along the four outer walls of the temple
+has for its inspiration one of the noblest and most ancient
+epics conceived by the men of Asia, those Aryan ancestors
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>of ours—the Ramayana. The uninterrupted bas-relief unrolls
+as long as the legs will carry one, an inextricable series
+of battles, warriors gesticulating with fury, combatants by
+the thousand, caparisoned elephants, ancient engines of war,
+war chariots with wheels strangely up-to-date, interminable
+scenes fleeing forever ahead in straight perspective, until
+they seem still more infinitely long than they really are.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This wall of endless carvings looks like a single piece for
+hundreds of yards. One must look closely to discover the
+joints between the enormous stones put together without
+cement, yet adjusted with a precision as rigorous as in the
+monuments of Egyptian antiquity. I found myself often
+comparing with Machu Picchu this gigantic heap of sculptured
+stones, and at least in this encircling wall of Angkor-Vat
+the stone-fitting was equal to that at which the few
+visitors to the long lost city of the Andes have marveled.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are indeed two miles of galleries in the Vat, twenty-six
+thousand feet of bas-reliefs chiseled in stone, archæologists
+tell us. All these pictures were formerly painted or
+gilded, but they have been at the mercy of the elements for
+nearly a thousand years, and have lost all the brilliancy of
+the original colors. Sweating with the eternal humidity of
+the tropics, the panoramas have taken on a sad blackish tint,
+with, in places, the gleam of wet things. Then, too, up as
+high as the puny mankind of to-day can reach, the bas-reliefs—five
+meters high on those outer walls—are worn
+glass-smooth by the rubbing of secular fingers. In times of
+pilgrimage the whole multitude makes it a duty to touch
+every figure it can possibly reach. Here and there, in the
+parts lighted by the beautiful little windows with thick
+carved-stone bars that are among the chief glories of Angkor-Vat
+one may still see tracings of the original coloring, on
+garments or faces; and sometimes, in the tiaras of queens
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>or goddesses, a little gold spared by the weather continues
+to gleam after all these centuries.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>In the middle of the face of each quadrilateral a portico
+opens in this great gallery and gives access to a central court
+in which the temple itself, properly speaking, rises, a prodigious
+heap of sculptured sandstone climbing into the blue
+sky. The grandiose spreading out of the courts of the second
+story and the formidable upward surge of the central mass
+all but take the breath away. Such a complication of lines,
+what a beauty for all the heaviness in the silent ensemble!
+The infinity of decorations is incredible; the Khmer certainly
+did not pay their workmen the union wages of to-day; for
+one thing there would not have been so much care and
+artistry in the work. The building seems to have been done
+by Cham and Tai prisoners of war and by regular levies of
+the Khmer populace itself—much as black Christophe built
+his citadel in Haiti. Evidently we must have some species of
+slavery to produce monuments of this kind; “free” workmen
+cannot furnish the constant enthusiasm and infinite care in
+details that they require. But in a way those tropical toilers
+so long since returned to dust had things better than our
+trade-union bricklayers of to-day, impossible as that may
+seem. For the story goes that there was one architect for
+every five hundred builders, and each of the builders had a
+hundred coolies to keep him supplied with stone! Then
+artists came to cover every available surface, with the care
+of painters working on canvas. For the Khmer were of the
+Hindu point of view, abhorring simplicity and uncovered
+surfaces.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are no obscenities among the myriad carvings of
+Angkor-Vat, even from our Puritan point of view, though
+somehow one expects them. But the Khmer kings evidently
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>liked their musical comedies, or at least their ballets, even
+as does the tired business man of to-day. For there are
+Apsarases carved everywhere, in infinitely repeated groups,
+chiseled on every side of every stone pillar, not merely here
+at Angkor-Vat but throughout most of the ruins of Angkor-Thom,
+forever dancing before their long departed masters.
+These perpetually virgin though constantly violated nymphs
+of the Hindu paradise, everywhere sculptured in stone, under
+the porticos, in the verandas, in the clear-obscure of the galleries,
+beneath the hard sunshine that falls through crumbling
+vaults, make the dead walls live. Everywhere they
+dance, among the falling lianas, on the bases of temple altars,
+their arms supple, their busts stiff and upright, as millenniums
+ago on the shores of the Ganges for the amusement of
+Indra, as at Pnom Penh their living descendants dance before
+the octogenarian king on the silver pavement of his palace-temple.
+The artists of ancient times chiseled and polished as
+lovingly as any modern sensuous denizen of the Latin Quarter
+these dancing virgins—who can say what has become of
+the beautiful women from whom these perfect torsos were
+copied?—and all these figures in bracelets and rich adornments
+rather than clothing have been so often caressed in
+the course of the bygone centuries that their beautiful bare
+throats shine like polished marble. It is the women especially
+who, during their pilgrimages, touch them passionately,
+begging from them the gift of becoming mothers. Unfortunately,
+like those on the bas-reliefs of Egypt, the feet of
+these lovely creatures are badly done, being always drawn
+in profile even when the dancer is facing forward, so that
+what might seem art to the followers of the reputedly funniest
+of our “movie artists” merely testifies that the myriad
+beautiful stone goddesses of Angkor were the work of a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>primitive humanity, still struggling with the difficulties of
+design.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I raised my eyes to the mass above me, and almost without
+volition my neck craned to its utmost that I might gaze
+upon the four giant towers, topped by a central one still
+larger, in which the temple rises. Nothing lives up there—except
+flocks of bats—and the stairways of startling height
+fall under the ardent sun like a cascade of sandstone. The
+Khmer were no more expert at making stairways than with
+roofs and arches and the feet of their dancing-girls, and
+Angkor-Vat has the steepest stairs in the world—even we
+who so love superlatives will not deny them this. Stairs
+that are all but sheer walls lead to the lofty heights of this
+mountain of a temple, stairs so steep that the knee-caps strike
+on the step above, and so narrow that the foot can only be
+set down sidewise; and even then there is many a slip, especially
+in descending. The bygone architects should have
+been more thoughtful toward dizzy tourists; the Piffton-Smiths
+never got above the ground floor at all—which was
+like coming to Rome and going home again without seeing
+the Colosseum. Even the surest-headed of us clung to the
+hand-polished old walls in descending, losing our footing
+often on the worn and sometimes wet steps.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One must climb these cascades of stone, too, between
+recumbent lions, beasts suggesting Assyrian sacred bulls in
+stone, cobras spreading out their seven heads like a fan
+above their angrily swollen necks, as well as between smiling
+Apsarases, perpetually dancing for their long dead masters.
+A hard climb, even for me, whose strength lies mainly in
+legs, and I found myself on the first of three platforms,
+with a second story, of a height double that of the first, defying
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>me with still more abrupt stairs, still more closely guarded
+by smiles and grimaces in stone. Then when I certainly had
+the right to think that at last I had arrived, there suddenly
+sprang up before me the third story, of a height double that
+of the second! It was like climbing the Andes, like fronting
+life and discovering to one’s astonishment that what at first
+looked like a struggle, perhaps an insurmountable obstacle, is
+only the easy preliminary to ever harder and higher tasks
+beyond. This progressive doubling of the heights, from
+one story to another, was a clever architectural discovery,
+enlarging the temple by an illusion from which one cannot
+escape. The Khmer were clever architects, as I have said
+before; and the memorable stairway that leads to the topmost
+platform, with its narrow worn steps on which grass grows
+even while the French are striving to keep this most magnificent
+of the monuments of Angkor clear of it, while pilgrims
+and tourists are constantly going up and down them, for their
+respective motives, is steep enough to give any one vertigo;
+even the sailor we know as Pierre Loti found it so. “One
+would say that the temple grows larger, prolongs itself indefinitely,
+straining itself toward the heavens, so that climbing
+Angkor-Vat is like those fatiguing nightmares in which
+one strives toward a goal that forever flees on ahead. The
+gods no doubt wish to make themselves more inaccessible the
+more one tries to approach them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are four of these stairways, watched over by the
+enigmatically smiling Apsarases, one on each side of the
+temple. As I mounted, the forest seemed to mount with me,
+spreading out on all sides to the horizon, unbroken as the
+sea clear to the circle of that horizon. The topmost platform
+must be at least a hundred feet above the plain, yet the great
+monument seems submerged, drowned in the midst of its
+verdure. It is the greatest extent of forest I have ever seen,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>except perhaps from the eastern slope of the Andes, where
+South America falls away into the enormous Amazon basin
+that stretches to the Atlantic. Formerly, in place of this
+silent sea of vegetation below, stretched the city of Angkor-Thom,
+perhaps no more forested then than Peking or a New
+England city to-day. If one could only push aside the roof
+of interlacing branches one could still see beneath them the
+walls, terraces, temples, the long paved avenues flanked by
+divinities in stone, balustrades, gigantic serpents with raised
+heads, Brahma-faced towers, all now swallowed up in the
+jungle. But the forest has become again what it was for
+incalculable centuries before the beginning of man, so that
+nothing visible remains of the work of those Hindu-like
+adventurers who many hundred years ago came here to tempt
+fate and clear the space of a city of nearly a million inhabitants.
+It endured only a millennium and a half, that episode
+of the empire of the Khmer; in other words a very negligible
+period compared with the longevity of the vegetable kingdom.
+The scars are reclosed, nothing now appears for all
+their labors, and the “fig-tree of ruins” spreads everywhere
+its parasol of green leaves. It is true that in our day other
+adventurers, from far off to the West, have founded near
+here the semblance of another empire; but it is small and
+puny compared to that of the Khmer, not likely to rival it in
+duration any more than it has in lasting monuments. When
+these pale-faced conquerers shall have gone their way also,
+they will merely have cleaned up a little the works of a
+greater race, and will be remembered only as the charwomen
+may be in the ruins of our sky-scrapers of to-day, by a
+charred broom or a broken dust-pan left here and there
+among the débris.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All afternoon I climbed and loafed about that mighty pile
+of masonry. In the immense clearing within which the giant
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>temple sits enthroned, defended by moats and walls, one
+had the impression of perfect security, quite unlike the feeling
+among the other ruins, for all the nearness and immensity
+of the great forest that hangs its black curtain all about it.
+Tigers do not cross the great stone bridge, even though the
+doors are never closed. The Vat was never finished. When,
+at the end of our thirteenth century, the Khmer empire fell,
+for no good reason that has ever been discovered, it was
+still in process of construction. As this great work of theirs
+surpasses any of our own, at least when we consider the
+tools they had, it is little short of presumptuous to suppose
+that we will endure longer than did that doughty empire of
+the tropical forests.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The Chinese scholar who visited this mysterious empire on
+the eve of its decline and left the only known documents
+on its splendor tells us that the fifth tower of Angkor-Vat,
+rising above all the rest and most imposing and complicated
+of all, seeming to give the temple a mountain summit when
+seen from afar off, but dwarfed by the very size of the
+edifice when one is close beneath it, was crowned with a
+golden lotus so large that one could see its sacred flowers
+gleam in the air from all parts of the city that is to-day
+buried in the jungle. Leaning over from the upper platform
+at the base of this tower one looks down upon an entrancing
+scene below, most of it a hundred feet below. From up
+there one sees that what with the tropical sun and rain and
+long abandonment each of the superimposed layers of the
+temple has become a sort of suspended garden in which
+the immense leaves of the banana mingle with white tufts
+of the fragrant jasmine. The comfortable French bungalow
+across the moat is no larger than a dove-cote. Scattered
+about the temple clearing are slender palm-trees up which
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>men climb by single bamboo poles tied with vines to the
+trunk, carrying over their shoulders bamboo buckets that
+they exchange for others hanging from cut fronds until they
+are filled with a sap from which is made a brown sugar.
+Even the almost naked men among the giant leaves of these
+trees that looked so high from below were far beneath me
+here. In the forest that surrounds the temple hundreds of
+parrakeets shrieked; one might think they had come from
+the four corners of the forest to enliven the solitude of the
+little stone dancers, who in their turn give the ruins life,
+and they never leave off chattering until night settles down
+upon them, as no doubt the dancers themselves chattered
+when the forest was a park and the ruins a palace.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Under the trees at the edges of the clearing are the shacks
+of monks where Admiral Viaud, alias Pierre Loti, slept, almost
+twenty-five years ago now, when he came to Angkor
+in his two-wheeled cart and went away on an elephant. The
+frail little houses, to which tiny stairs that are barely ladders
+lead, are made of wood and mats; some have little festooned
+windows from which shaven skulls peer now and then, and
+they stand on poles, well above the ground. All the inhabitants
+are dressed alike, in bright yellow robes set off by a
+drapery of orange and other colors that stand out against
+the old walls, gray with age, sometimes reddish, especially
+near sunset, as it was now, startling flashes of color against
+the dense curtain of greenery beneath the clear sky. Too
+accustomed to Europeans to be curious toward them, they
+seem to take us as unavoidable nuisances, and when they
+sing in a low voice and monotonous rhythm they gaze at us
+without interrupting their tranquil litany. Now some of
+them are walking abroad, languidly and without haste, their
+hairless heads shining beneath the low sun. Theirs are curious
+villages, where there are no women, no animals except
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>mongrel curs, no tillers of the soil, nothing but these
+monotonous singers, yellow of face and dressed in two
+brighter tones of the same color. For furniture their simple
+dwellings have nothing but an old Buddhist altar, with gods
+in faded gold, before which little heaps of ashes testify to
+the constant burning of joss-sticks to their tawdry divinities.
+About two hundred of these bonzes of Cambodia and Siam
+guard the sacred ruins, and nearly that number live here
+perpetually, psalming day and night about this pile of titanic
+blocks of stone heaped up by their more hardy ancestors, or
+by those whom their more hardy ancestors defeated and
+drove away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sunset, quickly followed by a bright full moon, came, and
+the lighting of the immense stage-setting about me diminished
+until the forest, already full of shadows under an ashen
+sky, in which a yellow phosphorescence mingled with an ever
+darker green, died down to a great spread of vacancy without
+details or distinctness. In the last light of the day, leaning
+over the edge of the uppermost platform, I had seen a procession
+of multicolored women drawing away along the great
+causeway across the moat, a saffron-clad priest with a rolled
+parasol across his back leading them. Cruder Buddhas have
+here and there replaced broken or fallen Brahman figures
+in the great temple, especially within the base of the central
+tower in the lofty third story. They are ugly things of
+mud and wood compared with the ancient Khmer deities,
+and to look upon them gives one the feeling one sometimes
+has toward the crude missionaries from our own land who
+are trying to replace the more fitting as well as older beliefs
+of the East with their own. A quantity of Buddhist idols
+of all sizes sit on thrones in this upper story, smiling at
+nothing, and pilgrims go about, bowing down before statue
+after statue, indifferent, and no doubt unaware, whether they
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>are praying to Vishnu or to Buddha. Sometimes pilgrims
+from far-off Burma come in the silence of the night to lay
+a flower or burn a joss-stick before each of these figures,
+with a musty smell now, that are crumbling away into the
+dust from which they, like the rest of us, came. A word
+from the leader, which one can guess to be some such warning
+as, “Let us hurry or the hour of the tiger will overtake
+us,” and they make their devotions more hastily, cut even
+shorter their reverences, and soon their barefoot tread is
+lost in the drone of a Buddhist service below as they descend
+the steep stone stairways.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Whatever else one may see at Angkor, one always comes
+back to the great temple, and that not merely because it is
+so near the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>. I found myself almost unconsciously wandering
+there in the moonlight every evening after dinner.
+For one thing it gave a respite from the prattle of tourists,
+very few of whom ventured into the structure after dark.
+On the first day I had met two childlike monks in their
+yellow robes going along the gallery with a broom and a
+scoop of woven bamboo strips. They were picking up the
+wherewithal to fertilize some little monastic garden, no doubt
+for the growing of flowers, since the pious laymen furnish
+them their food, and the tilling of the soil for useful purposes
+is not one of the duties of their calling. There is no
+lack of fertilizer to be had in Angkor-Vat. The pavements
+that are not open to the sun are everywhere carpeted with
+the droppings of bats, so thick in many places that one seems
+to be walking on felt. An almost intolerable odor permeates
+all the interior, and the squeaking of what the French so
+fittingly call “bald mice” up under the sharp vaults of the
+crude massive roofs is always in the ears even of the visitor
+by day. Then, if one’s eyes are sharp, they may make out
+myriads of the repulsive creatures hanging head down by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>their claws to the rough stone ceiling, looking during these
+their sleeping hours like sacks of dark velvet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By night, clouds, avalanches of these flying rats, aggressive
+and tireless, greet the intruder. As my steps resounded
+in the obscure corridors, along which I advanced feeling
+my way foot by foot, for all the brilliant moonlight outside,
+sharp little cries multiplied to a concert, as of thousands of
+angry rats above my head. The horrible odor seemed to increase
+as one after another of the sleeping creatures unfolded
+its hairless membranes and joined in the general movement.
+It is always half-night up there under the vaults and roofs,
+and perhaps they do not sleep too soundly, or know the
+hour exactly, even by day; with the night the least intrusion
+turns chamber after chamber into swirls of the squeaking
+creatures. They descended to touch my hair; the wind of
+their wings was like the breeze of electric fans running riot in
+the darkness, cold in the tepid night as the breath of death.
+They swirled about me in swarms on their silent wings,
+uttering their angry little cries, as if banding together to
+repel an invader. One might have fancied them the unappeased
+spirits of the Khmer gods of long ago, or the
+unsaved souls of those who built the mountain-temple, resenting
+the profaning of the sacred edifice in the solemn
+hours of the night by the crude, heavily shod being of the
+modern world. If I stood perfectly still for some time, the
+chorus decreased, died down, disappeared, as if they had all
+gone back to sleep again. But with the first step forward
+they detached themselves once more, one after another, and
+soon the same noisome gyrations of unseen squeaking things
+was all about me again. My flesh crept at the damp contact
+of their wings, at the very thought of their touching me, and
+for once I was almost afraid of the dark, a feeling I had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>not known since early childhood. I kept myself with difficulty
+from fleeing headlong out into the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No longer paled by the excess of sun, the bas-relief of the
+gallery, the figures on the terraces, the dancing Apsarases
+everywhere took on a nebulous clarity that in a way made
+them all the more beautiful. The moon shone in silver
+streams through the carved stone bars of the narrow windows;
+out in the courtyards the massive block of Angkor-Vat
+with its five towers seemed more gigantic than ever, too
+enormous to be merely the work of pygmy mankind. The
+more than steep stairways had about them something so
+uncanny that it took more exertion of the will than of the
+thighs to climb them; I had the feeling of entering a mammoth
+burial-vault from which there would never again be
+any escape. As if fearful of having to accuse myself of
+cowardice I climbed the first story, doubly high to the second,
+forced myself up to the third. A light like a fallen star
+twinkled at the top of the highest stairway, at the door of
+the sanctuary beneath the central tower. It was the votive-lamp
+of the Chettys, the Hindu money-lenders of Cholon
+and Saïgon, who offer this eternal flame to the abandoned
+gods. Then suddenly the squeak of swirling bats became
+more than my nerves could bear, and I retreated, slowly only
+because of the indignity of frankly running away, and the
+likelihood of tobogganing down those long cascades of narrow
+slippery steps at a false movement made in haste.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>On Monday I set off on foot to Bayon at the crack of
+dawn, knowing how painful walking becomes soon after
+the sun rises above the tree-tops. The Elephant Terrace
+and Bayon, with some of the striking old ruins in their
+vicinity, about which I spent the morning, I had already
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>hastily seen as we were Fording bungalow-ward on the first
+morning in order not to delay Mrs. Piffton-Smith’s luncheon
+and nap. Now, alone and at leisure, I found them second
+only to Angkor-Vat. Bayon, impressive as a cathedral, is
+the oldest sanctuary of Angkor-Thom, two centuries older
+than the great temple in which the genius of the Khmer
+terminated. In its day it had half a hundred towers, each
+and every one of them bearing on all its four sides the face
+of Brahma, the highest rising nearly fifty meters above the
+plain. Now many have fallen, been destroyed, or been removed
+by the French to save the others; and still there are
+so many of them that one feels the futility of trying to get
+out of sight of their myriad-faced god. Those enigmatical
+faces of Brahma, or Siva, some of them two men in height,
+crowned by diadems in stone, gaze so multitudinously down
+from even what remains of the pyramidal mass that one has
+a feeling of self-consciousness as when one is the focus of
+the eyes of a living multitude. Those visages with the
+enigmatical smile, the half-closed eyelids, the great flat noses,
+all with the selfsame expression of ironic pity, are not merely
+on every face of every tower; they gaze even from worn
+stones, no larger than a fist, picked up in the underbrush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Toward the end of the ninth century, four hundred years
+before the decline of the Khmer, Bayon, ruder and even
+more enormous than Angkor-Vat, was in its glory. The
+fifty towers of different sizes formed several stories, and
+the topmost could be seen from any part of the now abandoned
+city. To-day most of it has to be reconstructed by
+the imagination, including the vast cleared space that made
+it possible to see the crushing stature of the ensemble. In
+fancy one can rebuild the successive terraces, the great stairways,
+the sumptuous avenues which led to it, bordered by
+so many columns, balustrades, divinities, rampant-headed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>cobras, and monsters, now crumbled away in the grass. But
+even the faces of Brahma that remain gazing to the four
+cardinal points of the compass seem to affirm, to force upon
+the beholder, the omnipresence of the god of Angkor.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A shower-bath, lunch, and a nap, and I was off again,
+for a three-hour elephant ride. There are two of these great
+beasts attached to the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>, but like the goat-cart at the zoo
+they are now rather curiosities than useful means of transportation.
+Akin to all holders of sinecures, they stood before
+the door lazily swinging their trunks and watching with cunning
+little eyes the Fords that have taken nearly all their
+work away from them. The American ladies mounted one
+of them, Mr. Piffton-Smith and I the other. The mother
+of Lady So-and-so would not risk her precious life in such
+an adventure, and how her husband persuaded her to let him
+undergo this terrifying experience is a domestic secret to
+which I have no key.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I shall forevermore think of the elephant as a synonym
+for caution, for slowness and docility too, for that matter.
+The <i><span lang="fr">cornacs</span></i>, as the French call what we know as mahouts,
+drove these pacific monsters more easily than we do a horse,
+nay, as easily as one can drive an automobile, except that
+nothing would induce them to move faster than two miles
+an hour. Like domesticated man, there was nothing whatever
+wild about them, and with every step up the only hillock
+in all the region the prudent beasts felt every stone before
+trusting their weight to it, until they seemed to personify the
+precautious mother of a Lady whom we had left behind.
+Little by little we dominated the immense sea of absolutely
+flat forest. Here where once there were innumerable palaces
+gleaming in the sunshine, little more was visible above the
+endless spread of vegetation than the block of Bayon and
+the five towers of Angkor-Vat. The view across the vast
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>forest-jungle left even that great temple like a needle lost in
+a haystack, so tiny was it in its immense setting in the midst
+of what looked like an endless and a trackless wilderness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So terrifying was this experience of rising a hundred feet
+or two above sea-level on these cautious monsters that poor
+Mr. P.-S. had to be helped down at the summit like an infant,
+and only the impossibility of covering on foot the mile or
+two back to the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> induced him to mount again. Cambodian
+workmen, under orders of the French, still toil in several of
+the ruins, and here they laughed and shouted as they threw
+blocks of stone down the slope with insulting words. Then
+we went slowly, more than slowly, back, and across the mammoth
+bridge over the moat for a circuit of Angkor-Vat. It
+was as if, knowing they could not compete in speed with the
+Fords that have replaced their fellows, the beasts had no
+intention of trying; or it may be that there is an elephant
+union. That would even better account for their skill in
+wasting time at every movement, at every moment, making
+their journey the shortest possible within the three hours
+allotted us. The foundation of Angkor-Vat and the bridge
+leading to it are raised two or three meters above the
+ground, to facilitate mounting and dismounting from the
+elephants that were once the only beasts of burden in this
+region. But there was no time to dismount and mount
+now; the hour of the tiger would indeed have come before
+the lethargic animals took up their funereal march again. As
+we crept slowly round the temple, the elephants tore large
+branches from some of the tropical trees high above our
+heads, and munched them as languidly as a plumber eating his
+lunch on some one else’s time. Men in breech-clouts were
+still walking up the frail palm-trees with bamboo buckets in
+which to gather their sugary sap; the bonzes were chanting
+their monotonous litanies from their stilt-legged huts; and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>then the sun disappeared swiftly in the sea of jungle and
+gave us that brief fleeting twilight of the tropics.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On Tuesday morning I mounted a tiny horse and rode
+away alone through the woods, the delightful freshness of
+an early tropical morning all about me. A light two-wheeled
+cart was also to be had, but I preferred the miniature sample
+of the equine world—until the blazing of the sun began in
+earnest. Though there are on the whole few feathered creatures
+in the forest that has swallowed up Angkor-Thom, as
+if even they were afraid of the denseness of the jungle, the
+singing of birds and insects made a mild ceaseless music.
+Sometimes it sounded as if a bird was whispering a cordial
+invitation to me from the bush—or was it merely whistling
+to keep up its courage? There was such a wall of verdure
+on either side that, like will-o’-the-wisps, they were never
+really visible. Monkeys dashed from branch to branch,
+scores of monkeys, though not one had we seen during the
+official trips by Ford. Evidently they keep out of the way
+of tourists, perhaps because they cannot endure their inane
+chatter. But now they played by the dozen about the ruins,
+as freely as if they recognized in me a close relative, and
+indulged in a pantomime, worthy of any stage, that was
+plainly an imitation of the workmen among the remains of
+Angkor-Thom. A Cambodian legend assures us that monkeys
+formerly talked like men, until the men made slaves of them
+and forced them to work. The monkeys did not like this,
+and as they are timid but intelligent they simply ceased to
+talk like us and pretended not to understand, so that from
+that time forth they have lived in peace, gathering nothing
+except for their dinners, and gamboling among the trees to
+their hearts’ content. The thin Cambodian coolies who toil
+for the French about the ruins have not been so clever.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER IV<br> <span class='c011'>THE CAMBODIANS AT HOME</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>The efficient French manager of the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> at Angkor,
+and those few of my fellow-guests who saw me set out
+on foot for Siem Réap that Sunday afternoon, gave me
+credit for being at least half mad. I have often suspected
+as much myself. The native town was nearly five miles
+away along that almost excellent French road by which we
+had come from the edge of the flooded forest on the evening
+of our arrival, and obviously it would be at least as great
+a distance back to the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> again. But it was a delightful
+walk, even while the sun was pouring its rays like a molten
+flood of gold down into the roadway, and with every step
+forward its aim became less exact, so that the infinitesimal
+streak of shade along one dense forest wall gradually grew
+to be worth attention.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were road-signs as in France, now and then an ox-cart
+with two wheels drawn by as many oxen. On the whole,
+though, the road was deserted, and for a long distance there
+was nothing but the Chinese wall of unbroken forest close
+on either side, with frequent visions of lianas in blossom,
+and in the streak of sky above, occasional flashes of strange
+tropical birds. Then there came scattered villages, water-buffaloes
+at pasture, more bourgeois birds sitting serenely on
+the spines of the beasts as on a telegraph-wire, naked children
+who live in the water, their gleaming skins mirroring
+the sun like the scales of a fish. At length, some little distance
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>from the ruins of the ancient city, there began an almost
+endless succession of thatched huts back among the trees,
+stilted villages, so to speak, for every one of them was raised
+head-high above the ground on more or less haphazard posts
+that had once been the trunks of small trees. None of these
+simple homes had a clearing about it. The inhabitants had
+wisely cut away only enough of the underbrush to give themselves
+room to move and to plant a little, and they lived completely
+in the shade of the great forest about and high above
+them. Steps were cut in the earth bank of the little river that
+more or less followed the road, down to the water’s edge and
+what seemed to be fish-traps. There were also some simple
+but ingenious nets, and strangely shaped boats, the smaller
+ones paddled, the larger poled. A quiet Sunday-afternoon
+languor that was probably perpetual rather than only weekly
+hung over everything. The leisurely splashing of water called
+attention every little way to a large wheel, made of now age-blackened
+bamboo, that forced the river to lift itself by the
+scoopful into the little gardens beyond the houses. The
+slow regular thump of a wooden pestle worked by foot-power
+betrayed here and there woods-dwellers caught in the act of
+having to hull rice for their evening meal, in the hollowed
+upright section of log that serves them as mortar. Otherwise,
+there was only the forest and its natural noises.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Siem Réap, of which I had once before had a fleeting
+moonlight glimpse, was almost a city, in the Cambodian sense.
+For the Cambodians are not a townspeople, but prefer the
+woods, which, with a bit of tilled soil, gives them all they
+need. The place was entirely Siamese, its little houses all
+perched on piles and its temple decorated with golden horns;
+and even these were tucked back into the forest that crowded
+the wider place in the road closely on either side. Evidently
+the inhabitants sleep on the openwork bamboo-splint floor
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>of their porches, as some of them were already, or still,
+doing now, with the sun barely touching the tree-tops. It
+was not always easy to tell the sexes apart at a glance, for
+girls and younger women cut their hair in the ugly Siamese
+pompadour fashion, slightly longer than that of the men.
+Grandmothers, old men, and priests dispensed with theirs
+entirely, having more or less recently shaven skulls. Both
+sexes wore like a short skirt a mere piece of cloth wrapped
+about the hips and thighs, a costume so simple that most
+Cambodian girls never learn to sew. Some of the younger
+women, especially if they were far from the family clearing,
+had a cloth thrown carelessly over their breasts; but about
+the house and in its immediate vicinity they had nothing
+above the waist to hamper them from working, or from
+suckling one of their interminable infants, carried on the
+hip, Hindu fashion. There seemed to be much bathing and
+washing of clothes, such as they were, reminding one of
+Ceylon. Bougainvillea hung in purple masses about the
+wooden house of the French <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> and some of the other
+better buildings. Police in half or full khaki uniforms,
+topped by a kind of tam-o’-shanter, seemed out of place in
+this languid Eden.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The Cambodians are a slow and quiet race compared with
+the Chinese, even with the Annamese, so gentle that even the
+shoulder-poles of their oxen are seldom weighted down with
+heavy loads. The Tai, as the race to which they belong is
+better known, are about equal in civilization, under equal
+circumstances, to the Chinese, according to those who know
+them well, except that the Tai are superior in personal
+cleanliness and the lack of monkey-like curiosity, and the
+Chinese in foresight and industry. Here there was none of
+the crowding of staring or chattering throngs about the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>foreigner, so common an experience in China. The Cambodians
+seemed to have a greater sense of personal dignity.
+As a people they appeared a little surly toward the French,
+therefore toward white men in general, though this may only
+have been bashfulness. Physically the individual type is more
+sturdy, and observers agree that they are much more reserved
+in their personal habits, than the surrounding peoples.
+In situations where the Annamese squirms and howls the
+Cambodian shows neither fear nor excitement. Simple timid
+souls, however, manly and infantile at the same time, they
+are too naïve to be any match for the world of to-day.
+Though they are physically stronger, laborious in their
+leisurely way, intelligent, and not easily swayed from their
+purposes or beliefs, they will let a puny Annamese chastise
+them without any attempt at retaliation, because they are
+afraid of the tricks this more sophisticated fellow might
+play upon them if they dared to resist. For though the
+Annamese really look down upon, even hate, the French,
+they are regarded by the other races comprising Indo-China
+as the special pets of the foreign rulers. Being nearer in
+their own sophistication to the modern wisdom, or trickery,
+of the Westerner, they know much better how to turn the
+presence of the French to their own good than do these
+isolated woodsmen of Cambodia, a prey to all sorts of rascalities.
+The spirit of tolerance, renunciation, non-resistance, of
+this timid forest-dweller who ornaments his body with symbolic
+tattooings is so great as to make what in the Chinese
+seems to be that quality appear none at all.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So while Cambodia is rich, the Cambodian is poor.
+“Wealthy as Cambodia” was for centuries a byword among
+the Chinese. The yearly flooding of the Mekong, the Nile
+of Indo-China, annually brings down a new covering of rich
+soil for all the delta. Yet even the hasty traveler notes the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>far greater prosperity of less fertile Cochinchina. There is
+only thatch in Cambodia; in Cochinchina, inhabited by all
+the races of Indo-China, including the Cambodians, there
+are tiled wooden houses, always a sign of prosperity, for the
+fear of fires causes any race to get beyond the thatch stage
+as soon as possible. Not merely the Chinese, with their
+special privileges, but the Annamese, so easily outdone by
+the Celestials in commerce, become in their turn the harsh
+commercial exploiters of their simpler neighbors, not only
+the Cambodians but the Moï, the Muong, and the Laosians.
+Even the recently arranged export of Cambodian cattle to
+Manila has proved of no real help to the people themselves,
+for they are often cheated out of their working cattle by the
+tricky Chinese or Annamese traders.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Cambodian is exclusively an agriculturist. Even
+though he makes his own tools, carts, and houses, that is
+merely an adaptation to his isolated life. In whatever he
+does he works with the spirit of the genuine artist, which
+means that he gives too little attention to getting all possible
+material benefit from his labor. Thus during the past several
+centuries this little people—they are barely a million
+and a half—has been terrorized, vanquished, despoiled,
+forced to fly, in the dry season, before the Siamese, at the
+mercy, in the wet, of the Annamese flotillas. The first were
+looking for slaves, and deported people en masse to cultivate
+their lands of the Menam; the second came killing the
+people off and driving them out in order to take their lands
+for themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To come through the forests and see so low a type of
+humanity, at least in so far as ambition and the ability to
+build lasting things go, and then suddenly see the towers of
+Angkor-Vat, through the half-cleared vista of the old cart
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>road, is to refuse to believe that the ancestors of these built
+that. It shakes one’s belief in the equality of man; for
+surely without masters of higher type than these hut-dwellers
+of to-day this people could never have produced such things.
+But no, one reflects, peoples, like individuals, have their day,
+their prime, their productive years. They develop for centuries,
+then at a certain level accomplish rapidly for a time,
+then sink into old age. All our own real progress has been
+during the past few hundred years; we may soon cease to
+be productive, perhaps not even remain static, like the
+Chinese, but drift back down-stream, like these simple gentle
+Cambodians. Possibly some of their once great creative
+ability might be revived; more likely not. Besides, it is
+better to let others have the next chance, just as we each
+give way in turn to the rising generation, than to try to
+resuscitate what is past, as we sometimes try with the individual.
+For it is impossible to backwater in life.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Though they have lived more or less intermingled for
+centuries, there has been little racial intermixture of the
+Cambodians and the Annamese. They are too nearly like
+oil and water, the real dividing-line between the Chinese
+and the Hindu world which makes the name “Indo-China” so
+fitting. It is only recently that Cambodian girls have not
+been forbidden to marry foreigners, and there are far fewer
+<i><span lang="fr">mariages à terme</span></i> with the French, and the resultant
+half-castes, than in Annam. Yet it is said that the Cambodian,
+interbred with some other race having more aggression
+in its fiber, makes an excellent human specimen.
+There is little repulsion between the Tonkinese and the Cambodians,
+for those two groups are historically little acquainted.
+But the two discordant races are so different
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>that to train a French official in Annam, or even in Cochinchina,
+and then send him to Cambodia, is almost as bad
+as to send one from Algeria to Madagascar.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Whereas the Annamese language is a singsong of many
+tones, like the Chinese, and they use, or did at least until the
+French came, Chinese characters for their writing—so that
+Japanese and Annamese, Korean and Chinese, could all read,
+though not speak, together—the Cambodian tongue is in one
+tone, like our own, and their writing is similar to that
+of Siam and India. Cambodian music seems such to Western
+ears. Their freedom from the cacophonic hullabaloo
+of the rest of the Far East gives the traveler ground for
+hoping that here at last he is running into our own Aryan
+influences again. The Cambodians accompany themselves
+on a kind of guitar, and are the only people in Indo-China
+who have so far been taught to play band music well.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The favorite game of Cambodian boys is to keep a ball
+made of bamboo splints in the air as long as possible, kicking,
+striking, butting it with any part of the body except
+the hands—real football, which of course ours is not. Their
+dances, of immemorial tradition, are a kind of drama of
+pantomine ballet, perpetuating the old Hindu epics, given
+only by troupes of imperial dancers from the royal harem.
+The people themselves do no dancing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Once from the north, influenced by the more mystic
+Buddhism of Tibet, with Sanskrit as the language, the Cambodians
+are now of the Ceylon or southern Buddhist school,
+the language of which is Pali. The Annamese, on the other
+hand, inherited the harsher northern Buddhism by way of
+Mongolia and China. Thus the clergy, as disdained in
+Annam as in China, has great prestige in Cambodia. The
+monks are very simple, and in their piety at least are
+worthy the profound respect with which they are surrounded.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>Though they live only on what they can beg, they are
+not hermits and anchorets, as in the Chinese atmosphere of
+Annam, but live the monkish life in common in the numerous
+temples of the country, quite independent of one another.
+Priests become laymen, and vice versa, very easily;
+all Cambodians are in fact expected to don the yellow robe
+at least once in their lives. Most of them being country
+people, the monks do not find it repugnant to engage in
+manual labor. There are many woodsmen, brick-makers,
+even clock-menders and other industrious “artists” among
+them. Personally I saw none of this, but only meditation
+and begging; and I am quite ready to admit that I am
+hopelessly prejudiced toward those who withdraw from
+their share of the world’s work and troubles the world over.
+During the three months of the rainy season the monks
+of Cambodia practise “the retreat” and refrain from all
+pilgrimages; the rest of the year they go and come almost
+at will. Their five commandments are: thou shalt not kill,
+steal, lie, drink intoxicating beverages, or take the woman
+of another—which is not, be it noted, celibacy in the Christian
+sense. It is said that at least they never drink strong
+liquor, and so careful are they to avoid killing that they
+have a special word (“Bahboh!”) and gesture to drive off
+the militant mosquito without injuring it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There have long been <i><span lang="fr">salas</span></i>, or public houses maintained
+by the government for travelers, along the principal roads
+of Cambodia, for the same reason that there are <i><span lang="fr">dak-bungalows</span></i>
+in India. They do not want strangers in their houses,
+which are semi-sacred; and from that to the Hindu belief
+in caste pollution by so much as an alien shadow is no great
+step. Suicide, as common among the Annamese as with the
+Chinese, is rare among the Cambodians, not because they
+are greater cowards or more generally happy, but because
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>of their fear of vile reincarnations. They burn their dead,
+like the Hindus and the real Buddhists farther west; the
+Annamese practise the loathsome Chinese and Western custom
+of burying their corpses and keeping them as long as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Cambodians have a feudal Hindu civilization, entirely
+distinct from the mandarinic, communal, oligarchical civilization
+of the Annamese and Chinese. In theory all land
+belongs to the king, and any that lies uncultivated for three
+years may be demanded by some one else as a concession.
+Only the produce is taxed, the assessments being
+gathered by royal delegates quite independent of the provincial
+authorities. In reality the French have not greatly
+changed the ancient order of things during their sixty years
+as the “protectors” of Cambodia. They have improved the
+ways of communication, beautified the old royal city of
+Pnom Penh. They have done much against smallpox:
+formerly those who had never had this disease were considered
+“not yet born to existence.” They were exempt
+from taxes; a girl could not marry, a boy could not claim
+the rights and duties of an adult, until a pock-marked face
+could be presented as a certificate of maturity. The French
+have given the country peace, external peace, that is; old
+residents say there is piracy in the provinces as usual, even
+more of it the past twenty years than a century ago. The
+French are impotent to stop criminal violence against the
+natives, and the local authorities have every interest in
+coming to an understanding with the robbers instead of
+fighting them. The Chinese merchants of Cambodia pay
+pirate insurance.</p>
+
+<div id='i_082' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_082a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>One may still crawl about Angkor by elephant, though Fords are much more à la mode</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_082b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Buddhist priests took their saffron-clad ease in the shade along the great moat of Angkor-Vat, beyond the tourist bungalows in the background</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_083' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_083.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A rural Cambodian family at home</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>The French have kept the old forms of kingly rule; and
+“beneath an appearance of order there still reigns the old
+anarchy,” said a French doctor long resident there. Under
+cover of the French the ancient injustices of despotic Oriental
+rule have been perpetuated and modernized. It is
+next to impossible for an ordinary Cambodian with just
+cause for complaint to get satisfaction. The mass of the
+people dare not tell the wrongs done them, even were there
+some one both willing and able to listen to them, because
+of the fear of reprisals. In a forested Oriental country
+very few would risk giving testimony, even if it were not
+the Hindu-Buddhist temperament not to complain; for
+vengeance is easy. Native functionaries stick together; they
+are closely related to the ministers of Pnom Penh. Even
+if a case is taken directly to the French <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i>, about all
+he can do is refer the matter to the governor of the province
+involved, “for information.” There are many clandestine
+tariffs for legally gratuitous formalities. By law registry
+of birth is free; in practice it costs all that those
+concerned can be made to pay. There is a tax on furnaces
+used in the production of fish-oil; but because the
+same Cambodian word also means a little portable stove
+made of glazed earth, on which all Cambodia once did its
+cooking, tax-gatherers have laid by great personal fortunes,
+and most of the people have gone back to the three sticks
+stuck in the earth used by their ancestors to hold their
+rice-pots over a fagot fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is the old story of a very alien race unable to help,
+whatever its good will, except in superficial things that are
+easily understood, because it cannot get down into the
+deeper facts. In the French courts the interpreter reigns
+as absolute master, and erects a stone wall between the best
+judge and the parties before him. Even the making of
+good roads has augmented rather than decreased the helplessness
+of the people, for now French officials, often
+changed, dash to and fro between their posts, whereas in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>the days of slow native travel they got perforce some clear
+idea of the needs of the people. The French of course
+see to it that their rule is treated with full honors, whatever
+the results of it. There is a costly series of splendid
+fêtes at Pnom Penh in honor of each new <i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i>,
+which contrasts sadly with the poverty-stricken people whom
+he comes in theory to help, and who must pay for all
+such festivities. The fact is that he rarely comes for
+any such purpose, but to follow his career with the least
+possible trouble and the greatest possible advancement. But
+in the eyes of the Cambodians the French are merely a
+passing phase, as the Siamese and their other conquerors
+were before them, and they endure this brief affliction as
+true fatalists do any other misfortune.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The minister of the palace is the real power in Cambodia.
+A former interpreter—all who knew a little French when
+the French took upon themselves the “protection” of Cambodia
+naturally got in on the ground floor—imposed first
+upon Norodom as secretary-general of the Council of Ministers,
+is now a kind of political comprador. An intelligent
+hard worker, supple, well informed, speaking French fluently
+now, he has made himself indispensable to the superficial
+and unstable French administrators and is richer than
+old King Sisowath himself. Naturally he drew a marvelous
+personal advantage out of a situation that he was no doubt
+stupefied to find falling into his hands, and with an almost
+Chinese point of view toward political matters he tends
+to perpetuate himself, every day perfecting his double game
+between the king and the French <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i>, peopling posts
+with his relatives and retainers, keeping his political fences
+in order. It is the story of the rise of Charlemagne’s forebears
+all over again, in an Oriental setting. Some <i><span lang="fr">résidents</span></i>
+have tried to outwit this now richest and most powerful
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>man in the kingdom, but he always comes out best. He
+is the real master; the other ministers, the crown prince,
+even the octogenarian king himself tremble before him, mute
+and resigned.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To this have the descendants of the mighty Khmer sunk
+in the millennium since they were forced to abandon Angkor-Thom.
+Yet after all the Cambodians are the only people in
+the peninsula who have left enduring works of their intellectual
+past. Their great art, in which the grandiose perfection
+of the ensemble is combined with the most delicate
+finesse of detail, is their certificate as one of the great races
+of mankind.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER V<br> <span class='c011'>NORTHWARD FROM SAÏGON</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>On a blazing Sunday late in January I was off at six
+on a little train that carried me, not uncomfortably,
+from daylight until dark, through a jungle country of few
+villages and no towns. Bienhoa, half an hour from the
+Cochinchina capital, has rubber plantations of some extent,
+the well spaced trees still small but already adorned with
+sap-gathering tin cans. Beyond, jungle and forest soon
+began again, endless jungle-forest, so that there are countless
+acres available for rubber, and before the century is
+over this form of exploitation will no doubt have reached
+vast proportions. The wilderness, broken only by little clearings
+for occasional stations, was so dry in this hot prelude
+to the rainy season that it had almost the autumn colors of
+the north. Most of the land was deadly flat, but there were
+low hills now and then, densely wooded and brushed, especially
+after little Cochinchina lay behind us and we entered
+the great coastal strip known as Annam.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For all the wilderness, a splendid road, with huge native
+trees well spaced on either side of it, followed the railway.
+Train and highway used the same bridges, which custom I
+found to be common throughout Indo-China. A horn manipulated
+by a loin-clothed coolie at either end warns the automobile
+driver whether or not it is best for him to proceed.
+For the bridges are only wide enough for one train or one
+vehicle at a time, and though the trains of Indo-China are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>not large, nothing short of a motor truck could dispute the
+right of way with them with any great prospect of success.
+There are of course no unprotected grade-crossings even in
+this faintly inhabited region, where an automobile a day is
+an event, and where there are few ox-carts and fewer
+pedestrians. As in France, the bridge and gate men govern
+themselves by the time-table rather than by the facts,
+though here it is a languid Annamese coolie instead of an
+old woman or a crippled war-relic who holds up traffic so
+much longer than necessary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The government owned and operated railways of Indo-China,
+destined some day to be joined together in one
+system, are not yet continuous. The eight hundred miles
+just then in running order were broken up into three isolated
+jumps along the coast, not to mention the line from
+Hanoï up into China that has been leased for a term of
+years to private interests. All are of meter gauge, burn
+wood, and make very good speed, considering their difficulties,
+as was proved by this day’s feat of covering the
+more than 260 miles between Saïgon and Nhatrang—longest
+of the three sections, even without counting the branch
+from the Cochinchina capital to Mytho—in the twelve hours
+between equatorial dawn and darkness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The French have evolved a curious type of train to fit
+the peculiar division of humanity in their Far-Eastern possession.
+The last car is divided into first-, second-, and
+third-class compartments. First-class accommodation consists
+of two crosswise seats facing each other in the center
+of the coach, and the second, with twice that capacity,
+differs mainly in the color of the leather upholstery. Third
+class, occupying half the car, has bare wooden seats of
+American arrangement. The rest of the train, unless it
+includes also a few freight-cars, is made up of fourth-class
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>box-cars innocent of springs and with four rudimentary
+benches fore and aft the full length of them. Officials
+armed with government <i><span lang="fr">réquisitions</span></i>, or passes, usually
+monopolize the first class, and even with their boxes and
+bags rarely fill it. Europeans with purchased tickets, an occasional
+Eurasian, and now and then a wealthy native, go
+second-class. Well-to-do natives, and the poorer French
+residents, endure the hard seats of the rest of the car, and
+only in the more populous regions do they fill them all.
+There are no color-lines, except that Caucasians are not
+allowed to travel fourth-class. This rendezvous of the
+Oriental masses is often packed to rush-hour proportions,
+and is so free from cramping rules that even rickshaws
+may be dragged in as baggage.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The half-dozen of these springless box-cars for every
+first-second-and-third-class coach is symbolical of the proportionate
+division of classes in the population of Indo-China.
+To the simple countryman who occupies the rough
+<i><span lang="fr">wagons</span></i> making up the bulk of the train, even the third-class
+compartment represents such luxury that he comes to
+gaze in awe and what may be envy at the <i><span lang="fr">richard</span></i> who can
+afford to ride there. Yet even in the deeply upholstered
+center of the last car, fares are not so high as on our own
+railways. There are no sleeping-cars, for the simple reason
+that the trains of Indo-China do not venture forth at
+night. The back end of the last fourth-class car is commonly
+taken up with a makeshift buffet-kitchen, in which
+the privileged occupants of the rear coach may partake of
+not particularly Parisian food, salted with such a jolting as
+may or may not be an aid to digestion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All through the hotter hours the train twisted and squirmed
+its way among jungle-clad hillocks, the shades drawn, electric
+fans whirling. Farther north were sandy half-arid
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>patches; then, two hundred miles or more above Saïgon,
+hills appeared and grew to be almost mountains, fairly
+well wooded and thick with underbrush. At length the forest
+gave way to scattered-bush land, resembling parts of
+Texas, untilled, perhaps because it is too arid for cultivation.
+There were almost no inhabitants, at least in sight.
+Here and there huddled half a dozen miserable time-blackened
+and dilapidated huts made of palm-leaves; now and
+then a garden-patch with a plastered house of dull-red tile
+roof, and outhouses suggesting plentiful servants, testified
+to the presence of some isolated French official or railway
+man. Perhaps there are towns along the edge of the sea
+not far away, since fishing and farming are the principal
+Annamese occupations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From Phanrang near the sea a branch railway that degenerates
+into a motor-bus carries passengers with time to
+spare up to the plateau of Langbian. For high up in the
+distant mountains to the left toward which the sun was
+descending is Dalat, an expensive hotel and hill-station which
+the European residents of southern Indo-China call their
+Darjeeling. All this mountainous region back of the narrow
+strip of rice-growing coast-land is inhabited by Moï,
+“savages” who wear breech-clouts and look at life accordingly.
+There are several undomesticated tribes scattered
+throughout Indo-China, some of them dangerous even to
+the white man who claims to rule over it. Many parts of
+the hinterland are unexplored by the self-styled rulers, and
+portions of it are impossible without a wild-man guide,
+who may not consent to lend his assistance. Queer claims
+are those of the Caucasian and Japanese races of ruling over
+this or that country when they only control the modernized
+edges of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These Moï in their loin-cloths, most savage of the wild
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>tribes of Indo-China and looking not unlike our Indians,
+hold some clusters of mountains where it is still not entirely
+safe to go. Some have renegade Annamese leaders;
+one tribe lives in trees, in which it builds little houses, out
+of wholesome respect for tigers. The visitor to the Moï
+is expected to announce his arrival and friendly intentions
+by beating on a drum set up at the entrance to every village,
+as we knock at a door. If his visit is agreeable, a
+man bearing rice comes out to escort him, and if he is
+prepared to give salt in return, he is made welcome. Though
+they have little or no intercourse with the rest of the world,
+the Moï suffered greatly from the recent epidemic of “flu,”
+and fevers and smallpox have often ravaged them. The
+average Moï woman has ten children, of whom only one
+or two reaches maturity. Thus the estimated three hundred
+thousand Moï are constantly decreasing. It is curious
+how many savage tribes have less success in raising their
+young than do most wild animals. Perhaps it is nature’s
+way of keeping down an intermediate creation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Moï language, with no tones in the Chinese sense,
+sounds almost European. At the age of puberty boys and
+girls alike undergo the formality of having their teeth filed
+down to the gums. With some kind relative sitting on
+the chest of the sufferer, lying on his back with his head
+between the legs of a primitive vise, and with a wooden
+bit forced into his mouth, a medicine-man breaks off the
+teeth with stones and hacks and chips them away. It is
+their idea of making themselves beautiful, and the boy or
+girl who has not undergone this punishment is not considered
+marriageable or otherwise of adult status. After a day of
+this frightful work the operator leaves his victim covered
+with blood, his gums in ribbons, his lips like hashed beefsteak,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>and incapable for a fortnight of eating anything but
+liquids. Nor is this all, for the patient is then given a
+stone with which to continue the beautifying process himself,
+when he has a moment to spare, until not a sign of
+tooth remains above the level of the gums. Among some
+of the tribes the lower teeth are given a saw shape, so that
+the open mouth suggests that of an aged shark that has
+lost its upper plate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Dalat is the chief hunting-ground for tigers in Indo-China.
+So well are these hunts organized by the French that the
+brave hunter bags his beast as safely as royalty does.
+There is a French colonial official whose chief duty it is
+to oblige those who wish to boast that they have killed a
+tiger. One orders a tiger by telegraph—tiger <i><span lang="fr">à la carte</span></i>, so
+to speak; the official sends out coolies to lay a bait that
+has reached just the right degree of olfactory attraction
+to the great cats, and in due season the bold hunter lays
+one low without the slightest risk. Thus Indo-China is full
+of successful tiger-hunters, without a scar to show for it.
+The Annamese down on the coastal plain live in such dread
+of the tiger that they never mention their greatest four-footed
+enemy except by the respectful title of Ong Kop
+(Lord Tiger), and in the woods your coolie will make a
+clawing sign rather than speak openly of the fearsome beast.
+Children have been carried off by tigers within a mile or
+two of the Annamese capital. Yet the Moï hunt them
+with primitive weapons that are hardly more effective than
+a sharpened pole. “Moï,” by the way, is simply the Annamese
+pronunciation of the Chinese character “man,” meaning
+barbarian, a term much used by these two races to
+designate the despised peoples who have not the honor of
+being of the same blood as they.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>Heavy clouds, and one gust of rain, as from the swiftly
+passing nozzle of a celestial hose, swept over the train late
+in the afternoon, though in Saïgon rain is unknown at that
+season. Near Tourcham real mountain ranges climbed down
+to the edge of the plain and crowded the railway so close
+to the sea that we caught several glimpses of it, and of
+waterways beautiful at high tide. The name of this all
+but isolated station is taken from the great Cham tower
+that stands on a hillock near it. The Cham were an ancient
+people, of Hindu civilization also, who occupied this coastal
+strip many centuries ago, long before the Khmer swept
+down into the peninsula, and they left behind them gray
+stone towers that stand forth weirdly in the wilderness of
+to-day. Mammoth rocks heaped themselves up into half-jungled
+hills as we raced onward between low mountains—the
+coastal group on one hand and the forerunners of the
+great Annamese chain inland on the other. Toward sunset
+the arid landscape grew green again, some paddy-fields
+and scattered villages appeared; then the region as far as
+the eye could see turned frankly to rice culture, though
+with cattle grazing now in long brown stubble. But this
+fertility did not last, even where there was evidence of
+plenty of rain recently; in its place came bush, primitive
+unpeopled jungle, trees in white flower shrouded with vines,
+kapok trees shedding their vegetable cotton, flatlands, or at
+most low hills. Patches of Indian corn and tobacco flashed
+by, clusters of miserable wattled mud huts with old straw
+or palm-leaf roofs that looked like beggars’ caps, but there
+were no people at all compared to almost any part of
+China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nhatrang had a booming beach and a constant sea-breeze,
+and seemed spacious and pleasant, a trifle cooler than Saïgon.
+But this I take partly on faith, for I never saw it by daylight.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>Thick tropical night had fallen when the train came
+to the end of its rails, and almost before I knew it I had
+been whisked into the stopping-place provided for Europeans.
+This was a cross between a government <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> and a
+public inn, exactly what a French establishment in the
+tropics run by a slippered Alsatian who had completely
+forgotten his native land, except for its German accent,
+would naturally be. It seemed that I, the only European
+to whom Nhatrang was to play host that night, had broken
+a fixed rule of travel in these parts. Of two Annamese
+youths who had boarded the train some miles away to
+drum up passengers for two rival motor-buses, I had come
+to terms with the least respectable, whereas all Europeans
+hitherto had patronized the official mail-bus belonging to
+vested interests. But the terms were favorable accordingly,
+and as between outsiders and vested interests my sympathies
+are inclined to radicalism.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was called at three, and we were off again in the
+bootleg autobus that had clinched our agreement by carrying
+me from station to inn the evening before. It was
+still dark when we crossed a broad estuary or river by a
+<i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i> and struck off into what seemed to be mountains. A
+<i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i>, as all diligent students of French know, is a ferry,
+but the genus that abounds in Indo-China is worthy a
+name of its own. How many times during my gasoline-propelled
+travels throughout the colony my eyes fell upon
+that capital T on its back like a helpless turtle, which meant
+one more river to cross by the precarious Annamese method,
+I refuse even to try to guess. As a special concession I
+might admit that there are at least a thousand bridges in
+Indo-China that have never been built, some of which I
+fear never will be. One is rolling serenely along a smooth
+French highway, swathed in that delight which comes from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>swift comfortable motion, so long as it is uninterrupted,
+when “Brrgrrum!”—another sign-board with the overturned
+T. The vehicle slithers down a steep and probably
+slimy bank, all but sinks a collection of ancient planks
+criminally put together, and stops just in time to keep from
+sliding off the farther end of them. If it is daytime, two
+or three or half a dozen Annamese of either sex and any
+age have been aroused from their siesta by the overworked
+horn and the compact of automobile and their disjointed
+sleeping place, which they begin forthwith to pole or gondolier
+across the fluid interruption to traffic. If it is night,
+profanity and slapping on the part of the chauffeur and his
+assistants may also be necessary to metamorphose the several
+huddled sacks about the intrepid raft into living beings and
+to move them to indulge in similar exertions. Sometimes,
+if the expanse of water is not too great, there is a rope
+or chain from shore to shore. The boatmen use chain-handles
+weighted at the end with a block of wood by means of
+which they wrap themselves easily about the transfluvial
+cable as it is dragged up from the slimy bottom. But
+whatever the method of propulsion, the craft is sure to run
+aground or meet some other form of delaying mishap before
+the crossing is completed, and to creak and groan
+and rend itself in a way to assure the inexperienced that
+his trip is about to end at the bottom of that particular
+strip of water. Nothing is more adaptable than the human
+spirit, however, and within a week a <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i> meant no more
+to me than entering the ring does to a bull-fighter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I traveled first class, at two thirds what the same privilege
+would have cost me in the regular conveyance of the
+<i><span lang="fr">poste coloniale</span></i>. That is, I sat wedged into a corner of
+the front seat with the driver. His assistant, having yielded
+his usual place to me for whatever reward may have been
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>promised him by his chief, rode for two days on the running-board,
+one bare foot hooked over the front door or one
+skinny hand clutching a support of the baggage-laden roof.
+It was a place convenient for his duties anyway, for these
+consisted in catching sight of the next kilometer-post in
+order to compute the fare of each new passenger, clambering
+along the side of the car like a chipmunk on a wall to
+collect it, slapping or booting with a bare toe pedestrians
+who did not speedily give the vehicle the widest possible
+berth, and watering the radiator wherever time and water
+were to be had, as if it were some jungle beast perpetually
+dying of tropical thirst. Behind me rode an average of
+fourteen Annamese, with a few babies usually thrown in.
+These second-class passengers enjoyed the privilege of being
+less likely than I to catapult through the wind-shield at
+one of the sudden stops that were always imminent; but no
+doubt the honor of my position, and the lesser likelihood
+of being sprayed with betel-juice by some garrulous fellow-passenger,
+made my double fare worth while.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The chauffeur, like his understudy, was dressed in
+tropical French fashion, as was proper to his honorable
+calling, a soft felt hat crushed down over his head, his
+shirt-collar wide open, after the latest fashion of European
+beaches. Once he abandons the comfortable and pleasing
+garb of his own people, the Annamese jumps to the most
+ultra-modern mode of his rulers. Until I had met others
+of his clan who seemed to have learned the chauffeur trade
+in a tailor-shop, I considered this driver the last word
+in perpetual homicidal intention; looking back upon him
+from the vantage-ground of uninjured escape from Indo-China,
+I grant him perfection among Annamese wielders
+of the steering-wheel. For one thing he wore shoes, which
+is by no means common among his brake- and clutch-stepping
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>compatriots, and the little French he tortured when
+there was no visible way out of it was at times within reach
+of an attentive understanding, in itself a rare virtue. His
+chief amusement was the crushing of dogs, those thin yellow
+dogs that are almost as numerous in Annamese villages
+as children and pigs. It was a kindness to the gaunt
+curs perhaps, but I never reached the point of taking
+great pleasure in seeing one of them disappear beneath us
+with one short helpless yelp. When he could not find
+enough of these pitiful animals within reach, he brushed
+against frightened <i><span lang="fr">nha-qués</span></i>, the leisurely peasants of Annam,
+in order to see how far they could remove themselves in
+a single jump. Not a few of them made the records of
+mere athletes seem the performances of babes in arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To be the driver of an automobile is to the Annamese
+more than a trade, it is a title. The first chauffeur of the
+<i><span lang="fr">Résidence Supérieure</span></i> at the capital of Annam wears the
+dragon decoration of his emperor, and other chauffeurs
+passing through Hué go to his garage to kowtow before him.
+The ease with which Orientals adapt themselves to our inventions
+is one of the wonders of the East. One would suppose
+that a people quite incapable of understanding, much
+less inventing, such a mechanical contrivance as the automobile
+would stand in awe of it, and of those who had
+contrived it. Not at all; on the contrary they take it as
+calmly as they do the growths of nature, as they do the
+miracles with which they credit their demons and invisible
+spirits, showing the same rage or surprise if it does not
+respond to their senseless chastisement as at their gaunt
+sore-backed domestic animals refusing to work under their
+heartless lashings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Thanks perhaps to French discipline, or because the Annamese
+are by nature a more quiet leisurely race, my companion
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>on the front seat was not so wild as the average
+Chinese chauffeur. Yet on the whole it was no great
+pleasure to ride beside this solemn little brown man in his
+misplaced near-European clothes. Though it was always
+passable, the road was in places atrociously surfaced, for
+all the road-gangs along the way. Especially among the
+mountains that often came down to the edge of the sea
+it is no joke even for such famous road-builders as the
+French to keep up a highway in a land of tropical rainy
+seasons. An autobus of the same bootleg line, lying upside
+down in a creek where a bridge had broken down a
+week before under its thundering impact, did not give me
+that reassurance of complete safety at his high speed which
+the fellow himself seemed to have. It was bad enough to
+see one of the mangy yellow mongrels that slink about
+every Annamese hut disappear under our wheels every hour
+or two. I could comfort myself that these at least should
+be glad to be so suddenly put out of their lifelong misery.
+But in the course of the morning the nerveless Asiatic
+at the wheel succeeded in running over a handsome foreign
+hunting-dog loping along beside its shotgun-armed French
+master on a bicycle. Perhaps he did not deliberately overtake
+the animal—unsuspecting, because of the kindly European
+atmosphere it lived in, any such treachery as the
+orphaned mongrels of Annam are constantly on the lookout
+for—but he could at any rate easily have avoided it.
+The Annamese passengers, gazing back at the writhing corpse
+in the dust as we sped away, seemed to look upon
+such incidents as one of the pleasures of travel, due them
+in consideration of the high fare on these strange foreign
+vehicles. One had the feeling that they grinned and chattered
+and nudged one another not so much because of a
+certain more or less natural antipathy toward the race to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>which this particular dog was attached as out of sheer
+Oriental joy at beholding suffering. On the tanned mask
+of the driver’s face there was just the hint of two conflicting
+emotions; one the satisfaction of having added another
+dog, better than the average, to his score; the other
+a possibility of vengeance on the part of the Frenchman
+kneeling in the dust beside his dying pet, that transferred
+itself into a more deafening roar and breakneck speed than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>That autobus trip from Nhatrang to Tourane was through
+much prettier scenery than the one by train the day before.
+For one thing the highway runs much closer to the
+coast than does the railway. Outcroppings of the great Annamese
+chain came down to the edge of the China Sea
+every little while, especially during the first day’s stage from
+Nhatrang to Quinhon, and our road wound and twisted,
+buckled and climbed, over high rocky spurs, along the sheer
+edge of breath-taking slopes, up and down between sea-level
+and several thousand feet above it, often with hair-pin
+turns high up along precipitous cliffs on the very edge of
+the densely blue ocean. It opened many magnificent vistas,
+of weird indentations, bold headlands, charming little beaches,
+now and again an unbelievably blue bay thickly speckled
+with the sails of tiny boats dancing in the whitecaps as
+to Pan’s pipes, yet seeming to have no fear. They were
+mere cockle-shells, these sea-going canoes of the Annamese
+fishermen, made of bamboo splints tightly woven together
+and covered with pitch. Scores of them, baking bottom up
+in the sun on raised frameworks and gleaming under a
+new coating as with varnish, lay along the road through
+Annam. Sometimes the road itself was made of bamboo
+splints, woven together into great mat-like strips six feet
+or more wide and in some places half a mile long. These
+carried the heavy autobus across deep sand, at either end
+of leaky <i><span lang="fr">bacs</span></i>, in which it would otherwise have floundered
+almost as quickly as in the water itself.</p>
+
+<div id='i_098' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_098a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Motor-buses link together the railways of Indo-China, crossing broad sandy river-banks on strips of woven bamboo splints</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_098b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>In Annam prisoners working in the streets wear a light remnant of the old neck-torturing Chinese <i><span lang="fr">cangue</span></i></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_099' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_099a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>In the “Marble Mountains” are many grottoes, some of them elaborately fitted up as temples</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_099b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>An Annamese summoning a ferry from across one of the many rivers which still offer no bridges to automobiles</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>Deeply green wet jungle surrounded us much of the
+time, cactus stretching out spiny arms toward us. Blinding
+white salt marshes contrasted with a road in places so red
+that the saliva of a nation of betel-chewers did not spot it.
+Striking peaks of the coastal group alternated with tame
+stretches of dusty highway down at sea-level, gusts of
+rain from mountains of black clouds with blazing tropical
+sunshine. Wherever mountains and foot-hills receded
+enough to leave a suggestion of plain, however narrow, rice-fields
+filled every level space. The young rice of the first
+crop of the year was deeply flooded now, peasants plowing
+thigh-deep in it behind ponderous water-buffaloes that seemed
+to be in their element wading in slime. Some men and
+more women were clawing in the mud up to their biceps;
+others paddled about the fields in the light canoes of woven
+bamboo. Stones were so rare in some sections of this
+ancient route that the well-sweeps used for irrigation were
+weighted at the short end with balls of mud and straw.
+Along the road there was no more suggestion of fences
+than in China itself, but the smaller foot-hills were here
+and there cut up into green fields by thin lines of greener
+bushes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With an hour’s hot halt for refreshments for man, woman,
+and gasoline-consuming beast at a village boasting a tolerable
+Annamese imitation of a French restaurant, we rode
+on through scorching midday into the slightly cooler afternoon,
+ending the first day’s stage with sunshine enough left
+to photograph pretty Quinhon. In the last few miles big
+rice-plains had opened out; we had bisected a scattered
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>town of some size; files of coolies had increased until the
+road became an almost continual procession of them. Quinhon
+is beautifully situated on a spit of sand and earth
+projected out into a bay surrounded by mountainous
+shores. Thus there are both mountains and sea on all sides
+of it, except where the road enters the one long street of
+the native town, merging beyond into shaded drives and
+foreign houses in garden-groves, none of them a hundred
+yards from either beach. The French suppress somewhat
+more successfully than the English-speaking races the tendency
+to insist on erecting in the tropics dwellings exactly
+like those at home, and the houses they build in Indo-China
+are not entirely unfitted to the climate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The ruling race monopolizes this tongue of sandy land
+running out into the densely blue, very deep harbor surrounded
+by high hills, where one small ocean steamer, flying
+the British flag, now rode at anchor. The native town
+is little more than two unbroken lines of shops, and between
+them and the French residences stood a whitewashed
+market building of modern lines, even at this late hour
+half filled and all but surrounded by squatting women in
+the woven palm-leaf hats of parasol shape that are the most
+prominent feature of every Annamese market. They sold
+all manner of native foodstuffs, fish from the sea, long
+rolls of dark-brown sugar wrapped in leaves, arec-nuts and
+the betel-leaves and lime that go with them, recalling the
+Indian women of the Andes selling cocoa-leaves and similar
+ingredients of an analogous mild vice. Though French
+paper piastres, fractional silver, and big copper sous are
+the ordinary Indo-Chinese medium of exchange, in the
+markets the masses still use <i><span lang="fr">sapèques</span></i>, as the French call
+Chinese “cash.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was at Quinhon that I saw for the first time in Indo-China,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>though by no means the last, prisoners wearing the
+<i><span lang="fr">cangue</span></i> once so common and now so rare in China. Instead
+of the great planks of Manchu—and Puritan—days, however,
+these contrivances about offending necks were a very
+light frame of wood, as if the French, though unable to do
+away entirely with an old Annamese custom left over from
+the centuries of Chinese rule, had insisted on softening this
+form of punishment. Native justice prescribes leg-irons
+too, and sentences men to hard labor even for not paying
+taxes, but French rule seems to temper Asiatic cruelty
+by wrapping bands of cloth about the ankles so that irons
+shall not chafe the skin. Most of the convicts also had
+an iron band about the waist, and this was connected with
+the leg-irons by two chains that clanked constantly with
+the prisoner’s short steps. Yet the fellows could even climb
+cocoanut-trees in these, and they did not seem to have any
+difficulty in getting permission from the soldier guards to
+step into a shop and buy cigarettes or the makings of
+the betel-nut cuds with which the black teeth of both prisoners
+and guards driveled. The men who thus dropped behind
+soon caught up again with their fellows, pushing and
+pulling two-wheeled carts of sanitary purposes and drawing
+loads of broken stone.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For all its French colony, the people here gaped at a
+foreigner almost as much as in China—though perhaps it
+was merely because I was out in the sun and on foot at
+such an hour. They gathered to watch me write wherever
+I drew out my note-book and gaped open-mouthed at my
+antics with the camera that few of them seemed to recognize,
+but with more respect, or fear, than Chinese crowds
+show under similar circumstances, remaining quietly at some
+distance, like well trained children. Frenchmen, even
+women and children, began to appear when the sun neared
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>the horizon, strolling under the trees and along the edges
+of the blue bay out on their breeze-cooled sandspit. At
+the more or less French hotel where Europeans passing
+through Quinhon spend the night I was joined that evening
+by the only man of my own tongue I met between Saïgon
+and Tourane. He was thin and lanky with long tropical
+living, but filled with Scotch humor, and announced himself
+the chief engineer of the steamer in the harbor. He
+did not seem to believe my tale that I had come all the
+way from Saïgon by land, much less that I hoped to go
+clear on into China without taking to the sea, though he
+had sailed into this and all the other little ports along the
+coast of Annam half his life, during which his chief pleasures
+were a meal and a “berth” ashore now and then.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER VI<br> <span class='c011'>THROUGH ANNAM TO ITS CAPITAL</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>We were off again by the same conveyance at four
+next morning. Long before daylight the road was
+alive with files of coolies, two loads bouncing at the ends
+of each shoulder-pole, the same familiar lines of jogging
+carriers as in China, with the difference that here there were
+as many women as men, for the bound foot is one advantage
+of Chinese civilization that was never adopted in
+Annam. All up and down the long slender kingdom of
+the Eminent South endless miles of coolies of both sexes
+come trotting to market to sell to one another. Always
+they jog in Indian files, even on the wide modern roads,
+unable to cast off centuries of training along the narrow
+trails of old Annam. All wore palm-leaf hats; some carried
+parasols also, even before daylight, perhaps as a protection
+against the setting moon. With the first rays of sun,
+flung horizontally across the already tepid world, double
+lines of pole-bearers stretched ahead and behind, on both
+sides of the road, as far as the eye could see, the women
+carrying with a floating motion, many of the men not
+carrying at all. New lines, cut out in fresco against the
+brightening horizon, came jogging in along the dikes of
+the paddy-fields. As both sexes dressed and carried alike,
+and the men wore their long hair in Psyche knots, it was
+not easy to distinguish man from woman until we were
+close upon them, sometimes not even then. Evidently the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>Chinese found this annoying, for when they conquered
+Annam, centuries ago, they ordered the women to wear short
+garments with wide sleeves. China’s power over the kingdom
+of the south virtually ended during the Ming dynasty,
+however, and the Manchus did not succeed in introducing
+the queue.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The country was now perhaps a bit less mountainous than
+the day before, the strip of plain wider, certainly more
+densely populated, and all its products were bound market-ward.
+Here and there in the files a mother carried a child
+at one end of her pole and a small pig at the other. The
+hasty glimpse as we dashed past was not enough to decide
+whether the youngster or the pig had been brought
+along as a counterweight. Like their near relatives in
+China, the pigs of Annam refuse to walk to market. Coolies
+carry them in baskets—“like foreigners in chairs”—or merely
+with a band from their jouncing poles about their bellies,
+which would seem to the disinterested observer to be more
+painful than walking. Who would be so bold, however,
+as to claim to grasp the point of view of a pig?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Often that morning the road ahead looked like a flowing
+river of coolies, parasol-hats and jogging poles forming
+a kind of scum on the surface. We dashed through this
+endless stream like a steamer through a narrow waterway,
+our incessant horn always clearing a passage just soon
+enough to escape doing the ceaseless multitude of dodging
+pedestrians bodily injury, the chauffeur’s assistant striking
+a resounding thwack, with a whip that he seemed to carry
+for no other purpose, on every palm-leaf hat he could by
+any stretching reach. We dashed as peremptorily through
+markets squatting along and, so rare is wheeled traffic,
+even in the road at the frequent villages, markets noisy
+with bartering, gatherings that recalled Haiti in other ways
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>than the pell-mell with which they scattered as we rode
+down upon them without so much as slackening speed.
+Annamese markets are always a broad vista of whitish palm-leaf
+hats, so that they look like an individually roofed
+congregation. There were hat factories beside the road
+where more of this ubiquitous head-gear was being fashioned,
+of other materials as well as palm-leaves, it seemed, for
+the brass top of one soldier’s hat came off in my presence
+and disclosed the filling to be the apartments-to-let columns
+of a New York newspaper, yellow with several years of
+tropical service. In certain movements and when the wind
+is blowing the Annamese must keep his mouth open to
+hold his hat on, by tautening the ribbon under his chin.
+Wanderlust in Annam takes the form of going to market,
+especially among the women and girls. They like the sense
+of freedom it gives them, the company, the gossip, above all
+the bargaining, at which the women of Annam are past
+mistresses. In the afternoon we met these same files of
+women, or at least their exact counterparts, jogging homeward
+as heavily laden as they came, for they often buy as
+much as they sell.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this section, all through southern Annam in fact, every
+one not in mourning wore black. Compared with those of
+Cambodia and of some other parts of Indo-China, the
+women were almost prudish in their dress. Like the men
+they wore thin cotton pantaloons as voluminous as those
+of the modern college youth, and a jacket barely disclosing
+the neck, and more often than not all this was covered with
+a flowing cotton coat reaching almost to the ankles. Rarely
+was a breast revealed even during the frequent nursing of
+children that in many cases should long since have outgrown
+that form of nourishment. True, in the hottest
+hours of the sea-level day many of the women, especially
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>the older and less attractive ones, wore in their own villages
+nothing between hat and pantaloons except a diamond-shaped
+breast-protector, tied on with cross-strings across
+the back, outdoing from the rear the most extreme of
+Western evening-gowns. But on the road and in the market
+even the flowing coats seemed almost <i><span lang="fr">de rigueur</span></i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the coolie class these overcoats of both sexes were
+of thin cotton. The better-to-do men in the towns and in
+the autobus wore jet-black ones, thin as gauze, transparent
+as mosquito-netting, with flowered designs of the same hue
+woven in them, like the pattern in lace, and fastened together
+down the side with little gold buttons. Beneath
+this the well dressed man wore a white jacket-shirt and
+very loose cotton trousers, and thrust bare feet into black
+slippers or wooden clogs. A black cloth carelessly wound
+about the head distinguished most coolies, but all men above
+that class wore that most unique item of the Annamese
+costume, a black band-turban permanently arranged in many
+little folds, rising in stairway fashion up the forehead
+and descending in the same manner at the back. This mere
+head-band, without top, is worn indoors and out, even, one
+suspects, during sleep. In place of the male turban the
+women wrap black cloth about the long single thick braid
+of their generally luxuriant hair, and wind this about the
+head. Out in the sun the palm-leaf hat sits on top of
+turban or its feminine counterpart. At least along this
+main route of French railway and autobus highway both
+men and women of the well-to-do class wore gold and other
+valuable ornaments openly. Long necklaces of grains of
+gold of the size of peas are the favorite adornment of the
+women who can afford them; there were bracelets, sometimes
+several on one arm, earrings usually of gold, and
+miscellaneous jewelry to suit the individual taste or purse.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>Rice lands stretch for many miles north of Quinhon,
+some so broad that they looked like great inundated wheat-fields.
+In other places the hills closed in like interested
+spectators, but still left room for a broad strip of cultivation.
+Sunk to the knees in this slime, pantaloons rolled to
+the tops of their thighs, men and women clawed about the
+roots of the young rice. Here a laborer up to his—or
+her—middle in mud and water toiled feverishly to stanch
+an overflowing pond by slapping hasty handfuls of oozy
+black mud on a broken dike. On another such division
+between the paddy-fields two Annamese of indeterminate
+sex were alternately pulling and letting loose in rhythmic
+cadence the two ends of a cord bearing in its middle a
+pail made of straw, the simplest Oriental form of lifting
+water from an overflooded field into a thirsty one above.
+Farther on, a coolie condemned to hard labor to earn his
+rice, turned with his bare feet a primitive wheel that set
+in motion an endless chain of simple buckets. To protect
+himself from the sun he held in one hand an open
+umbrella, and no doubt dreamed himself a mandarin. Right,
+left, sometimes everywhere as far as the eye could see,
+were rice-fields, mirroring the sun so brightly that the
+eye quailed before them. Yet there was little color to
+make gay this landscape of the plains; it is green or nothing,
+except for the bluish tinge of masses of the Japanese lotus
+or hyacinth. The Annamese planted this in a few selected
+spots to celebrate the victory of the yellow race over the
+white at Tsushima; and now, as if to punish them for their
+seditious thoughts, it has spread far and wide, invading
+their ponds and rice-fields, obstructing their watercourses.
+To-day the peasants of Annam spend much of their time
+laboriously digging out and carrying away this prolific and
+troublesome plant, good for nothing, not even as fertilizer.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>In so narrow and intensively cultivated a land it is a
+great problem even to find space on which to throw the
+stuff, yet their food is just so much decreased until they
+can rid themselves of this disastrous invasion of flowers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A few red humped cattle lolled under wayside trees, or
+grazed on dikes where they were mirrored in the flooded
+fields, as were the mountains in the background and the
+huts in cocoanut-groves against the more or less distant
+foot-hills. Clusters of water-buffaloes on vacation lay immersed
+to their nostrils in mud-holes or swung their mammoth
+horns with an inhospitable air along the mud ridges
+between the paddy-fields, or fed on the edges of the uncultivated
+hillocks in which the great mountain range
+always bulking clearly or hazily to the west gave up its
+contest with the sea. A pair of birds stood blithely on
+the backs of some of the amphibians; on others a boy, at
+times even a girl, lay at full length, head pillowed on rump
+or withers. Among the trees especially these ponderous
+beasts resembled, exactly as to color, that other survivor of
+the dinosaurian age, the elephant. Some of them were of
+that dull creamy hue of the sacred “white” elephants of
+Siam and vicinity. For a semi-albino buffalo is common
+in Indo-China, its eyes red, a rough red skin showing
+through scarce whitish hairs, as if it were half roasted in
+the Annamese sun—perhaps it is only because it is not
+rare enough that this abnormal beast is not also regarded
+as sacred.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>A whole population was toiling in the rice-fields, or
+trotting elastically along the dikes, two pole-balanced loads
+bouncing from every shoulder. The rural Annamese are
+not lazy; on the contrary they are very hard workers,
+though they have some of the natural indolence of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>tropics. Agriculture is laborious under the best of conditions,
+to say nothing of those of the Orient; with his
+seldom lacking flock of voracious children the <i><span lang="fr">nha-qué</span></i>, the
+peasant of Annam, can rarely rest. Small, but of great
+endurance, the countrymen of the Eminent South are forever
+on the run, like ants in haste to provide themselves
+against a drouth or a famine. Both sexes can trot indefinitely
+under great loads; even a six-year-old boy can
+propel a sampan, though he may not yet have reached the
+dignity of clothing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Rice is by far the principal product of Annam, fish or
+fruit being a slow second. Thanks to its rice, Annam is
+rich; all Indo-China is rich, else why this Western form
+of “protection”? Low as they seem to us from the land
+of exorbitance, prices are high compared to China. There
+were a few beggars, now and then one obviously leprous,
+yet few indeed measured by the rows of them along any
+important Chinese route. A visiting French novelist, angry
+at the exchange between its real currency and his poor
+paper francs, entitled one of his chapters on Annam, “Under
+the Sign of the Piastre.” There are so many piastres in
+Indo-China that the Chinese and the Chettys, the “usuricultors”
+who lend to the unforesighted peasant at highwayman
+rates of interest, and even French officialdom and
+monopolists, cannot take them all; there remain some for the
+<i><span lang="fr">nha-qué</span></i>, the toiling peasant who earns them all by the sweat
+of his brown back—and those of his women-folk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Since almost all the Annamese are agriculturists, there
+is no aristocracy between the emperor and his mandarins
+and the <i><span lang="fr">nha-qué</span></i>, little exploiting of any other than the agricultural
+resources of the country. Whatever wealth it has
+comes from the soil, almost entirely from these flooded
+rice-fields mirroring the ever near-by chain of mountains
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>that shuts off this laborious people close on the west. For
+the real Annam is only this very narrow strip of fertile
+lowlands on the eastern slope of the Siamese peninsula.
+Like the Nile in Egypt, this main highway, close as it
+is to the sea, takes in all the narrow country. The Annamese
+chain crowds the toiling peasant so close to the
+sea in many places that he is often driven into it as a
+fisherman to escape starvation. He cultivates only the valleys,
+both because he knows little else than rice and because
+the Moï, the barbarians of various tribes, make it uncomfortable
+for him back in the hills. Yet narrow as their
+country is, of the eighteen or twenty million people in
+French Indo-China two thirds are Annamese. For as if
+to make up for its slenderness, that strip of flatland between
+the mountains and the sea is incredibly fertile, so
+fertile that its overcrowded toilers trouble themselves far
+less with fertilizing than do the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bamboo of all sizes, palms ranging from mere fans to
+great masses of leaves, magnificent trees, some of them
+bearing the jackfruit on their trunks, cocoanut-palms
+hugging the coast-line, banana-plants all but hiding thatched
+huts, above all the straight and slender arec-palm up which
+climbs the clinging betel-vine, broke the monotony of the rice-fields.
+There were miles of hedges gay with what looked
+like a small pink rose, and large flowers made up of many
+tiny ones, care-free, unconstrained bushes, not the domesticated
+hedge-rows of England. In places a shock of colors
+like an explosion emphasized the landscape. Then, after
+so long a stretch of rice-fields that they grew wearisome,
+we went high up over a spur from which spread out another
+great vista, more than half of it the dense, very
+green tops of cocoanut-palms. Beyond came miles of waste-lands,
+with sand white as snow piled up over sterile hillocks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>There were hundreds of graves among these barren sands,
+strewn as closely together as are the green unmarked grave-mounds
+that emerge everywhere from the rice-fields, where
+agriculture gnaws at them year after year, century after century,
+yet never destroys them. Though January was not yet
+done, and the lunar New Year was still a week off, preparations
+had almost everywhere been completed for that important
+date. Here and there a man was still touching up his
+family graves, giving them a new top of sand or earth,
+weeding and clearing them of all vegetation, before the
+Annamese New Year should overtake him and bring reproach
+from the spirits of his ancestors. But most of this
+work had already been done, so that the rounded knolls,
+such as stretch in hundreds of millions from northern Korea
+to southern Annam, were bare and smooth now, all showing
+some sign of recent care. Here in the waste-lands
+the graves looked like sand-mounds left by playing children;
+farther on came queer coffin-shaped ones of cement
+or baked mud, just as if a coffin above the ground had
+merely been plastered over.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Annamese live and keep shop on a wooden platform
+a couple of feet above the earth floor; and generally mere
+boards laid on two sawhorses, covered with a thin reed
+mat, serve them as beds. Rarely has a native house more
+comfort than that. As all houses should be redecorated
+at New Year’s, there is a great market then for new reed,
+grass, or fiber mats, and whole processions of them were
+coming in from the country districts on the shoulder-poles
+of men and wives. Some were plain, some had simple
+designs, some had streaks of color running through them,
+and I saw many rich with red and purple and lush-green
+hues that no doubt would grace the hard couch of the
+wealthy. To the Annamese the mat is the symbol of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>bed, of the couple, the household; and believing as firmly
+as the French that it is not well for man to sleep alone,
+they always sell these mats in pairs. If a family buys only
+one mat at New Year’s renewing-time, say the wiseacres,
+some member of it is sure to die within the year. From
+the moment that two persons are gathered together they
+should buy two mats, and as there is very little single
+blessedness in Annam, merchants do not wish at any price
+to divide a pair and run the risk of never selling the odd
+one. Bachelors and old maids, one gathers, are as badly
+off at New Year’s time as a one-legged man in a shoe-store—and
+it serves them right, any native of early-marrying
+Annam would no doubt answer, were his attention called
+to one of those rare and unnatural beings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every little while during that all-day journey from
+Quinhon to Tourane gusts of rain sprang up, between
+stretches of blazing sunshine, and then men, women, and
+children, every one of the outdoor class, slipped on palm-leaf
+rain-coats that were shaped like opera-capes, or like
+barrels with one stave removed so that the wearers could
+get into them, and which they turned in any direction against
+the slant of the rain. Scores of boys in these leaf rain-coats
+sat their water-buffaloes or their red humped cattle
+and let it drizzle. A real shower brought out so many rain-coats
+that the whole landscape—people and houses, buffaloes
+and hillsides—were covered with palm-leaves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the slimy pond at the entrance to every village the
+inhabitants were washing their rice, their clothing, their
+water-buffaloes, their night-buckets, themselves, everything
+that is dirty, and dipping from the same spot water for
+their kettles. They live with their cattle, their sway-back
+pigs, their chickens, ducks, and orphaned curs; at noon-time
+everybody in the villages, even the yellow mongrels, the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>black pigs, the wilt-tailed fowls, slip into the cai-nha, or
+thatched hut, for the siesta; and by night there is a similar
+congregating. Yet they are not so filthy as the Chinese;
+all things are relative. It behooves a more southern people,
+eager to live out its allotted span, to show less innocence
+of the meaning of cleanliness than do the incredible
+Celestials.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Once that day we met an elephant. He was being slowly
+driven along by a nonchalant coolie dozing astride his neck,
+grazing as he went. Somehow an elephant strolling down
+a modern highway, marked with kilometer-posts and traveled
+by autobuses, daintily picking a bit of weed or a tuft
+of grass here and there, and attracting no more attention
+than a cow or a water-buffalo, was more impressive than
+one all dolled up in a circus-parade.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>When it was not clambering over a spur of the ever jostling
+mountain chain to the west, this road through Annam
+was always the same—a dike between two rice-fields, dusty
+or muddy in the country, filled with people, pigs, and dogs
+in the towns and villages. Then suddenly, frequently, inevitably,
+another <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i>, an ancient floating contrivance that
+leaks and creaks with age, which Annamese push across
+some river or inlet of the sea with poles that seem too
+heavy for their meager arms. Sometimes the commander
+of the <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i> is a woman, strongest of all the crew, not only
+in will-power but in muscle. Once in a while we crossed
+a woven-bamboo bridge that gave with a groan under our
+cruel weight and regained its shape as an invalid knocked
+down regains his feet. But the short rivers of narrow
+Annam are often so wide and so erratic that they discourage
+the building of bridges. For the stream rises or
+falls, according to the season, disappears, comes back in a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>towering rage; and red with anger some morning it carries
+away not only bridges, where any exist, but dikes, roads,
+villages, the very railways, anything that dares to loiter in
+its imperious path. Then, too, Indo-China has terrific
+typhoons, which tear down her forests, to say nothing of
+destroying roads and bridges and the other puny works of
+the French usurpers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The French do their best to keep the highways of Indo-China
+up to their own far-famed standard, especially this
+ancient route through Annam that is still sometimes known,
+in memory of the days when Chinese officials went over it
+in chairs, as the Mandarin Road—though now it is Route
+Coloniale No. 1. A French <i><span lang="fr">ingénieur de routes</span></i> lives in
+every stretch of a hundred kilometers or so; there was
+much road-mending all along that two-day autobus journey.
+An army of <i><span lang="fr">congaïes</span></i>, the supple young women of Annam,
+trotting like black ants along the dikes, carried stones, mud,
+and other materials in little baskets at the ends of their
+shoulder-poles; at frequent intervals we dashed past long
+heaps of broken stone; men and women, boys and girls,
+the two sexes working and looking incredibly alike, and
+showing no sign that they recognized any difference in sex,
+toiled to keep the road passable.</p>
+
+<div id='i_114' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_114a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>An Annamese girl, chaperoned by her small brother, sells her wares in the market-place of Hué</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_114b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>When it rains in Annam, as it does on every provocation, a simple straw raincoat covers either sex among the masses</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_115' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_115a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Like the southern Chinese the Annamese are expert boatmen because they learn their calling long before they reach the dignity of clothing</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_115b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Swinging in the village squares is a favorite diversion of the Annamese populace during the lunar New Year’s season</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>The roads of Indo-China, even this principal highway of
+Annam, are constructed for one vehicle at a time, as are
+the <i><span lang="fr">bacs</span></i> and the narrow cement bridges across the slighter
+streams that were constantly breaking through from the
+mountains on this journey up the eastern coast of the
+China Sea. There was little reason for them to be wider,
+for few automobiles take advantage of the Frenchman’s
+expensive road-building, though there were then more than
+four thousand motor-cars in Indo-China, and any one who
+has recently traveled in continental eastern Asia knows that
+means a great many. We passed a private car or two during
+the day, the south-bound autobus of our own line, and
+the rival mail-carrying government buses, the one bound
+in our direction constantly racing past us or being in turn
+left to swallow our dust or wallow in our mud. A few
+big clumsy carts drawn by water-buffaloes brought rice to
+market; further than that there were almost no other
+vehicles, except rickshaws. No wonder road-filling markets
+and startled villagers, to say nothing of pigs, curs, urchins,
+and chickens, were not prepared for us when we roared
+down upon them out of the south and on like an avalanche
+into the north. Nearly all the carts of Indo-China are
+drawn by man-power; even massive machinery is hauled by
+human muscle, though there are a few stout little horses.
+A hammock slung on two poles, with a woven-reed or
+split-bamboo cover over it, were the only survivals of the
+sedan-chairs once so numerous along the Mandarin Road.
+To-day you can scour all Indo-China, from Bac-Lieu to
+Laokay, and never meet, at least on a main road, a single
+palanquin, nowhere find a chair porter, once so numerous,
+but only a thin line of autobuses and automobiles, and many
+rickshaws.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We met rickshaws everywhere, plying even between towns
+far apart in the well inhabited sections of this Shoestring
+Country. Red rickshaws rattling with the iron-tired wheels
+of our buggy of a generation ago, nearly all carried two passengers,
+and freight or baggage enough to sink an ox-cart.
+Yet the little runner, seldom as large as either passenger,
+trotted mile after mile across the country, rarely falling into
+a walk. Even in hard-working China two adults are hardly
+ever seen riding in the same rickshaw, but in Annam it is so
+common as to be almost the rule. It is of course nice and
+cozy, romantic and unoriental, to see a man riding along
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>with his wife half in his lap—granting that it always is his
+wife; certainly it is some one’s wife, for nothing is so rare
+in Annam as old maids. Sometimes there is a half-grown
+child also, for good measure, giving the skinny puller the
+task of dragging three persons and all their movable belongings
+along mile after mile of highway, until you wonder
+whether even the dull-witted human horses themselves do
+not realize that it might have been better for them if the
+French had never come to build roads capable of two-wheeled
+vehicles.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Tourane, where the autobus ended its northward task
+some time before sunset on the second day out of Nhatrang,
+is a “foreign concession.” One suspects that the “protected”
+emperor of Annam lost little time in conceding this much
+to the French when they expressed a desire for a <i><span lang="fr">pied à
+terre</span></i> in Annam, with a status similar to those they hold in
+Shanghai and Tientsin. As a matter of fact Tourane, the
+best harbor in Annam, was given to the French, along with
+the islands of Poulo Condore and Touron off the coast of
+Cochinchina, in return for their help to Gia-long in consolidating
+the claims of the present dynasty at the beginning
+of the nineteenth century. Tourane bulks larger
+on the map than on the spot. It suggests a real-estate
+boom in some aristocratic old hamlet that died out long
+before the “plotting” by its optimistic sponsors reached its
+justification. In area it vindicates its conspicuousness on
+paper; on the spot it is even more roomy than the average
+town of Annam under the French, straining itself to cover
+as great a space as possible, like some of our largest American
+cities, like a squatter who fears that anything he may
+not claim will be taken away from him. Grass-bordered
+roads rather than streets, broad rural highways among
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>widely scattered French tropical residences in spacious yards,
+each with the atmosphere of a private park, the necessary
+official buildings of a French headquarters, shops and market-place
+enough to supply the wants of the residents, and
+the Hôtel Morin, half grocery and half <i><span lang="fr">pension</span></i>, for the accommodation
+of transient foreigners, just about complete the
+inventory. Scattered at the end of a short wide river where
+it empties into an excellent blue harbor in which ocean
+steamers can anchor close to the town, it is no city at all
+compared even with obscure Faifo a few miles south; but
+as a residence of foreigners it takes on a false importance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By the same token it has some of the comforts of home,
+or at least their tropical counterparts. The expenditure of
+two piastres a month brings daily to those householders
+capable of appreciating such luxuries two large bottles of
+sterilized water from the French government hospital. Ice,
+without which the French refuse to live for a day in their
+Far-Eastern empire, is brought every morning from Hué,
+sixty-five miles away. I was reminded by contrast of the
+endless individual tasks of boiling all water that passes
+the lips of any but the most foolish foreigners in China,
+and that four fifths of the foreign residents there know
+ice only from homeland memories, while thousands of them
+never enjoy the luxury of a really cold drink from the
+time they leave their transpacific steamer until they embark
+for home again. Wherever half a dozen Frenchmen are
+gathered together in Indo-China there is an ice-making
+machine, or at least some means of getting a daily supply
+from some more fortunate group. The most constant cry
+in any French hotel dining-room in the colony is “<i><span lang="fr">Nuoc-da!</span></i>”
+Natives who have become sophisticated in such matters
+have much sport in startling the Moï and other wild tribes
+back of the sea-level strip with the “water-stone” produced
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>by their French masters. A piece of it passed from palm
+to palm until it disappears like a few drops of perspiration
+produces more astonishment among the hills than does an
+automobile or airplane. It is pure magic to the naïve wearers
+of the loin-cloth, and by such things have the people of
+the West won their prestige among them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Until I reached Tourane I had not seen a Christian missionary
+in Indo-China—that is, not a Protestant missionary;
+the French do not admit that their own priests are
+missionaries in a land over which their own flag waves.
+Glad as the traveler always is to meet his own people in
+very foreign parts, I had been half conscious of a feeling
+of relief at the scarcity of avowed soul-savers, compared
+to the swarms of them in China itself. This paucity of
+workers in the spiritual vineyard of a race in some ways
+more Christ-like than we is not an indication that Protestant
+missions have wilfully overlooked Indo-China but that
+the French do not fervently welcome them there. In all
+the colony-protectorate there are only a few proselyters
+from the English-speaking world, and they are confined to
+three or four stations. In activity as well as in territory
+they are forced to be very circumspect, and thereby hangs
+the sad tale they have to tell the traveler who will listen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They came first in 1911, a bit of pollen wafted southward
+from the great mission-field of China. At first they
+were allowed comparative freedom, or at least were graciously
+ignored. Then came the World War, and in due time
+the discovery that the United States might not after all
+join the Allies. Neutrals were rated little better than
+enemies in this far-flung slice of the French empire. All
+American missionaries in the possession were ordered to
+leave. The Canadians might remain, since they were allies;
+but as they were merely individual workers in what was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>virtually an American mission-field, they had little choice
+but to leave also. When the war was long enough over
+for its bitternesses to have become somewhat diluted, the
+missionaries were allowed to return, but only to find their
+goings and doings more hampered than ever. They were
+almost freely admitted to Cochinchina, because it is rated
+a colony, in which the laws and customs of France apply
+in most matters. They were allowed in Tourane, because
+it is a “foreign concession.” But the rest of Indo-China
+being merely under the “protection” of France, missionary
+work there is a different matter. The authorities had discovered
+that the treaty of 1877 between the emperor of
+Annam and the Western world, by which Christian missionaries
+were granted the right freely to propagate their
+doctrines in the emperor’s realm, applied only to the Catholics,
+“because they are the only Christians within the meaning
+of the text.” Moreover the startling fact was unearthed
+that “the emperor and his ministers are against the teaching
+of the Protestant doctrines to their people”—as if the
+poor little puppet on the throne of Annam would dare to
+be against anything unless his French guardians suggested
+it. Similar difficulties developed against admitting missionaries
+to Tonkin, Cambodia, and Laos, and to-day the saving
+of souls in the Protestant fashion is not a flourishing enterprise
+in that part of the peninsula east of Siam.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the other hand the Annamese are converted to
+Catholicism by whole villages, particularly after some priestly
+assistance in the courts, a communal loan, or some other
+legitimate Catholic form of propaganda. One great inducement
+is that the converts are allowed to retain their
+ancestor worship, under a slightly different guise. But
+then, the Protestant missionaries permit their rare converts
+to keep all the wives of whom they are possessed at conversion,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>so long as they do not add to them afterward.
+“What,” the missionaries quite properly ask, “could be done
+with cast-off wives if their converted husbands found Christianity
+a means of getting rid of their support?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In Tourane there was a Protestant church—though the
+French deny such false places of worship any other name
+than <i><span lang="fr">temple</span></i>—and a school. But those great educational and
+medical institutions so common in China with its thousands
+of missionaries of who knows how many sects are not a
+feature of the Indo-China landscape. The French have
+many hospitals, but they are government- rather than priest-operated.
+They have found it uphill work to encourage
+the Annamese to go to them, and only of very late years
+have they attracted any great percentage of the population,
+though clinical service is free and even in-patients pay
+very little—lying-in cases, for instance, are charged about
+a piastre a fortnight, just enough to pay for native food.
+But when the French doctors go to call on patients outside
+the hospitals they ask fees of five piastres a visit
+of French and Annamese alike. Naturally an Annamese
+earning ten piastres a month cannot call in the doctor often,
+so they fall back upon their own medicine-men. “<i><span lang="fr">Mais quoi
+donc!</span></i>” cry the French; “A doctor must have his pay
+like any one else, <i><span lang="fr">n’est-ce pas?</span></i>” True enough no doubt,
+though after two years of associating with the foreign missionary
+doctors of China, whose fees amount almost to nothing—unless
+the patients are non-missionary foreign residents—one
+begins to dream of some more ideal method in
+matters of health than the competition of the market-place.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I coaxed one of the few Americans engaged in saving
+souls in Tourane to take a needed holiday and visit the
+“Marble Mountains” with me. These farthest-south outrunners
+of the great rock hills that become so numerous
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>and so fantastically individual in form farther north, dotting
+by thousands the Bay of Along and stretching far on down
+the West River in the Chinese province of Kwangsi, seem
+wholly out of place here protruding from the flat sandy
+coast-land. It is as if the gods, carrying these absurd
+heaps of molten rock from their equatorial melting-place
+to their allotted destination, had dropped a few of them
+unnoticed on the way. Across the river, by native boat,
+we walked for hours along the beach toward them, close
+as they look to the town. The sea, stretching away to
+the eastward like a sheet of molten steel, rolled great breakers
+in at our feet. Had they swept over us we should
+probably have been less drenched than we were with perspiration
+from that endless plodding through the sand.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The incandescent sun stood sheer overhead by the time
+we reached that misplaced cluster of savage heaps of rock.
+Jagged mountain peaks jutting out of the sand like islands
+from the sea, the “Marble Mountains” of Tourane, taking
+their name from the marble-like rock of which they are
+formed, rise in thousands of pinnacles, nearly all of them
+sharp as needles, the peaks themselves pointed as the head
+of a Roman spear. Nature evidently did not intend man
+to explore these isolated crags standing out so sharply
+against the white sand all about them. For not only are
+the myriad rocks themselves needle-pointed, but all the
+vegetation that steals its scanty nourishment among them
+bristles with thorns. No four-footed animal has ever been
+known to venture up them; and only hardy climbers of the
+two-legged species, with the price of a new pair of shoes
+available, are wise to attempt the ascent, slight as is the
+elevation. From the summit of the highest, once the climber
+can find standing-space for both feet, spreads a brilliant
+scene of beach and sea, of rice-green plain backed by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>endless Annamese range not far inland, and, dim in the
+offing, the hogback island which the government rents to a
+syndicate of Cantonese who gather there the ingredients of
+bird’s-nest soup.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We fell upon our wilted lunch at a temple cut into the
+lower slope of one of the “mountains,” a temple quite like
+those of China, even to the languid attitude of the priests.
+Then we explored grotto after grotto, deliciously cool after
+our infernal climb. In the largest of them the Annamese
+have set up other Chinese-style temples, for the attracting
+of pilgrims. Half-naked families peered forth from little
+huts nearly buried in the sand as we skirted the bristling
+waterless heaps on our way to the river, down which native
+boatmen sculled us back to the town.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The mission stands so convenient to the railway station in
+the outskirts of the widely scattered concession as to suggest
+that the workers in this difficult bit of the Lord’s vineyard
+wish to be prepared at any moment to abandon their
+task at the behest of their powerful rivals. The train that
+picks up there the broken end of what in a few years will be
+a continuous railroad the whole length of Indo-China strains
+its way for more than two hours toward Hué, the Annamese
+capital. First there is a desert of brush and sand
+from mountains to the sea, its blue bays dotted by so many
+sails that one’s sympathy is rather with the hunted fish
+than with the crowded people who must have them or
+starve. Huge fish-nets on poles, pulled from the shore, leave
+the denizens of the deep little chance for safety except
+by taking to the far high seas. Then for twenty miles
+the railway crawls along the face of a cliff, not a hundred
+feet above chaotic heaps of rocks boiling in the surf of a
+vast stretch of blue ocean, burrowing its way through many
+tunnels. At length both rocks and sea disappear, some
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>densely jungled hillsides succumb in time to a plain, now
+planted with rice, now covered with low brush, single
+weather-faded thatched huts or clusters of them scattered
+across it, and with the sudden tropical twilight passengers
+blend into the chaos of rickshaw-men of the capital of
+Annam.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER VII<br> <span class='c011'>MAROONED IN HUÉ</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>The river at Hué runs parallel to the sea, some twenty
+miles inland, and there is a screen of mountains to
+the south, the direction from which evil spirits come in
+Annam—just as the north, the reservoir of bitter cold and
+conquering Tartar tribes, is the quarter from which they
+are to be guarded against at Peking. There are also two
+islands near-by, known respectively as the White Tiger and
+the Blue Dragon. Hence it is not strange that the royal
+geomancers of several generations ago considered this the
+proper place to establish a new capital.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is a very roomy town, like all those of any size and
+importance in Annam, probably not so much from Annamese
+custom as from French influence. On the foreign side of
+the river, where the traveler is set down, are all those
+things properly pertaining to the French superlords. From
+the railway station a wide grass-sided boulevard along the
+river-bank passes in its mile or more of existence a rather
+imposing school, hospital, barracks, and government buildings,
+many comfortable French residences, the <i><span lang="fr">cercle</span></i> where
+the ruling race gathers of an otherwise empty evening
+over its coffee and wine, its dominoes and cards, and brings
+the traveler at length to another grocery-hotel named for
+the tropically energetic Morin brothers. Just beyond, only
+across the street from the French windows of the room assigned
+me, stands the palatial residence and offices of the
+<i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i>, real ruler of Annam.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>The whole machinery of the actual government of the
+“protected” kingdom is confined to this side of the river,
+the south side, direction of evil influences. Probably the
+river was kept between the real and the puppet rulers purposely;
+the French have as good reason as the emperor of
+Annam to keep up the fiction of his sacredness and unapproachability.
+Yet space is still so plentiful in this French
+section of Hué that almost any official—and there are virtually
+no other European residents—has his own garden
+and greensward among trees, large enough to be called, with
+a little stretching of the southern Gallic imagination, a private
+park. In any habitable direction these shade away into
+thatched huts that may be tailor-shops and the like as
+well as native residences. Up a creek tributary of the
+river bulks forth on its knoll the tropical-weather-worn old
+cathedral, under a nap of fine vegetation, a contrast to the
+low insignificant buildings of the missionaries of Tourane.
+Not the least conspicuous thing on the French side of the
+river is the Monument aux Morts, in Annamese style, the
+names of the French heroes who went home from Annam
+to die in the World War facing the boulevard, where the
+passer-by can scarcely overlook them, those of the Annamese
+who made the great sacrifice for the “mother-land”
+around on the side facing the river. Of course he who takes
+the trouble to go behind the monument can read those also;
+possibly the emperor can even make them out with a powerful
+field-glass from the flagpole of his citadel, if he ever
+climbs so high; or it may be that the placid river is more
+in keeping with their memory than the road with its broken
+stream of Oriental and Western traffic.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I found the weather in Hué quite different from that of
+Saïgon. When rain falls in Cochinchina it is dry in Annam,
+and vice versa, thanks to a high range between them. Ever
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>since I had left Canton the weather had been bright and
+equatorial in temperature, but as I came northward the
+humidity had steadily increased in density, and now the
+rainy season this so plainly augured overtook me in earnest.
+For the first time since leaving Hong Kong I was comfortably
+cool, though white was still my favorite garb.
+It did not seem to be so with the French of Hué, however,
+perhaps because of some connection between that color and
+the sacredness of the emperor. There was an attention to
+dress worthy of descendants of Beau Brummel and his
+spouse, if he had one; but white suits for men were
+rather looked down upon, and of course to so much as
+step out of a bedroom without a coat on was almost as
+incredible a breach of civilization as in Brazil itself. A
+thick Scotch mist reigned all my first, and what I had
+planned to be my only, day in the capital; and that evening
+at the very height of the motion-picture tale on the wall
+of the outdoor covered sitting-space in the grocery-hotel
+courtyard tropical rains began to fall in earnest. Hardly
+did it let up again as long as I remained in Hué—except
+for the all-important day that justified my stay, during which
+the weather behaved <i><span lang="fr">à merveille</span></i>. It poured without cessation,
+confining me to my hotel room, making even a dash
+across the courtyard to the other parts of the establishment
+a shower-bath with mud foundation, forcing me to
+put off my visit to the real Hué across the river, the “citadel”
+with its palaces, bringing forth again the cloth suit
+for which I had so roundly berated myself at Saïgon, and
+leaving me none too warm at that. Everything took quickly
+to mildewing, and in less than forty-eight hours pocketbooks
+and the extra shoes of those who owned them were covered
+with a delicate vegetation. Soon stories began to come
+in of dikes giving way, of thousands of coolies being rushed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>to save this or that town, built several meters below the
+river, so that a broken embankment would mean disaster.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nowhere could the rainy season have overtaken me with
+less cause for resentment, however, for I had to tarry several
+days in Hué rain or shine. I did not know this when
+I arrived, but found it out next morning, when I went
+to present to the “résuper” the letter of introduction I
+had won from some other official along the line. The
+real ruler of Annam, less telegraphically known as the <i><span lang="fr">résident
+supérieur</span></i>, received me in his palatial dwelling and
+bureau a few steps beyond the grocery-hotel with a perfect
+Gallic mixture of courtesy and that something which
+leaves one no chance to presume upon one’s fancied importance.
+Yet the writer of that letter must have been either
+an important personage or the “résuper’s” boon companion
+in school-boy days, for it certainly could not have been
+my own virtues that won me the precious privilege the
+superior resident of Annam offered.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the course of our official platitudes he mentioned that
+the ceremony of the lunar New Year greeting of his loyal
+subjects to the emperor of Annam across the river would
+take place the following Tuesday morning. It was then Friday,
+and by Tuesday I had hoped to be leaving Hanoï for
+the Chinese border. But the most important personage of
+Annam went on to mention that, while only French officials
+were ordinarily admitted—which I found later not to be
+sternly true—he thereby invited me to remain for this
+crowning feature of the Annamese <i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i>. This very special
+favor, I gathered from his meticulous deportment, was not
+so much in my own honor as to that of the then still gratefully
+remembered country to which I belong.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Expert as I was in my academic days at ministering to
+the gastronomic demands of my fellow-students, I have never
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>been a good waiter. For some inexplicable reason the loss
+of time brings me more bitterness than the loss of money,
+though of the first I have habitually far more to spare than
+of the second. Certainly I did not care to squander wantonly
+in Hué the better part of a week that I had planned
+to spend in hurrying back to my family in Canton, with
+whom communication had been rare and precarious. Yet I
+felt it a duty to my curiosity, if not to my country, to attend
+one royal levee before the time comes to settle down
+to a respectable life of immobility. There are few such
+ceremonies left in the world, and still fewer of them are
+open to Europeans—as the East insists on considering Americans.
+I murmured a polite acceptance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But life is an incessant series of ups and downs in this
+vale of tears. The next words of the ruler of Annam
+turned my satisfaction into disappointment. When I—or
+it may have been the “résuper” himself—brought up
+the obviously important question of court costume, he remarked,
+“Of course you have with you your frock-coat
+and <i><span lang="fr">chapeau de forme</span></i>?”—in other words the ceremonial
+head-gear of politicians and other successful exploiters of
+the general public. Or if not, it seemed, I could get along
+with <i><span lang="fr">le smoking</span></i>—which as a Frenchman he of course pronounced
+“smocking.” Now <i><span lang="fr">le smoking</span></i> ordinarily means
+our more modest form of dinner garb, disrespectfully known
+as “soup and fish,” and not only that part of my wardrobe,
+but the even more absurd long-tailed livery of night life, I
+had left at Canton. The motive for this dreadful oversight
+had seemed sufficient in the days when it occurred. I did not
+care to have the Chinese bandits I was almost sure to meet
+on my way home have just cause for wreaking Bolshevik
+vengeance upon me by catching me in possession of such unsightly
+things, or give them the false impression that I was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>worth holding for ransom, or, more likely still, endure
+the painful experience of seeing one of them bedeck himself
+in that unseemly garb. I could of course not weep openly
+in so official a predicament, but it looked indeed as if for my
+carelessness in packing, my failure to remember the oft-learned
+lesson that the equatorial regions of the earth by
+no means forgo the perspiring amenities of social intercourse,
+I was to miss something which very few of my countrymen
+have seen. True, the “résuper” murmured something to the
+effect that some way would be found to <i><span lang="fr">me tirer d’affaire</span></i>,
+but I took this to be merely a kind way of softening my
+unavoidable disappointment, and having received official permission
+to visit the palaces across the river under less interesting
+circumstances I took my leave.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had barely broken my first French roll and tasted my
+wine at the eleven o’clock <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i> when one of the black-turbaned
+“boys” in snowy white laid before me the card
+of the “Chef de Sûreté d’Annam.” Misfortunes certainly
+come in clusters. The chief of the security of Annam,
+police-head extraordinary of the land, suggested trouble,
+with emphasis on such persons as spies and unwanted
+visitors; hence it was with something akin to trepidation
+that I hurried out to the grocery division of the hotel and
+presented myself before him. Perhaps I had somewhere
+neglected to have something done again to my passport, and
+was to be ordered out of the country, which would not
+greatly matter, now that I had lost the privilege of hobnobbing
+with the emperor, except that they might send me
+back the way I had come, or perhaps from Tourane as the
+most convenient port, and spoil my plan of going all the
+way from Angkor to Canton by land.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I found the bearer of the dreaded title an upstanding,
+soldierly, yet genial fellow, in the act of sampling a newly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>opened keg of olives. The <i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i>, he remarked,
+after the customary words of greeting, had sent him to see
+me. So I was in for it, even as I had feared! But to my
+astonishment and growing relief the chief of Annam’s security
+showed no signs of official wrath. Conversation ran
+along in a perfectly neutral manner until my fellow-guests
+in the dining-room must have been nearing the sad French
+substitutes for apple-pie. Then at length, in a very tactful
+way—which was fortunate, since I am nothing if not sensitive—the
+guardian of the security of Annam introduced the
+apparently irrelevant and immaterial theme that he and I
+were of about the same build; to which, so long as he did not
+also charge me with rivaling him in manly beauty, I acquiesced.
+In short, he interrupted himself in the midst
+of some genial story based on the natural spiritual affinity
+between republican France and my own Republican land to
+say that he had come at the suggestion of his superior to offer
+me clothing for the coming ceremony. He would be glad to
+assemble the requisite outfit from his own wardrobe; he had
+already done as much, some years before, for another <i><span lang="fr">journaliste</span></i>
+from my country—what a barbarian and unprovided
+nation he must have thought us!</p>
+
+<div id='i_130' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_130a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Overlooking, from his flagpole, the palaces of the emperor of Annam</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_130b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>China itself cannot outdo the old bronze urns before the main palace of the Annamese emperor</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_131' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_131.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The throne-room of the emperor of Annam, on the afternoon before the New Year’s ceremony</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>We began forthwith to take stock. For a moment it
+seemed that I would after all need only to wear his trousers,
+for the conference disclosed that in Annam <i><span lang="fr">le smoking</span></i>
+means black pantaloons topped by a white tuxedo coat giving
+up its duties abruptly at the waist, what is quite fittingly
+known in the dancing circles of the Far East as a “monkey
+jacket.” Nay, even a full-length white coat would do, and
+that I had. I was even the possessor of black trousers—if
+ever the baggage I had checked at Saïgon should catch
+up with me. But further discussion brought to light the
+annoying fact that those straying trousers had a faint stripe
+in them, and that would never do; it would be almost equivalent
+to <i><span lang="fr">lèse-majesté</span></i>. Then that white coat—did it have one
+button or two? Two, as far as I recalled. “Sapristi!” The
+chief of the security of Annam threw up his arms in a gesture
+of dismay. A coat with two buttons would be worse than
+no coat at all in Annamese court circles, I gathered from his
+excited demeanor. Also I should have to have a vest,—beg
+pardon, purists of the editorial function, I mean a
+w’s’c’t—and that curse in any climate, let alone in the tropics,
+a stiff collar. All these things the chief expressed his delight
+to be able to furnish, and the day seemed to have been saved—until
+he glanced down at my feet. They were incased in
+brown shoes. Moreover, though I am not perpetually conscious
+of that fact, they must be large feet, compared at least
+with those even of athletic Frenchmen of my own build,
+for the chief not only disclaimed any ability to provide me
+with shoes of such a size from his own wardrobe, but doubted
+the possibility of finding a pair as large as that in all Hué.
+Plainly I have overlooked the opportunity of becoming a
+great popular comedian and riding in my own limousine.
+But surely Buddha would provide, in so small, or even large,
+a matter as that, and I planned to settle down in Hué for five
+days rather than wend my way homeward bitter with
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Once I had reconciled myself to losing several days, Hué
+was by no means the worst place on earth in which to pass
+the time. My hotel room was more home-like than those
+for which we pay several times as much in our own beloved
+land; food, wine, and ice were in keeping with French standards,
+and if the evening movies in the hotel courtyard were
+not worth going to the Orient to see, the types of French
+colonials and the natives they attracted were, not to mention
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>the numerous crosses between those two races. Then too
+the rain did now and then slacken, though so weary did the
+senses become of hearing it pour on the graveled road outside
+that it never seemed to do so. One briefly clear evening
+I took a walk in Hué itself, the walled but very much
+Frenchified imperial residence across the river from the
+newer foreign section. The river is so wide that seven big
+incongruous steel arches are needed to lift the modern bridge
+over it, and the town beyond proved to be extensive, though
+from the farther bank it looked merely like a façade of shops
+backed by forest. A whole village of queer boats, most of
+which spend their lives in bringing produce to the big half-covered
+market-place on the northern bank, were anchored
+about that end of the bridge. At first there seemed to be
+no great population. But gradually this impression gave
+way, as the town, orderly with wide right-angled streets,
+stretched leisurely on and on out various directions, long after
+one expected it to succumb to jungle or fields, until I began
+to wonder if there could be as much city scattered among the
+trees here as in the forest of Angkor-Thom.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Whatever the French have left of shops and native handicrafts
+is outside the wall and moat of the imperial residence.
+Once, they say, these were labyrinths of narrow dirty streets;
+now they are neither labyrinthine nor unclean, and much of
+the picturesqueness one expects is lacking. In the wide-open
+shops that lined the principal extramural streets one saw
+Madrasis in little red fezzes, most of them with black-toothed
+Annamese wives, and children with the luminous eyes of
+the Hindu. But there seemed to be few Chinese merchants.
+The Annamese themselves evidently kept shop here more
+than is normal, perhaps because the capital with its swarms
+of loafing functionaries had impressed them with the ease
+of this sedentary occupation. Between the river and the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>mountains that shield the capital from evil southern influences
+there are many waterways, and sampans and humped
+bridges were frequent. But on the whole the charm of the
+Orient had been cleaned and modernized away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Much of the old atmosphere remained, however, within the
+<i><span lang="fr">citadelle</span></i> which the native city partly surrounded. In Annam
+towns of any importance are encircled by ramparts and are
+known as citadels. Once, and in some cases still, the rather
+roomy residences of native officials, the citadels of Annam
+have little in common with the walled cities of China, teeming
+with jostling humanity. The crenelated walls of Hué
+inclose a space a mile or more square, but it is a newer, lower,
+much less imposing wall than the ancient ones surrounding
+Peking and most Chinese cities. A moat stagnant with
+water-lilies and other broad-leafed vegetation protects the
+wall, and short stone bridges older in appearance than they
+probably are in years give entrance to it in three or four
+places through Chinese-style gates. Inside is an astonishing
+spaciousness, trees and greensward and shaded boulevard-wide
+streets, a veritable park scattered with dwellings, as
+if nothing were so plentiful as space. With overcrowded
+China always in mind, I was constantly astonished at the
+roominess of Annamese cities. Within the citadel, Hué is a
+city of gardens, less a capital than a great inhabited park,
+more an Oriental Versailles than a Paris, not so much a
+center of hard official duties as a perpetual summer residence
+of Eastern potentates. As those on this side of the
+river really have very little to do with governing, the atmosphere
+is in keeping with the facts, and the ostensible
+rulers of Annam can spend their time growing flowers and
+parading their singing-birds.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Never, surely, was another walled city so bucolic as this
+residence of the sacred emperor of Annam. Quiet and calm
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>reigned everywhere along its wide roadway under trees that
+joined together overhead into an almost concealing forest.
+Lotus ponds, as covered as the moat with flowers and big
+green leaves, lay here and there through the half-forest;
+many of the houses—most of them, I was to learn later, the
+homes of mandarins—were set in roomy gardens surrounded
+by low walls with imposing gateways. With its broad river
+and its canals, bordered with water-palms, its flower-decked
+bungalows, its wide silent roadways, the chimeric roofs of
+its palaces, the splendid circle of its forest, its quiet and
+cleanliness, Hué was indeed a great contrast to China. One
+day when for a little while the weather was clear—no,
+not that, for the humidity was thick as cream, but at least
+the sun was doing its best to shine through it—I evaded
+the royal guards and mounted the iron ladder of the Eiffel
+Tower of a flagpole, which stands at the front of the citadel.
+From it the royal palaces stretched away among the trees one
+after another in a straight line, impressive by their colors,
+perhaps by their architecture, but never by their height, as
+if their builders scorned to take advantage of that cheapest
+means of exciting admiration. From this elevation little else
+than the palaces and the tree-tops are visible, but down beneath
+the foliage the stroller will find many humble huts
+made of poles and thatch, not only within the citadel but
+only a short walk from the palaces of the sacred Annamese
+emperor. Yet about some of these simple, but probably on
+the whole as comfortable, homes of the ordinary mass of his
+loyal subjects, there were some fine clipped hedges, as if
+these faded-thatch hovels were merely a means of disguising
+wealth still naturally modest from centuries of envious
+mandarins. Rich and poor have the same little squared garden,
+the same dwarf trees growing in pots of baked earth,
+the same water-jars sweating in the sun.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>He who is privileged to visit the home of a mandarin
+enters the principal room directly from the garden, without
+steps, and finds it furnished with a big bed of naked wood,
+with no other bed-furnishings than a porcelain pillow and
+a reed mat. Besides that there is a round table with stools,
+and the altar of the ancestors. This now sometimes bears a
+photograph of the deceased in the place of the ancient tablet—the
+one evidence of progress, and an unpleasant one, for
+it is far more agreeable to picture a bygone member of the
+human race from no other data than his posthumous name
+in Chinese characters on an upright stick than to behold
+him photographically in all the moles and wrinkles he left
+behind him in the grave.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>All this I did not of course see in one day; the rain was
+too incessant for that. Long as I remained I could not have
+seen it all if I had not defied the rain, helped thereto by
+the attitude of the natives toward it. A rainy day does not
+keep the Annamese indoors; like the inhabitants of most
+southern countries where deluges fall for days at a time,
+they make the most of it. I had only to glance out my hotel
+window to see scores of both sexes, bare to the knees, even
+to the loins, all ages wearing their mushroom hats and the
+palm-leaf rain-coats that turn so easily this way or that,
+according to the slant of the storm. On they went, carrying
+their shoulder-pole loads or doing whatever else the pursuit
+of their rice required of them, quite as if the sun were
+shining. It is so hot when it does that in some ways a rainy
+day is a more pleasant time to work; and what is mud when
+you can wash one foot with the other at any water-hole?
+Thus Hué on those wet days was a vista of broad graveled
+streets, lined by trees and grass and spaciousness, and dotted
+with human figures dressed only in palm-leaves, so far as the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>eye could see, like some strange Eden that defied any but
+the most practised eye to tell the sexes apart.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As there seemed to be no prospect of the rain halting, I
+dived into a rickshaw one afternoon and went to visit the
+palaces across the river. It was as well that I had brought
+along my special permit from the “résuper,” for soldiers in
+the now familiar Annamese uniform of khaki rompers and
+blouse below a mushroom, brass-topped hat and above bare
+feet—here however with imperial yellow rather than the
+ordinary red wrap-leggings—expect a permit from Europeans,
+though coolies of both sexes were going freely in and
+out. A fine pretense this that the French are merely protectors;
+and incidentally it keeps other Western nations from
+finding out too much of what goes on in the privacy of the
+emperor’s own department of the governing of Annam.
+There is nothing very exciting about his palaces. So low
+that they are not seen at any distance, they are few and unimposing
+compared to the Forbidden City of Peking. Yet
+small as they are beside their Chinese counterparts, like the
+same thing not too exactly done in miniature, they are in
+general artistic and in some ways perhaps superior to their
+more pretentious Chinese models. One’s impression of them
+and of the dynasty they represent improved with seeing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Workmen on a bamboo scaffolding were repainting the
+exterior of the main audience-chamber, and Saturday afternoon
+being pay-day, even as in other lands, a group of mandarins
+with ladylike hands, on some of which cat-claw finger-nails
+still remained, sat at a table keeping books in French
+style and paying out French paper piastres to the men and
+women as they filed past. Building after building, Chinese
+wood-and-paper buildings under top-heavy tile roofs, all of
+imperial yellow, stretched lengthwise one behind another,
+like squads of soldiers with a passageway through the middle
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>of them, as do those of a Chinese yamen, back to the main
+and finally the more private edifices. All these were inclosed
+within a walled compound. Under the incessant rain
+the polished tiles of the courtyards between them resembled
+great lakes of uncertain depth, in which all the surroundings
+were mirrored as in a broad horizontal pier-glass. The old
+bronze lanterns before the palace verandas, exactly full of
+rain-water, were as beautiful, as graceful, as any I had seen
+in China; and being carefully preserved in this still imperial
+land, they showed their fine points to better advantage. They
+are hardly the favorite lanterns of his Majesty, however,
+who is more French than Chinese in his tastes and thirsts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The gaudy audience-chamber was on the whole more conspicuous
+than lovely. The real throne-room, on the other
+hand, was a gorgeous place well worth seeing, in spite of a
+goodly supply of those chandeliers which seem to be Europe’s
+chief contribution to the splendor of Oriental kings. From
+a vast expanse of varicolored tiles gleaming as if they were
+made of glass, rose a forest of red pillars with imperial yellow
+five-clawed dragons climbing them. Decorations of
+every conceivable Chinese form and color, but with red in
+the ascendancy, added to the rich yet not chaotic ensemble.
+There were many fine vases, quite evidently Chinese, though
+the “guide” who saw to it that I chipped off no souvenirs
+and slipped nothing into my pockets called some of them
+French and contended that many of the others were made
+by the Annamese themselves, in earlier days, before those
+of his countrymen capable of such things had all died off.
+But they looked to me so much like Kingtehchen ware, the
+best of Kingtehchen at that, that for once I might have been
+tempted into a wager if one had been offered.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Naturally there was the throne, and all the other things
+that go with emperors’ throne-rooms, but all those I was to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>see better during the ceremony that was keeping me in Hué.
+Suffice it to say that the throne-room of Annam was the
+most gorgeous place I had seen in many a moon, on the
+whole artistically pleasing, and—that the rank and file of
+Americans may understand just what I am trying to say—worth
+several million piastres, or about half as many
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Beyond came more long tile-covered rooms, shed-like in
+shape, in which were many spirit-tablets and tables covered
+with porcelain fruits. There were even some small baskets
+of real fruit, perhaps because it was now New Year time,
+when the spirits of the departed cannot be deceived with
+pretended food, and when their descendants are surest to
+remember them. All these things and many more stood in
+imposing array before the six shrines of the present dynasty.
+I fear, however, that with my incorrigibly plebeian mind and
+tastes I found most interesting of all the flocks of ordinary
+coolies with dusters and brooms, who roamed about all the
+buildings among these king’s playthings and slept on mat-covered
+boards beside them.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The story of the emperors of Annam, since Gia-long asked
+through the bishop of Adran for the assistance of the French
+against his dynastic rivals at the end of the eighteenth century,
+is not an entirely happy one. Some of them have even
+lost their jobs entirely for not behaving themselves, or for
+disobeying the French. There was Thanh-thai, for instance,
+deposed in 1907. He had been cutting up—among other
+things one of his concubines, merely to try his hand at
+surgery. So the French, not realizing perhaps that such
+things happen even in Philadelphia, nay, in Paris itself, sent
+him into exile and called in a doctor to help pick out one of
+his many sons to take his place. The eldest they passed over
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>as a plain idiot, and chose a boy in prison, who howled because
+he thought he was being led forth to have his head
+lopped off. By the time they had washed and dressed him
+in the imperial robes, however, and seated him on the throne
+with the jade scepter in his childish hand, he had reverted
+to type and was an emperor both in appearance and demeanor,
+scorning already the common people among his
+kowtowing subjects. But in 1916, coincident with a certain
+busyness of the French at home, an independence movement
+broke out under this youthful king, which the French naturally
+insist was engineered by the Germans. The scheme
+was to have servants poison all the foreigners in the colony
+some evening, but some one “squealed.” So Jy-su, born in
+1902, was also exiled to Réunion, a French island off the
+east coast of Africa, which he still graces with his surgical
+father and one favorite wife. There they are both very
+happy, according to the French colonials, who regard Réunion
+as a second Garden of Eden, and where the ex-Sons of
+Heaven “have all the women they want”—a French as well
+as a Mohammedan notion of paradise.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All this gave the then reigning emperor, Khai-dinh, his
+chance. This French-ruled king of Annam, a rather distant
+relative of the man and boy he succeeded, came to the throne
+in 1916, when he was nearly thirty-five. He must have been
+troubled with something akin to vertigo by his accession,
+for until then, though he had been a kind of prince, he had
+enjoyed by no means the income or the importance of a railway
+station-master. If I have inadvertently called him
+king I apologize; his official title is Koang-de, Son of
+Heaven, written with the same characters as those for the
+Chinese Hoang-ti, son of a similar celestial realm. In fact
+the emperors of Annam claim descent from an imperial
+family of China, which had descendants to spare. Khai-dinh
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>visited France in state in 1922, influenced perhaps by an
+American president, for that was the first case of an emperor
+of Annam leaving Annamese soil. It was even more important
+for him to go, however, for in the Indo-Chinese pagoda
+on the outskirts of the Bois de Vincennes he performed a
+ceremony to release from the necessity of wandering perpetually
+through eternity the shades of thousands of Annamese
+who had fallen in the World War, unsaved either
+because they had not been able to comply with the final rites
+of their religion or because their bodies had not been recovered.
+He also placed in a French school his son and heir—the
+only one, I believe, for all the wives Khai-dinh
+maintained.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Khai-dinh was nearing forty when I graced Hué with my
+impatient presence, and was already anemic with tuberculosis.
+The other day he died, and twelve-year-old Vinh-thuy, the
+crown prince, ascended the throne under the name of Bao-dai
+(Greatness Sustained). But he returned at once to France
+to continue his studies, and Frenchmen will tell you that
+Annam is now governed by a Conseil de Régence, presided
+over by the mandarin Ton-that-tan. For in theory the emperor
+governs. In Cochinchina, which is admittedly a colony,
+a French lieutenant governor is the supreme functionary,
+but in the four protectorates the native sovereigns are still
+nominally the heads of the governments. Annam and Tonkin
+are under the Annamese emperor; Cambodia and a part of
+Laos still have kings. The native laws apply, unless a foreigner
+is involved, when the Code Napoléon is used. The
+protectorates maintain almost intact the laws and administrative
+machinery of the days when they were independent of
+French authority. The native sovereign appoints all officials,
+but the French <i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i> can reject any candidate;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>the native rulers dare not ignore his smallest suggestion, and
+the lesser <i><span lang="fr">résidents</span></i> keep a sharp eye on native functionaries
+in the provinces. New laws may be of either French or
+native initiative, but both sides must agree, which of course
+means that the French have the final word. All royal ordinances
+are drawn up, not only the French but the native
+texts, in the <i><span lang="fr">Résidences Supérieures</span></i>. In Annam the old
+Chinese system of choosing officials and mandarins from
+among those who have shown the greatest proficiency in
+scholarship still more or less prevails, rather than the Irish
+system of our Western world.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One wonders what the thoughts of Bao-dai will be when
+he comes back really to take his father’s place. Educated
+in French schools, Parisian during all his formative years,
+he will suddenly be plunged into this old-world atmosphere,
+to the customs, the ideas, the ideals, even the spirit of which
+he will surely have become a stranger. Will he regret the
+ardent life of the Occident he will have left behind, or will
+the old soul of the palace of his ancestors penetrate and
+possess him, and insensibly make him an Oriental potentate?</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I softened my enforced stay in Hué by also three times
+visiting the imperial burial-places some ten miles from the
+citadel, on the French side of the river. The low rolling
+hillocks close about the Annamese capital are covered with
+graves of the rank and file by the many thousands. Nearly
+all these mere mounds of earth were cleared and rounded off
+now for the New Year, the few still covered with grass and
+weeds suggesting very unfilial descendants or, more likely
+still, a line died out. As many Annamese as possible have
+themselves buried near the tombs of their sacred emperors,
+as the Hindu who can manage it has his body burned on the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>bank of the Ganges at Benares. The French are gradually
+restricting the grave-lands, but they must move slowly in a
+matter so important to an ancestor-worshiping race.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All important Annamese make preparation during their
+lifetime for their burial, some building their own tombs,
+where they often come to sit in meditation. While he is
+still on the throne each emperor has a geomancer, or a consultation
+of geomancers no doubt, choose the site for his last
+resting-place, always in the shelter of a natural screen, a
+butte or hillock that will protect the dead from the evil spirits
+that are forever flying about through the air. In such a
+garden several buildings are constructed, their number and
+arrangement fixed by ancient custom, superstition, and rites.
+There is an inclosure for the material remains, a pavilion
+for the memory, a temple for the soul; our miserable way
+of putting all these together, so that we cannot commune
+with the memory of the deceased without seeming to smell
+his bones, is not the Annamese way. Thus things were
+conceived by the sages who erected beyond the gates of
+Peking the mausoleums of the Ming, and the Annamese
+sovereigns have since changed nothing of what they got from
+their Chinese masters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The royal tomb is the last residence of the sovereign, and
+in some ways the most sumptuous, as befits a palace of
+eternal repose. He may come back in spirit at any moment;
+therefore his loyal people are always prepared to receive him.
+Here is his great wooden bed, with its mat and cushions and
+porcelain pillow, not only for himself but for his favorite
+wife. Here is the tea, the rice, the <i><span lang="fr">nhoc-nam</span></i>, or salty sauce
+in which the Annamese dip their food on the way to the
+mouth, cups of <i><span lang="fr">chumchum</span></i>, or rice whisky, the arec-nuts,
+betel-leaves, and the little pot of lime that goes with them
+for his favorite minor vice, even cigarettes, everything he
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>will need when he arrives. All these provisions are renewed
+every morning of the year, generation after generation, so
+that he will find nothing stale on the day when he finally
+comes. He will find again, arranged under glass, his royal
+playthings, the trinkets and gew-gaws, the jade shrubs, the
+precious crystals, the coffers inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
+the weapons he loved, even those great Sèvres vases which
+the ambassadors of a more respectful France sent him as
+New Year’s presents; more things perhaps than the living
+emperor has now in his living palace. Perhaps the worst
+punishment of Thanh-thai and his son, deposed in 1907 and
+1916, respectively, is that they cannot have their tombs here
+among those of their ancestors—unless the French relent
+after they are dead, which for politic reasons of influence
+on imperial conduct in the future they probably will not
+do. That Khai-dinh succeeded in dying on the job was probably
+the most successful accomplishment of his life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nothing in Indo-China has the charm of these old royal
+tombs; in them lives intact the melancholy beauty of old
+Annam. One can walk or rickshaw all afternoon about them,
+and never tire of seeing them. Perhaps the tomb of Tu-duc
+is the most striking; another can be reached only by boat.
+That of Gia-long, epic sovereign of Annam, founder of this
+dynasty and of Annam’s present subordination to the French,
+is not the most elaborate. He was so very busy getting back
+his kingdom that perhaps he did not have time to prepare
+properly his last place of repose, for with the aid of the
+French he chased out his usurpers and grouped under the
+rule of his jade scepter all the land of Annam, being the first
+native son to govern as master from the frontiers of China
+to the banks of the Mekong. Even the tomb of Tu-duc is unimposing
+compared to those of the Ming emperors of China.
+But they all have a setting in solitude among unexploited
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>forests, and are kept in a state of cleanliness and repair rare
+in the great land to the north. Weather-blackened structures
+in a hot, rainy, and often humid climate, though originally
+reddish, blue, green, multicolored, some overgrown with a
+fine vegetation, these Annamese temples of the dead do not
+impose upon the heavens like those of China. They blend
+themselves harmoniously into their densely green surroundings,
+the fleeing lines of their low walls barely cut out against
+the sky. As in the palaces of the living, it is not in the elevation
+of verticals that their builders looked for beauty, but
+in the prolonging of unreflected lines, in the grace of colonnades,
+terraces, superimposed roofs nonchalantly stretching
+to the horizon. Nothing dominates except two slender
+grayish pillars lost in the verdure before each tomb, the
+symbolic camel’s-hair brushes of the man of letters. In the
+large court of honor stone mandarins mount perpetual guard,
+in a row on each side of the entranceway, their saddled horses
+and their little elephants beside them, all dull and weather-tarnished
+and sometimes crumbling away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But the stone mandarins, the horses, elephants, and
+mythological monsters guarding the royal tombs of Annam
+are only pathetic little things compared to those of China.
+Once I stood a living caretaker in the place of a missing stone
+one, and only by looking closely at the picture can one distinguish
+him from those of stone or plaster, whereas in China
+my head hardly reached to the knees of many an imperial
+guardian, and the horses, elephants, and camels of the Ming
+tombs are fully life-size. Nor are the materials so rich in
+these tombs. The dragons that unroll their coils on the roofs
+of glazed sun-polished tiles show signs of crumbling away;
+the bricks tend to disintegrate into the earth from which they
+came. Some of the most effective of these royal Annamese
+tombs are covered with pictures of scenes and people made
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>entirely of broken crockery, pieces of porcelain cups, plates,
+bowls of Chinese design, and of many colors set in cement,
+much as the Annamese inlay their furniture with mother-of-pearl.
+Even fragments of broken bottles—nothing is so
+plentiful as bottles in French-ruled Indo-China—have been
+used in this way. These monuments recall the rags torn up
+and sewed together into the saffron robe of the Buddhist
+priest, because poverty is blessed. Yet even in this decoration
+the resting-places of the royal Annamese dead are
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the woods, as we were driving homeward from the
+tombs—my first visit having been by automobile—we met
+a boy carrying on his head bananas and some other fruit,
+his grandfather kneeling beside him at the edge of the road
+and burning incense in a bush. The chief of Annam’s security
+stopped his car. He was, I may have neglected to
+mention, in some ways an unusual Frenchman. Big and
+handsome, a soldier at Peking in the Boxer days, he spoke
+excellent Annamese and still knew some Chinese, and his
+interest in the natives was more than official and perfunctory—so
+much so in fact that one got a hint now and then that
+he sometimes felt the recent loss of his bachelor privileges,
+for all his enthusiasm as a new benedict. He spoke to the
+pair, and in the tone of an interested friend rather than of a
+martinet official. The result was a naïve frankness instead
+of a taciturn imitation of stupidity. It seemed that the son
+of the one and father of the other had “taken the sickness”
+while gathering wood, and they had come to implore the
+spirits of the forest to pardon him any harm he may have
+done them. They had come twice before, and now the father
+and son so much better that they were sure their amends
+had been accepted, but they were performing the effective
+rites once more, in order to be on the safe side.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>Though it is getting ahead of my story, such as it is, I
+came out to the tombs again on the afternoon of <i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i> and
+found every one very busy about the royal mausoleums. The
+soldier-like caretakers whose permanent duties are there had
+freshly washed the very red coats they wear over the usual
+black Annamese garments. Men in these bright red tunics,
+some holding imperial yellow umbrellas over the trays covered
+with red cloth borne by others, were bringing the dead kings
+their New Year’s food. Mandarins, some of them evidently
+descendants of the emperors, came and donned transparent
+deep-blue cloaks over their black gowns, much decorated
+with French orders and the ivory plaques that denote the
+mandarin’s estate, and kowtowed inside and outside the
+tombs. Some of these ceremonies were elaborate, that at
+the tomb of Thieu-tri, which I chanced upon at the right
+moment, including a procession and incense-burning rites in
+the courtyard, with yellow and faded white parasols very
+much in evidence. Old women in purple, green, and other
+conspicuous head-bands and cloaks crowded the interior,
+where a high mandarin was master of ceremonies. There
+seemed to be no great objection to the presence of a European
+inside, except during the actual interior ceremony of
+greeting to the royal spirits, when the mandarin opposed my
+entrance in a resolute manner rare, especially toward the
+ruling race, among this easy-going people. Though I was
+the only foreigner nearer the tombs than the capital itself, I
+was no doubt perfectly safe from physical interference even
+had I persisted in entering, and perfect Oriental courtesy
+was shown me; but once again I sensed the probability that
+the Annamese do not love the French, from whom of course
+few of them distinguish the rest of us of the white race.</p>
+
+<div id='i_146' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_146a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The waterfront of Hué, capital of Annam, offers a contrast between its native craft and the French bridge</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_146b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Once a visitor surreptitiously snapped this glimpse of the mandarins of Annam kowtowing before their emperor on New Year’s Day</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_147' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_147a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The scores of homes of mandarins within the “citadel” of Hué were all richly decorated for the lunar New Year</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_147b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Inside the “citadel” and near the sumptuous palaces of the emperor of Annam are the perhaps more comfortable homes of his humble subjects</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER VIII<br> <span class='c011'>AN IMPERIAL HAPPY NEW YEAR</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>I was called at six on the eventful morning, and as
+soon afterward as was consistent with that meticulous
+personal attention befitting an imperial audience I was
+whisked away to the palaces in the automobile of my sartorial
+benefactor. Those who have suffered similar experiences
+need not be told the feeling of interloper, of usurper, with
+which I wore my borrowed plumage, though to the naked uncritical
+eye I must have showed little of this, for the bemedaled
+stiff-necked officials deep in the seat beside me
+showed no signs of finding me incongruous. All had gone
+easily, except in the matter of disguising my feet. Look
+as I would, not only in the merchandising part of the hotel
+but among all the native shops, there was not another pair
+of shoes in Hué that could be stretched over those extraordinary
+extremities. In my desperation I had turned my brown
+ones over to the head “boy” with orders to blacken them
+every half-hour during the intervening days, and nights,
+orders emphasized by promises of great reward and by
+threats of corresponding punishment. It had not therefore
+been merely the rain that confined me to my chamber. When
+the crucial moment came success seemed to have crowned my
+persistence. The shoes were not only black, they had a
+hint of luster. If only the false color did not rub off before
+the show was over! It did, as a matter of fact, but not so
+completely, I flatter myself, as to call widespread attention
+to the deception.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>The ceremony was set for eight sharp. I suppose it might
+have been at Peking Manchu hours, and all over before daylight,
+but for the bed-loving French. A score of Frenchmen
+were already herded inside the door by which we entered
+the imperial courtyard, a side door, by the way, a detail not
+without its significance. Another dozen or two dripped
+from other automobiles not long behind us. The French
+officials had come in their best uniforms and their most
+numerous medals; some of the men in civilian dress wore
+gold medallions about their necks. All were not equally
+resplendent in the requisite court dress. Visitors must be
+<i><span lang="fr">en tenue</span></i>, but that, it became at once evident, did not mean
+that one must strive for the elegance of a Beau Brummel.
+Some of the costumes had all too plainly been shaken free
+of their moth-balls too late to be pressed; others had arrived
+in the colony when the Franco-Prussian War was still a
+burning question. The group was sternly confined, however,
+in one respect: only the reputedly more manly sex was
+present, in any form, capacity, race, color, or condition of
+servitude. No woman, the sponsor for Annam’s security
+himself assured me, has ever seen this imperial New Year’s
+ceremony. Only persons in good standing, which in Annam
+does not include females, may by any hook or crook be
+admitted. Once two Frenchwomen had sneaked in by some
+still mysterious deception, and it had been the painful duty
+of the chivalrous chief of the security of Annam personally
+to drag them out of their hiding-place and chase them outside
+the grounds. Surely, whispered the incorrigibly skeptical
+spirit within me, there must be peep-holes known to the more
+enterprising of the emperor’s wives; but on second thought
+I decided that their superstitions probably accomplish what
+the sternest husbandly admonitions might not.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We had been greeted one by one at the side door to the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>courtyard by two mandarins in the flowery costumes of old
+Chinese times, topped by the same stepping-block head-dress
+with absurd side-pieces to be seen on statues at the
+Ming tombs of China. Inside, scores of other mandarins in
+the same garb flocked together. All wore black knee-boots,
+ancient robes of varying colors, silks decorated according to
+rank—but you can see it all in old Chinese paintings or on
+the Chinese stage. Like so many things which last longest
+where they have been introduced with the most difficulty,
+the costumes and manners of Ming days remain officially
+correct in Annam centuries after they have been abandoned
+in China. Not merely do back-waters show the greatest
+stagnation, but the Manchus never conquered Annam, though
+they now and then got tribute from it. It was just as well
+that photography was forbidden; the absence of the colors
+in the developed films would have made them too bitterly
+disappointing. If there was any color in the spectrum missing
+in the gathering, or in the building and its decorations,
+I do not know its name. All the prism seemed to have been
+invited to the ceremony; and as if to supply any tone that
+had inadvertently been omitted, and to cause my gorge to
+rise with wrath after all the trouble I had taken to live up
+to the sartorial rules, who should come slinking in at the
+last moment, with the air of a cat returning to the comforts
+of an old-maid home after a night of dissipation on the
+housetops, but a Frenchman—though in his conspicuousness
+he looked more like a Swede or a Hollander—wearing the
+loudest check suit in the Ghettos of Christendom and carrying
+a camera! It is true that this last was promptly taken away
+from him. The French exploit their own colonies even in
+photographic matters, and this ceremony had been officially
+filmed some years before. Yet he not only was admitted
+to the courtyard but was allowed to sneak under cover of us
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>respectable members of his race into the palace itself; and
+so help me if he didn’t even have on tan shoes! All through
+the ceremony he stood forth from our courtly throng of
+Westerners like a splotch of red ink on a white suit, though
+he made every effort except the two obvious ones to be inconspicuous.
+Political or social pull are powerful institutions,
+and audacity is not confined to American reporters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The great audience-chamber in which the New Year’s
+ceremony is usually held having been covered with a network
+of bamboo scaffolding for more than a year, his Majesty
+awaited us in the somewhat smaller but more sumptuous
+throne-room. The little “résuper,” in a uniform worthy of
+the admiral of the European fleet, had arrived with some of
+his staff last of all, as befitted his standing; and, piloted by
+the receiving mandarins, we had filed in by twos behind him
+and lined up on the right side of the richly decorated chamber—on
+the left or heart side of the emperor, be it noted, which
+is the place of honor in the Orient. Dazzled by the forest
+of pillars climbed by yellow dragons, I was at the very foot of
+the throne before I saw that the emperor was already there.
+He stood so still, and his garb and the racial and sickly
+yellow of his face blended so harmoniously into the ensemble
+of the imperial decorations, that even then I was not sure
+for a moment that I was not looking at a lay figure in his
+place. Yet he was not inconspicuously dressed. Again I
+plead my incompetence in the matter of inventories, but
+some of his garb could not have escaped the most unobservant
+eye. He wore an imperial robe of such richness of
+embroidery and decorations that even a woman, had her sex
+permitted her to behold it, nay, were she, by profession, both
+a dressmaker and the concocter of social columns, could not
+adequately have described it. Whether or not some of the
+imperial wives had put in a safety-pin here and there at
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>the last moment I have no means of knowing, but the wearer
+himself could not have adjusted it to such a nicety without
+expert assistance of one sex or another. He stood in the
+embrace of a chair that the lineal descendant of St. Peter
+himself might have envied, two golden dogs half hiding his
+feet, which were incased in high boots of the Ming period
+and turned out at right angles, as if he were in imminent fear
+of tottering. They were so exactly such boots as those of his
+predecessors in a glass case near-by that they might indeed
+have been borrowed from it. On his imperial head sat an
+indescribably magnificent openwork crown of gold and precious
+stones, beneath which, later developments disclosed,
+he wore the ordinary black band-turban of the Annamese
+male. Many jewels gleamed from various parts of his person;
+on three fingers of his left hand he wore clusters of
+enormous diamonds, and as he constantly held that hand over
+the other, these stones drew the eyes like a flash-light in a
+darkened theater. In his clasped hands he held before his
+face an ivory wand containing a mirror, just such as are to be
+seen in old Chinese statues and paintings, and which has
+something to do with the holder’s unworthiness to look upon
+the spirits of his ancestors, if I have not bungled my
+theogony. His almost golden-yellow face was somewhat
+chinless, his form slight, even under the imperial robes, his
+general appearance so effeminate that he suggested Mei Lanfang,
+China’s most famous actor, aged by a decade or so and
+with the slight changes between Chinese and Annamese features,
+playing one of his inimitable female rôles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Evidently this chief ceremony of the ordinary Annamese
+year is one of the rough spots in the kingly career, for everything
+pointed to the suspicion that the emperor did not
+enjoy it. His face remained as motionless throughout the
+throne-room service as if it had been made of wax, but his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>body shifted nervously on his legs, as though the ancient
+boots were too tight for him, or the right angle at which
+etiquette required his feet to be set made standing difficult;
+and his little eyes roved constantly from side to side, especially
+toward the Europeans, until at times he suggested a
+trick poodle constantly in fear of doing something that would
+bring a whipping after the performance from the trainer who
+could only stand blandly by while it was going on. Though
+it was not unpleasantly warm so early in the morning, he
+wiped his face every few seconds with a folded snow-white
+handkerchief. Two men in musical-comedy costumes stood
+at the front corners of the throne and fanned him throughout
+the ceremony. It was not the hasty careless fanning
+of mere modern mortals; they stood at the strict attention
+of the old days when a head was lopped off for a grimace,
+and one after the other raised his fan of feathers on a handle
+taller than himself and waved it once downward at a dignified
+speed, continuing to alternate with such exact time between
+the strokes that they must have mentally counted the
+seconds.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Two princes of the blood, dressed in robes of exactly that
+color, and whom I understood from a whisper from the
+owner of my raiment to be brothers of the recently exiled
+emperor, stood each on his mat on opposite sides of the
+wide-open front doors, ten yards or more from the throne.
+No other Annamese were allowed inside the throne-room so
+effectively graced by our broken double row of motley Europeans
+festooned about the first line of pillars on his Majesty’s
+left. All the nobility of Annam was gathered in
+the sun-drenched, flagstone-paved courtyard outside the open
+doors which the emperor faced, but for the moment all one’s
+attention was needed inside. Amid deep silence and formal
+attitudes the <i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i> stepped nearer to the throne
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>and read in French a greeting in which he referred to his
+Majesty’s ascent of the same in 1916, recalling that he himself
+had been present on that auspicious occasion, that he
+was overwhelmed with pleasure and honor at his recent return
+to a place so near his Majesty’s sacred person, and in a
+capacity now that implied a recognition of his constant diligence
+in his Majesty’s service, and so on and so on, to the
+depths of French political rodomontade, with many references
+to the <i><span lang="fr">Nation Protectrice</span></i> thrown in.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then a young mandarin stepped up beside the “résuper”
+and read in the querulously singsong Annamese language
+what was evidently a translation of this masterpiece, written
+in Roman letters. Thereupon the emperor dived down into
+one of his voluminous sleeves, this very first motion he had
+voluntarily made since our arrival seeming to bring him a
+relief similar to that of a “living statue” at the drop of the
+curtain, and dug out a document written in Chinese characters
+on a long strip of cardboard folded accordion fashion.
+This he read in a better voice than his physique suggested,
+though not without a nervous break now and then in his unmelodious
+native tongue. From behind a dragon-climbed
+pillar on the other side of the throne appeared an old mandarin
+with a straggling gray beard, looking in his New-Year
+costume exactly like an ancient Chinese portrait cut out of its
+frame, who read, in an almost perfect pronunciation that
+seemed strangely incongruous coming forth from such a
+figure, a French translation of the emperor’s speech. This
+fourth act of the exchange of platitudes over, the emperor
+bowed low, the “résuper” bowed a trifle less low, and we
+Europeans moved grudgingly back, not so far but that we
+could still easily hear and see the chief actor in the ceremony,
+who now for the first time sat down, with an air which
+seemed to say that at least that was that. Every one else,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>including even the <i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i>, stood throughout the
+entire throne-room part of the ceremony.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Meanwhile in the courtyard outside attention had turned
+to activity. Scores of mandarins in the gay and fanciful
+attire of Ming days began to fall into ranks. The Annamese
+troops in blue, with brass-topped mushroom hats and imperial
+yellow leggings, but under command of a French
+officer, and carrying their long rifles with needle-sharp fixed
+bayonets French fashion, high on their shoulders, backed
+to the edges of the court and out through the gateways. For
+some time a great to-do reigned in the courtyard, but at
+length restored order disclosed six rows of mandarins lined
+up according to rank on as many strips of matting, each
+holding before his eyes in clasped hands a somewhat less
+splendid wand-with-mirror than that of the emperor. It was
+typical of human society East or West that three rows of still
+lower rank, no doubt the hard-working old souls on whom
+the real labor of government fell, were lined up outside the
+courtyard, where they could neither see nor be seen by the
+emperor, but where they went through the same maneuvers
+as those inside. Standing within arm’s length of one another
+in exact rows some two paces apart, the assembled
+nobles of Annam so vividly suggested a company of soldiers
+or a gymnasium class about to begin its setting-up exercises
+that one might easily have been struck by the absence of
+dumb-bells. On the side-lines throngs of flunkies in conspicuous
+garments began to make those loud discordant noises
+that represent music wherever the Chinese character is written,
+while others, in simpler costumes, added a weird vocal
+dissonance in voices of which fully half suggested eunuchs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The gymnasium-class aspect of the situation was not entirely
+accidental; the nobility of Annam was about to take
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>its yearly exercise. Loud noises not unlike the “music” that
+incessantly assailed the ears rang out in a series of semi-military
+commands, at each of which the rows of mandarins
+in their flowered robes threw themselves face down, slowly,
+as if, what with boots, the wands in their hands, and the
+insufficiency of annual practice, they found it no easy task,
+and touched their noses to the pavement. Just inside the
+main doors the two princes of the blood, also facing the
+emperor on his throne, were doing the same exercises, their
+movements evidently serving as a signal to those outside and
+keeping the prostrations in unison. There were several
+series of these, three at a time, amid much hullabaloo, the
+emperor meanwhile sitting motionless on his uncomfortable
+throne, except that he now and then mopped his face, yellow
+as the ensemble of throne-room decorations with the filtered
+tropical sunshine upon them, with the still folded pocket-handkerchief.
+Each time there was a dazzling flash of the
+many diamonds on his left hand, which he always folded
+again over the diamondless right.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In theory “ten thousand” mandarins of Annam—<i><span lang="fr">ee wan</span></i> is
+a number so easily said in any tongue that reads Chinese—come
+to prostrate themselves in the great courtyard of the
+palace of Hué on the day of <i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i>, but something less than
+that number beat their foreheads on its flagstones that morning.
+<i><span lang="fr">Lam lie</span></i>, the Annamese verb to prostrate one’s self,
+means this stretching out at full length on one’s face and is
+still descriptive in this great yearly ceremony, though at
+other times the Annamese nowadays usually contents himself
+with bending the bust as if he were hinged at the waist, and
+shaking his own hands. As they finished, the mandarins
+backed a couple of steps toward the side of the courtyard,
+then turned and marched to the side-lines, while others took
+their places. All was done in very good unison, though not
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>in perfect military precision, and everyone seemed to take
+the matter very seriously, as if a slip would be as dreadful
+as during a guard-mount in our regular army.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then came retired mandarins, in bright-red trousers under
+gowns reaching to the knees, and <i><span lang="fr">no boots</span></i>. This, a whisper
+told me, is the sign of retirement; “I have taken off my
+boots,” means to the Annamese mandarin what cutting off his
+<i><span lang="fr">coleta</span></i> does to the Spanish matador, what the writing of his
+memoirs means to an American pugilist or politician. Each
+and every one of these old chaps was in stocking-feet quite
+plainly made in France, most, though by no means all, of the
+same color. They threw themselves down the same number
+of times as had those who had preceded them, some aged
+faces contorted as if they found the effort quite a trial. Two
+ragged rows of poor old fellows of low degree at the rear
+had not even been provided with mats, but had to bump
+their heads on the bare flagstones.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Between the two front doors almost directly in front of
+the emperor, where he could not have taken his eyes off them
+if he had tried, stood a hat-rack bearing aloft all the tropical
+helmets and uniform capes of those Europeans who did
+not carry their hats in their hands. A servant had taken that
+of the “résuper” himself, but many others had refused to
+run the risk of having some royal retainer make off with
+theirs. It seemed as if the hat-rack might have been put in
+some less conspicuous corner, but perhaps it was an intentional
+symbol, a constant visible reminder to his Majesty of
+who made him emperor, and who could unmake him again
+in twenty minutes if he bungled his rôle. I could also make
+out through a door at the back of the throne-room the imperial
+rickshaw. It seemed to be at least half of gold, with
+richly yellow cushions; and the imperial rickshaw-man—who
+with a few other low-caste hangers-on peered in now
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>and then, after the custom at all Oriental ceremonies—was
+in an incredibly ornate livery, also mainly of imperial yellow.
+Though he uses an automobile outside the palace walls,
+the emperor needs a rickshaw within, for it is nearly a hundred
+yards from the throne-room to his semi-European
+living-quarters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When the larger audience-chamber is available at the
+lunar New Year, trained elephants are brought from the
+imperial stables to do homage on bended knees before the
+Son of Heaven, but this sight was denied us. The kowtowing
+of the retired mandarins ended, his Majesty Khai-dinh
+stepped down from his throne, evidently no easy task in
+his heavy boots, for he moved on the polished floor like an
+octogenarian crossing smooth ice. He shook hands with the
+<i><span lang="fr">résident supérieur</span></i>, then with the purple-robed old archbishop,
+and behind these three we all filed out into a semi-foreign
+dining-room at one side of the courtyard. There
+the emperor once more sat down at the back of the room,
+facing doors wide open on the yard, and again flanked by his
+two fanners, though these were not working now, possibly
+because it was after union hours. A young mandarin interpreter
+stood against the wall behind him; the superior
+resident of Annam took a seat on his left, and the rest of
+us subsided into the rows of chairs facing the emperor sidewise
+that filled the room. Khai-dinh knew some French, but
+like many others in the same boat he never ventured to
+speak it in public. Sometimes, before the interpreter had
+passed on the “résuper’s” remarks, he gave a sign of having
+understood, but he never seemed to attempt to reply in
+French. He now looked more human, permitted some expression
+to play over his features, among which that of relief
+was the most prominent, even smiled now and then. This
+showed that, unlike nearly all the mandarins that now mingled
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>with us, his teeth were white, but that he probably chewed
+betel-nut. He smoked a cigarette as if he were accustomed
+to devour them but was now on his good behavior.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The band played the “Marseillaise,” after which the emperor
+evidently made a brief speech, though in a voice that
+could hardly have been heard by the superior resident himself.
+The two more manly looking princes of the blood, both
+wearing glasses, seemed to speak French fluently and to be
+in many respects quite up-to-date, as they went about greeting
+their many friends among the Europeans. Evidently there
+was nothing wrong with his Majesty’s voice when he wished
+to be heard, for he went on talking to his respectful master
+even after the fire-crackers had been set off, which feat was
+as difficult as conversing in a subway express. The <i><span lang="fr">pétards</span></i>
+were tied in thick continuous bunches from top to bottom
+of bamboo poles terminating in a few leaves that had been
+set up at the four corners of the courtyard, and they kept
+up a deafening bombardment unbrokenly for at least twenty
+minutes, until they suggested the applause for a favorite
+candidate at a political convention. The yard was filled with
+white smoke and the flagstones carpeted with bursted
+crackers, and still the bombardment went on. A little earlier
+the booming of artillery had come from somewhere within
+the citadel, probably an imperial cannon salute, but if this
+still continued, as was likely, we could not hear it, so like
+the firing of thousands of rifles was the bursting of fire-crackers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meanwhile we had all been served iced champagne, in
+which we drank the emperor’s health standing; and there
+were passed around plates of cakes and sweetmeats so elaborate
+that no one seemed to dare to touch them, though the
+Son of Heaven himself munched a bit. A fat Frenchman
+beside me wanted to know in a voice almost loud enough
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>to reach the emperor whether there was <i><span lang="fr">pas moyen avoir un
+cigare</span></i>, and a moment later these and cigarettes were passed
+in jeweled boxes, which contained also the ingredients of
+the betel-nut habit for those who preferred that to smoking.
+Some of the servants who passed these things had the strained
+eyes and high cheek-bones common to eunuchs, and looked
+on as if the fun of life meant nothing to them, as if they
+were still wondering what had happened to them in boyhood
+that they could not be like other men, much as a blind man
+must wonder what sort of sensation is sight. Or they may
+merely have been tubercular.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was evidently some way by which the initiated
+could tell when the bombardment was to cease, for the emperor
+arose and we all filed out after him just in time to
+hear the last fire-cracker explode as we reached the courtyard.
+We went on to the door of the throne-room, and
+there this queer medley of East and West ended with the
+Son of Heaven standing and shaking hands with each of us
+as we filed past him. I murmured New Year’s greetings
+from the United States in his ear, but either he did not catch
+my French or he had never heard of so unimportant a place.
+His fingers were slighter than those of a school-girl, and
+his grasp weak and without cordiality, though this may
+have been due to lack of experience with our queer Western
+form of greeting. We filed out between ranks of gaily
+dressed flunkies, musicians, probable eunuchs, past the troops
+in the outer courtyard, to our automobiles and rickshaws and
+sped away through palace and citadel gates and across the
+big seven-arch steel bridge, soldiers at the gateways saluting
+as we passed, and the populace looking after us not so much
+with envious as with curious faces, as if the thought had
+never occurred to them that they might also be admitted
+to the great imperial ceremony. The last glimpse I had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>of his late Majesty Khai-dinh was of a slight form in ornate
+Oriental get-up, framed in the doorway of his throne-room
+and shaking hands with a fat and pompous French merchant
+who wore a golden Annamese decoration about a neck on
+which a once stiff collar had wilted beyond recognition.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I returned thus hastily to the grocery-hotel both because
+I could not decline the seat reserved for me in the chief’s
+automobile and because I wished to restore the borrowed
+plumage before something fatal happened to it. Moreover,
+my shoes were rapidly changing from their false African to
+their natural Asiatic hue. But that duty and the eleven-o’clock
+<i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i> over, I hastened back across the river. The
+last few days had been very busy there, the market and the
+shops crowded, every one buying new mats, paper and real
+flowers, red paper lanterns, red strips of paper with Chinese
+characters written on them, and great quantities of other
+New Year’s necessities. As in China the people of Annam
+must have money for the <i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i>; not only must they pay their
+debts at the lunar New Year, but they must have new
+clothing, redecorate their houses and the tombs of their
+ancestors, feed well those departed souls and themselves,
+and gird themselves for another Sundayless year of labor
+or indolence. Now the market was closed, though more
+shops kept open than in China, perhaps because many of
+the merchants were not real Annamese. On the other hand
+theaters were working overtime; temples were crowded
+with newly dressed throngs; in sampans, hovels, and houses
+the ancestral altars were laden with flowers, fruits, pork, fish,
+fowl, and boiled rice. The evening before they had scintillated
+with gilded and silver things that gleamed under candle,
+kerosene, and electric lights. Everywhere there was a great
+going and coming, every one making New-Year calls. A
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>green bamboo pole, with a few feathery leaves still at the
+top, had been set up before each house and temple, a woven-bamboo
+ornament far up most of them as a kind of roosting-place
+for the spirits of the air. The theory is, if I understood
+an explanation couched in far from perfect French,
+that these invisible flying wraiths will accept this homage
+to them and do no harm to the inmates of any house before
+which such a bamboo stands.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The rickshaw-men had little chance to celebrate; their holiday
+resembled that of an Irish donkey on March 17. One
+of the chief New-Year sports even of those Annamese who
+usually walk was for once to ride in rickshaws, two and even
+three passengers in each vehicle. The women especially
+were in their newest and most resplendent garb—light and
+dark green, purple, rich brown, small children in every tone
+of red. Negro soldiers from other French possessions, their
+black faces emphasized under their white helmets, were hobnobbing
+with the poorer people in the outskirts, evidently
+held in as much honor among them as their white masters.
+A number of ordinary-looking young conscripts from France
+also mingled freely with the populace, and here and there
+one met a negro and a white soldier arm in arm, as one may
+see them side by side in the same squad on the drill-grounds
+of Indo-China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Annamese seldom drink to excess, and they are not
+by nature quarrelsome or violent, but they dearly love
+gambling. So serious is this vice among them that the
+French now forbid games of chance except during the week
+or so of the lunar New Year season. Now one saw them
+gambling everywhere, men, women, and children. Women,
+even boys of six or seven, had set up gambling-boards in
+the streets, in the doorways of their houses, in the courtyards
+of those homes which had them, in the main rooms before
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>the family altar. It was a simple game that engrossed most
+of them. A board was marked with chalk or paint into several
+squares, sometimes with numbers, some with crudely
+drawn animals in them. When all those who wish to take a
+chance have laid their money in the squares, the proprietor
+of the board throws out a handful of little disks from a bowl
+and counts them off four by four, the remaining number
+winning four times the amount of the bets on the lucky
+square. Besides this primitive form of fan-tan there were
+dice in a saucer with a cup turned down over them. When
+all the money is laid the cup and saucer are shaken and the
+result disclosed. In the public streets wagers ranged all
+the way from perforated brass “cash” to paper piastres;
+inside the larger houses especially much more serious stakes
+were the rule. Many French colonials criticize the government
+for gathering revenue through its opium monopoly
+and forbidding the lesser vice of gambling except during
+<i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Within the citadel much the same ceremony, on a smaller
+scale, as that at the palace, took place in each mandarin’s
+home, with his relatives, friends, and the lower orders bringing
+the greetings. Among other New Year’s decorations
+there were many flags all about this forest-shaded town, the
+tricolor less in evidence than a red and yellow flag that was
+evidently the imperial banner. Scores of the homes of the
+mandarins within the citadel displayed over their gateways
+the flags of all the Allies, that of France double size and in
+the middle. All the rest of the day I met mandarins coming
+out of their low houses in garden groves, or from those of
+others of the same rank, or along the roads and streets on
+both sides of the river, usually in rickshaws. Some even of
+high rank did not scorn to ride double, after the common
+Annamese custom. They no longer wore their ancient Ming
+head-dresses or their knee-high boots, but still had on the gay
+garments of festival, such as cerise robes embroidered with
+flowers. I met several mandarin servants carrying home a
+pair of boots strung over a shoulder, with a cloth-wrapped
+bundle of holiday garments in one hand and the strange
+head-dress left over from the days of the Ming in the other,
+as if some of their masters also had been obliged to borrow
+<i><span lang="fr">le smoking</span></i> in its Annamese form, before they could bring
+their annual greetings to their emperor.</p>
+
+<div id='i_162' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_162a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>An Annamese mandarin all dressed up for his New Year’s honors to his emperor; his servant behind</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_162b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Servants of the mandarins carry home after the ceremony the ancient Ming accoutrements of their masters</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_163' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_163a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Emperor Khai-dinh of Annam on his French-supported throne</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_163b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Some of the most effective of Annamese tombs are covered with pictures and designs made of broken porcelain dishes set in cement</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>One recognizes a mandarin of Annam by the somewhat
+better material of his clothing and by a little wooden or
+ivory baggage-check on his starboard bowsprit, bearing his
+title or grade in Chinese characters. Some of them had
+been so brave, or have obeyed the French so well, that they
+wore on the other side French decorations enough to rival
+a staff-officer. Not all the mandarins surrounding the emperor
+of Annam are noted for either their physical or—the
+experienced eye could not but note—their moral beauty.
+Many were pitted with smallpox, and more of them were
+stoop-shouldered with loafing than were horny-handed with
+toil. Like Chinese above the laboring-class, these tax-gatherers
+from a hard-working people give no attention to
+their muscles, scorn indeed to use them when there is any
+way out of it, and are flabby and ungainly accordingly. Yet
+some of the staid old retired mandarins looked like men who
+had led a kindly and a scholarly life. Each generation the
+grade of a mandarin drops a notch, so that the privileged
+class does not remain perpetually the same, a scheme that
+might perhaps advantageously be applied in other centers of
+the human maelstrom. Titles of nobility are sometimes given
+for distinguished services—such, no doubt, as betraying to
+the French rulers independence movements among the natives—but
+these are no longer hereditary. I met one of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>the princes of the blood on a suburban road that New Year’s
+afternoon, still in his blood-red robes of ceremony, so out
+of keeping with his modern nose-pinching spectacles and the
+very ordinary rickshaw in which he rode. Here and there
+a coolie or a boy took off his palm-leaf hat to him, but that
+was the only visible evidence that his rank meant anything
+much to the populace, or to the prince himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The people of Annam still treat their puppet emperor as
+the true Son of Heaven, however, though they cannot but
+know that he is chosen by the French. It is as if they considered
+the French merely an instrument of fate, as some
+Christians manage to regard anything that happens as God’s
+hand working in strange mysterious ways. Whatever he
+may have thought of this attitude of his loyal subjects, Khai-dinh
+did not by any means disdain the material conveniences
+of our upstart Western civilization. He never went outside
+his palace grounds except by automobile—a big imperial-yellow
+limousine with black top and red wheels, of French
+make naturally, and which had its blow-outs and other mishaps
+now and then quite like the Fords of the garden variety
+of mankind. Over on the French side of the river he had a
+suburban palace, a rest-house far from his crowded domestic
+circle. It is a very showy establishment in foreign, more
+exactly in continental European, style, with graveled driveways,
+<i><span lang="fr">portes cochères</span></i>, plate-glass windows, the walls
+bright yellow with the intertwined letters AD on the gates.
+That afternoon it was gay with yellow flags, a color forbidden
+the ordinary people, though now and then a small
+child wears it with impunity—or it may be that this means
+the emperor once called upon its mother. Even in his
+palace within the citadel Khai-dinh had his apartments installed
+in European style, they say, though I cannot of course
+report this on first-hand evidence; his domestic realm was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>closed even to his French superior, for after all Annam
+is still Oriental. When the spirits moved him to spend an
+evening entertaining any cronies he may have had among
+the French colonials, he called his yellow limousine and
+repaired to his transfluvial palace. He drew and sculptured,
+not in the traditional Chinese-Annamese fashion, but after
+the manner of a not too talented pupil of the Beaux Arts.
+The French insist that he also was very happy, and they
+may be right. His salary for doing nothing was five thousand
+piastres a month; he had ten wives—his predecessor
+maintained a hundred, but economy is the watchword in
+official Annam since the war—and his dancers and all such
+necessities were paid for by the government. The “résuper”
+who really rules Annam and its emperor gets only fifteen
+hundred piastres a month and has only one wife, and as far
+as is officially known not even one dancing-girl.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On March 19 there was to be an even greater ceremony
+in Hué—the emperor’s all-night vigil at the Temple of
+Heaven. Similar, though by no means comparable, to the
+imperial rite that took place yearly in Peking until the
+revolution of 1911 turned that Temple of Heaven into a
+tourists’ picnic-ground and China into a masquerade-ball
+republic, this ceremony has long been given every three
+years; but the French had decided that this one was to be
+the last. Thus do the pageantries of olden days drop unnoticed
+one by one under the trampling feet of time.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER IX<br> <span class='c011'>THE PEOPLE OF THE EMINENT SOUTH</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Of the eighteen to twenty million people of French Indo-China
+two thirds are Annamese. That does not mean
+that Annam has so many inhabitants. The Annamese are
+the predominant people of all the lowlands of France’s Far-Eastern
+empire, not merely of Annam. Their own land,
+though nearly eight hundred miles long, is very narrow,
+containing barely sixty thousand square miles, on which
+between seven and eight million people manage to wrest
+subsistence almost entirely from a plain twelve to fifty
+miles wide between the mountains and the sea. Naturally
+they have gradually overrun the other divisions of Indo-China,
+submerging the other races there, just as the tricky,
+the less pleasing, the more sophisticated always drive out the
+naïve and the more lovable on this sad old globe of ours.
+Their Chinese religion of ancestor-worship, requiring every
+man by hook or crook to leave a son behind him, has of
+course much to do with this majority.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As far back as history mentions it, what we now call Indo-China
+was under the sway of the Cham, then of the Khmer,
+tribes of a certain Hindu culture who subjugated the land
+and drove the aborigines, if such their predecessors were,
+into the mountains. Later they in turn were conquered by
+what we now know as the Annamese. One guess is that
+this dour people originally came from Tibet or the lower
+mountains about it. They themselves say that they once
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>inhabited southwestern China—Yünnan, Kwangsi, Kwangtung,
+and Tonkin—at least five thousand years ago. Many
+of their customs and physical characteristics bear out this
+statement, but they are so mixed with the Cham and the
+other peoples they found in their new home that they have
+many traits not typical of the Mongol race, and one is every
+now and then surprised to find a nearly Aryan nose among
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Whatever their exact origin, they came down from somewhere
+to the north and filled, as tightly as a plump leg fills a
+stocking, this narrow strip of plain between the coast and
+the mountains, pushing back, killing off, and absorbing the
+tribes that preceded them. Highlanders to begin with, perhaps,
+they have now lived in tropical lowlands and rice
+marshes for so many centuries that they have gradually
+taken on tropical characteristics; hence it is not at all strange
+that they are the weakest and the ugliest of all those reputedly
+of the Mongolian race. Hardly of medium height, less
+vigorous than their neighbors, they are much like the Chinese,
+yet in many ways quite different from them also. They
+have been known to the Celestials for centuries by the name
+first given them when the two peoples came in contact with
+each other—the Giao-chi, or “Big Toes.” The noticeable
+spread of the great toe away from the others, suggesting
+mountain-climbing ancestors, is still conspicuous among them
+even in this day of French shoes. Though the name no doubt
+had its origin in that scornfulness of the Chinese for any
+race but their own, in due season the Annamese began to
+call themselves Giao-chi also, just as they followed the Chinese
+example in calling their country Annam, Land of the
+Eminent South, or words to that effect. As I may have
+said before, the white man’s name “Indo-China” is particularly
+fitting; France’s Far-Eastern possession is certainly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>the half-way station between the Chinese and the Hindus.
+The Annamese are no more really Chinese than are many
+of the Indian races that are called by that name, yet they
+are quite unlike the Hindu-cultured Cambodians and have
+nothing in common with the people of Laos, beyond the
+Annamese chain, who are akin to the Siamese. In mere
+physical matters they are not only smaller but darker than
+the Chinese, tawny, though less so than the Cambodians,
+with flat skulls, faces, and noses, protruding cheek-bones,
+and large mouths that are made doubly conspicuous by their
+permanently blackened teeth and thick lips swollen with
+what we miscall betel-nut.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Thus we have come in leisurely sequence to the most
+conspicuous, the most despicable perhaps, certainly the most
+inexplicable point in the physical appearance of the Annamese.
+They have never practised mutilation of their women
+in the Chinese manner by binding their feet; infanticide is
+reputed to be very rare, if known at all; but about marriage
+time, which in Annam is early in life, every Annamese,
+of either sex, is expected to have his teeth lacquered black
+by a process said to be very painful. Recalling what a
+dentist can do to us in half an hour, it is not hard to believe
+that they suffer during a task that takes day after day. The
+lacquering loosens the teeth, but the <i><span lang="fr">nhoc-nam</span></i>, or ground-fish
+sauce with which every Annamese seasons his food,
+tightens them again. The men are not so selfish as to force
+the women to go through the beautifying process alone, as
+in so many lands, but step up and take the same medicine
+themselves, so that the mouths of both sexes resemble rat-holes.
+Perhaps it is this that makes the Annamese seem
+more stupid than the Chinese they in so many other ways
+resemble—or perhaps it is merely their southern indolence
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>of manner, or the circumspection of a subject race as
+compared to freemen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every people has its own style of beauty, however, and
+to the Annamese a person is handsome only if his teeth
+are jet-black. “Any dog can have white teeth,” say the
+Annamese, looking disparagingly at Europeans. To them
+white teeth are not only ugly but immoral! For the <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>,
+the Annamese girl, who has not blackened her teeth, is
+usually, if not always, some Frenchman’s darling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The blackened teeth alone would be bad enough, even
+if the people of Annam were not also addicted to a custom
+common to a large part of oceanic Asia. Almost all of them
+chew betel-nut, as we persist in calling it. It is really the
+nut of the arec-palm and the leaf of the betel-vine that often
+climbs this, mixed with lime to bring out the full strength
+of the ingredients. The wand-like arec-palms that rise
+straight and soldierly, as if they fancied they served some
+useful purpose and were proud of it, are the most conspicuous
+feature of any Annamese or Tonkinese village.
+Whenever a child is born one more of these slender trees is
+planted, with a betel-vine beside it, so that in time the infant
+also may have its “betel-nut.” Large villages are almost
+hidden in arec-palm forests. This tree produces nuts of
+about the size of a walnut, in green clusters like a bunch of
+huge grapes, which grow, like cocoanuts, just below the
+leaves. These, sold in the markets, the shops, everywhere
+along the highways and the narrow trails, are cut up, wrapped
+in a betel-leaf—whence the misnomer “betel-nut,” which
+does not exist—smeared with lime, and thrust into the
+repulsive mouth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A French colonial who had tried betel-nut once told me
+that he had a sudden rush of blood to the head and felt warm
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>and excited all day long. Like opium, however, it was one
+of those things I prefer to take on hearsay. It is strange
+that in China, land of bad habits, this mild vice is unknown,
+unless we count the lower half of now Japanese Formosa.
+A few old French colonials get the habit, as they become
+addicted to opium, <i><span lang="fr">congaïes</span></i>, and other customs of the East;
+but most of the ruling race have more respect for at least
+their outward appearance. The chemical action of the lime
+on the other ingredients produces a blood-red cud, so that
+betel-nut chewers look as if their disgusting mouths of apparently
+decayed teeth were full of blood, as if they were
+in the throes of a hemorrhage—and didn’t know it. Some
+Annamese girls would be good looking but for this blood-dripping
+mouth, repulsive even when closed, for the constant
+use of betel-nut not only destroys the gums but leaves the
+lips permanently swollen. On the other hand the lacquering
+of the teeth and the chewing of betel-nut somehow manage to
+save the Annamese from toothache, they say, though some
+of us might prefer to suffer the pain ourselves rather than
+pass it on to the beholder. The chemical action of lacquer
+and betel-juice in combination seems to kill the microbes
+that lead to the dentist’s chair in other lands, and no wonder;
+for surely no self-respecting microbe would take up its
+habitat in an Annamese mouth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In Hué and the two capitals alternately graced by the
+French governor-general the younger people of the better
+class show evidence of beginning to think of leaving off
+the enameling of their teeth, and even of abandoning the
+chewing of betel-nut. But both customs are almost universal
+among masses and classes alike wherever Annamese
+is spoken, and many, like our rural tobacco-chewers, are
+proud of the distance they can project the red saliva. This
+seems to be a favorite indoor as well as outdoor sport, for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>they spit the stuff everywhere, not only splotching with red
+every road and street in the land that is not already red by
+nature, but even the whitewashed walls of the homes of
+mandarins. In hiring an Annamese nurse-maid or cook one
+must insist that no betel-nut be used in the house, and even
+then one’s best things are likely to become gradually speckled
+with red.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though the race as a whole is not noted for its manly
+beauty, the women of Annam have a more pleasing appearance
+to Western eyes than do those of China—except when
+they smile. Their expression is more <i><span lang="fr">piquante</span></i>, if you know
+what I mean. Those who become temporary wives of the
+French, and do not blacken the teeth, sometimes do not even
+chew betel-nut, are often pleasant to look upon during their
+younger years. To be sure these are hand-picked; but
+almost without exception, irrespective of age, the women
+of Annam are slender, sinuous, and graceful, with a sort of
+gliding walk, the countrywomen especially very erect, their
+arms swinging far behind them, as if they were constantly
+performing the feat of balancing their big palm-leaf hats.
+Many have beautiful hands, small, thin, and tapering, even
+though they do the hardest work of carrying and grubbing
+in the rice-fields. To Annamese taste the chief points of
+female beauty are black teeth, red heels—on bare feet, that
+is, not on shoes, as in the case of foot-bound China—and
+oval faces, in contrast to the round ones called for by Chinese
+standards of beauty. Great numbers of the women
+of the Eminent South have the longest hair that I—nay,
+even my wife—had ever seen, in certain cases reaching well
+below the knees.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>There are those, however, who consider inwardness more
+important than outwardness, and for them let us begin by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>saying that in disposition the Annamese are less gay, have
+little of the sense of humor so highly developed among the
+Chinese—unless it be that they put on a mask before the
+white man. This they do, of course, like any subjugated
+people, but one seldom catches them laughing even when
+they have no suspicion of being observed—seldom, that is,
+in comparison with that reservoir of laughter, the Chinese.
+A Frenchman tells us that of all the people on earth the
+Annamese have the greatest plasticity, are the most sly, cunning,
+utilitarian, and the most assimilative—though often
+superficially so. They show outward respect to parents and
+superiors, but seem to be insincere and incapable of deep
+devotion—not unnaturally, one would say, seeing that the
+race has been subjected for most of the past two thousand
+years. Never showing his real thoughts on the surface,
+conserving his own personality under all circumstances, the
+son of Annam adapts himself, passively resists, triumphs
+when he seems to be defeated. Those who know him well
+credit him with a great love of his native land, especially
+of the village where he was born. The French insist that
+the Annamese are great thieves, which, with all their faults,
+can hardly be said of the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During all the centuries that China held Annam enslaved,
+“like a kept mistress,” it became Chinese. It took from
+China its art, its morals, its writing, its costumes, its customs,
+its gods; it is so Chinese that there are still celebrated
+in the temples of Annam festivals and formalities that have
+not taken place in the Celestial Empire for hundreds of
+years. Now it is France that rules, and the Annamese have
+become French. If Russia had conquered them, asserts a
+Frenchman, they would have icons in their homes and sleep
+on unlighted porcelain stoves. Either they are naturally
+copiers or they have found copying the easiest way in a hot
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>climate; long dominated, they seem to have lost through
+evaporation the “pep” of their probably highland ancestors.
+No doubt this explains why, although of old it was literary,
+artistic, responsive to the most subtle plays of the spirit,
+Annam never produced a single, great personal work, a great
+poet, an original architect, a powerful moralist, a painter or
+a sculptor of genius. “The foreign model shines through
+everything admirable between the Mekong and the Gulf of
+Tonkin.” The Annamese can work at the task in hand with
+infinite taste and patience; what he lacks in originality he
+makes up to a degree in ingeniousness; but the creative spark
+seems never to have flashed forth in him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I suppose it is this copy-cat characteristic that makes him
+show no surprise at the inventions of the West. You cannot
+startle this ancient Oriental world with the mechanical marvels
+of the new. It accepts them, but it is not astonished.
+Give the yellow race the telegraph, and they send telegrams;
+the phonograph, and they listen; the railroad, and they buy
+their tickets and take their seats—granted that there are
+any left; the automobile, and a self-confident young man
+pours in gasoline and steps on the starter, knowing only that
+for some reason this makes the thing go. The force of this
+people lies in its shrewd plasticity; the Annamese do not
+resist, they adapt themselves; they espouse on the instant
+the practices and customs of the conqueror. Endowed with
+an immeasurable pride, they strive, not to do their best in
+their own line, but to imitate their masters, to outdo them in
+their own field. It is not because they admire them, one suspects;
+it is merely to prove that they are as smart as any
+one else. Thus Annamese students, with centuries of memorizing
+Chinese characters behind them, often outdo in French
+even the French youths in their classes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though they take so readily to Western inventions, no
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>Annamese will use a mechanical contrivance if he can do
+without it. With all the corkscrews and can-openers in the
+world within reach of his hand, your <i><span lang="fr">bep</span></i>, or Annamese cook,
+invariably draws corks and opens cans with his teeth. In
+putting fuel on his fire he prefers his hands to a shovel.
+You may show him better methods, but he continues to make
+sure of the condition of an egg by whirling it on its side;
+if it is fresh it will not whirl, according to the <i><span lang="fr">bep</span></i>; the older
+it is the more it will gyrate, he insists. Try it on your own
+“strictly fresh” eggs some winter, ye slaves of the land of
+cold-storage—and if he is right they may be whirling still
+when spring comes.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Though they sometimes eat sharks, the Annamese worship
+what they call a whale, really the dolphin or porpoise. According
+to legend, one of these acrobats of the sea once got
+under an emperor’s boat and kept it from sinking until it
+could reach shore. Even students in French <i><span lang="fr">lycées</span></i> still believe
+this yarn, and if one of these “whales” dies and is
+washed ashore, it is given honorable burial with much ceremony.
+The Annamese worship trees, especially if they
+are huge, or very old, or of strange shape; and to propitiate
+the demons or to win the favors of the good spirits that
+inhabit them they put under them little vases of the lime
+used with the betel-nut that even spirits are reputed to enjoy.
+Scores of these tiny jars may sometimes be seen at the foot
+of a single tree. No Annamese will cut down those trees,
+such as the banyan, that are especially sacred. The French
+sometimes have to chop down with their own fair hands
+trees that are in the way of civic improvements. At Tourane
+two Annamese converts to Christianity were given good
+wages and all the wood in a huge tree that was hindering
+progress, and earned fifty piastres for two days’ work, fifty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>times their normal income. Being Christians, they did not
+of course care how many trees were cut down. There are
+other lands where so effective a superstition would be well
+worth entertaining.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The religions of Annam are in the main those of China.
+Not only “whales” and trees, but big or queerly shaped rocks,
+the rat, the silkworm, the elephant, above all the tiger, which
+they never mention except by the honorable title “Ong Kop,”
+have their worshipers. But the most general cult is that of
+their ancestors and of the village genii. The local god may
+be some mandarin who ruled the village centuries ago, some
+native son who became a great scholar, some former mistress
+of an emperor who aided her native town in some crisis; or
+it may merely be a beggar or an executed robber, some great
+calamity after his death having proved that his spirit must
+be propitiated, perhaps a new temple built to enthrone it. In
+return for all this adoration the village genius is expected to
+protect the village from drouth, epidemic, and similar
+catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One can scarcely travel, however rapidly, through Annam
+without seeing one of these fêtes to the genius of some village
+or other. Parades riotous with color make their way
+along the narrow dikes, across the rice-fields, the fantastic
+costumes mirrored in the flooded sloughs. Not only do
+women take no part in the cult of village genii, any more
+than they can effectively worship an ancestor, but neither
+do any of the men except those village notables who are not
+in mourning and in whose family full peace and harmony
+prevails. I gather that if a wife has recently run off with a
+lover or wilfully blackened an eye of her notable spouse, or
+if a daughter has eloped during the year with a Frenchman
+but without benefit of clergy—though this is perhaps no such
+serious matter—the husband or father involved would not
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>be available or eligible for the rites in honor of the village
+genius, but would pass the day in seclusion. An incentive
+surely to domestic harmony! The plebes of course have
+merely the honor of paying the bill, as in any other part of
+the globe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are many temples in Annam, but the largest of them
+are small compared with those of China, and in many details
+they are distinctly different. Elephants appear among the
+decorations; dragons are not so numerous. The roofs tilt
+with a longer, almost coquettish, curve; the tropical climate
+has given them a more luxurious brown; there is rather an
+air of equatorial languor about them. Most of them are
+better kept too, as if either the worshipers were more devout
+or there were better supervision over the caretakers. But
+this is perhaps merely another example of the superiority in
+cleanliness and order of Annam over China. Possibly it
+is due to the presence of the French, who have ruled over
+them during the life of almost all those now living, that the
+Annamese have a little more conception of the line between
+filth and its antithesis than is given to Celestial understanding.
+Or it may be that on the whole the people of Annam
+are less noisome in their personal habits than their northern
+neighbors because they are less poverty-stricken, and because
+total indifference in sanitary matters is more swiftly and
+visibly punished in so tropical a land. At any rate there is
+no such slovenliness, no such stench, in the cities of Annam
+as beyond the northern border; for one thing they are mostly
+on the coast, with water plentiful, and they are small, none
+of those enormous conglomerations of humanity to be found
+in hundreds of places throughout China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Gaudily painted little temples, weather-blackened shrines,
+generally among trees, pass in constant procession as one
+hurries through the land of the Eminent South. Now and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>again another procession enlivens the landscape—a long file
+of people in their gayest robes, most of them carrying high
+above their heads the parasols that are usually forbidden to
+any but mandarins and foreigners, wending its way along
+the dikes. They are on their way to a temple, or taking part
+in a wedding, perhaps a funeral, in which latter case they
+carry with them gay paper imitations of everything the deceased
+will need in the after-world, from automobiles to
+concubines. Temple festivals are theatrical and musical
+entertainments as well as religious ceremonies, even as in our
+churches. Probably the mass of the people distinguish no
+difference. The charming oasis of the <i><span lang="fr">pagode</span></i>, as the French
+call it, may suddenly have taken on life in the midst of
+the rice-fields. The dikes about it are covered with files
+of people moving toward it; where there was once a road or
+some other open space beside it there is nothing but streets
+of makeshift shops that have sprung up overnight. There
+are improvised restaurants, women roasting cakes; sellers of
+rice and <i><span lang="fr">chumchum</span></i>, of sugar-cane and oranges, of arec-nuts
+and betel-leaves, squat on their heels near their round flat
+baskets—a whole village of fortune will have sprung forth
+from the soil. The swarming crowd rumbles and clamors
+and shrieks with full mouths, for this is the time when they
+are all gourmands and when the whole region becomes one
+great family. Narrow wooden benches bear rows of customers
+seated monkey-fashion on their heels, stuffing themselves
+with swiftly moving chop-sticks. Every one is dressed in
+his best, the villagers with floating black tunics, the band-turban
+tight about the forehead, on which it leaves a whitish
+streak untouched by the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The temple itself, usually deserted, is full of natives,
+chewing, spitting, shouting, their wooden sandals clacking.
+An air of gentle yet barbaric splendor radiates through the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>place; religious furniture, sumptuously carved and painted
+with lacquer or gold, gleams forth; parasols, silk banners
+embroidered with mottoes and attributes and moralities scintillate
+in the distilled sunshine. Everywhere, even in the
+most distant corners, candles and joss-sticks burn; blue
+clouds of incense cover with an impalpable veil the golden
+faces of the idols; the altars are loaded with offerings; pasteboard
+horses, richly caparisoned, spread their stiff legs.
+About the ritual vases, the big iron urns in which incense
+and paper prayers by the myriad are burned, sacred swans
+stand erect on bronze tortoises; every now and again the
+flame leaps high in an urn, devouring a package of bars of
+gold or silver, made of rice-paper painted white or yellow.
+Then suddenly, unexpectedly, two generals pop forth from
+the wings, their backs a quiver of waving flags, their lungs
+roaring forth challenges in a false key. With uplifted sabers
+they march upon each other and indulge in what is meant
+to be a terrifying pantomime, but nothing more serious comes
+of it than of most Chinese battles. Frightful noises resound
+from their armies following close behind them—two howling
+troops of ragged coolies shaking spears and standards. The
+stage becomes a whirling chaos of gleaming flags and shrieking
+soldiery, in which all visible likeness to a religious ceremony
+fades away into pure theatricalism.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was constantly running across religious celebrations.
+Sometimes gay paper boats, their sails all set, were started
+off down a river to appease the spirits of the stream. Or
+it might be at one of those neglected little temples without
+door or roof which the slightest village maintains for its local
+gods. First the worshipers <i><span lang="fr">lam lie</span></i>, kowtow to the stone or
+mud tiger at the entrance, a tiger with great bulging eyes,
+usually sculptured in deep relief on a stone screen. Then
+they go to lay their offerings on the altar—horses made of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>red paper, pasteboard gourds containing sticks of incense,
+rice-paper ingots of gold and silver. Fire-crackers explode,
+what the Chinese consider music howls and shrieks, crowds
+swarm, the temple flares with decorations in colored paper.
+In the front chamber there usually sat a shaven-headed bonze
+wearing a golden paper crown and dressed in red, singsonging
+Buddhist prayers from a ragged tissue-paper book. Beside
+and behind him men were beating drums, large and small,
+or pieces of bell-metal, of resonant hardwood, sometimes
+adding falsetto voices to the uproar. Countrymen in not
+too clean garments crowded close on either side, until men
+with sticks drove them back, again and again, sometimes
+by throwing lighted bunches of fire-crackers into the massed
+throng. Old women with sickening black mouths, contrasting
+unpleasantly with the gay decorations, seemed to be
+the chief worshipers. The mandarin in a gauzy black cloak
+who kept order knew enough French to tell me that they
+were praying for peace, but not enough to specify just what
+they meant by it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another time, elsewhere, strange sounds drew me to a
+house where men of professional countenance were playing
+on flutes, cymbals, tambourines, or their Oriental equivalents,
+while the people were lamenting in discordant voices.
+A family and its neighbors were praying about the bed of
+a sick woman whose body would not cease swelling for all
+the medicine-man’s mud plasters. That concert of uproar
+had lasted since the night before; it was merely a question
+of who would tire out first, the music, the sickness,
+or the invalid. Before I left, fire-crackers were thrown
+about to scare off the evil spirits that were wilfully causing
+the illness, and if that did not drive them away the
+master of ceremonies was prepared to toss about handfuls
+of tissue-paper piastres, in the hope that the covetous devils
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>would leave the body of the sick woman to fight for the
+money. If even this should not succeed, the funeral procession
+starts with a band, followed by banner-bearers, then
+by other ragamuffins carrying in a little paper temple the
+spirit-tablet of the deceased, portable tables laden with roast
+pig and other delicacies, and finally the gaudy bier, surrounded
+by howling mourners trying to call the soul back
+to earth, perhaps against its wishes.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>As there is really no Annamese religion, so there is no
+Annamese literature, except the Chinese. Even their spoken
+tongue seems to be an ancient Chinese dialect. It is a
+monosyllabic language, depending on tones to give different
+meanings to the same words; and it is so difficult that
+those Annamese who know French prefer to converse in
+that tongue. A queer language indeed, explosive in pronunciation,
+so that the friendliest little chat sounds like
+a violent quarrel, and until one gets accustomed to it every
+conversation seems about to develop into a fist-fight—or
+at least its Far-Eastern counterpart, clawing and scratching.
+In writing, Chinese characters are used, therefore Annamese,
+Japanese, Koreans, Formosans, Chinese of the
+north or south, can all converse readily enough on paper;
+though as they do not pronounce the characters at all alike
+the spoken word is of no use among them. Half a century
+ago the French Jesuits gave the Annamese a romanized
+script, and now thousands read their newspapers in it. In
+fact the government has made this alphabetical writing
+obligatory in the schools, and it is far more widely spread
+than a similar effort in China. But it is no such simple
+matter as the uninitiated imagine to represent tones by an
+extension of accent-marks. With the reform goes the
+ability to talk to their neighbors on paper too, and the old
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>classics are being lost to the younger generation, even as
+in Korea and Formosa under the Japanese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Polygamy is still legal in Annam, though for economic
+reasons it is no longer usual. It remains a not uncommon
+practice for the wife who has tried in vain for eight or
+ten years to bear her husband a son to put on an old woman’s
+bonnet and go out and buy him a second wife. Not a
+bad plan, surely an improvement on the extramarital secrecy
+of the West; it no doubt makes for a more congenial companionship
+and incidentally solves the servant problem, if
+ever there was one in Annam. Yet the Annamese wife
+has a better social position than in most of the Orient.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Speaking of wives, in Annam kissing—except in the not
+few cases in which Frenchmen have taught a different style—consists
+in approaching the nose to the face of the loved
+one and sniffing, much as if one were smelling a flower.
+The harder one sniffs the more it proves one’s love—which
+is sometimes a real test!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Naturally a ditch has dug itself between the younger
+and the older generation in Annam. Other customs, other
+manners, other points of view have grown up since the
+rule of despotic emperors changed to the rule of protective
+Frenchmen. When the old ancestral altar is replaced
+by a chest of drawers topped by a mirror it is not merely
+a question of furniture; something has changed in the heart,
+in the essence of things. The fathers wish to remain true
+to the spirit of old Annam; the sons wish to be “même
+chose Français.” Observing the two generations side by
+side, one has an impression of two different classes, almost
+two different races. The dissimilarity shows itself in the
+slightest matters of every-day life. Take, for instance, the
+well-to-do Annamese families the traveler finds dining in
+the more or less French hotels along the main routes of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>travel. The young people, often dressed entirely in European
+garb, their black hair cut in our fashion and glossy
+with brilliantine, eat their <i><span lang="fr">tête de veau</span></i> and <i><span lang="fr">poulet rôti</span></i> with
+ease, talking and laughing freely, while their constrained,
+embarrassed, yet always dignified parents, in their long
+gowns and the Annamese head-dress, handle knife and fork
+in one hand at one time, as if they were chop-sticks, and
+hardly succeed in swallowing a mouthful. Especially in
+the ports and the larger cities young Annam is growing up
+vastly different from his fathers. Far from reading the
+old classics, he knows only the <i><span lang="fr">quoc-ngu</span></i>, the Annamese
+language transcribed in our alphabet, which he even beats
+out on a typewriter. At Saïgon or Hanoï he is resplendent
+with modernism, agitating, scheming, getting rich; but at
+Hué he seems to have taken refuge in the legendary past,
+in tradition, in the memory of his ancestors. How long even
+this spacious town on the banks of the River of Perfumes
+will remain what it still is, the natural place of refuge of
+the exalted spirits of the great princes of other times, seeking
+throughout the “protected” kingdom for a place to
+which our Western civilization cannot track them, is not
+hard to guess: just about the time necessary to finish the
+railway that is to unite the Annamese capital with Hanoï
+on the north and with Saïgon to the south; the time needed
+to replace the little hotel-grocery, celebrated among all the
+colonials of Indo-China, with the tourists’ palace already
+planned; the time it will take to build a few factories in
+which fishermen will be the workmen and princes and
+mandarins the bosses.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Ah, well, the world changes. Not every visitor to Annam
+can see the prostrations of the “ten thousand” mandarins
+at Hué, and soon that ceremony too may be gone forever.
+The legendary Annam, the traditional Asia, is passing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>away. Roads, the automobile, the telegraph have upset all
+the old customs. Old-timers cannot tell a story of the
+olden days—of late in the nineteenth century—without sighing,
+“Ah, in my time&#160;... but we shall never see that
+again.” We shall not, of course; yet there is no just cause
+to weep at our misfortune in arriving too late in a world
+grown too old. There are compensations. Western customs,
+introduced into Indo-China, have not destroyed the picturesque;
+they have merely transformed it. In the place
+of the adventurers turned administrators who, living like
+little kings far from control, inspired respect in the natives
+by tricks akin to sleight-of-hand, surrounded themselves with
+<i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i> like Oriental sultans in their harems, and dispensed
+justice in the shade of a banyan-tree, like some tropical
+Saint Louis, there is the Parisian boulevardier, far from
+his element, watched over by a wife who will see to it that
+<i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i> become nothing more romantic than seamstresses
+and cooks’ assistants. After all, the sedan-chairs that once
+crawled along the Mandarin Road by which Chinese officials
+went and came among their posts in Annam were no
+more worth coming to see than are autobuses, jammed so
+full of natives that their feet stick out from both sides of
+it, <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i> wearing French shoes, an old Annamese dowager
+with a modern umbrella under her arm, “boys” with a golden
+tooth or two among their black-lacquered ones, bicycles
+among the baskets on the roof of the terror-spreading
+vehicle, an autobus so crowded that it looks as if the passengers
+were transporting it, like ants dragging a dead fly.
+Come to think of it, there is nothing more amusing about
+the myriad old temples of a mummified Far East than about
+a Buddhist priest in his saffron robe carrying a fountain-pen
+and riding a bicycle in his bare feet. The old <i><span lang="fr">nha-qué</span></i>
+bound to market with a string of “cash” over one shoulder
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>may be gone, but in his place there are Annamese youths,
+still wearing black band-turbans above their misfit French
+clothing, counting out paper piastres behind the bars of the
+Banque de l’Indo-China.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER X<br> <span class='c011'>HURRYING ON TO THE NORTHERN CAPITAL</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>I was up at four the morning after the imperial ceremony,
+in sufficiently good mood to refrain from kicking
+the “boy” who had called me according to orders, and
+off in a heavy rain by a rickshaw assured the evening before
+by a combination of heavy subsidy and threatened
+penalty. The train from Hué to Dongha, completing the
+central stretch of the railways of Indo-China that begins
+at Tourane, ran close outside the moat of Hué citadel, the
+walled imperial city stretching from river to river. Beyond,
+a rich plain was almost completely covered with rice,
+a wet green plain backed by the mountain ranges, bulking
+against the western sky, that were never far distant on the
+left. The scantiness of the country, the paucity of its arable
+land, seemed to be emphasized here; for Annam gets very
+narrow indeed north of Hué, so narrow that it all but
+breaks in two. Yet it was surprising how many people
+were crowded into this slender strip of earth, how many
+things of interest to the hurried traveler too, for that matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At length, hardly an hour beyond Hué, we rode out from
+under the clouds as from under a roof. For the climate runs
+in streaks up and down this narrow country. The weather
+again became, and, what was more to the point, remained,
+splendid, so that almost the only time I did not have brilliant
+sunshine during my two months in Indo-China was
+during that enforced delay at Hué. Another hour and we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>ran out of track, and were set off at 7:30 at a mere station,
+where I stepped into an autobus in which I rode until 8:30
+that night.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were plenty of Annamese in the back four fifths
+of the vehicle, though it was not packed as the autobuses
+of Annam often are. For at this New Year’s season most
+people were either already at their ancestral homes or had
+no intention of coming. Just how the driver and his unfailing
+assistant were induced to work at such a time was
+a mystery, but that perhaps is one of the advantages of
+French rule. These autobuses run as regularly as the trains
+with which they connect, whether there are passengers or
+not, for at least there are the mails. In fact on the whole
+they run a little faster than the trains, which is perhaps
+one reason their fares are higher. My Scotch blood evidently
+having surged to the surface during my delay, I
+had taken before leaving Hué a second-class ticket, partly
+too, I fancy, in order to prove that the company would
+have to sell me one, in spite of my complexion. There had
+been no argument, though white men cannot ride among
+the natives in fourth class on the trains. But the Annamese
+agent at Dongha, as if he could not bear to see
+the race that ruled over his land mingling with his fellow-countrymen,
+insisted that I ride first class, that is, in the
+front seat, behind the driver this time. Or there may
+have been another reason; for when my recovered baggage
+was placed in the closed box at the rear of the car—also
+a first-class privilege, since freight and express, the parcel-post
+and the baggage of native passengers, was all piled
+up on the railed roof of the vehicle or tied along the
+running-boards—he mentioned casually that of course it
+weighed considerably more than the fifteen kilograms even
+a first-class passenger was allowed as free luggage; and as
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>the rate for anything above that amount is nearly as high
+as for human flesh, I felt it only fair to slip a couple of
+paper piastres into his limp palm, at which he not only
+did not protest but even thanked me in imperfect French.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This time I had a fellow-passenger of my own color.
+A Frenchman of sturdy frame and studious face, a khaki
+patch held in place over one eye by a cord that had left
+a thin white line free from sunburn diagonally across his
+intelligent features, had also stepped off the train. As the
+custom in England and its newer American counterpart of
+strict incommunicativeness between strangers unexpectedly
+meeting on the road does not apply among the hospitable
+French colonials of Indo-China, I soon discovered that my
+companion, though ostensibly in the customs service, was
+a novelist whose latest romance against an Annamese background
+I had finished reading the evening before. I might
+have been embarrassed at being discovered by so important
+a personage, an official to boot, occupying “European accommodations”
+at the price of a native ticket, had I not
+quickly learned that the novelist had not even paid second-class
+fare for his first-class seat, but was traveling on a
+government <i><span lang="fr">réquisition</span></i>, which cost him nothing more than
+the asking.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He had been in the customs service of Indo-China since
+early manhood, but chancing to be on furlough in his
+native land when the World War broke out, he had joined
+his regiment at once, fighting unscathed all through the
+war, until, three days before the Armistice, he had lost an
+eye. But the government had been kind. It had kept him
+on the pay-roll as a customs officer, but let him run about
+the country at government expense, to such things as the
+ceremony we had just seen at the court of Hué, in order
+that he might gather material for more writing. For your
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>Frenchman realizes that even an honest novel, true as to
+local color, is useful propaganda; and Indo-China has a
+longing to be known, in France as well as in the world at
+large. Hawthorne and Whitman, I recalled, had not been
+paid their government salaries in order that they might go
+on producing what was perhaps even better literature than
+that of my new traveling companion. Nor could I remember
+having heard of any of our crippled war veterans receiving
+government aid in the production of art or letters.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>We made the constant good speed of a limited express,
+along a road raised a foot or two above the rice-fields,
+here dry but green, still flooded back toward the foot-hills.
+I could in fact have ridden a little less swiftly with more
+pleasure. For there being rarely any turn in the road, and
+no other vehicles, gasoline-driven or otherwise—luckily,
+since the roads of Indo-China are for one car at a time—we
+went over the many short bridges just wide enough
+for so ponderous a conveyance as ours with the roller-coaster
+feeling of a day at Coney Island. It was a gravel
+road in which grew grass that seemed to have sprung up
+during the last few days of rain; and there was never a
+fence or other protection from it even at the villages through
+which we roared so madly. Striking peaks stood out
+among those rows of ranges perpetually following us on
+the west; at the mouths of the several short rivers that
+looked like seas in the raging wind we were ferried across
+in the usual decrepit old <i><span lang="fr">bacs</span></i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Donghoï or Quang-binh we were the first guests in
+a brand-new hotel, subsidized by the government in order
+that the few French travelers who go up and down the
+<i><span lang="fr">Route Mandarine</span></i> may have all the advantages of home during
+the <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i> and siesta that break the journey there.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>During that Parisian ceremony we picked up a French
+colonial burned a reddish bronze by half a lifetime at a
+country post beneath the equatorial sun. He went on with
+us for a few hours to his bungalow at the place where
+another <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i> came across the sea to us at the call of a
+water-buffalo horn in the hands of a ferryman. Before
+it had fought its way to the southern shore there was
+ample time to enjoy the coolness of an interior in marked
+contrast to the facial and temperamental heat of its chief
+occupant, who, apologizing for the absence of his <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>
+to do the honors, had his “boys” serve us drinks cooled
+with the ice that was thrown off to him each forenoon
+from the south-bound bus. Without this daily necessity
+he could of course no more have endured life in his isolated
+station than without his respectful servants and his female
+companion. Most of the conversation ran on the selfishness
+of a few of his younger colleagues in expecting their
+own countrywomen to accompany them to such posts of
+“exile in the wilderness.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every house or hovel of the natives had standing before
+it the tufted bamboo of the New-Year season, that
+signal to the spirits of the air that the people who live
+beneath it are pious and not to be molested—something akin
+to the hobo signs of our own land. In many of the villages
+the populace was childishly enjoying itself in swings
+made, supports and all, not too securely of bamboos crudely
+lashed together. Toward the middle of the afternoon we
+found ourselves making toward a great wall of mountains
+at right angles to the main ranges. It looked as if this
+ponderous autobus could not possibly pass such a barrier,
+at least without the united assistance of the passengers, and
+I recalled with some misgiving the ancient story of second-class
+travelers being obliged to get off and push, while those
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>in first class had merely to walk. For the day was still
+uninviting to physical exertion, and my special front-seat
+privileges might not be honored in such an emergency without
+the two-piastre agent at Dongha to protect me. But
+the road found a way up and around and over the steep
+spur, twisting itself into hair-pin curves to climb a slope
+up which an old-style Chinese road went straight and unswerving,
+with the hardiness of the pioneer, to the remnants
+of a gate at the lowest point, not far from where our less
+virile modern route surmounted it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To all intents and purposes we had come to the end of
+Annam. What the Chinese named the Eminent South
+Country was usually reckoned as beginning on the north
+at the Gate of Annam, as this pass has been called for
+centuries. This was the old Annam-Tonkin boundary;
+there is still the vestige of an ancient wall built along the
+summit by the Annamese to protect themselves from invasion,
+and many great battles have been waged there. To-day
+the official boundary is much farther north, and does
+not signify anyway, for there is a fiction that Tonkin, the
+northern knob of the Indo-China dumb-bell, is now a part
+of Annam, ruled over by Koang-de, the Son of Heaven at
+Hué.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The climb had opened out a great amphitheater of a valley,
+checkerboarded with rice-fields, a stretch of the sea with a
+curving beach that flashed in the afternoon sunshine, several
+other spurs that almost hindered our progress, and more
+rows of ranges, with densely green forests in the hollows
+high up on some of the ridges. On the southern side of
+the Gate there had been no forest, only a light brush; but
+it looked as if the northern slopes, blue-black now in the
+slanting sunshine, were all thickly wooded. Long pasturelands,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>rolling and bushy, dotted with red herds, almost completely
+crowded out cultivation for some distance. There
+were few inhabitants, but many tiger temples, all set in
+clusters of bamboos or trees, as if the wilderness that had
+driven out the rice-fields brought the dreaded beast that much
+nearer. The mountains had pushed us so close to the sea
+that for some time beaches and even islands seemed but a
+stone’s throw away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A slightly different human type appeared beyond the Gate
+of Annam, stockier, the women perhaps a bit better looking,
+or more nearly good looking—so long as they kept their
+repulsive mouths shut. In fact purists among the French
+anthropologists of Indo-China insist that the real Annamese
+are not in the handle of the dumb-bell at all, but in Tonkin,
+because south of the Gate so many tribes have been
+Annamited, so to speak, mingled in blood and culture with
+the conquerors from the north. Unlike their relatives south
+of the Gate, the Tonkinese were dressed in a cinnamon or
+tobacco-juice color that suddenly became as universal as
+black had been farther south, as denim blue is among the
+masses of China. The countrywomen, then their men, and
+finally all the hand-laboring class, took to wearing long cotton
+cloaks of this reddish brown hue. I found later that
+this is colored with <i><span lang="fr">cunao</span></i>, the vegetable dye in which the
+masses north of the old boundary dip their clothing, so
+that all Tonkin wears the same conspicuous livery. More
+exactly it is inconspicuous, in much of Tonkin; one might
+fancy it had been adopted as a protective coloring, not only
+so that betel saliva would not show on it, but because so
+much of the soil of the Tonkinese plains is reddish that
+everything, earth, water, people, their clothing and their
+cattle, anything that comes in contact with the earth, took
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>on this <i><span lang="fr">cunao</span></i> color. Centuries of toiling in flooded rice-fields
+reflecting a tropical sun had indeed given even their
+faces a similar tint.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were fewer male Psyche knots here than farther
+south, hair-cuts for men being now popular. The women
+had suddenly taken to skirts, in place of the voluminous
+thin-cotton trousers of Annam proper, and dressed their
+hair differently, wrapping the braid once about the head and
+letting the rest hang down like the tail of a Hindu turban.
+But the most conspicuous change was that the palm-leaf
+hat of toadstool shape, which I had grown to associate forever
+with the country people of Annam, had given way,
+among the women only, to a most astonishing head-shade.
+Of grindstone shape and size, being easily two and a half
+if not three feet in diameter and perfectly flat on top, with
+a brim six or more inches wide forming a perpendicular
+circle about them, these astounding hats made also of leaves,
+perhaps of the banana, looked like a tub set upside down
+on the head. More exactly they sat on a little round support
+tied to the top of the head, and were so unwieldy
+on this slight fulcrum that whenever the wind was blowing
+or the wearer under motion the struggle to retain her head-gear
+seemed to be much more difficult than the carrying of
+her shoulder-pole burden. The men continued to wear the
+smaller cone-shaped mushroom hats that had roofed the rural
+population all the way from Cochinchina, as if they realized
+how foolish they would have looked in these immense grindstones,
+or knew the futility of trying to compete with their
+women in ornamental matters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The graves were now well weeded knobs on top of
+large raised circles of earth; the towns, almost as compact
+as those of China, were surrounded by high walls
+of growing bamboos. The more straggling towns south
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>of the Gate of Annam had been encircled, if at all, by
+hedges of cactus or wild pineapple, concealing nothing; here
+every village was completely hidden, with an opening here
+and there through its bamboo wall like that to the lair of
+a jungle beast, so that with Tonkinese villagers going home
+consists in crawling away into the jungle like the tiger
+they so dread and honor. This lofty bamboo hedge is a
+vestige of pirate days, and of battles between towns and
+clans. Near the coast cocoanut-trees did their part toward
+the concealing, and of course the soldierly arec-palm with
+its clinging betel-vine was everywhere. Once or twice we
+passed fields of mulberry-trees, for Tonkin also produces
+silk. Women in the grindstone hat stood on little platforms
+and screened rice by pouring it out in the wind,
+rice to be hulled later by these same women stepping with
+their bare feet incessantly on the end of a heavy beam that
+drops its hammer-head into a stone or wooden mortar.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>It was well after dark when we came to a last <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i>,
+across an arm of the sea that seemed in the black night
+as wide as the British Channel, and were gradually poled
+and pulled and sculled by sleepy coolies toward the lights
+of Ben-thuy, where the railway picks up again. Another
+three years and trains will be running between Dongha and
+Ben-thuy; we had seen the half finished embankment now
+and then along the way. Within twice that time the traveler
+should be able to go entirely by rail the whole length of
+Indo-China, clear on to the Yang-tze perhaps, possibly even
+to Angkor, connecting with the lines of Siam, which already
+run to Singapore.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were no accommodations for foreigners at Ben-thuy,
+merely the river-mouth port of the city of Vinh, where
+we were soon housed in the almost French hotel of a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>Spanish—er—lady of fortune. Vinh is a large town, for
+Indo-China. Three hundred and ten houses, a whole section
+not far from the hotel, had been burned that day as an
+unintentional addition to the New Year’s celebration, and
+the night air was still strongly scented with the conflagration;
+but this catastrophe had left only an unimportant
+vacancy in the civic area. The French showed little sign
+of interest in these popular misfortunes, so long as their
+own spacious part of the town, with its uncrowded dwellings
+on broad half forested lawns, remained undisturbed. Is it
+because they no longer hold in honor their own labyrinthine
+old cities that the French have given such an atmosphere
+of bourgeois order to the towns of their Far-Eastern empire
+by making them checker-boards of straight, right-angled
+streets, just as the Japanese have done in Formosa and
+Korea?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another “boy” risked his life by calling me at four again,
+though the train on which I wandered northward all that
+day long did not leave until two hours later, from a station a
+few blocks away. That journey from Vinh to Hanoï began
+as rather a stupid ride, but it turned out better than the
+morning promised. The little train, with its single three-class
+coach at the end of a string of modified cattle-cars
+for the populace, sat lower to the ground and was in some
+ways less comfortable than the autobus. A stone embankment
+from two to six feet above the rice-fields formed the
+basis for railroad and highway, which flowed together every
+little while into the same narrow bridges, with a coolie
+at either end to sound a warning. The plain, of more or
+less width according to how curious the mountains were to
+come down and look at the sea, was one vast paddy-field.
+Birds were numerous for a tropical land. Herons lay in
+wait for careless frogs at the edges of the rice-fields; the
+<i><span lang="fr">crabier</span></i>, a brown bird showing a patch of white, like a
+flag of truce, when flying, plied its customary quest for
+edible crabs; a little reddish bird that seemed to have copied
+the garb of its human neighbors flitted here and there across
+the leisurely moving foreground. Water-buffaloes, almost
+one in three of them of the albino type, were plowing belly-deep
+in the slime of the paddy-fields or loafing along the
+dikes; whole Oriental families of them lay immersed in
+mud-holes, completely covered except for the ends of their
+snouts and their sagacious little eyes, recalling those tales
+of Annamese pirates hiding themselves indefinitely under
+water by breathing through two reeds thrust in their nostrils.
+Now and then one of these ponderous pachyderms presented
+his massive head threateningly toward our train, as if about
+to attack this new type of animal, but always decided at
+the last moment not to risk it and loped off into the
+flooded paddy-field on either side with a splash of wet mud.</p>
+
+<div id='i_194' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_194a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>With each new year the Annamese clear of vegetation the graves of their ancestors, back to remote generations</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_194b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>I asked a living caretaker to fill the place of one of these of stone which guard the entrance to a royal tomb of Annam</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_195' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_195a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>In the heart of Hanoï, northern capital of French Indo-China, stands a delightfully picturesque lake of goodly dimensions</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_195b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Annamese girls hold Sunday morning flower-market at this corner of the city-girdled lake of Hanoï</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>In places the land was so flooded from the recent rains
+that only graves, dikes, and the tops of the half-grown
+rice appeared above the broad expanse of water—except
+of course the villages and temples in their clusters of trees,
+standing wherever possible on a knoll too rocky to be cultivated
+to advantage. Villages close to the road were frequent,
+graves still more so, the dead and the living
+inhabitants both too numerous. The plain, flat as a billiard-table,
+the water and the exact rows of flooded rice shimmering
+like silk, was dotted with red cattle, some also plowing,
+and with redder people of all ages and both sexes,
+in various forms of undress, all toiling for their rice in
+the inundated fields. More exactly it was all one vast
+field, divided into all manner of queer shapes by narrow
+green ridges six inches above the general level. Brown
+men in faded tobacco-brown clothing—still more often
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>women, who seem to do most of the work—groped about
+up to their thighs and biceps in the slime. Some were immersed
+to the waist; some paddled about in sampans; others
+stood in pairs on the dikes and tossed water from one
+field to another in a basket of woven bamboo splints hung
+in the middle of a long rope, or toiled alone shoveling
+water from one level to another with a huge wooden spoon
+mounted on a framework.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The reddish-brown garments that had begun at the Gate
+of Annam were universal in the rural parts of this region.
+Some of the men in the fields were naked except for a
+shirt tied up about the armpits, but the women were more
+or less covered, though they are more careless than those
+of China about exposing the person. Trousers for women
+had for the time being entirely disappeared, though they
+were to appear again about Hanoï; a sign, I suppose, of
+the fast life of cities. Along the road close beside us women
+under shoulder-pole loads of anything, everything, trotting
+in constant files, like trains of leaf-bearing ants in the
+jungle, often left their long, sun-faded, red-brown cloaks
+swinging open, and not concealing all that the once white
+diamond-shaped breast-cover beneath leaves visible. Some
+frankly wore only that and the knee-high skirt, as if
+this season of hard labor was no time to be prudish in
+small matters. Almost all wore those great basket-like hats,
+some faded and frayed, some fresh from the markets to
+and from which endless streams of them forever jogged.
+A picturesque figure is the Tonkinese woman of the people,
+with her flat umbrella-hat, her loose, cinnamon-colored, knee-length
+jacket, her short skirt or very loose thin black
+trousers, her clacking wooden sandals in town or her noiseless
+straw ones in the country, her black-lacquered teeth
+bloody with the betel-juice driveling from the corners of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>her hideous mouth. Invariably she has a well built back,
+a pretty brown in tint, and suggesting to our society leaders
+how they too might have perfect forms—merely by
+carrying a hundred pounds or so across their shoulders to
+market several times a week.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were stretches where the land was almost bare,
+the fields yellow-green, with brownish graves, the foot-hills
+terraced, some of them cut up by bush fences but apparently
+uncultivated now. The forerunners of the mountain
+range were without vegetation, except for clumps of trees,
+among which the palm was the most common. In other
+places, where the demands of husbandry had not killed them,
+were whole forests of trees white with blossoms, bamboos
+that were like smoke spirals of blond gold, great kapok-trees,
+without a leaf on their whitened branches, but bearing
+immense bunches of flowers that turned orange by translucence
+against the blue of the sky. Finally the mountains
+came down so close to the sea that there were heaped-up
+hills cultivated in patches, though here, unlike China, the
+ratio between soil and inhabitants has never been such that
+anything more than the level land must necessarily be
+cultivated.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here and there on the muddy mat of the fields stood
+slender triangular rafts anchored or mired in the slime,
+raising in the air, with strange immobile gestures, disjointed
+arms, like gigantic field-spiders. Most of them bore
+on this base a rudimentary house, a roof of woven palm-leaves
+closed at the back with an old paddy-winnowing basket,
+a bundle of straw inside taking the place of a sleeping-mat.
+They were the shelters of the fishermen who come
+here whenever there is water enough to make it worth
+while to plunge into it the big square dip-net at the end
+of the balanced pole suspended at the front of the raft.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>Some were without the nets now, the bare bamboos on
+which these are fastened seeming to claw the air in their
+eagerness to be of use again. In places there were scores
+of these fishing devices, each with its little hut, its net
+balanced with stones and raised and lowered by a rope
+inside the hut, so that the fisherman does not need to expose
+his already bronzed hide to either rain or shine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some time in mid-morning, masses of jagged rock, similar
+to the “Marble Mountains” of Tourane, began to rise from
+the plain, growing ever more numerous. They were identical,
+I was to find later, with those fantastic rock isles
+that dot by thousands the northwestern corner of the Gulf
+of Tonkin. This region has indeed been called the terrestrial
+Bay of Along, which is no misnomer, for these rocks also
+once stood out of the sea, before the earth came to fill
+in between them the flat plain that flows as level as the
+ocean all about them. Some of these gigantic formations,
+which were to follow me far down the West River into
+the Chinese province of Kwangsi, had patches of hardy
+vegetation on them; some were as bare as the forbidding
+mounds of stacked bayonets they suggested. They were of
+most curious shapes, forms as tormented as if the mountains
+had been tortured in their youth, some like rocks
+torn jagged by uncounted centuries of dashing waves. Now
+they grew up among the rice-fields, and continued for hours,
+fantastic, of every possible formation, attitude, posture,
+striking peaks and ridges with perpendicular, horizontal,
+diagonal strata, covered with thorny scrub vegetation wherever
+it could get a foothold. Some of those queer rock
+hills, half covered with plant life, looked like velour fedora
+hats carelessly tossed out on the plain; others resembled the
+slack heaps of a region of pulsating industry.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All the rest of the day we rode among those mountainous
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>heaps of rock, those phantoms of stone. Sometimes that
+afternoon the whole western horizon was cut off by a capriciously
+peaked range so hazy as to seem a gauze curtain, at
+other times so close that it appeared to hang threateningly
+over us. But always there was this vanguard of isolated rock
+heaps standing sentinel along the plain. I made the journey
+between Vinh and Hanoï three times before I finally left
+Indo-China, and I never tired of those eccentric nonchalant
+piles of stone, on land and sea, of which the “Marble Mountains”
+of Tourane are the southernmost outcroppings and the
+bandit-riddled cliffs along the Si-kiang near Nanning the
+most northern.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The arable land was still more intensively cultivated and
+inhabited north of Thanh-hoa, a hot “citadel” of well built
+structures along orderly streets, which there is time to go
+and see if you will miss the midday meal at the station presided
+over by an Annamese woman with unlacquered teeth
+whose French is suspiciously fluent. Thanh-hoa station
+well outside the town is the luncheon-place of all foreign
+travelers between Vinh and Hanoï, whether by train or by
+automobile, and track and road run so close together much
+of the distance that acquaintances made there can be renewed
+from time to time during the journey. Those in
+the motor-cars now and then sped past us within handshaking
+reach, tossing over their shoulders gibes at our
+slowness, though we were not so slow at that. The towns
+grew larger, with some more or less European houses, an
+old church sometimes bulking above the trees. The mountains
+gradually retired to infinity; French appeared in the
+platform crowds, the Chinese merchants in our car increased
+as Jews do in trains nearing our own metropolis.
+Crowds were returning from holiday jaunts on this last
+day of the official <i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i> season. French boys, and girls too
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>for that matter, with nascent mustaches and bare knees,
+who had never been in France, were on their way back
+to school; French and half-caste hunters filled our car with
+dogs and guns, with dead rabbits, wild chickens and ducks,
+bagfuls and bunches of still less commonplace game. Though
+we took on more cars as they were needed, our coach was
+so overrun with standees that the mind was unwillingly
+carried back to the subways of another continent, while
+the fourth-class cars were almost as packed and jammed
+and chaotic as the soldier-abused trains of China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Passengers were piled three deep from engine to back
+platform by the time we reached Hanoï at six, and I found
+the city so busy that I had my first and only ride in a
+<i><span lang="fr">pousse-choléra</span></i>, as the French quite fittingly call the iron-tired
+buggy-wheeled rickshaws usually patronized only by
+the natives. Certainly I should have had something akin
+to cholera if the journey to the post-office for my first mail
+in a long time and back to the Hôtel de la Gare had lasted
+much longer.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XI<br> <span class='c011'>HANOÏ AND THE TONKIN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Hanoï, northern capital of French Indo-China, is somewhat
+larger and less obviously tropical than its southern
+rival, Saïgon. It is quite a city, with expensive modern
+buildings, electric street-cars—found nowhere else in the
+colony—railways in four directions, many automobiles, both
+of the taxicab and private limousine variety, several excellent
+hotels; in short, it is a little Paris of the tropics, with some
+advantages that even Paris does not have. Those hotels
+were a constant surprise, though I had seen almost their
+equal in other parts of the colony. Not only were they
+all you could expect of the French themselves, but their
+rates were surprisingly reasonable for these exorbitant times.
+Though I am getting ahead of my story again, we had later
+on two large rooms with bath, electric fan thrown in,
+excellent French food and plenty of ice, for three adults
+and two small children at 250 piastres a month. True, there
+were cobwebs visible in the corners of the high ceiling,
+bright little lizards paraded the walls, and the plumbing
+might have been more strictly up-to-date, but he is an inexperienced
+traveler who expects perfection anywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the very heart of Hanoï, with the principal foreign
+streets on some sides of it and the native city on the other,
+is a large lake, delightfully blue and restful, bordered by
+a stone-faced embankment spaced with huge old trees. Out
+in it rise two little islands, one reached by a causeway,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>the other needing a boat, bearing respectively a famous old
+temple and a kind of pagoda. The beautiful, lazily tropical
+view across this broad deep lake in the heart of a city is
+one of the sights of the Far East, and gives Hanoï quite
+a distinctive atmosphere. In a well shaded corner on its
+shores there is, especially on Sunday mornings, a flower-market
+very similar to the one near the Madeleine in Paris,
+except that this one lasts the whole year round, and in
+place of the <i><span lang="fr">bouquetières</span></i> of Paris boulevards the sellers
+are black-toothed <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i> in long cinnamon-brown coats,
+their swollen lips reddened with betel-nut, yet quite as commercially
+skillful and in their Oriental way just as coquettish
+as their Parisian counterparts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Rue Paul Bert, named for a former French commander,
+is to Hanoï what the Rue Catinat is to Saïgon. Along it
+are some very up-to-date government and private buildings,
+well stocked stores, and cafés overrunning the sidewalks.
+The tram-cars across this lead along the lake and through
+the native town to even larger government structures in
+a great park of the outskirts, now admittedly the headquarters
+of the governor-general, though even he hardly
+dares openly admit this down in Saïgon. There are
+other parks, one with a big stone water-tower that looks
+like a medieval dungeon, many streets of good foreign
+houses, most of them gay in Buddhist-yellow stucco, a big
+museum left over from a former exposition, and all the
+other adjuncts of French civilization. As in Saïgon, there
+is an imposing municipal opera-house, where a company
+subsidized by the government, at the cost of the natives,
+comes to sing each “winter” for the French residents, not
+to be outdone by that other Paris on the opposite side of the
+earth in any of the cultural things of life just because
+their lot happens to be cast so far afield. Most of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>year the municipal theater stands idle, however, with a welcoming
+air toward anything that promises to be a relief
+from the monotony of the silvered-screen nonsense offered
+in another part of town. On my second visit to Hanoï
+its pretentious façade was adorned with the paper of an
+“Oriental Magician,” whose performance was as worthy
+of the solemn throng in full dress that filled the house
+as would have been those of his rivals elsewhere. The very
+atrociousness with which he massacred the bit of French
+needed to accompany his tricks had about it a tang of the
+occult East unable to express itself in our crude Western
+medium—which was strange in an Italian who called Newton,
+Massachusetts, home, and whose ultra-Oriental wife
+and chief stage assistant admitted in unofficial moments that
+she was born in Kansas.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The rush and swirl of street life in Hanoï was even more
+nearly incessant than that of hotter Saïgon. Hawkers,
+improvised restaurants, hundreds of rickshaws, most of
+them thumping their wooden wheels on the ill-fitting axle,
+queer carriages, wheelbarrows again for the first time since
+leaving China, man-drawn freight-carts, automobiles bellowing
+their demanding way through flocks and shoals of
+pedestrians, all bore testimony to the importance of the
+northern capital. Superficially everything was French, down
+to the tiny bottles containing those <i><span lang="fr">pierres à briquet</span></i> required
+for the gasoline-driven cigarette-lighters of France,
+which one saw in the display-windows of native as well as
+French shops. The big department-store across the street
+from our hotel opened at dawn and closed from eleven
+until two, like almost everything else, so that its reassembling
+force was constantly breaking short both our night’s sleep
+and our afternoon siesta. But the red tape of buying there
+was as entangling as in France, with the added difficulty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>that prices quoted in francs and paid in piastres had to
+be figured according to the daily rate of exchange—often
+to our decided advantage. There seemed to be a general
+taste for French bread, and bottles by the coolie-load were
+so cheap and plentiful, in contrast to China, that every possible
+thing was made out of whole or broken ones—walls,
+garden borders, sidewalk edges, playhouses. But there did
+not seem to be much Frenchifying of native life except in
+these external details, and even with those the millions of
+the masses have little to do.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Late January in Hanoï was cloudless, almost as hot as
+in Saïgon, more than ten degrees farther south, so that
+even in white again I was none too comfortably cool. By
+night it was often too hot to sleep well even stark naked
+under a languid electric fan, and one’s dozing was made all
+the more fitful by the rattling hubs of the <i><span lang="fr">pousses-choléra</span></i>,
+those iron-tired, almost springless rickshaws of the masses,
+and of the larger coolie-pulled baggage and vegetable carts,
+that made a hubbub beneath our windows all night long
+like the passing of a regiment of lumber-wagons. Sometimes
+there might be a lull from about two until four in
+the morning, corresponding somewhat to the daytime siesta,
+but even then the streets were by no means so nearly
+deserted as they were around noonday. Plenty of good
+rickshaws, with wire wheels on large pneumatic tires and
+ample springs, as noiseless and comfortable conveyances as
+those of Peking and far better than the ones to be found
+in Canton and southern China in general, plied the streets
+of Hanoï. But they were used almost exclusively by foreigners,
+one European each, while the bone-breakers in
+which even mandarins were glad to save an Indo-China
+nickel served the natives.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The rickshaw-men of Indo-China are so hungry for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>work that they always know, whether they understand him
+or not, where a possible client wishes to go. A score of
+times I had the same experience; all foreigners in Indo-China
+have had it: a mob of rickshaw pullers, seeing me
+come out of a hotel, a shop, a government office, the home
+of the lone Protestant missionary couple in Hanoï or of
+the customs officer turned novelist, rose up like a battling
+mob along the sidewalk, each vociferously offering his little
+seat on wheels, those behind thumping the others with
+their shafts, so common a trick that none of them show
+anger at it, as if it were all a part of the day’s work, of
+the eternal struggle for rice for their thin bodies and the
+many dependent upon them. “Rue de la Soie!” I cry to
+the uproar. All begin to shriek, to howl in chorus: “Moï
+connaître! Moï connaître!” I step into one of the vehicles
+at random. The others give a little smirk as of amusement
+to cover their chagrin, to save face by pretending that they
+were not keen for the job after all, while the lucky fellow
+speeds away straight before him, as if he knew the way
+perfectly. But he goes too straight ahead; the way to an
+Asiatic goal cannot be so direct as that, even in this less
+labyrinthine part of the Orient. I begin to grow suspicious;
+at the end of several full-speed minutes I stop him with
+“Mais, ce n’est pas—this is not the way to the Rue de
+la Soie, is it?” He has no idea what I am saying, longer
+experience will show me; all he understands is that I have
+said something. So he turns around and flees as rapidly
+in the direction from which we have come. I call out
+again, and though he still does not understand, he pretends
+to, and feeling that he must do something to satisfy me
+he forks off at random, to the right, to the left, no matter
+which, and continues to trot, now and then turning his
+head to look at me more or less surreptitiously, like a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>clever old horse, as if to gather from my expression some
+notion of where I wish to go.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All very well for the old resident, who knows his way
+about town and is well aware that the two-legged horse
+between his shafts does not know a word of the French
+he so glibly pretends to understand. But it is hard on
+the new-comer, who has neither of these advantages, who
+does not know one street from another until he can read
+the signs on their corners, who speaks no Annamese, particularly
+so on the naïve American accustomed to put his
+faith in the truthfulness of the human kind. After he
+is lost completely he appeals perhaps to a native policeman,
+only to find that the officer knows even less French,
+and so, he discovers one by one, do the natives round about,
+even those in full European tropical dress. So that unless
+he happens to run across a French official or resident,
+which is unlikely in many parts of town or anywhere at
+certain hours, he is in for it. Perhaps, if he is lucky,
+he can make his more or less human horse understand that
+he wishes to be taken back to the place from which he
+started, or to a police station, where at least he can telephone
+for assistance, if central happens to have a smattering
+of French. Besides, it is no pleasure to drive these
+poor fellows far, with their thin chests heaving and their
+bare brown backs gleaming with sweat. Yet it is perspiring
+work to walk; the trams go only along a fixed route,
+and automobiles are expensive.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The very next day I would find the same coolie, or one
+looking exactly like him, shrieking with the same effrontery,
+“Moï connaître!” if I asked him to take me to the corner
+of Broadway and Forty-second Street; and at the end
+of the run, wherever that might be, he would stand holding
+out both hands cup-fashion in that engaging Annamese
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>manner, as if he expected a fortune for the job. It is only
+a poor ruse to earn a few cents, for these <i><span lang="fr">pousse-pousses</span></i>
+are the most miserable and the least astute of the Annamese
+who serve the French and such few white foreigners as
+come to Indo-China. The “boys” who work for us are
+much brighter and know far smarter tricks. Certainly they
+are ingenious, if somewhat less so than their Chinese
+counterparts, capable of serving a ten-course dinner without
+cook-stove, dishes, or cutlery; but they are so artful, so
+cunning and sly for all their outward servility, that even
+he who tries to be continually on his guard is sure to be
+periodically duped.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Though the streets in their own section of Hanoï bear
+the names of French heroes and politicians, the rulers from
+the West have not forgotten that it is after all a Tonkinese
+city. In the native town on the farther side of the lake—which
+is nothing like a native town in the Chinese sense
+of the word—the streets are also named in French, but not
+for the French. Instead, they have preserved as much of
+the old atmosphere as is compatible with sanitary requirements,
+including the ancient street names. The blue and
+white metal placards on each corner bear literal translations
+of the old Chinese-Tonkinese names for the trades
+once, and in many cases still, practised in them—for after
+the fashion of the East, those craftsmen or merchants
+carrying on the same work gathered in a single street or
+piece of street, instead of scattering to various parts of
+town.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Thus the traveler can wander for interesting hours through
+the indigenous quarter intersected by the trolley, into the
+sweetish-scented Rue des Sucres, through the Rue des Cercueils,
+lined with heavy wooden coffins in the Chinese style—for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>the wealthy, massive sarcophagi richly carved, lacquered,
+gilded, or painted, each bearing the Chinese character for
+longevity; for the poor, thin bare boxes. The Rue des Médicaments
+is full of the ancient type of medicine-shops, its
+air pungent with the odors of dried barks, herbs, deer-horns,
+roots, plants, magic powders, tiger bones, talismans,
+all the somber and mysterious pharmacopœia of China,
+everything with which to combat the evil spirits, influences,
+fatal breaths of the Black Kingdom. In Furniture Street
+the tools of long ago are still in use; crude planes fly;
+saws sing; a chisel cuts its way through brass; a center-bit,
+still run by a string wound about it, creaks; files set
+the teeth on edge; chips and shavings dance madly about
+among unfinished pieces of furniture on the bare floors of
+open booths from which escapes a dry odor of varnish.
+Here and beyond are the shops of the inlaid mother-of-pearl
+things, from tables to jewel-boxes, for which the
+Annamese are famous—things to which steam-heat is so
+fatal, as the gatherer of souvenirs discovers soon after arriving
+home, though they stand the steaming heat of the
+tropics well enough. The people of Annam and Tonkin
+are good carvers and designers in the old models, but they
+are plainly not originators; there is more than a suggestion
+of the Chinese in all their work. Silk merchants carry
+on in the Rue de la Soie as they did centuries ago; Copper
+Street, a block long, is strident with workers in copper
+and brass; the Street of the Forgers—in the honorable sense
+of the word—teems with workers in heavy metals; there is
+the Street of Rice, of Veils, of Iron, of Flax, of the
+Cantonese, a street with shop after shop full of the gay
+paper things used in funerals, a street of workers in lacquer—for
+the Annamese lacquer other things besides their teeth—and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>so on, as long as the hardiest wanderer would care to
+stroll in such a climate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The trolley goes on, through the Rue du Grand Buddha,
+past the temple of a great statue that is small compared
+to similar figures in China, Mongolia, and Tibet, on along a
+shore of the big lake, as distinguished from the <i><span lang="fr">petit lac</span></i>
+in the heart of the city, to the Village du Papier, where
+native paper is made of bamboo shavings or of bark. The
+brown outside of the bamboo gives second-grade paper, the
+white inside first-quality, and most of it is turned into false
+money to be burned at funerals and graves. The raw
+product is cooked to a pulp and then pounded in a granite
+mortar with a stone pestle. Women, standing before the
+vats in which the pulp floats, swirl the water and lift
+out on bamboo slats the film that form on top, then lay
+each sheet on a soggy pile that would seem to defy taking
+apart after stacks of them have been pressed to squeeze
+out the water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On one side Hanoï is bounded by a wide boulevard on
+a high dike along the Red River, which comes down out of
+China and spreads its fertility in a long straight streak
+diagonally clear across Tonkin, a dike not high enough, however,
+for sometimes it lets the river into the city. Here
+one may muse upon the contrast between East and West
+while gazing at the telescopic perspective of the longest
+bridge in the Orient—as the French, if not the Tonkinese
+themselves, will proudly tell you—a bridge which in one
+sense is very ugly and in another almost beautiful. Eight
+hundred and ten meters from end to end, it carries across
+the Red River all the railway trains leaving the city except
+the daily one to and from Vinh to the southward; and just
+then it was being widened to carry automobiles also, so that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>no longer would motorists be forced to go down a steep and
+often slimy bank to a miserable <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>One train across the bridge follows the Red River northwestward
+to Laokay and goes on two days farther into
+China by a line marvelously engineered through magnificent
+mountains, to Yünnanfu, whence the French have now and
+then had hopes of pushing their trains clear to the upper
+Yang-tze. Across it, too, goes the branch-line to Langson
+and the “South Gate” of China, by which I left Tonkin
+on my way back down the West River of Kwangsi to Canton,
+up which the defeated Tai fled centuries ago before
+the conquering Chinese. We were soon in uncultivated
+jungle, as north of Saïgon, though the undergrowth was
+much thinner here, with brown fields and slopes of wild
+hay now and then, and stations that consisted of a sign-board
+and a woodpile. But every little while there were a
+few huts and some cultivation. Then came mountains covered
+with trees and underbrush, more and more abrupt
+rocky mountains, and the sun, so long imperious, suddenly
+disappeared for good and all the seventeen days back to
+Canton. Though the altitude was not great, within an hour
+it grew so cold, in contrast to the month behind me, that
+I changed to my heaviest clothing, thereby reducing my
+baggage by half. At the end of the train a special car
+carried a lone general, with whom, though I did not then
+suspect it, I was to lunch at the <i><span lang="fr">Résidence</span></i> at Langson. As
+I alone graced the first-class division of the three-part car,
+one might have thought that a simple way of cutting down
+expenses and paying French debts would have been to let
+the general share the compartment with me, particularly if
+we were to sit down to the same <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i>. But the French
+cannot treat their great men in that simple fashion.</p>
+
+<div id='i_210' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_210a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The ladies of Annam lose any claim they have to beauty when they open their mouths on black-enameled teeth</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_210b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Thi-ba, who did her best as guardian of our children, was equally set against bobbed hair and skirts</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_211' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_211a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>For days one may steam in and out among the fantastic rock islands of the Bay of Along</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_211b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Tropical vegetation sometimes commandeers sustenance on the rock peaks</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>The world had become little more than low mountains
+punctuated with forts on rocky eminences when I reached
+the place from where the little Peugeot of the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> was
+to carry me over the border into suddenly and totally un-Tonkinese
+scenes. The Foreign Legion serves in these picturesque
+strongholds along the Chinese frontier, a picturesque
+crew themselves, whom the French find it safer to confine
+to such isolated posts than to turn loose on Hanoï
+and other cities. Though no German travelers were allowed
+to land in the colony, there was a whole company
+of Germans among these guardians of the frontier, as well
+as many Russians and sprinklings of at least a dozen other
+nationalities, adventurers, down-and-outers, fugitives from
+justice—for there is no extradition from the Foreign
+Legion—above all men who do not care a tinker’s damn
+so long as life remains interesting and as free as possible
+from dangerless monotony.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The usual route for those from the outside world who
+visit Hanoï is by rail or automobile from Haïphong, or
+rather, vice versa, also across the great bridge. There were
+always the same scenes on these journeys through Tonkin,
+but one never seemed to tire of them—broad endless
+stretches of rice-fields, women in long copper-colored coats
+and grindstone-shaped hats skimming along good roads
+under shoulder-pole loads, boys and sometimes girls loafing
+on the backs of water-buffaloes grazing among flocks of
+white ducks, others of these ponderous animals plowing belly-deep
+in slime, still others in their glory, with only eyes
+and nostrils protruding, beautiful gates into low temples,
+banyan-trees of four or five trunks, with little vases of
+lime and often a few tombs under them, villages of huts
+among the feathery bamboo groves, a tomb with a flat-topped
+tree over it, a boat with a sail moving through a rice-field,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>though no waterway is visible, two women watering
+a field by means of a basket between them in the middle
+of a long rope, graves of different shapes dotting the dead-level
+country near-by, cactus hedges, almost naked countrymen
+washing their legs beside the track, a girl toiling with
+a hoe almost as big as she, a man who owns no buffalo
+plowing in deep water with his cow, a little hut thatched
+with straw surrounded by a grove of very green trees, still
+larger groves in the distance with white buildings peeping
+out of them, a beautiful tree spread like an open umbrella,
+its branches almost touching the ground, roofs coyly curling
+up their corners, still another apparatus, like a huge corn-popper
+hung on three poles, for lifting water from one field
+to another, sometimes a big wooden spoon manipulated by
+one man, still more likely by one woman, two pagoda-shaped
+pillars at the entrance to a tomb, implying that the deceased
+was a scholar if not a gentleman, a coolie laboriously making
+his way through the rice-fields by a dike-top path not
+wide enough for the rickshaw he is dragging behind him,
+other such vehicles with two, even three people in them,
+scampering across the flat country behind small runners,
+dim mountains forever in the distance—and there ahead
+lies Haïphong, an important city and port now, the first
+houses of which sprang up about the barracks of the French
+cantonment in the days when France and China disagreed
+as to the “protection” of Tonkin.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I had heard so much of the Bay of Along among the
+French colonials, confirmed by what I had seen of the
+terrestrial part of it from Tourane to Nanning, that I realized
+the foolishness of leaving Indo-China without spending a
+few days cruising about it. That would have been impossible,
+there being no regular service and I still unable, for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>all my more than a quarter century of toil, to buy a yacht
+or even charter a steamer, if the French authorities had
+not been so proud of their famous bay that they would
+not hear of my turning my back on the Far East until
+I had given them my unbiased opinion of it. So they
+lent us the <i><span lang="fr">Tuyen Quang</span></i>, a comfortable floating chalet in
+the customs service, with a picturesque Corsican captain
+whose French outdid our own in foreign accent. I say
+“us,” for this time I took along not only the family I
+had brought from Canton but Thi-ba, lacquer-toothed Tonkinese
+nurse-maid of our children.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We steamed away one sunny morning before the heat and
+humidity became unbearable, down the river by which steamers
+from China and the rest of the outside world come to
+Haïphong, and within two or three hours found ourselves in
+the midst of the justly famed, or rather, the most unjustly
+little known, fairy-land of Along. It was like roaming
+among mountain-tops at sea. The rock formations were
+unlimited, fantastic, incredible—round rocks springing sheer
+out of the bluest sea on earth, rocks like mushrooms, the
+waves having worn them away about the base until they
+seemed to stand on stems, rocks that looked as if they
+were floating, or were upheld by pedestals incredibly small
+for such massive things, rock islands of the most fantastic
+shapes to which islands can aspire, some with holes washed
+clear through them, some looking supernatural where gashes
+of white rock met the black shadows thrown by them,
+cliffs, precipices, palisades, with vertical, horizontal, diagonal,
+zigzag strata—the sheerness was so remarkable that
+we could scrape the sides of them with our large steamer
+and be in so little danger of striking the bottom that the
+sailors were not even told to heave the sounding-lead.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>How many thousands of these rocky islands there are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>floating on the blue waters of the Bay of Along only the
+architect of the universe knows; the human mind could not
+count them. Yet never were there two of the same shape.
+With every hundred yards forward we found ourselves
+looking through another narrow vista upon row after row
+of pointed rocks, always varying in size and form, in distance
+and color, new ones with every new opening, though
+one would have thought Nature had already rung all the
+changes possible, used all the models and molds in her factory.
+Each was of some unique configuration we had never
+seen before, as if they were all parties to a masked ball
+every member of which had succeeded in getting himself
+up in some novel way to surprise and delight the beholder.
+Morning, noonday, or evening, when the sun rose or when
+it set, great vistas of them stretched as far as the most
+piercing eye could see in any direction we chose to look.
+Calcareous rocks washed down during the centuries to the
+hard basis of which they were made, broken by weather,
+water, and time, with windows, arches, doorways, now a
+tree standing forth in silhouette in one of these, here an
+island depicting a whole cock, from comb to tail, another
+looking like a group of black monkeys made of stone, some
+veritable mountains of stone slabs laid together like huge
+bricks, some with tiny crescent beaches, whole horizons of
+fantastic peaks, monuments of every possible form—and
+beyond, more vistas of heaped-up rock through every narrow
+opening. Magnificent as they were, they seemed at times
+rather pathetic too, standing, floating, here for so many centuries
+in their unrivaled beauty, yet unknown to almost all
+the world that prizes so highly many a vastly inferior scene,
+unknown even to most of that European nation to whom
+they “belong.” An endless wilderness of rocks so poignantly
+beautiful in their stillness, their solemn isolation, their
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>majesty.... The far famed Inland Sea of Japan hardly
+seems worthy of a place on the same hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Many of those steeple-pointed islands are as bare as the
+sea itself, but vegetation covers them wherever it can grow,
+so that some are green as a spring meadow. On the larger
+and less impressive ones there was sometimes a complete
+cover of bush, with plenty of small game, the captain said,
+where they are not too sheer. But ordinary trees cannot get
+foothold on most of those gigantic needles; only some contorted
+cypresses, intertwisted lianas, represent the forest,
+wild pineapple here and there humping its wicked backs.
+On one of them is a little cemetery of Frenchmen who
+died of fever or dysentery far from their native land.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are grottoes and tunnels in many of these floating
+mountain-tops. We took a life-boat one afternoon nearly
+two miles through one of them. It was dark as a Paris
+sewer, the bottom, clearly seen beneath a flickering torch,
+covered with millions of oysters half an inch thick that
+recalled the sand-dollars on the coast of Maine. The grottoes,
+too, were reached by small boat, then by climbing
+steep stairways of stones roughly piled up or carved in
+the rock. The greatest of these led first into a sort of reception-hall,
+beyond which opened a narrow tortuous corridor,
+its walls perpetually sweating. Though two solemn
+Annamese sailors with sizzling torches of waste or rags
+in an iron cage at the end of a pole, on which they occasionally
+poured thick oil, preceded us, we advanced by
+feeling with our fingers, the smoke pricking our eyes and
+suffocating us, our elbows tight against our sides. Then
+suddenly at a turn came the sight that gives this cave
+its name of Grotte de la Surprise. A vast amphitheater
+of tumbled rocks, into which streaks of daylight fell as
+sheer as at the bottom of a crater, yawned at our feet.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>The light of the torches wavered capriciously on rock walls
+striped with green, with purple, with violet, a setting and
+lighting as fantastic as that of any Broadway musical review.
+Stalactites flowed down from the great vaulted roof like
+a cataract of stone, nay, of pure marble, stalagmites large
+as century-old tree-trunks climbing to meet them, some
+already forming great pillars that gave the place the aspect
+of a mighty cathedral. Misty shafts of light played on pulpits
+carved by nature, on pillars almost as symmetrical as
+man could have fashioned, on great shimmering heaps of
+stone with the same semi-glossy sheen one sees on pure-camphor
+piles in Formosa. Certain columns seemed to be
+formed of millions of shells piled up as if by some prehuman,
+pigmy bricklayers; others were like the trunks of
+massive trees, their stone roots twisting themselves into
+the stone soil like those searching for nourishment among
+the ruins of Angkor. Here hung a colossal stone beard,
+there a marble veil with a gleaming white fringe; in places
+the cold water dripping forever down through the centuries
+had made stone things that looked like mammoth frogs, a
+monkey, a turtle with a scaly back; in certain vistas the
+grotto suggested the interior of a vast tobacco-barn in the
+drying-season. Maidenhair ferns had crept in as far as they
+dared; now and then, doubled, quadrupled, by the echo,
+sounded the piercing cry of a bird of which we saw nothing,
+except the gigantic shadow of its wings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This endless forest of floating stone islands is a fisherman’s
+paradise. Each evening and sometimes oftener my
+wife and I dived into the incredibly blue sea—though the
+Corsican captain, to say nothing of the Annamese crew,
+evidently thought us mad—and saw between us and the bottom,
+hundreds of feet down yet seeming so near that we felt
+in danger of striking our heads, fish of every kind and color,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>pinkish fish of the tint of the albino water-buffalo, red,
+purple, green, white fish. Natives in henna brown peered
+forth from some of the smaller grottoes; more of them
+were at home in their fishing-boats, square golden-brown
+sails of which often broke the deep blue surface. Whole
+clans of fisher-folk spawn, live, and die among these calcareous
+rocks, satisfied to leave this, their native land, only
+now and then to sell their fish and buy the few things
+they need that cannot be found here among these clustered
+sea-bound spires. Our steamer now and then called in, by
+three short blasts of the whistle, all the sampans and sailing-craft
+within hearing, and examined their papers. Finding
+these in order, and neither opium nor girls in their
+holds, we bought fish and sea-monsters of them for the
+next Parisian dinner and parted, outwardly at least, friends.
+It seems that with its thousands of hiding-places for malefactors,
+the Bay of Along has been notorious for two crimes:
+the smuggling in of Chinese opium, and the smuggling out
+of Annamese girls. Old women still lure girls away and
+deliver them somewhere in the bay to Chinese junks, which
+sell them in the open market farther east. Enticed, drugged,
+kidnapped, hidden among the islands and in the grottoes,
+these girls have supplied a trade between wicked Annamese
+and Chinese men of the pirate family that has flourished
+for centuries, and even the French have not yet been able
+to do away with it entirely. When pursuit grows too warm
+the miscreants slit open the bellies of the girls so that
+they will sink quickly, and by the time the pursuers overhaul
+them all traces of blood may have disappeared in the
+blue waters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Three heavenly days we cruised about the Bay of Along
+in our private yacht, and we might have gone on for thirty
+and found something new every hour among the floating
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>rocks of every shape stretching clear to the Kwangtung
+coast of China. The French authorities, and certainly the
+Corsican captain, did not seem to care how long we stayed.
+But all things must have an end. We turned back much
+against our will, and by noonday there was steaming hot
+Haïphong in the offing again.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XII<br> <span class='c011'>THE FRENCH IN INDO-CHINA</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Much as we all hate to be fed plain knowledge, preferring
+our learning disguised with the sauce of entertainment,
+like castor-oil in orange-juice, I fear we must
+taste a few of the bitter spots in the history of Indo-China
+before we can properly savor the present position of France
+in her greatest Far Eastern possession.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All the land from Tonkin to Cochinchina was conquered
+and colonized by the Chinese more than two centuries before
+the beginning of the so-called Christian era. From
+that time China ruled the region off and on; it was in
+fact five times a Chinese colony. Once, shortly before
+Christ, a woman of Annam governed for three years, but
+after another brief hiatus or two China held unbroken sway
+from the third to the tenth century, until the revolution of
+968 <span class='fss'>A.D.</span> During that millennium Annam took on a complete
+Chinese culture, and has kept most of it down to
+this day. Then there were various native dynasties until
+1407, when, under the Ming, China again ruled until 1428.
+Even after that, though there was no interference from
+Peking, and the Manchus held Tonkin only in name, the
+people of the Eminent South, like Siam, Burma, and other
+former dependencies, paid a modest tribute to the northern
+emperor, as the easiest way out of risking more fighting.
+Koang-de, the Annamese Son of Heaven, was still considered
+a vassal of the emperor of China—the occupants
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>of the throne at Hué are in fact still proud to claim
+descent from the Chinese imperial family of before the
+days of the pigtailed Manchus. Toward the end of Chinese
+domination the Annamese could function even in China
+proper as mandarins, generals, and still higher officials, so
+that the line between the two peoples was almost obliterated.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the mess that followed the Manchu conquest of China,
+a Tonkinese fisherman founded a new dynasty, which ruled
+at Hanoï until the end of the eighteenth century. Then,
+the country having naturally broken in two in the middle,
+a rebellion overthrew the ruling Nguyen family of the
+south and the Tai might have taken the country in hand,
+had there not arisen that epic hero among the Annamese,
+Nguyen-anh, who in 1802 took the name of Gia-long. This
+founder of the present dynasty united under one rule what
+are to-day three of the five divisions of Indo-China—Annam,
+Tonkin, and Cochinchina—establishing his capital
+at Hué, being the first to group under the jade scepter
+everything from the frontiers of China to the banks of the
+Mekong.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But his victory was not so complete or so simply won
+as this may sound, and strictly speaking he did not rule
+as master, for he had to pay for calling in outside help.
+As usual it was a squabble between native factions that
+gave the less naïve Europeans their chance. Though they
+had already begun to visit these shores in the way of commerce
+during the sixteenth century, the French first had
+official contact with Annam in 1787, when the future Gia-long
+was fighting to recover the position of his family.
+Finding himself, in his war with the Tai and three brother
+usurpers, in imminent danger of being driven out of his
+native land, he ill-advisedly followed the suggestion of the
+French bishop of Adran and sent an embassy to France
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>asking for protection. He got it, with a vengeance. Also
+the wise bishop, who thought this a fine chance to counterbalance
+the growing political power of England in India,
+got a splendid tomb and a lot of Indo-Chinese streets
+named after him. Fearing perhaps that the embassy would
+not put things strongly enough, the bishop went to France
+in person and got promise of help from Louis XVI, or
+whoever ruled in his name. Before the assistance was delivered,
+however, Gia-long-to-be had to make a treaty with
+Louis promising to cede to France the islands of Touron
+and Poulo Condore off the coast of Cochinchina and give
+the French a concession at Tourane. Then the French sent
+troops from Pondicherry and helped Nguyen-anh to overthrow
+his enemies and to acquire by 1801 sway over all
+the present Indo-China except Cambodia and the Laos, in
+short to become Gia-long the Great.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though Gia-long died in 1820 without perhaps suspecting
+the truth, this opening wedge eventually led to the establishment
+of French authority over all Indo-China. But
+the successors of Gia-long showed themselves “very ungrateful”
+to the French. His immediate successor, his natural
+son Minh-mang, broke off with Europe in order to get
+the support of China, and after considerable rough work,
+including the massacring of many native Christians, died
+by falling off a horse, a failing he seemed to have in common
+with some modern princes, leaving behind him seventy-one
+children, of whom forty-nine were sons—not a bad
+record for a man who died young. The choice among these
+must have been difficult, and it does not seem to have
+been particularly successful, for the son who followed him
+under the name of Thieu-tri left no great fame behind him.
+But then came Tu-duc, who massacred many more native
+Christians and their European missionaries. Though they
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>probably wanted to be martyrs anyway, the killing of the
+ecclesiastics was made the pretext for the declaring of war.
+A Franco-Spanish squadron took Touron and finally
+Saïgon; Tourane was seized by the French; Tu-duc, besieged
+in his own capital at Hué, gave up all Saïgon Province;
+and by 1867 all lower Cochinchina had passed into
+the possession of France and became the French colony it
+has remained ever since.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Cambodia was already considered a protectorate of
+France; for Norodom, father of the present octogenarian
+king, Sisowath, had for better or for worse placed his
+country under the protection of the French in 1863. The
+French gradually crowded upon the Chinese in upper Tonkin,
+to make up for the British advance in Burma, and
+there was long and sometimes severe fighting, with “some
+splendid feats at arms,” according to French historians.
+There was an opposition or anti-imperialistic party in France,
+but as usual this minor opinion was crowded into the
+background. This time the French intrenched themselves
+in the citadel of Hué and put on the throne a new emperor,
+the old one fleeing among the Moï after massacring
+several thousand more native Christians. The war for
+the possession of Tonkin lasted a long time. In 1873 Dupuis
+and a hundred French soldiers captured Hanoï, though
+it was the Portuguese and Dutch who had long had “factories”
+in the rich delta of the Red River; and China,
+which had given her Tonkinese vassals no more assistance
+than she did the Burmese against the British, was at length
+forced to acknowledge all Tonkin to be under the “protection”
+of France. Thus by 1885 the whole of present-day
+Indo-China, from end to end and from Siam to the
+China Sea, a country about the size of Texas, therefore
+larger than France, was consolidated under French rule;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>except that the Angkor region was added later. Plainly
+speaking, though the French talk of “treaties” as if an
+equal sovereign people had requested them to take over
+the task of governing, not only Cochinchina but all Indo-China
+was stolen bit by bit as a result of the simplicity
+of Gia-long and the killing of those French missionaries
+in 1858. Bright little pupils will recall that the French
+had similar schemes afoot in Mexico at the very time
+they were fighting for Saïgon, and in Asia one realizes
+that the Monroe Doctrine has certainly changed the face of
+America from what it might have been.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The French conquest of Indo-China, some of it by trickery
+and some of it, notably the Tonkin, by real warfare, is
+merely a part of Western covetousness in the Orient, not
+the individual sin of an individual nation. We can condemn
+that Western aggression without losing the right to
+give full praise to the French soldiers who did the dirty
+work, just as we can condemn modern industrial exploitation
+without charging present conditions in Indo-China particularly
+to France. Once we grant the righteousness of
+“imperialism,” of the conquering “for their own good” of
+colored races by the white, once we accept that trite tricky
+phrase of imperialists, “the white man’s burden,” any possible
+charge against the French is quashed. It is the old
+question: Is it good or is it bad for white nations to take
+over weaker peoples who cannot govern themselves well
+in our sense of the word—and who are so well worth exploiting?
+Is it better to be chaotic, “backward,” but independent,
+or modern and exploited? Is it better for a country
+even as civilized as France to take hold of these poorly
+governed races, these inefficient countries, and make them
+settle down to business and behave themselves, even if the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>“protector” does pay himself well for the trouble? Great
+minds set in cement will tell you, but I cannot; I find my
+judgment depending on the color of the day, the way I
+have slept, my breakfast, the mail I have received; it is a
+perpetual struggle between my reflected and my indignant
+self. And of course each individual will condemn or praise
+this modern way of acquiring colonies that are not called
+colonies, of subjecting people who are not admittedly subjected,
+according to his background, his environment, his
+wealth, and the job he holds, perhaps also to the breakfast
+he has eaten.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At any rate exploitation is visibly the <i><span lang="fr">raison d’être</span></i> of
+the French in Indo-China, though the Indo-Chinese are no
+more exploited than are the great mass of our own people
+at home by those few who have the strangle-hold in
+industrial matters, and by no means so much as are the
+people of “independent” China by their own legal and bandit
+rulers. One of the trump-cards in this modern game of
+colonial exploitation is a tariff. There are swarms of customs
+officials whose duty it is to see that nothing gets into
+or out of Indo-China—or even through it, for that matter—without
+paying heavy charges, swarms of Frenchmen with
+native assistants who examine every spool of thread that
+comes in from anywhere except France, so that it takes
+all day to get a few dollars’ worth of “foreign” goods
+through the customs. Things from France pay no duties,
+submit to no formalities, any more than the French need
+passports or lose time in landing. But all others, whether
+persons or things, are put to trouble and expense. A box
+of cigars selling for three dollars in China costs seven
+dollars in Indo-China, though its Philippine place of origin
+is as near one country as the other. Every kind of French
+drink is available, but no others; even British whisky can
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>be had only if it is smuggled in. Every box unloaded from
+the average ship comes from France; everything not of
+local origin in the average shop is French, even those things
+which France produces much more poorly and much more
+expensively than other lands. A Ford coming direct to
+Indo-China pays 45 per cent duty—125 per cent if it
+comes indirectly—and sells for about eighteen hundred
+piastres, or more than nine hundred dollars gold. The
+little cars for which the French are noted cost from thirteen
+to fifteen thousand francs, so that it depends on the
+exchange of the day which car you can afford. There are
+not only import but export duties on everything, even paddy,
+or unhulled rice, nay, a duty even on the gunny-sacks it
+goes out in. More than that; everything merely passing
+through Indo-China, as the shortest or most convenient route
+between two parts of China, is opened, carefully examined,
+and assessed, though in this case the charges are called
+“transit dues.” Indeed, the more toothsome things from
+foreign lands are not infrequently consumed by the examiners
+and the empty cans sent on to the consignees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Does all this money, paid in the end by the inhabitants
+thereof, go to the “protected” country? You have three
+guesses, if so many are needed. <i><span lang="fr">La Métropole</span></i>, that is,
+France, gets real returns from its Far-Eastern possession;
+it is no altruistic “white man’s burden” the French are carrying
+there. Every year Indo-China sends France a check
+for about twenty million piastres. That nice little filial
+Christmas present of ten million dollars comes mainly from
+the <i><span lang="fr">douane</span></i> and <i><span lang="fr">régie</span></i>, that is, the customs and the tobacco,
+opium, and other government monopolies. Besides this the
+“protected” people pay the cost of military occupation, not
+to mention many millions more in official salaries and the
+like.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>But what France officially gets out of Indo-China is a
+mere drop in the bucket compared to what Frenchmen get
+by individual exploitation of a land where they have
+special privilege. French commerce has a virtual monopoly
+in almost anything except rice and betel-nut. There is
+plenty of iron, innumerable other natural resources, but the
+French encourage no modern industries in the colony, because
+they prefer to import from France the products of their
+own factories, so that after all it is the French capitalists
+and workmen at home who are “protected.” Take sugar,
+for instance; they export the crude at low and import the
+refined at high prices rather than help the natives to have
+their own refineries. Perhaps the best example of modern
+industrial exploitation of a “protected” people is the coal-mines
+in the northeastern corner of the Tonkin, which we
+visited on the second of those never-to-be-forgotten days
+in the Bay of Along.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The mines of Campha or Hongay, on the northern shore
+of that great wilderness of floating rocks, are open cuts,
+like those of the Japanese at Fushun near Mukden, or the
+iron-mines of Daiquirí in the mountains of eastern Cuba.
+There is no flaunting of the dreaded earth-dragon by digging
+down into the earth. Black terraces, mammoth stairways,
+are piled up the reddish hillsides, great amphitheaters cut
+in the hills, their walls so smooth and so sheer that one
+might think the coal was cut in huge slices, as from a
+gigantic cake. This precious region was discovered by a
+French forest-ranger wandering the woods along this coast
+no longer ago than 1905 and 1907. To-day the cuts are
+so large that the natives pickaxing on the slopes look like
+ants on gigantic black stadiums scaling the heavens. The
+roads through them lead from one grade to another, on and
+on, cutting through the villages, following the edge of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>bay that is sprinkled much farther than the eye can see
+with those fantastic protruding rocky mountain peaks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When we visited Campha, the black quarries swarmed
+with workmen, clothed in once reddish-brown cloth, now so
+dirty that they blended into the background against which
+they toiled. According to the mine officials and foremen
+these Annamese coolies are very lazy miners; certainly they
+seemed unwilling, after the manner of slaves, as if they
+were asking themselves who is benefiting by all this hard
+labor to get out of the hillsides the black stuff that is of
+no use to them. In fact the atmosphere of Annam in
+general is unwillingness, when working for Europeans, in
+antithesis to that of China. These beings dressed in sooty
+rags, these men wielding pickaxes with thin arms, have
+little to gain by their grueling labor under an imperious
+sun. There were women on the slopes also, their mouths
+bleeding with the sustaining and comforting betel-juice, and
+behind the coal-wagons <i><span lang="fr">nhos</span></i> ten years old, their worn faces
+under the coal-dust seeming forty, bent double their gaunt
+little bodies, half covered with black rags and tatters, their
+bare feet covered with a hard sole of the dust in which
+they forever trot for ten or fifteen cents a day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We were carried in chairs and on horses up the slopes
+from where the cars of coal are loaded into barges with
+little houses at the stem, a kind of Paris green scattered
+over the top of the coal to keep the workmen from stealing
+a little of it to sell. We went so high that we could
+look down not only upon all the town below, but across a
+great stretch of the blue rock-strewn sea. There was not
+a temple or pagoda in the native town, not a flower, not a
+single bamboo hedge before the native houses, no more slim
+straight arec-trees topped by a parasol of leaves, no smoking
+incense, but belching chimneys, and pickaxes. Instead
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>of the pastoral quiet of other Tonkinese villages there was a
+great roaring as of a waterfall, as of some great battle—the
+noise of the sifters. In contrast to this super-civilization
+there are wild animals in the surrounding bush; tigers
+come now and then to eat a coolie, when old age makes
+them more cunning than swift and strong, for they do
+not need much strength to carry off a mere human being.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But soon the 10.30 whistle blew, halting the work until
+two in the afternoon, and we came down for the <i><span lang="fr">apéritif</span></i>
+in one of the houses where the French live in the comfort
+they will not be denied even in the wilderness—and where
+even the women could not understand why my wife and
+mother, why our not yet four-year-old son for that matter,
+would not join them in a cocktail.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The hardest job at the mines is to get workmen, to bribe
+coolies to work here in the bush, and to keep them from
+running away again. Everything has been tried, and nothing
+works. As soon as the Tonkinese has a few piastres in his
+substitute for a purse he leaves the mines and returns to his
+rice-fields—and who can blame him? At the time of <i><span lang="fr">Têt</span></i>,
+which also is nearing the time of harvest, all wish to escape
+to their ancestral villages again, and then especially they
+run away by the thousands. Every ruse and stratagem is
+tried, for the massed overseers and guards do not suffice.
+For instance, wages are paid only for the last fortnight of the
+preceding month, so that the workmen must either remain
+or lose many days of toil by running away. In order that
+they shall not starve, however, and out of pure philanthropy
+as it were, the company gives those who have worked well
+a piastre every ten days, which they call “making an advance.”
+Another scheme to hold them is to build a big covered
+market, a movie booth. Not long ago one bright administrator
+discovered a still better plan. Missionaries installed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>at the mines would keep there at least the Catholics,
+he thought. So an Annamese father of the Spanish missions
+was imported and a little church constructed for him, and
+the new parish already has some seven hundred coolies whom
+the confessional and a fear of future damnation keep from
+running away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sometimes, on the other hand, when floods carry away
+the dikes of the Red River, devastating the rice-fields so
+that famine settles down upon the delta, the <i><span lang="fr">nha-qués</span></i> flock
+to the coal-fields by whole villages, to find the rice they cannot
+get at home, and then there are as many as twenty thousand
+coolies dotting the great black stadiums, and a good
+year for the mine syndicate. As each new mine opens, at
+every new terrace begun, a Chinese man comes to set up his
+four planks and lay out his bowls of rice and provisions,
+often before a single shovel-stroke has been struck, as if he
+smelled profits from afar as the vulture smells carrion. He
+will be rich, this fat, physically flabby fellow with his freshly
+shaven head and his smooth, imperturbably smiling face,
+from the profits garnered from their wages, while the new
+coolies are still only poor ragged and dirty miners, longing
+to run away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The coolies of Campha and Hongay are of no importance
+to the court at Hué, and not only is there no mandarin to
+rule over them, but not even a French functionary, except
+a gendarme who pompously decorates himself with the title
+of commissary. The real master is the mine; the mere people
+are nothing; as in all this modern world of industry
+property is everything, human life a mere pawn. The syndicate
+owns everything for many miles round about: the fields,
+the woods, the houses, the roads, the railways that carry the
+coal down to their jetties, the barges, the whole port, even the
+church with the sharp steeple, everything from the bowels of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>the earth to the slightest sprig of grass that may force its
+way through the coal-dust. If a village stands in the way of
+a new mine, so much the worse for it; down it comes; and
+when the syndicate constructs a new one farther on each
+native is made to pay part of the cost of his new house, so
+that he will be bound to the soil like a serf. The company
+is self-sufficient too; it produces everything it needs, from
+its tools to the rice for its coolies; and it is rich enough to
+be beyond the dreams of avarice, were there any such locality.
+The sixty-four thousand shares of stock offered at sixteen
+million francs a few years ago are to-day worth more than
+half a billion. The net profits the year before my visit were
+more than the total capitalization, not counting a twenty-million-piastre
+reserve.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One might conclude that at least this kingdom of coal
+brings its tribute to Indo-China, to debt-ridden France. Not
+at all; it does not even furnish the colony the coal it needs.
+Almost all of it goes to Japan, which pays well. Saïgon
+and Hanoï demand coal in vain; such factories as there are
+have to send their orders to Cardiff, and the railroads fire
+with wood, devastating the forests. After the fashion of
+modern industrialism, that present-day descendant of feudal
+tyranny, unknown stockholders suck the marrow from the
+country, dividing the profits among themselves, and leave
+nothing either for the colony or for France. As in France,
+the rich run away with the money that should be paid in
+taxes and leave “nothing but the hatred of thousands of
+coolies.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As in these coal-fields, so it is with most rich enterprises
+in Indo-China; many a scandalous fortune has been created
+there since 1914, yet the public treasury takes no account
+of them. Not only is there no tax on war profits but not
+even an income tax. For the laws of France do not apply,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>and the law of the colony is to exploit it and the people
+thereof, not the Frenchmen who make their fortunes there.
+Nowhere in the world perhaps are war-profiteers more favored
+than in this rich French protectorate, for they can keep
+everything for themselves, down to the last piastre. “They
+are as miserly with their gold as they were with their blood
+when the war was on,” a French traveler bitterly puts it,
+adding that all those enthusiastic young men who conquered
+Tonkin gained for their country were the swollen profits
+accruing to the holders of stock in such things as the mines
+of Hongay. It is a misfortune that the people liberated by
+France from the tyranny of their mandarins, he goes on, fall
+now into the power of these new tyrants; bad, because little
+grains of misery make a mighty ocean of revolt, and just
+over the frontier of China there are something like half a
+billion yellow men who are gradually waking up. “For the
+true mandarins of to-day are no longer those lordlings in
+yellow robes and silk tunics, so proud of their long overdue
+finger-nails, whom we saw bumping their heads on the palace
+pavements at Hué, but negotiators and financiers, adventurers
+who now carry no rifles on their shoulders but operate
+far from the jungle, by thrusts of the stock exchange.”</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>As we have already descended to statistics, let me go on
+to say that Indo-China is now credited with about 20,000,000
+inhabitants, of whom two thirds are Annamese, 1,300,000
+Cambodians, more than 1,000,000 Laosians, and half a million
+aborigines of various races. To be still more statistical,
+the latest census, now some years old, gave the total population
+as 18,983,203, of whom 16,256 were French and 1191
+“foreigners.” Most of the French and nearly all the “foreigners”—that
+is, non-French Caucasians—are in Cochinchina
+and Tonkin, more specifically in Saïgon and Hanoï.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>To-day there are some 30,000 Chinese and other alien
+Asiatics not included in the round figures above; and for
+the 18,000 Europeans, more than 90 per cent of them French,
+there are fully 40,000 Eurasians!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Many French colonials think it would be better to abolish
+the pretense of “protectorates” and really rule the whole
+country in name as well as in fact, make it all a colony, like
+Cochinchina, in order to do away with the sleek practices
+of the native mandarins and other functionaries, particularly
+in Annam. Either, they say, let us have a direct and undisguised
+French administration or return to a real protectorate,
+with kings and emperors who would not feel themselves
+annihilated, who would have the impression of being guided,
+counseled, even directed, but never dominated. On the other
+hand the French way of ruling through native chiefs pushed
+along by Europeans is a good system, and it is hard to see
+how native go-betweens of some sort could be done away
+with entirely.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For the French officials, particularly those higher up, being
+French as well as officials, rarely know any other language
+than their own; and therein lies perhaps their gravest fault.
+For they and those they rule over are at the mercy of any
+scamp who poses as an interpreter. Some French functionaries
+get official credit for knowing one of the native
+languages, but they seldom speak enough of it to get along
+in court, for example, without calling in the <i><span lang="fr">interprète</span></i>. Just
+as there is a pidgin-English along the China coast, there
+is in Indo-China a pidgin-French, using only the infinitive of
+verbs and always the <i><span lang="fr">toi</span></i> form, so that “Toi connaître?”
+takes the place of “Savez-vous?” and so on, irrespective of
+tense or gender. It is an amusing tongue, which “boys”
+probably find as queer and as hard to learn as we do their
+quarrelsome Annamese. As in the case of foreigners who
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>become so fluent in the bastard English of Chinese treaty-ports,
+it would require little more effort to acquire a speaking
+knowledge of the native tongue.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Individually the French officials of Indo-China are agreeable
+gentlemen, at least on a par with their counterparts in
+other white man’s colonies. But the government atmosphere
+is much like that of old Spain: no one seems to come out for
+his health or primarily for the benefit of the natives. While
+there is not the “squeeze” of China or the graft of Tammany,
+still there are ways of turning a politician’s honest penny.
+It is less dishonesty, however, that constitutes the official flaw
+than lack of ardent personal interest in the task in hand.
+“The soul of the missionary and the educator is what the
+‘protectors’ of such a people should bring to their task,” a
+French <i><span lang="fr">publiciste</span></i> asserts. “But few officials will accept the
+sacrifice of wasting any more time and energy than necessary
+in a place reputed inadequate to their merits. The only
+thought of the average French colonial official seems to be
+to ‘make a hit’ with his superiors, for his own benefit and
+advancement, and get back to the fleshpots of Paris as soon
+as possible. He has no ardor, no initiative; the ethnic and
+social milieu being closed to him, his business becomes mere
+routine; he does everything with only one thought in mind—his
+career.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The French have of course done much good for Indo-China.
+They have improved the cities, planted parks, opened
+ports, built roads such as the Far East had never seen before;
+and some one would certainly exploit the people if the French
+did not; their position is decidedly preferable to the anarchy
+over the Chinese border. But the guardians pay themselves
+well for their services. The government departments are
+greatly over-staffed; even the hurried traveler gets the impression
+that the colony is a refuge for deserving wards
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>of the government who cannot be accommodated at home.
+The Council meets once a year in Hanoï and once in Saïgon,
+which among other things gives a change of scene, a “winter”
+and a “summer” capital, with lots of travel pay for
+mileage between them. The higher officials in particular
+are shifted often from one division of the country to another,
+whereas there should be two quite distinct sets of
+rulers, dividing the colony on ethnographic lines; for Cambodia
+is as different from Tonkin as Morocco is from Réunion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The majority of the French officials in Indo-China are
+from the Midi, like most of her colonials. The speech of
+many of them sounds almost Italian, to say nothing of that
+of the Corsican river-captains and the like, who speak with
+a genuine foreign accent. This is natural, the Midi being
+nearer the sea and having few industries to absorb its ambitious
+sons. Yet they do not love the tropics. Most of
+them are frankly bored with life in this distant possession
+and, outside their routine tasks, are interested mainly in café
+pleasures and the joys of feminine society. There are some
+exceptions, of course, some who do their gymnastics every
+morning and some who become mighty hunters before the
+Moï. Now and then a scholarly fellow takes advantage of his
+ethnographic opportunities. But on the whole there is little
+unnecessary mingling with the natives, little outdoor life,
+except under café awnings, few excursions, fewer <i><span lang="fr">piqueniques</span></i>
+than one would expect in a land of good roads to
+delightful places and automobiles in which to reach them.
+Lest I be accused of pessimism, let us listen to a critic of
+their own nationality:</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The Frenchman imports into the Orient the immortal principles
+of absinthe and café gatherings, as the German does his beer and
+the Englishman his sports. Individualists, rarely knowing any
+modern language except our own, we have therefore a national selfsufficiency
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>and a suggestion of provincialism, which betray themselves
+the moment we escape from the superficial cosmopolitanism
+of Paris—of a part of Paris and a certain stratum of Paris at that.
+Café habits and the customs of the politician, narrow-mindedness
+and prejudice, disparagement, the faults of individualism, give our
+colonial officials an incapacity for agreement and of organized
+collaboration, a tendency to ignore realities, and to pay themselves
+with words. All the colonial official’s thoughts seem to be turned
+toward his past, toward the <i><span lang="fr">Métropole</span></i>; the society he has left behind
+still obsesses him. He learns nothing, and he can teach
+nothing. The discouraging reality that surrounds him quenches
+his eagerness to know. How often that has been impressed upon
+me when I wished to document myself on Indo-Chinese conditions!
+To most Frenchmen the delightful landscapes of Annam, the artistic
+tombs of Hué, the noble adaptation of a temple to its site, all that
+remains dead-letter. Most of them are as disdainful of the ancient
+people they have come to rule over as was the famous governor,
+Maurice Long, who did not know a word of the language, of the
+history of the country he ruled, and forged for himself the most
+erroneous, even the most pernicious impressions of its future destiny.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An old British captain, sailing the Far East for the past
+forty years, and familiar with most British colonies, insisted
+that, unlike his own people, the French do not coddle the
+natives of their possessions. England, he asserted, caters
+to the natives, gives them education and too much self-rule,
+and is all the more despised for it. Asiatics do not understand
+kindness and sympathy; therefore the French are respected.
+You must not mix sentiment with the ruling of
+inferior races, or for that matter of any other subject races,
+he went on; “for instance, you do not seem to be having an
+entirely happy time in the Philippines.” The French themselves
+assert that there is more liberty under their form of colonial
+rule than under that of the British. I rather doubt it.
+Though the outward French attitude of equality irrespective
+of race or color may sometimes give that impression, in the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>end liberty in French and British colonies probably sums
+up to about the same total.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is true that the color-line is less tangible in Indo-China
+than in American or British colonies. French boys are deferential
+and even obedient to half-breeds, even to well dressed
+natives, such as an American or English boy brought up in
+a colony would scorn to glance at. Native and Eurasian boys
+of Indo-China act toward white boys as if they quite expected
+to be accepted as their equals, though that attitude
+does not exactly hold among adults. This freedom of intercourse
+has its good points—and certainly its bad. Yet the
+Frenchman is at heart no democrat; the line of cleavage is
+social rather than racial. There is every stratum of French
+society in Hanoï, from the haughty governor-general to the
+conscripts from manure-heap villages in rural France, and
+the common soldier is closer to the native rank and file than
+he is to the high officials of his own race, the governor-general
+socially more allied to high-class natives than to his
+own clerks and troopers. Yet on the whole it is better to be
+white. At the <i><span lang="fr">guignol</span></i> near the tiger-cage in the big park
+about the palaces of the governor-general the Annamese
+policeman raps on the head native children who do not behave,
+but is very deferential to the white children who sit elbow
+to elbow with them. On the other hand the sweat-dripping
+French soldiers who come out of their cloth-inclosed cages
+between the acts of these popular outdoor Punch-and-Judy
+shows and smoke a cigarette before going back to their
+stifling duties as showmen again are regarded by the upper-class
+Annamese more as servants than as lords. There are
+not only French children with their amas in the front seats,
+and half-breed ones already posing as French, as they will
+through life, but purely native children as well; and not far
+away the adults sit or saunter and listen to the good band
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>concert, or cluster before the monkey-house and other cages,
+without any outward evidence of that racial dissonance
+emphasized in our own or British colonies. The best hotels
+in the colony make no distinction between French and
+Annamese, or any combination of the two races; the Annamese
+wife of a Frenchman “will be admitted to any circle
+in France to which the social position of her husband corresponds.”
+Yet Indo-China is almost the only place left where
+one still sees white men, and women, slap and otherwise
+manhandle their servants, and some Frenchmen speak to
+native railway men and the like in a way that in any other
+country would bring them the quite proper request to betake
+themselves forthwith to where it is reputed to be warmer
+than in the earthly tropics.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>A French novelist whose background is Indo-China rates
+its “scourges” (<i><span lang="fr">fléaux</span></i>) as—in the order of their appearance
+to the newly arrived colonial perhaps—sun, “boy,” <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>,
+alcohol, gambling, opium, and madness. Most of these are
+self-explanatory. The “boy” alone is sometimes enough
+to drive the exile to drink, if not to madness, and it is not
+infrequently he who more or less surreptitiously brings in the
+<i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>, perhaps his own sister, sometimes even his own
+wife. The <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>—normally a perfectly respectable Annamese
+word for girl—is in colonial vernacular what in France
+is known as <i><span lang="fr">petite femme</span></i>, and by many other names, some
+of them far less complimentary, in every land. As our own
+pretty but stupid girls go into the movies or the “Follies,”
+those of Annam become the temporary wives of the French.
+There is a lot of romance about the <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>, from those of
+the “Madame Butterfly” temperament, until one finds that
+she is sometimes hired by the week, like a <i><span lang="fr">bonne à tout faire</span></i>,
+and is often passed on to a successor with the furniture.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>Nor is she the Oriental doll she is painted by romantic Latin
+novelists, though during her first few terms of service she
+may have youthful charm and perhaps be pretty. Many
+Annamese mothers do not blacken the teeth of their daughters
+because they wish them to live with Frenchmen, especially
+if they are the daughters of other Frenchmen, which
+is said to make an ardent combination much sought after
+among colonial Lotharios. But the <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i> must love her
+François indeed if she eschews betel-nut for his sake; she is
+more likely to teach him the habit. There is little visible
+public opinion against these temporary matings, though it
+is said that the best class of Annamese look down upon the
+practice at least as much as do the most nearly prudish of
+the French. As in France, marriage is very difficult and
+its unofficial rival very easy; one may even take the <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>
+back to France as a servant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One sees half-breed children now and then even in thatched
+hamlets far from the centers, while there are plenty of both
+children and adults of mixed blood in any city. Wherever
+there is a Catholic community cynical French males suspect
+any one in the slightest degree off color as having French
+blood contributed by the “missionaries.” The opposite combination,
+with the male Annamese the “protector,” may
+sometimes be seen—a Frenchwoman in Annamese trousers
+in some wayside village or peering forth from some native
+den in the cities. There were several instances in Hanoï of
+Frenchwomen legally married to Annamese, most of them imported
+after the war. The wife of a furrier who won a
+gold medal and his French bride at the Marseilles exposition
+of a decade ago never went out, but stood looking through
+her <i><span lang="fr">grille</span></i> like a captive animal. The Parisian wife of a
+barber in Haïphong lived in the not too large room of the
+barber-shop, with a bed off in one corner behind a bamboo
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>screen that did not even conceal from observant clients that
+she was soon to contribute to the Eurasian population. The
+government is now refusing licenses for such marriages, but
+that naturally does not do away with similar unions as long
+as Frenchwomen are ignorant of the color-line or indifferent
+to it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The French think that they cannot live in the tropics
+without a pith helmet, a cholera belt, wine, and a woman.
+One might add ice in the place of song. They have a curious
+belief amounting almost to a superstition that to take off
+<i><span lang="fr">la casque</span></i> in the sun, even the reflected sun, be it only for the
+instant needed to mop the brow and sweat-band, will almost
+surely be fatal, so that every little while the thoughtless “foreigner”
+is startled by raucous shouts of warning, and assailed
+with screams of dismay if he so much as thrusts his head
+out a window without his helmet on. Yet they constantly
+see the natives bareheaded, and either I must conclude that
+this, like the cholera belts with which even the women seem
+to torture themselves, is an unnecessary burden or that my
+own head is more <i><span lang="fr">dure</span></i> than those of the notoriously hardheaded
+French.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Of the eighteen to twenty million inhabitants of French
+Indo-China only the males over twenty years of age among
+the perhaps seventeen thousand French residents can vote—for
+the deputy from Cochinchina to the French Chamber
+of Deputies and for a delegate without a vote from the
+“protectorates.” Naturally those elected are Frenchmen.
+The number of French in Indo-China might have greatly
+increased of late, contends one party among this slight electorate,
+were it not for more or less official opposition. “For
+many of the rulers, the free Frenchman, the Frenchman
+who is not a member of the administration, is regarded as a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>troublesome intruder, an unknown incumbrance, a suspected
+person, a constant addition to the problem. This anti-French
+politics arose from the spirit of autocracy of those
+Cæsars with clay feet, Long and Baudoin, with their avowed
+hatred of every French civilian in the posture of a man.”
+This party insists that there should be a “white proletariat,”
+that many a young Frenchman, released from the army there,
+for instance, could live well in some part of the colony with
+his “companion,” and even contribute a large progeny, to the
+advantage not only of himself but of France and Indo-China.
+If only the government would find some means of
+helping him to raise and educate his children, they insist, he
+would be far happier than at home and gradually help to
+bridge over that gulf between the French and the natives.
+The point of view of this group is that of Brazil: that there
+is nothing wrong in mixing racial strains, legitimately or
+otherwise, that on the contrary this mixture of races should
+help to cement together more closely the different elements
+and perhaps breed a stock that would better endure the
+climate than does the pure white. In other words, they
+would emulate in human form the success of breeding hardy,
+tick-impervious, but runty tropical cattle with India bulls.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Offhand the impartial observer would say that there should
+be a “white proletariat,” that not merely French capitalists
+and officials should have the advantages France’s “protection”
+of this part of the world offers. But the governing
+class insists that there shall be none, or no more of one
+than is unavoidable, and for that reason does not now allow
+conscripts to be discharged in the colony when their time is
+up, even though, unlike those of higher social standing, they
+may be willing to marry their <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>, produce legitimate
+offspring, and agree to remain in the colony for life. Nor
+do those in power encourage the coming of colonists from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>France. Yet, contend the self-appointed spokesmen of the
+“white proletariat” who are so bitter against what they call
+the “anti-French” policy of the officials, it was precisely
+because of the sacrifice of these “<i><span lang="fr">petits blancs</span></i>” that France
+lost many of her other colonies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some of the complaints of the Annamese against the
+French are so well put in one of the novels of my companion
+from Hué to Hanoï that I cannot do better than to quote
+him:</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>You have seized Annamese in the streets of the large cities, with
+all possible vexations, for the sum of two piastres owing to the
+government, yet you subsidize each year a theater troupe at the cost
+of 80,000 francs [written when exchange was much higher than now]
+merely to amuse a handful of French during the three winter
+months. You have inaugurated the régime of the <i><span lang="fr">corvée</span></i> for the
+building of roads, or of buying out of it at a high price, promising
+the population that for this it would be exempt from payment in
+kind, yet by roundabout means you continue to requisition the inhabitants
+of the villages for nothing more than that you may be
+able comfortably to roll along in your automobiles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In other words road-building in Indo-China is quite as it
+was under us in Haiti, by <i><span lang="fr">corvée</span></i>, or payment of road taxes
+in labor. For three piastres a man could buy off from the
+ten days a year required of him, but the <i><span lang="fr">coolies voluntaires</span></i>,
+who had even to bring their own food, were often taken far
+from home and sometimes kept for months. When food
+gave out they renounced their nominal wages, glad to get
+home at so slight a sacrifice. As in Haiti, the explanation
+of the officials is that subordinates in the field did things
+contrary to the orders of those higher up, but this must be
+entered in the column of dubious excuses.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But to go on with the plaints of the Annamese against
+their “protectors,” as interpreted by one whose history and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>temperament have made him as nearly sympathetic as the
+average Frenchman ever becomes:</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The money you so cruelly cause to be sucked from the population
+you spend almost entirely on your own luxuries and pleasures, your
+own well-being; you spend next to nothing for the good of the
+natives, to help them to profit by the procedures which modern
+science puts within the reach of industrious, laborious people. The
+poor people everywhere say that the government deceives them by
+using tortuous schemes to increase imposts that are already heavy.
+They say that your protection is not what it seems to be on the
+surface, that while a European can go anywhere, except sometimes
+among the wildest tribes of the far mountains, there is still almost
+as much robbing, kidnapping, virtual banditry as ever among the
+natives when no Frenchman is looking on. You let the people be
+ruled by native mandarins, pure bandits whose immorality is no
+longer doubted by anyone—former “boys,” liberated criminals, head
+gardeners who have known how to please by combining pretty
+parterres and by offering flowers to the women of your officials,
+intriguers and unscrupulous adventurers, beardless youths who have
+won the favor of your ladies, sons of mandarins with the most
+corrupted habits—whereas under the old régime this important
+mission as father and mother of the people was confided only
+to men of forty or more whose worth was proved. The greater
+part of the mandarins to whom you have accorded your confidence
+are rascals who exploit the people in the most shameless manner.
+We call them patented pirates, differing from real pirates only by
+the brevet given them by the administration, with the aid of which
+they can legally pillage more easily and with less loss of honor than
+real pirates and smugglers.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>You do next to nothing for the higher education of the Annamese,
+for fear, you say, of making outcasts [<i><span lang="fr">déclassés</span></i>] of them, as if
+advanced instruction could make a degenerate of a man. It is said
+everywhere that you wish to keep the native at an intellectual level
+low enough to be able more easily to make him your slave. Thus you
+are false to the mission you gave yourselves to civilize the people.
+You cannot understand what attachments you would create between
+yourselves and the Annamese if you set yourselves resolutely to
+teaching them everything you know, without <i><span lang="fr">arrière-pensée</span></i>. You
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>have an example in the Chinese, who, though they treated us more
+severely, had nothing to regret for having inculcated in us all their
+civilization, all their knowledge, to such an extent that Annam
+became a China in miniature.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>You have too much pride; you disdain the natives too much; you
+believe yourself to be of a divine essence compared to us whom you
+keep at a distance, as if it were a question of a vile, abject race,
+worthy at most of being your servant. You are jealous of our
+slightest qualities; you cry out against our slightest faults, which for
+the most part you have noticed among the scum of our race that
+surrounds you, and which you attribute to all of us in general,
+without knowing that the true honest Annamese takes care not to
+approach you, not being able to support your arrogance, your conceit,
+your insults.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet though the Annamese, particularly of the Tonkin,
+fought long and valiantly to keep from being “protected”
+by the French, and there have been some revolts since what
+is considered the final conquest of all the Indo-Chinese empire,
+notably that abortive scheme to poison all Caucasians
+one evening in 1916, on the whole they now seem contented,
+or at least reconciled, and fairly friendly. Do they perhaps
+see the advantages of French rule, and recognize that some
+one would exploit them if these aliens from the West did
+not; or is it merely the fatalism and the infinite patience of
+the East that gives them the outward appearance of comparative
+contentment?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XIII<br> <span class='c011'>OVER THE MOUNTAINS TO LAOS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Early April found me back in Hanoï, this time as a
+family of five rather than a foot-loose individual. It
+was not the place I had left two months before. Constantly
+heavy skies gave it a gloomy oppressive atmosphere not at
+all like those brilliant days of late January. Almost perpetual
+rain, even though it was not always heavy, made the
+life of the city less chic, less lively. With even the big wide
+streets covered with a light <i><span lang="fr">couche</span></i> of mud and water, the
+large French community seemed to dress in its older clothes
+rather than in its Parisian best. In a hundred ways the
+change in weather made other things different. But the
+natives, especially the toiling masses, were evidently used
+to a season that had befallen them yearly for who knows
+how many centuries; for, covered with big pancake hats and
+palm-leaf rain-coats, they splashed about in their bare feet
+almost as happily as in the brilliant month of January.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Luckily Sunday managed to be fine long enough to confirm
+my reports on the zoo and <i><span lang="fr">guignol</span></i> and the band-concert
+in the governor-general’s park, and convince all three generations
+of my family that a month in the little Paris of the
+East would be the great contrast to life in China which my
+first glimpse of it had promised. It was still brilliant too,
+and already hot, when I took the train next morning for
+Vinh, through a land everywhere lush green now, to be
+met at the station that evening and carried home by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span><i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> in person. For though I had not known it until a
+day or two before, the journey through Laos, Indo-China’s
+largest, most distant, and least known division, could only
+be made more or less officially, with the willingness and
+connivance, sometimes the actual help, of the French authorities.
+That part of it which I proposed to visit could
+hardly be reached even on foot without government permission
+and aid, and only those whom the governor-general
+considers <i><span lang="fr">personæ gratæ</span></i> may expect either. The time will
+soon come when that great region northeast of Siam will be
+made the commonplace stamping-ground of tourists, but
+so far the roads were only started and the hotels not yet
+begun even on paper. Still, the French were not averse
+to begin to let the outside world from which tourists eventually
+come know what will some day be in store for them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> did me the honor of driving his big Peugeot
+next day himself, though to save face he took along his
+native chauffeur, as well as a “boy” to act as general servant.
+We turned back north for thirty-five kilometers along the
+railway by which I had come, then swung sharply west from
+the macadam road upon a gravel one that was by no means
+poor. At the first village officially recognized by the French
+the army turned out—a score of Annamese soldiers in white
+knickerbocker uniforms and red wrap-leggings, with the
+familiar brass-tipped mushroom hats, all of them barefoot
+except the sergeant, whose heavy high shoes on the ends
+of his thin legs gave him a resemblance to a diver about
+to descend to the bottom of the sea. With stiff leather
+cartridge-boxes in the pits of their stomachs, their French
+rifles with the long sharp bayonets, usually carried sidewise
+high on their shoulders but now held stiffly perpendicular
+before them, and as spick and span as only native troops
+under European command can be, they stood at rifle-salute
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>behind their young French officer with raised sword, the very
+personification of the East under Western training, while the
+<i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> leisurely got out and inspected them as deliberately
+as if it were a pleasure to stand motionless in full dress beneath
+a tropical sun. Once these formalities were over, however,
+and arms had been grounded, the two Frenchmen shook
+hands and fraternized like exiled brothers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While they are hardly a military people, any more than
+the Chinese, the Annamese had compulsory military service
+for all men between the ages of eighteen and sixty long
+before the French came. In fact they were so often called
+to arms that the field-work was largely left to their wives,
+which is perhaps why the women seem even to-day more at
+home in the fields than the men. Nor has the country lost
+its militaristic aspect under the French. Besides the white
+conscripts from overseas to be seen at important points,
+native soldiers are constantly in evidence. Astonishingly well
+groomed and set up compared to the armed ragamuffins of
+China, they commonly salute all Europeans with a gravity
+that further distinguishes them from the saucy, leering uniformed
+coolies of the soldier-ridden land to the north.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Naturally, most of these <i><span lang="fr">linh</span></i> are Annamese, though each
+of the four protectorates has its own soldiers, nominally
+under command of its king or emperor—“semi-volunteers”
+they are usually called, and quite properly. For even to-day
+it is no business of the king or emperor, much less of the
+French, whether or not they are volunteers in the true sense
+of the word. Mandarins or other officials tell each commune
+how many recruits it is required to furnish, and they are
+duly furnished, without embarrassing questions. The notables
+of each village choose those who shall leave it for eighteen
+months of service, at the ratio of one recruit to every six
+adult males, and naturally they do not include their own sons
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>among them. Their training over, the youths may return
+to their homes, but are subject to call until the age of sixty.
+Many prefer to remain under arms longer than is required,
+and with this system France—or the native sovereign—has
+a reserve of very respectable size, some of whom have served
+five, ten, and even fifteen years. The French assert that conscription
+is hardly necessary, that most of the soldiers of
+Annam are real volunteers, that all the men of Annam
+wanted to go to France at the time of the war to fight for
+the “mother-land.” If so, this indicates a patriotism, or
+at least a wanderlust, not in keeping with the manner of
+most of them, though it is true that a visible pride shines
+forth in the brown faces of those few native soldiers, usually
+noncommissioned officers, who display two or three French
+medals across their breasts.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>An hour or more later we crossed a river by a <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i> and
+raced comfortably on along grass-grown roads for the rest
+of the morning. The rice-fields had given way to brush and
+forests, the plain to ridges and ravines, to a semi-wilderness
+in which the scarcity of people was in great contrast to the
+endless files of cinnamon-clad coolies of both sexes jogging
+under their shoulder-pole burdens, the files of wheelbarrows
+carrying produce to market, pack-animals among which our
+snorting conveyance created a panic reminiscent of the early
+days of the automobile, and to the crowded hat-roofed
+markets themselves, close beside and even in the road, on
+what might be called the Annamese side of the river. For
+though we were still geographically in Annam, almost no
+country in the world is so narrow as this one in the vicinity
+of Vinh, and almost nowhere do conditions change more
+quickly, once the crowded, rich, flat coast-land between the
+Gulf of Tonkin and the Annamese chain has been left behind.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>Already we began to meet tribespeople very different
+from the Annamese. Barely two hours from the railroad
+there appeared women dressed from just above the nipples
+barely to the knees, in primitive skirts wrapped about the
+lower waist, carrying heavy loads of wood, with a forehead-strap
+similar to that of our Indians. They were Muong, that
+is, “wild people,” though their wildness showed mainly in
+their timidity as they slipped off into the jungle below the
+raised road. We had not merely changed regions at the <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i>;
+we had entered a new world, stepped back several centuries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We raced incessantly westward, for all the grass in the
+road, along which a path meandered as constantly as if forever
+dodging the evil spirits that can only move in a straight
+line, like a rifle-bullet, never encountering another vehicle—except
+once, when we missed by inches meeting head on
+at a brush-hidden turn the only automobile of the day.
+Toward noon we stopped at a Muong village, where we
+picked up a French colonist with holdings scattered among
+the foot-hills of the Annamese chain. The two Frenchmen
+of course were already acquainted, and there was the usual
+<i><span lang="fr">apéritif</span></i> before we sat down to a surprisingly good <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i>
+in a more or less public rest-house. More exactly it was no
+longer surprising to find good meals provided even in the
+wilderness, for your Frenchman will not endure gastronomic
+hardships; and since good meals are always more important
+to him than arriving, nearly three hours had slipped away
+before there was any indication that we were to move on
+again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meanwhile, on the heels of our arrival, the Muong chief
+of the village, closely followed by three or four retainers
+in bare feet, loose white panties, and more or less picturesque
+regalia, had come to welcome my high-rank companion.
+The chief wore a blue suit, instead of the usual black or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>cinnamon brown of the Annamese, and in honor of the
+occasion and of his own standing he had a blue cloth wound
+turban-fashion about his head. Also a volumnious cloak of
+mosquito-netting or cheese-cloth with huge sleeves, in which
+he clasped his hands together in a manner that increased
+his resemblance to a Chinese Buddhist priest, covered him
+to the bare ankles. He and his satellites brought us, as the
+city fathers of Muong villages do all important visitors, according
+to the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i>, a basket of eggs and several bottles
+of what looked like water. Knowing that such a beverage
+would be an insult to a Frenchman, I made inquiry and
+found that the bottles were filled with a native liquor of
+such deadly voltage that even my wine-loving companions
+did not venture to sample it. While the chief acted out his
+respects, the most lowly of the attendants laid out the ten
+eggs on a brass platter and set it with two of the bottles of
+rice-alcohol on the earth floor before the seated <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i>.
+Only then did the chief speak, accompanying his greetings
+with many low bows, showing none of the friendly half-gaiety
+of the Chinese, but rather an air of being inwardly
+frightened. The <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> replied, somewhat carelessly, with a
+bit of the native tongue that was at least fairly fluent. Then
+the chief and his attendants withdrew, and the eggs and
+the bottle stood where they had been placed until we departed,
+when they were either retrieved by the chief or fell
+to the lot of the rest-house servants.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The colonist went on with us to the night’s halt by a
+road now crawling along the edge of a precipice, now across
+serried ranks of what my companions called <i><span lang="fr">montagnes
+russes</span></i>, sharp ridges over which we incessantly bounced,
+alternating with constant drops to low filled-in runways in
+place of bridges, a wilderness all about us. But after all,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>tropical jungle has less of interest, at least after the first
+visit, to any one except the trained naturalist, than the seemingly
+greater variety of flora in the temperate zone. There
+was still something left of the afternoon, for all our generous
+midday halt, when we reached the military post of
+Cuarao, across the river from the highway and a mud and
+reed garage offering tropical accommodations to a car or
+two. One of its several white buildings of an official character,
+which looked so imposing against the background of
+Muong houses and jungle, had rooms for the three of us,
+opening off the soldier-trodden compound and roughly comfortable
+except for the heat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are three crops of Indian corn a year in this region;
+and among the small craft of various sizes on the river below
+were many narrow little boats full of ripe husked ears that
+gave the scene flashes of color. The Muong prefer rice,
+according to the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i>, but the land left them is so hilly
+that the toil of raising it is more than they will endure.
+Wild-looking Muong mail-carriers, each with a small bag,
+hung about the rowboat ferry between the garage and our
+quarters as if they were in no hurry whatever to cross and
+be off on their fifteen kilometers of the Postes et Télégraphes
+relay. It was a reminder that the mail service of Indo-China
+under the French is by no means the equal, in proportion
+to the difficulties involved, of that of China under international
+tutelage. But on the other hand one can telegraph
+anywhere within the colony, from almost any hut, at a cent
+a word, in English, French, or the native tongues, and be
+sure of prompt and accurate delivery. The traveler long
+inured to the unreliable, expensive, often hopeless telegraph
+system of China, unfortunately not under foreign management,
+could forgive the French almost anything for this
+boon. During all my journey through Laos I never took the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>trouble to write letters to my family in Hanoï, with the
+probability of reaching there again before they did, but spent
+a few cents each evening for a telegram, and kept as closely
+in touch with them as if I had gone home each evening; for
+never once was I more than two hours in receiving a reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have spoken before of the complete security of Europeans
+almost anywhere within France’s Indo-Chinese empire,
+whatever the complaints of the natives. No doubt it was
+to make us feel doubly safe that soldiers beat a hubbub on
+bamboo sections all night long about the post as a proof that
+they were awake and on guard. But there are dangers, according
+to some of the tales with which my companions
+whiled away the evening. The <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> of one of these wilder
+provinces, for instance, had broken five ribs when his automobile
+ran into a deer unfamiliar with modern traffic rules.
+A French soldier stationed on the Tonkin border was attacked
+by a tiger, an animal reputed always to take its victim
+by the back of the neck; and as this man chanced to be
+carrying a blanket-roll across his shoulders, he killed the
+beast with his knife—or his bayonet, for he himself was
+never clear on that detail—without getting a scratch. Tiger
+stories are legion in Indo-China, and many of them are as
+free from doubt as this one, which is fully authenticated—or
+documented, as my fellow-travelers put it.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> drove me a few miles farther in the morning,
+halting at the edge of another river, where we had made
+telegraphic rendezvous with the authorities of the next province.
+Here and there a path went off up into the woods to
+clusters of Muong houses; now and again we met a file of
+these jungle people sidling along the edge of the road. The
+men did not look greatly different from the Annamese. Their
+eyes were a little less oblique, their faces at close range
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>shaped more like our own; there was a bit more wildness,
+naïveté, timidity, or something countrified about them; but
+the surest way of telling apart the males of the two races was
+the manner in which they carry their burdens—the Annamese
+on the shoulder-pole, the Muong in baskets on their wives’
+backs. The men themselves sometimes carry in baskets also,
+and even larger loads, but only when the available supply
+of females makes it necessary. The women who trail behind
+them could not possibly be mistaken for those of
+Annam. They were much less independent, each hiding behind
+her husband at sight of us, following close on his heels
+as they hurried silently on. They wore little above the waist
+except the loads they carried on their backs, secured by a
+band across their foreheads. A cloth about their heads and
+another barely covering their plump breasts were evidently
+concessions to the prudish world of the highway, for at home
+in the bush a blue-embroidered skirt from the waist to the
+lower thighs seems to be all that Muong public opinion requires.
+A long bodkin protruded from a queerly arranged
+knot of hair worn somewhat to the side of the head. The
+long round basket on the bare back drew taut the supporting
+cord across the forehead, a small board with two holes in it
+keeping the two strands apart. Each woman wore at her
+left side a section of bamboo as a pocket, and carried by another
+cord over one shoulder a canteen in the form of another
+piece of bamboo, several feet long, and filled with river-water
+with which to quench the thirst of her lord and master.
+Some of the brick-colored male savages bore a lance over
+one shoulder, and most of them had a long tobacco pipe of
+tiny bowl thrust like the bodkins of the women through their
+knot of hair, or worn in the belt like a cutlass. There was
+some evidence of tattooing, but the naïveté of their faces
+and manner and the attitude of the half-naked women were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>the most typical features. Between the men and the women
+there seemed to be a deep social gulf, something like that
+between servants and masters among the wealthy of other
+lands.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here and there within sight along the road were a few
+Muong houses, all standing man-high on piles, a kind of
+gang-plank with cleats forming an outside stairway to a
+rounded veranda under a low overhanging thatch roof at
+one end. Men squatting over their long pipes and children
+at play evidently monopolized this portico, which the women
+only approached with the obsequious manner of those who
+feel themselves intruders. A smaller veranda at the other,
+always the southern and sun-baked end, served them as
+kitchen and place of recreation. Most Muong hamlets are
+far from the grass-grown highway, and one can scarcely
+blame them for preferring solitude and simplicity, though
+their roosters and cur-dogs probably make the nights as
+hideous there as the soldiers with their bamboo drums had
+ours at the post of Cuarao. The <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> whiled away the
+time with stories of this “wild” timid race, one of which
+concerned a great chief of the Muong who had always gone
+about as naked as his forefathers of pre-French days, until,
+having been decorated with the medal of the Legion of
+Honor, he went to Vinh and bought himself a magnificent
+jacket to pin his decoration on. Since then he had never
+been seen without the jacket, and his brother was always
+following him with envious eyes, though whether he envied
+him the medal or the jacket was not clear.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>We had waited nearly an hour when there appeared on the
+other side of the not very large stream a sumptuous Fiat
+strangely out of keeping with the wilderness about us and
+a startling contrast in transportation to the leaky old <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>by which I crossed to it amid the blessings of the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i>
+of Vinh. It was to have been there at daylight, but it soon
+became evident that even a high-priced Italian car cannot
+move faster than the chauffeur that drives it. We were off
+as soon as my modest baggage had been stowed away, along
+a still grassy road cut between the steep mountain-side and
+the stream, the scars of the evidently recent road-building
+already almost completely obliterated by the impulsive tropical
+vegetation. Here and there a path meandered along
+the road, and on it passed picturesque Muong women in
+scanty garments, all of them carrying baskets and some of
+them suckling babies as they walked, climbing the rocks as
+high as possible whenever they caught sight or sound of us.
+Birds of rich colors flitting in and out of the jungle gave
+us as hasty glimpses of themselves as did the Muong women
+who sought refuge in the thick underbrush on the stream
+side of the road. There were flapper birds, too gaily dressed
+to be useful or even virtuous members of ornithological
+society. One of them had a brilliant blue back, tail, and
+wings, red feet, and a velvety-brown throat above a snow-white
+breast that gave it the appearance of wearing either a
+low-necked evening-gown or the white shirt of a dinner-jacket.
+Its fantastic Semitic beak and cardinal-red head was
+topped by a purple hat adorned with a single aigret. There
+were matronly birds in black, with wings of the rich brown
+of Tonkinese clothing, actress birds in exaggerated, even indecent
+costumes, birds that changed appearance entirely, as
+if they had suddenly put on a disguise, when they opened
+their wings and showed the under side of them; there were
+birds that were mere streaks of white, flashes of fire in the
+sunshine, birds with tails longer than themselves, birds that
+made a noise like the pounding of a section of bamboo with
+which Chinese watchmen make nights miserable, or Buddhist
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>bonzes call upon the charitably minded. Yet they sang less
+than did the crickets or katydids, less than the queer members
+of the lizard family sunning themselves on the rocks,
+confirming a memory that the whistle or call of jungle birds
+is often monotonous but rarely musical. Once I caught sight
+in the stream below of a ridiculous member of the duck family,
+swimming and strutting about among his modest female
+mates in a costume so gaudy and incredible that he must have
+designed it himself. We were so closely flanked by the prolific
+vegetation that this part of the trip was like taking a
+journey through the heart of the jungle in an easy-chair, or
+on the magic carpet of Arabic legend. Memories of the tiger
+stories I had heard the evening before, and elsewhere,
+crowded upon me. There were panthers in these forests
+too, and herds of gaur, a wild cattle like the aurochs, two
+meters high, of little trouble to the people but very dangerous
+to the hunter. Yet the only visible peril was the constant
+tendency of the road to make hair-pin turns on the sheer
+edge of great gorges.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The chauffeur, dressed in full European style even to his
+tropical helmet, seemed to be a mixture of French and of
+several Indo-Chinese bloods. Instead of driving like the
+madman that most chauffeurs of Indo-China resemble,
+making every turn an attempt at suicide, every downward
+slope an effort to hang up a new speed-record, he was so
+overcautious that I no longer wondered at his failure to be
+on time at the rendezvous. While I am not one of those who
+like to fly along the brinks of precipices, I rather prefer that
+to crawling like an ox-cart when a stretch of straight wide
+road lies in clear view ahead. Twenty kilometers from
+the <i><span lang="fr">bac</span></i> he halted where we should have been three hours
+before, at a village which seemed to be named Muongsen, and
+announced that he could not reach our destination that day.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>It happened that my trip through Laos was absolutely set in
+cement, since I had to be somewhere else at a definite date,
+and this fellow and his chief, the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> of Xieng
+Khuang, had been advised of that fact by urgent telegrams
+from the governor-generalate itself. But the Caucasian part
+of him seemed to have exhausted itself in his appearance
+without touching his character. Or perhaps he had once run
+into a water-buffalo or spilled himself down a mountain-side.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was protesting against halting for the day while it was
+still fully an hour short of noon, when a white man unexpectedly
+turned up. He was a tall, good-looking, splendidly
+built fellow, with the appearance of a big blond Frenchman
+who had lived all his life in the open; and he wore the blue
+uniform of a French colonial officer. Yet he was no Frenchman
+for all that, but a native of Bavaria, who had lived as
+a boy in New York—at Sixty-fourth Street and Second
+Avenue, he still remembered. Now he could speak only
+French—besides Annamese and several tribal tongues of
+Indo-China—and was as Gallic in temperament as he was
+blond. Having entered the Foreign Legion when he was
+fourteen, he had been with the French ever since, and was
+now a second lieutenant in command of a village station
+higher up on the plateau ahead. With him was a French-Annamese
+woman of possessive manner, though no startling
+beauty, who called him husband.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hospitable as he was handsome, he insisted that at least
+I could not go on until we had performed the Frenchman’s
+midday rites. We had to prolong the <i><span lang="fr">apéritifs</span></i> an hour or
+more before we could sit down to a several-course lunch in
+a hut grocery of very respectful serving manners and a not
+total ignorance of French cooking. For according to the
+lieutenant and his no less hospitable companion, it would
+have been a great breach of bush etiquette not to wait for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>the other “European” in the village. He was the chauffeur
+of the general-in-chief of all Indo-China, and had been left
+behind with his car <i><span lang="fr">en panne</span></i> while the general had climbed
+on into the mountains in a Citroen “caterpillar” that had
+been serving him as baggage-trailer.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This other “European” turned up at last and proved to be
+a Guadeloupe mulatto, who lost little time in claiming that
+his grandmother had once been a great personage in Bordeaux—which,
+after the way of French ladies, was not at
+all impossible—and who either had never heard of American
+conventions where negroes are concerned or judged from
+my hand-shake that I had outgrown any such prejudice.
+Simple and naïve, yet with all those amusing little idiosyncrasies
+of courtesy and their opposite common to the French,
+he was a bit bashful at first, until convinced by my manner
+that I accepted him as a social equal. His misgivings had
+plainly nothing to do with color but with the natural gulf
+between a mere corporal turned general’s chauffeur and a
+traveler sponsored by the governor-general himself. Thereafter
+he was at his ease, and his big eyes rolled like those
+of a minstrel-show end-man whenever he heard anything
+even mildly surprising, and he became convulsed with gaiety
+at the slightest suggestion of anything humorous. The lieutenant
+thought I might get more willing service out of my
+chauffeur if we invited him also to sit down with us; and
+what with the Muong and the Laosian servants who waited
+upon us, the mixture of races about the rough but well
+garnished table at which we finally gathered could hardly
+have been increased without going in search of other
+individuals.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The conversation hovered chiefly about the women of Laos.
+The lieutenant asserted, and was borne out by his wilderness
+companion of the sex under discussion, that to touch the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>hair or breasts of a Laosian woman is a more serious crime
+than actual violation. In fact Laosian law prescribes a much
+more serious penalty for the former than for the latter indiscretion,
+and the lieutenant in his judicial capacity had often
+been called upon to try cases under this strange code. Naturally,
+he explained, again abetted by his lady-love, what
+the Western world considers the lesser of the two crimes
+might be committed entirely against the will of the victim,
+while the other.... In brief, here was an example of Oriental
+wisdom to which the other side of the earth has not yet
+attained.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In a case of what, in the language we were then using, is
+called <i><span lang="fr">tromper le mari</span></i>, the Laosians again outdid us in
+their sense of justice. By their law the lover is punished
+for the first offense, the woman for the second, and the husband
+for the third! For, as the lieutenant said, and his domestic
+partner again agreed, the woman who is party to such
+an act a second time must have some of the guilt; and the
+husband who is so inattentive as to be <i><span lang="fr">trompé</span></i> three times
+is either a fool or is knowingly permitting it, and deserves
+punishment in either case.</p>
+
+<div id='i_258' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_258a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The women of Tonkin combine hat, sunshade, and umbrella in one unwieldy contraption</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_258b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Muong women wear little above the waist, except the loads they carry</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_259' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_259a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The guard turned out to greet my companion, the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> of Vinh, at the first village on the way to Laos</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_259b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Muong chief of our noonday village came in state, bringing eggs and native fire-water</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>The gentleman of color from Guadeloupe confirmed all
+these statements and added the information that when the
+husband, or the “man,” is a soldier, like himself and the
+lieutenant, or is for any other reason away from home for
+six months or so at a time, it is impossible for him to avoid
+betraying his wife, or she him. This recalled to the lieutenant
+that the code of Laos allows the woman a divorce
+without contest if the husband stays away from her longer
+than the length of time he said he would when he left. What
+an importation this would be in our civilized West! One
+might fancy that it would make the men of Laos more punctual,
+more aware of the value of time, than the subway
+victims of our great metropolis. Yet it is not so, far from
+so. The lieutenant contended that this is a very just law,
+for the suffering of the woman from long absence, whetted
+by the uncertainty of the return, is obviously more than she
+can stand, more than she should be expected to stand. His
+own darling feebly denied this, but the men agreed with many
+sage shakings of the head. It is as bad as expecting a man
+to live six months without a woman, they went on, with
+extravagant gestures, as if trying to clinch the argument
+with the most ridiculous analogy they could hit upon. Gradually
+the tone of the conversation drifted to the other side
+of the shield, the subject of parents. Both men asserted
+that they had loved their mothers but not their fathers. “A
+man’s mother can only be one person; there can be no doubt
+about her,” the mulatto argued, with all the gravity of a
+chief justice, “but his father may be any one of thirty-six.”
+Whereupon there were general roars of laughter and agreement,
+while the typically French dinner came to its end with
+demi-tasses as naturally as a sentence does with a period.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XIV<br> <span class='c011'>EN PANNE!</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>With the influence of the lieutenant I managed at last
+to get under way again, not without hope that we
+might reach somewhere before nightfall, since the sun was
+still almost directly overhead. At Muongsen there begins
+one of the greatest automobile climbs I have ever seen, up
+and up and forever up through the jungled ranges of the
+great Annamese chain, an ascension unforgettable both for
+its magnificence and its danger. We climbed abruptly to an
+elevation of fifteen hundred meters, a full mile above sea-level,
+without moving forward a mile on the map. The road,
+forever clawing itself a place in the flank of the mountain,
+constantly making great detours, looking always for an opening,
+a gap to slip through, writhed like a tortured snake,
+struggled fiercely upward, grew dizzy with effort, took
+breath again, and climbed valiantly onward. On the left, or,
+worse still, on the right, the abyss always yawned. Our
+wheels touched the edge of space and flung stones off down
+sheer wooded slopes into <i><span lang="fr">le vide</span></i>—emptiness; in many places
+there were curves so sharp that we had just room between
+the jagged mountain wall and the bottomless pit to make
+the turn by backing and filling where the slightest miscalculation
+might have meant destruction. Even then we barely
+got by without striking a lamp on the recently blasted mountain-side
+or dropping a hind wheel over the edge. I began
+to understand why a man, particularly an aging half-caste,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>whose lot in life required him to drive even now and
+then up or down this fly-footed route, might easily become
+too nervous ever to speed again and might grow to have the
+downcast view of life in general of this crawling imitation
+of a chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Between the trees of every size there were glimpses here
+and there for an instant of the great Annamese chain we were
+struggling to surmount. The narrow little boats fighting
+their way up the rapids of the river we had crossed again at
+the beginning of the climb had long since disappeared; the
+river itself was gone. Giant ferns, valleys full of banana-plants,
+perfect tenement clothes-line mazes of jungle vines,
+range after blue range of the densest forest-jungle sank beneath
+us, and still the climbing continued, steadily, inexorably,
+forever. It was like duplicating by automobile my
+wild journey through the jungles of the upper Malay Peninsula,
+now two decades ago. Sometimes, when the road was
+completely exhausted, it went a little way on the level, but
+only long enough to catch its breath, as quickly as do the barrel-chested
+Indians of the Andes, before digging its toes into
+the mountain-side again. The air became fresher; the humid
+scent of the tropics disappeared; with every wheel-turn it
+was more pleasure to breathe. Behind and below us lay an
+ocean of branches, a vegetation so compact that it filled the
+vast ravine of the visible world to its very edges, like an
+overflowing bowl of greens, an immense panorama of verdure
+dotted with densely black patches of shade that looked like
+the mouths of caves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were many long thatch-roofed bridges, some of them
+curved, some with sharp angles, bridges of timbers and
+rough-hewn planks evidently cut on the spot, some covered
+with woven bamboo splints, bridges supported only by the
+upright trunks of trees along the sides of them, so that even
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>the least nervous of travelers could not but have wondered
+whether they would always hold the weight our heavy car
+suddenly put upon them. Many similar bridges had been
+abandoned and left to disintegrate into the jungle again, because
+the road had been cut farther back into the hillsides.
+When this new road gets officially opened and there are cars
+in both directions—many cars, the French hope and believe—there
+should be magnificent possibilities of accident, for
+rarely indeed can one see five yards ahead, and often fog
+half or fully fills and conceals mighty ravines into which a
+false twist of the chauffeur’s wrist would have sent us crashing
+among the jungle tree-tops hundreds of feet below. I
+looked anxiously askance at the graying fellow at my side
+on whom my life depended, and was startled suddenly to discover
+that after all he was a mere savage in loin-cloth and
+bare feet, however much his half-French features and his
+wholly French garb might strive to conceal it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was an expensive luxury for the one or two automobiles
+a week that traveled over it, this road up the face of the
+mountains, costing seven hundred piastres a kilometer, about
+seven hundred dollars a mile, even in this continent of low
+wages. The workmen were paid only thirty-five piastre-cents
+a day, and must furnish their own food; hence one
+could scarcely blame them if they did not hurt themselves
+with work. Piles of stone, broken or to be broken, lay in
+long carefully slope-sided heaps at frequent intervals along
+the way, recalling France and its <i><span lang="fr">cantonniers</span></i>; but the road
+was built rather in “American style,” according to a French
+engineer I met later, especially on the curves, because the
+famous old highways of France were not designed for speeding
+automobiles. We passed scores of Annamese men, nearly
+all of them gaunt and sickly looking, thin, lemon-yellow,
+feverish pictures of misery, squatting in miserable grass huts
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>that had been thrown up for the road-building, or dawdling
+along the way. Always with the air of being half scared
+to death at sight of a white man, they were pitifully
+obsequious, all snatching off their hats and most of them
+even the rag they wore about the head under it, at the same
+time backing against the mountain wall or to the extreme
+edge of the precipice and bowing low with the palms of the
+hands together. I have seldom seen human beings as sad
+looking as these Annamese road-builders. There was no
+gaiety, no life at all compared with the harder working and
+more miserably living Chinese, though one was still constantly
+puzzled to know whether this related race was merely
+suppressed, depressed by French treatment, or naturally
+gifted with solemnity. At any rate we rode frequently
+through bowing ranks of bareheaded coolies in rusty clothes
+and with fever-stricken faces, who could not have greeted
+me more obsequiously had I been the governor-general himself.
+In fact more deference was shown me on this trip into
+Laos than is received by most European sovereigns of to-day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It astonishes us from the temperate zone of the West that
+the Annamese or Tonkinese prefer the malarial and overcrowded
+rice-lands of their coastal plains to the rich upper
+regions of their country. But the most wretched of them
+have a horror of the hills, even though their ancestors seem
+to have been highland men; so that it is always a difficult
+job, often requiring actual governmental force, to get even
+a few hundred coolies from the plains, where they are often
+half starved, to come up and help build these roads; and the
+few French exploiters of highland plantations look almost
+in vain for workmen. Criminals sentenced to hard labor
+are sometimes used in such enterprises, and often the <i><span lang="fr">corvée</span></i>,
+calling for forced contributions of labor on the roads, has
+had to be invoked. In the cities it is no uncommon sight
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>to meet a column of these miserable fellows, wretched
+already, though perhaps only the recruits of a labor agency,
+marching to a train under command of a half-breed, like a
+file of condemned exiles. When moving from one camp to
+another almost all these downcast fellows carried a cloth-tied
+bundle in their hands or at the end of a bamboo over one
+shoulder, so that they resembled a tropical imitation of a
+procession of American hobos “hitting the ties.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There seemed to be no women in these road-building
+camps, which perhaps accounted for half the appearance of
+misery, the great susceptibility of these plain-dwelling descendants
+of hardy highlanders to disease in the hills furnishing
+the rest of it. But it seems to be psychological more
+than physical, according to the French; ancient superstitions
+make the mere thought of living in the mountains sickening
+to them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Higher up there were two or three villages that seemed
+to have inhabitants of both sexes and all ages, some of whom
+we now and then met making their way along the winding,
+perpetually climbing road. The sound of our horn drove
+them mad. The more fearful tried their best to climb the
+sheer earth or rock wall of the blasted mountain-side; the
+others, as if imploring us to be merciful and realize that they
+would run away if they could, snatched themselves bareheaded
+and, placing their hats against their stomachs, tried
+to break their spines in kowtowing to me as they might to
+a long dead emperor suddenly returned to earth. A few,
+less obsequious, or less quick-witted, watched us pass with
+open mouths and stupefied expressions, bawling children
+scurrying in and out between their legs. Near the top of the
+climb there suddenly appeared horses and other pack-animals,
+and the panic we created among these unusual carriers in
+Indo-China could not easily be described. We passed not a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>few traveling pigs along the way too, for wherever there is
+Chinese culture there must also be pork. Though they are
+credited with infinite patience, the Chinese will not drive pigs
+to market. But the Annamese, more afraid of work perhaps,
+rather than more patient, usually try to, with a cord tied to
+each porker’s leg. This may possibly be easier than the
+Chinese way of bodily carrying them, two on a one-man
+shoulder-pole or one between two men, so that carrier and
+carried, bound to market in this undignified manner, seem
+fellows in misery. In Hanoï and the larger towns of Annam
+this more certain form of transportation may also now and
+then be seen. But the Annamese pig is ordinarily driven,
+which is hard on motorists. For most of the pigs we met
+were too strong for the holder, and yet not quite strong
+enough to get away entirely and dash themselves over the
+mountain-side. Therefore, as they seemed bent on suicide
+in any form—and who could blame them?—the car always
+had to wait while the would-be pig-driver and several of his
+fellows united in one mighty tug of war that dragged the
+squealing animal out from under our wheels. For the most
+foolhardy of Annamese chauffeurs, however disdainful of
+the pig-driving populace, would scarcely have risked running
+over one of these porcine obstructions on this pathway along
+the bottomless pit.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>It was in many ways a delightful trip, doubly so because
+one knew even without being told that very few travelers
+had ever made it. But good things often come to a violent
+end, though to tell the truth I had felt it in my bones that
+trouble lay in wait for us. I claim no prizes as an automobile
+driver, but I certainly could have given that mixture of races
+in French garb several pointers on how not to drive up a high
+mountain. Again it was overcaution rather than recklessness
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>that worked his undoing. Never would he let the car get a
+reasonable start, with the result that it had to pump its heart
+out to make a snail’s pace. I carried no driver’s license for
+Indo-China, and should not have considered it courteous
+to my host ahead to practise with his new Italian-minded
+car on such a road if I had; hence I was totally at the mercy
+of this mingled son of caution. A dozen times we snorted
+to a halt before the maltreated engine quit entirely, fairly
+near the top. The chauffeur’s mental reaction to this emergency
+seemed to be to sit where he sat until the Goddess of
+Mercy or some one else came to help him out, with the probability
+about a week off of another car passing. When at last
+I prevailed upon him to get out and look at his engine, at
+least out of curiosity, all he knew was to lift the hood, when
+he fell into contemplation before the motor, mute with stupor,
+as if he had discovered this strange machine for the first
+time, until I expected him to bow down and kowtow in the
+dust before it. He seemed to know as much about the workings
+of automobile engines as of the gods in his temples,
+and to have the same dread of looking into the secrets of
+their power. But then, when I came to think of it, even I,
+effete product of a garage and repair-shop on every corner,
+knew no more about it than he did, so that after all he had
+been right, and there was really nothing to be done except
+what he had started to do—calmly to sit and wait for help.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That was no easy task for a man whose hair is habitually
+ragged of edge because he cannot endure to hold the penitents’
+seat in a barber-shop, and when we had been broken
+down long enough to prove that neither of us could do anything
+useful about it, I walked on. Gusts of rain had fallen
+during our climb, pedestrians each lopping off a banana-leaf
+as an umbrella and dropping it where the shower ceased.
+But the second-hand one I picked up at the next emergency
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>proved that as an umbrella a banana-leaf is waterproof, at
+least to the tropically inexperienced, only when one sits down
+under it. Luckily the showers were short and not very intense,
+and within an hour or so I was striding over the summit
+and down upon a few simple buildings. It was a military
+post named Nong-het, which turned out to be the station of
+the Bavarian-born lieutenant and his mixed lady-love, who
+had indeed invited me to stay with them on my return, should
+it happen that the rains made impossible the itinerary I
+had planned. Much good that did me now, with the hospitable
+pair still down at Muongsen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Annamese sergeant in charge massacred a few words
+of French, beating them out between his black teeth in a
+clogged stream from his betel-nut bloody lips, and there was
+no great difficulty in getting enough of his confidence to seat
+myself in the faded cloth easy-chair under the thatch roof
+of the lieutenant’s earth-floored porch. In fact it was not
+long before I could have coaxed his cook to cook me something,
+if we had been able to find anything to cook. Obviously
+I could not broach any stores there might have been
+inside the lieutenant’s thatched house, though it was locked
+with a piece of jungle twine, even had I been sure that the
+sergeant would permit it. In the long thatched barracks
+across the smooth earth parade-ground there were different
+kitchens and “beds” for the Annamese and the Laosian soldiers
+who made up the garrison, the former sleeping on
+wooden platforms, Chinese style, and the Laosians on soft
+springs of woven bamboo; and there were similar differences
+in cuisine and other customs. But that made it all the more
+difficult to convince the sergeant that surely there must be
+something native that could be made edible for “ung Flançais,”
+as he persisted in calling me. Plainly the lieutenant
+or his protective companion had taught the sergeant the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>solemnity with which the rites of the table should be treated,
+and the sacrilege of mixing culinary breeds.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Finally, thanks to my well known persistence and persuasiveness,
+there appeared some rice and the toughest chicken
+for its tender age that I have ever met in all my travels, nay,
+on Broadway itself. This trial over, and a path worn in
+the parade-ground while we discussed beneath a sardonically
+grinning moon the propriety of my continued presence in the
+post, the sergeant at last consented to have collected for me
+in an outhouse a bundle of straw and a ragged blanket which
+I was just as well pleased not to have seen by day—or even
+by torch-light; and just as I was dozing off there came the
+choral shrieks, growing slowly louder, of a great gang of
+coolies whom the chauffeur had requisitioned to push the
+car over the summit to Nong-het. The suspicions of the
+sergeant and his post having been allayed by the chauffeur’s
+acknowledging me, I found somewhat better quarters, now
+that my cot had come, out in the half-finished stone garages
+into which the Fiat had been coolie-handled. The chauffeur
+being hopeful, for some reason, of making the wop contrivance
+go on again in the morning by gasoline rather than
+by coolie-power, we turned in, he, somewhat less downhearted,
+curled up on the back seat of the car. Perhaps he
+thought whatever injuries the car had suffered would heal
+during the night.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He actually did get the thing under way again, long after
+sunrise, on three or five or seven of its four, six, or eight
+cylinders, as the case may be, and we covered twenty-seven
+kilometers along a now merely hilly road. Early during
+that feat we met and paused to chat with a French lieutenant
+driving back to Muongsen the Citroen <i><span lang="fr">chenille</span></i> that had carried
+the general-in-chief to Xieng Khuang, the same in fact
+that had crossed the Sahara the year before; and but for that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>fatal optimism of motorists so long as their wheels are turning
+we might easily have had him repair whatever damage
+had been done us. Apparently neither of us thought even to
+mention our difficulties of a few miles back, yet almost as
+soon as the “caterpillar” was out of sight my substitute for a
+chauffeur halted before another cluster of huts, called Sala
+Nam-lien, and refused even to try to go farther, saying that
+something disastrous would happen to us if we attempted
+to proceed. As nearly as I could make out from his ignorance
+of his father-tongue, the car was certain to explode
+and strew itself and us all over the Annamese chain if he
+annoyed it any longer. Possibly Italian cars do succumb to
+such fits of Latin temperament; at any rate I was in no
+position effectively to argue the matter, and assassination is
+regarded as more or less reprehensible even thus far from
+the haunts of civilization.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though I only suspected it then, I was destined to know
+Nam-lien better than I know my own birthplace, nay, than
+Paris or Rio de Janeiro. It consisted of a dozen thatched
+huts with earth floor and wattled walls on either side of the
+wide space that served as road, one of them the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> or rest-house
+for French travelers. Two bare woven-bamboo cots
+and a rough wooden table comprised the furnishings of this,
+unless one also counted the soft layer of dust on the earth
+floor as a rug. A few things such as eggs were purchasable
+about the village—though I should have been in hard luck
+indeed if I had not taken official advice and brought a few
+canned supplies with me—and a native was available to boil
+water and do the simplest form of cooking.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There I spent the rest of the day, sitting in the automobile,
+the only really comfortable place in the vicinity, reading, with
+a walk for exercise’ sake thrown in. During that time I
+had much intercourse, in so far as that is possible without
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>a common speech, with one of the principal tribes of the
+region. I had known the Miao, or, as the French call them,
+the Méo, in southwestern China, though there my acquaintance
+had been mainly with the “Flowery Miao” in their
+extravagantly colorful dress. These were “Black Miao,” a
+much more independent tribe, and with almost no color in
+their black or dark-blue garments, sometimes set off by a
+dull red or purplish wine-colored scarf about the waist. Both
+men and women, often riding on horses, were a wilder
+tawnier type than their flowery relatives, their sturdy independence
+as plainly to be seen as their bare feet; for none of
+them, of either sex, had ever tortured their feet with shoes.
+Their sunburned hair and eyes were more nearly brown than
+black, and both sexes wore the hair long. Most of the men
+had carelessly wound turbans of dark cloth, a few of them
+wore Chinese skullcaps and dressed their hair Chinese fashion,
+old Chinese fashion, more exactly, for the majority still
+had queues, often hanging unbraided loosely about their
+shoulders. Another custom among these sturdy mountaineers
+is the wearing about their necks of heavy silver rings of all
+shapes. These are evidently concerned with their tribal superstitions
+as well as being their idea of combining adornment
+with safe banking. All silver money that falls into
+their hands is turned into rings; men, women, even the children,
+all wear them, large and small, from mere twisted
+silver wire to veritable horse-collars, some with open ends,
+some fastened with silver padlocks. Sometimes there are as
+many as half a dozen on a single neck, even of men on their
+way to work in the jungle. The richest of them clanked like
+perambulating pawnshops whenever they moved.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A critical observer might have wondered why they do not
+spend for shirting some of the silver dollars they turn into
+neck-rings. For the men wear a shirt or jacket that covers
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>everything except what a shirt is most expected to cover,
+leaving bare a foot or more of the waist, with the navel
+as its central point of departure. But to every race its
+own ideas. The girls are not prudish, yet not at all forward.
+For their jackets, open almost to the navel and
+giving frequent half-glimpses of the breasts, were plainly
+designed for comfort rather than coquetry, as were their
+plaid skirts reaching hardly to their bare knees. The women
+walk with a powerful yet not ungraceful swing of the hips
+and a saucy flirting of their short pleated skirts, of which
+they are perhaps quite unconscious. Some of the men wear
+the tattooed blue panties ending in ruffles just below the
+knees that are common in Laos and the Shan States, but
+this is evidently due to extratribal influence, just as are the
+flowered silk gowns a few of the well-to-do among them
+wear after the fashion of the Chinese. The men, and sometimes
+the women, carry crude daggers in home-made
+sheaths; some had a long slender rifle, a few of them
+crossbows of a simple form, and most of them smoked or
+carried in their sashes pipes of sometimes elaborately tortured
+shapes. They use pack-oxen as well as little horses,
+but most of them, of both sexes, carry in a basket on their
+backs, though Chinese influence perhaps has led some to
+fasten two baskets at the ends of a short, stiff whole bamboo
+over a shoulder, thereby losing all the advantage of the long
+and supple shoulder-pole of China and Annam.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some consider the Miao merely Chinese who in centuries
+gone by drifted down from the north, with a history
+similar to the Hakkas, but it is probably a better guess
+that they are of a more nearly aboriginal tribe than the
+Celestials. Sturdy enough in their natural habitat, they
+must live at least three thousand feet above sea-level to
+be either happy or healthy, just as the Annamese must stick
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>to their miasmic rice-plains; and they never descend below
+that altitude if there is any way out of it. Of all the
+races of Indo-China the Miao are probably the most self-sufficient.
+In common with some other mountain tribes of
+Laos they burn off steep hillsides, normally every nine years,
+for their cultivation. When they need new fields to plant,
+they fell the biggest trees and set afire great patches of
+the jungle-forest, destroying wood and lumber enough to
+supply a large city for years to come. This burning is
+partly to drive off the blackleg fever and partly to give
+room for grass for their cattle; and as cinders make good
+fertilizer for a few years, their crops are abundant until
+it comes time to burn off another mountain-side. As this
+burning by patches has probably been going on for centuries,
+much of Laos is not so forested as one expected
+it to be, but often covered with those half-grown forests
+which the French call <i><span lang="fr">brousse</span></i>. Yet with all the uneven
+growth there are many magnificent panoramas of densely forested
+ranges.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I spent that night in the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>, and when, late next morning,
+it was still evident that the substitute for a chauffeur
+did not propose to do anything about it except to settle down
+there in the vain hope that some day some one might come
+along who might do something to help us out, I set out
+to walk. It was still about fifty miles to Xieng Khuang,
+but certainly there was more prospect of reaching there
+on foot than of having help turn up within the same length
+of time. Moreover my supplies were distinctly limited, even
+if the loss of time could be made up by abandoning the
+best part of the trip and returning as I had come. Besides,
+I am far better at walking than at waiting, and nothing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>after all is more delightful than walking, especially on so
+splendid a route for it—high enough not to be too warm, the
+great jungle-forest opening new vistas, springing new surprises
+at every turn, at every rise of ground, so few of
+the tiresome human race as hardly to bother at all, and at
+every corner the chance of an adventure. So I swung off
+almost light-heartedly, even if to the mingled worry and
+disgruntlement of the worthless chauffeur, who evidently lost
+face with the village by this flaunting of his services and
+protection.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had walked about ten alluring miles, or perhaps merely
+kilometers, when to my vast astonishment a big automobile
+came suddenly down out of the west upon me. In the
+capacious back seat, the top stowed away behind them, rode
+the general-in-chief of the French forces in Indo-China and
+a colonel aide. Having waited in vain for the conveyance
+that was to have brought me to Xieng Khuang in time
+for them to return by it, they had been forced to drain
+the province of its last thing on wheels, the Berliet—one
+car of each make seemed to be the rule here; once the road
+was officially opened they should know which performed
+best—of the <i><span lang="fr">vice-commissaire</span></i>. Never have I been more
+pleasantly treated by a chance passer-by on the road. If
+the general’s importance weighed heavily upon him he was
+an expert at concealing his burdens. To be sure, the fact
+that he also had been the guest of the ruler of Xieng Khuang
+whose hospitality I had been—enjoying? no, let us say suffering—since
+stepping into the Fiat of distressing memory,
+and that, having expected me two nights before, they
+had about come to the conclusion that I had been eaten
+by a tiger, may have had something to do with his geniality.
+For it seemed that the donkey masquerading as a chauffeur
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>who had been sent for me had not disclosed to the harassed
+head of the province an inkling as to our plight, though one
+can telegraph in Indo-China from almost any tree-top.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The general was strongly of the impression that I should
+come along with them rather than continue my walk until
+the returning car overtook me, and the semi-guest of a government
+does not flout the opinions of its chief military
+officer. In fact the general had an insistent way about him,
+though it had on the surface none of that big-stick gruffness
+of too many of our own army officers. The change
+from walking to riding left me somewhat chilly; the general
+insisted that I put on his coat, which had been lying
+in the seat beside him. I protested that the insignia of such
+high rank did not become me, that he himself might need
+the garment. His reply was typical of an old campaigner
+in many lands, of one who had served France in almost all
+of her colonies:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“<i><span lang="fr">Je n’ai jamais froid, jamais soif, jamais faim, jamais
+chaud.</span></i> When any of these things threaten me, <i><span lang="fr">je fume une
+pipe</span></i>, and they disappear in a puff of smoke”—and suiting
+the action to the word he lighted up again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We were soon back at the <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>, where there remained
+enough of my meager supplies so that I could do my share
+toward providing a luncheon. While we ate, the fellow
+who had been sent to fetch me told the general some badly
+pronounced tale of why it was dangerous to try to go
+on, lifting the hood to prove it. Again it seemed to be
+something to the effect that he could make the car go
+all right, but that if he did so the engine might blow up
+at any moment. He seemed to convince the general, who
+was probably no automobile expert, and naturally the
+colonel always agreed with a superior of such high rank;
+hence there was nothing left but for me to agree also. I
+might have stayed on at Sala Nam-lien and, if the Berliet
+and its Annamese driver had the luck that had been denied
+the Fiat under the inexpert ministrations of the son of
+caution, have been picked up by it sometime next day on
+the way back from turning the general over to other transportation
+in Muongsen. But the general insisted that I
+give them the pleasure of my company as long as possible,
+and on second thoughts it was better not to trust myself
+to spend another night within reach of that mixed-breed
+chauffeur.</p>
+
+<div id='i_274' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_274.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The chief sport of the mountain-dwelling Miao of Laos is the making of assorted neck-rings of silver dollars that might better be spent for shirting</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_275' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_275a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The Miao women of Laos take no back seat for their men</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_275b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A Kha woman of the semi-wild tribe that is said to be the aboriginal race of mountainous Laos</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c012'><span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>Besides, it was a pleasure to travel over that great mountain-side
+road once more, even though I might be less successful
+in climbing back to the plateau, and although the
+platform-bed in the rest-house of Muongsen was several
+times harder than the cot I had left over the mountains. The
+lieutenant of the Citroen “caterpillar” had the Guadeloupe-driven
+car ready for action again, and in spite of all the
+decorating Muongsen had done for him the general insisted
+on continuing eastward toward nightfall, leaving me
+alone in the riverside <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> like the janitor of a ball-room
+amid the embellishments of an abandoned banquet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I set out once more next morning before daylight upon
+that great climb from Muongsen to the plateau of Laos.
+This time fogs all but hid the world about us and made
+the road-gangs along the way seem more miserable than
+ever. But this Annamese chauffeur knew his trade and his
+car much better than did his predecessor in my affections, and
+while a man not so disgusted with a continual run of
+bad luck as to be willing to take some risk for a change
+might have complained at the speed he made on the brinks
+of bottomless precipices, we were soon at Nong-het over
+the summit again, then back at Sala Nam-lien, still adorned
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>with the stalled Fiat, in time for a skimpy lunch. From
+there on, the Annamese let no grass grow under his wheels.
+In fact I wonder if any ever grew again in some of the
+spots they touched in our semi-aërial dash across the eastern
+half of Tran-ninh. It was startling to be able to race
+what seemed hundreds of miles along an excellent, even
+though grassy, automobile road through so primeval a region.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was some more climbing, though it was by no
+means so strenuous as the ascent up the face of the Annamese
+chain, and at length, beyond a waterfall that came down
+the mountain side within hand-shake of the road in a beautiful
+cascade of many strands of silver among jungle and
+forest choked rocks and, dashing under the highway, dropped
+far down below to form a reunited stream, we came out
+of the great forest that had surrounded me ever since the
+first afternoon out of Vinh. Here, a hundred kilometers
+from the border of Annam, amid a plateau growth of
+scattered oak-like scrubs, there was much open country, of
+reddish rich-looking soil, though few inhabitants. In fact
+all Laos, largest of the five divisions of Indo-China, being
+about the size of Italy and not unlike it in shape, has, if
+the recent census was accurate, only 818,755 people, of
+whom 280 are French and eight—count them, eight!—are
+“foreigners.” About us lay vast rolling meadows of great
+beauty, as virgin as a world in which animal life had not
+yet been created. The general-in-chief, who had seen most
+of them, thought this great plateau of Xieng Khuang the
+finest region in the French colonies. There were some
+cactus-trees of striking forms; then the mountains closed
+in again on a narrow valley that seemed once to have been
+broken up into rice-fields, though this may have been an
+illusion. Small villages appeared once more, this time of
+the real Laosians, villages of thatched houses raised on poles
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>well above snakes and possible floods, with a bit of cultivation
+about them. Each house had rounded gable walls at
+either end, one a kind of family veranda all but covered
+with a curving roof of thatch, where visitors are received
+and the family does its gossiping, the other a granary and
+store-room, where the cooking also seemed to be done. The
+walls of the houses, everything possible, in fact, were made
+of strips of narrow palm-leaves folded over a stick, forming
+panels overlapped like shingles. Many small but stout
+horses dotted the landscape here and there. I had not seen
+a grave for days; the Laosians dispose of their dead like
+real Buddhists; the Miao pile heaps of stone over their
+corpses.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This time fortune showed me unusual favor and we
+made the whole trip from Muongsen, including the stop at
+Sala Nam-lien, in a single day, as we might have done three
+days before but for the overcautious chauffeur. In fact
+we turned up at Xieng Khuang toward the end of the
+daily siesta, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in French
+formalities with the colonial officials of that distant but
+little known Garden of Eden.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XV<br> <span class='c011'>DOWN-STREAM TO LUANG PRABANG</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Having ended on Saturday instead of Wednesday
+afternoon the first stage of a journey that at best had
+seemed in the beginning hardly possible in the time available,
+I made a tight fit even tighter by spending Easter
+Sunday in Xieng Khuang. For the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>, so long
+absent from the world at large that time had come to be
+a mere academic expression to him, had done so much to
+make my stay agreeable that to have hurried away again
+next morning would have been to increase a common French
+impression that to Americans personal convenience is more
+important than courtesy. Visitors do not come often to
+Xieng Khuang; besides, there are things of interest there,
+and whatever is worth doing, be it only a journey, is worth
+doing well.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire’s</span></i> zoo, for instance, a score of
+pets ranging from some distant member of the leopard family
+to monkeys that looked like puffballs, fittingly domiciled
+in his garden, with or without chains to assure their allegiance
+to a master from whose hand the fiercest of them
+ate with murmurs of pleasure. There are said to be
+more species of animals in the forests and on the plains of
+Tran-ninh than in almost any other space of similar size
+on earth—tigers, panthers, bears, gaur, gibbons, monkeys,
+deer, pythons, boa-constrictors, and a host of lesser serpents;
+a cobra was chased out of the yard of one of the French
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>residents that very day; and the museum maintained this
+quarter-century past by a tropic-emaciated Frenchman was
+easily proof that the province is an unspoiled paradise of
+the ornithologist and the collector of butterflies and insects.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I spent the morning in a hot walk about the scattered
+thatched town, climbing to jungle-guarded half-ruined old
+stupas on the rounded hills behind it. Priests of the yellow
+robe had again appeared, dawdling about their simple
+monasteries with the leisureliness of men who know that
+to step on an insect means to be set back that far on the
+long and difficult road to Nirvana. Speaking of insects, the
+people of Tran-ninh boast that they are never troubled by
+mosquitos, because, all their domestic animals being at
+home under their pole-legged houses, these pests are so busy
+down there that they never trouble to rise to human height.
+The custom of living over unconfined stables is further
+exonerated by the warmth the animals are reputed to give
+the householders above—for so thin-blooded a race needs
+its central heating-plant also, during the short tropical
+“winters.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was market day, and well fed, almost haughty women,
+with many brilliant reds and yellows in their dress, were
+squatted in the shade over their semi-tropical vegetables, and
+pottering homeward again in long broken files. They had
+almost nothing in common with the Annamese women,
+except their sex and the protection of the French. Their
+lustrous hair piled in great black glossy heaps on the top
+of the head in an intricate fashion, usually with a saffron,
+rose-yellow, or red cloth about it, and most of them with
+stomachers of similar gay colors, they were striking examples
+of the unrestricted portion of the human race. In
+complexion they were much like ourselves plus many layers
+of tan, but were noticeable for bad teeth. The Laosians
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>do not enamel their teeth, but most of them chew betel-nut;
+and the women seem less unequal socially to the men than
+their Muong, even their Annamese and Chinese sisters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In Xieng Khuang there stands a monument to six Frenchmen,
+five of them killed in France during the war, and one,
+like the dozen native soldiers whose names also appear on it,
+<i><span lang="fr">tué par les Méos rebelles</span></i>. It seems there was a great Miao
+uprising in the Laos during the winter of 1918–19, the bloodiest
+battle of which took place at Nong-het, between the
+“rebels” and the French, more exactly the native soldiers
+of the French. It was no surprise to be told that German
+agents and money had fomented the rebellion, though
+saner French residents admit that the Miao had long wished
+to be ruled by their own rather than by Laosian chieftains.
+That was no unnatural demand, and by the terms of the
+peace now reigning between them and the French it has been
+granted. Nor does this change seem to put any great burden
+upon Miao justice, for in cases involving more than five
+piastres the contestants may appeal to the French authorities,
+whom they evidently trust more than they do their own
+chieftains. The end of the rebellion was typical of
+these stiff-necked mountaineers. The French issued an
+ultimatum that the Méo must submit by 9 <span class='fss'>P.M.</span> on a certain
+day; and at 8:59 exactly, while the French commanders
+sat with their watches in their hands, the Miao chieftain
+strode in and capitulated. The puzzle still remains how
+a race without clocks managed to time themselves so
+dramatically. Now they seem quite friendly, though it is
+not they who put their palms together above their heads
+and come to the squat when a white man goes by.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It would never do to quote to our own prudish-tongued
+land all the conversation that passed between perfectly respectable
+members of the little French colony of Xieng
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>Khuang over the <i><span lang="fr">apéritifs</span></i> and the Parisian repasts in the
+<i><span lang="fr">commissaire’s</span></i> big living-room. For it turned largely on
+matters of sex, even when, perhaps even more so when,
+any or all of the three or four French wives of the little
+official group were present; and those who have lived with
+them know that the French can bring a blush to the cheek
+of a New England spinster without having the least notion
+that they are skirting the precipitous edge of frankness.
+One wife, I recall, was vehement in her denunciation of
+the Germans because they have so many children to the
+family, implying that as the French are unable to compete
+in that line with their enemies over the Rhine, her beloved
+native land was sure to be the loser in the end. Yet
+she and her husband, an officer in the colonial gendarmerie,
+had been married nearly fifteen years and showed every
+outward evidence of being able to add to the decreasing population
+against which she fulminated. But I did not ask
+the obvious question. It was amusing, when it was not
+pathetic, to observe how all these groups of French colonials
+seem to consider it axiomatic that they should not be expected
+to produce children. Their very manner voiced their
+conviction that in consenting to “exile” to the colony which
+they helped to rule they had done enough for <i><span lang="fr">la patrie</span></i>;
+and those who contributed a child or two in addition were
+rather pitied, and pitied themselves, as the victims of an
+unkind fate or a deplorable accident. In this community
+of Xieng Khuang, for instance, the ten or more French residents,
+most of them married, had one child—that is, legitimate
+white child—a baby girl.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The huge <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>, now half invalid but still a great
+force in his province, and beloved apparently by all classes
+of its residents, was a survival of the earlier colonial days,
+when a man in his present position was virtually king
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>of all he surveyed. His half-dozen pure-blooded dogs all
+wore stout canvas pants to assure their offspring against mixture
+with the local mongrel breed. But some officials had
+not taken the same precautions with themselves, and had
+several brown-complexioned children at school in Hanoï,
+though they were bachelors. I am sure they would not
+look upon mention of this as unkind criticism, any more
+than it is meant as such. It is all in the point of view.
+Neither they nor any of the French wives and husbands composing
+the official community of Xieng Khuang saw anything
+wrong in this situation. Had some prudish member
+of the English-speaking races opened a discussion on the
+subject with them, he would not have got beyond being
+assured that it would have been inhumane of the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>
+to expect a French wife to share with him the hardships
+of his productive years, when Tran-ninh was a houseless
+and an iceless wilderness, and that he was therefore
+compelled to vent his affections upon the native women.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> could still, with assistance, hoist himself
+into the back seat of a topless automobile, and that afternoon
+we drove out to see the archæological puzzle of Xieng
+Khuang Plain. It did not need the assurance of my immense
+companion, or of his antithesis, the Midi-tongued
+vice-commissary, whose Berliet was still the only available
+vehicle in Tran-ninh, to see that this great plateau should
+have a great future, in the modern Western sense of the
+word. Its climate is as delightful as its soil is fertile. One
+French colonist had already covered a bit of it with splendid
+fields of wheat and corn, while his pineapples were
+almost worthy of Hawaii. Yet somehow I caught myself
+hoping that it would never serve the exploiting portion of
+the human race as anything more than the excellent airplane
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>landing it was already. Its present pristine glory
+was too infinitely removed from the horrible picture that
+sprang up in my mind as I listened half-heartedly to the
+enthusiasm of the two <i><span lang="fr">commissaires</span></i>, of such plains in my
+own land debauched into cheese-box cities by real-estate “developers.”
+Humanity is scarcely so precious that it must
+be fed or housed at the loss of such glorious spaces as this
+one across which we rolled toward <i><span lang="fr">les jarres</span></i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Far out on the great plain, some miles from Xieng Khuang,
+are scores of immense stone jars, the mystery of which no
+man has yet solved. They are made of what the French
+call <i><span lang="fr">grès</span></i>, a natural composite not unlike sandstone, yet quite
+hard; and they are so large that those I climbed into reached
+to my armpits and gave me almost room to squat. Many
+have fallen, some only partly, but the majority are still
+upright, for all the centuries that have rolled over them.
+Stone covers, some of them broken, lie on the ground among
+the jars, many of which are decorated with little clay
+Buddhas set up on them by the pious modern inhabitants.
+There are five hundred or more of these jars, in two groups
+a few miles apart; and the French, after their manner,
+though there is no money to be made out of them, have
+built what they call an “automobilable” road to both clusters.
+But even they have not been able to solve either the origin
+or the purpose of the jars. Made by some race lost in
+the prehistoric mists—for recorded history found them already
+here, much as they are to-day—they are the more
+puzzling in a region where there is no natural stone of
+this kind whatever. Amateur archæologists of Tran-ninh
+contend that they must have been brought on rafts across
+the lake that probably existed then where the plain is now,
+and set up on little islands that have become the knolls
+on which they still stand a bit above the general level. Were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>they used for storing food, as hiding-places of bootleg liquor,
+or were they places of burial? So far as appearances go
+they might have been either coffins or granaries. There
+are no signs of bones in them, however, no broken bottles or
+food-remnants either. But then, even bones would have
+had time completely to disintegrate during the unknown centuries
+since the stone age in which the jars may have been
+made, as they certainly were long before the pyramids, and
+probably before the monuments of Stonehenge. There remains
+the further mystery of how that prehistoric people,
+of which there are still found stone hammers, knives, and
+what seem to have been arrow-heads, fashioned these great
+hard-stone receptables.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Notwithstanding the time I had lost I decided to go on
+with the trip as planned, trusting to my own speed and
+my ability to induce speed in others to bring me through in
+the time available. So I was off once more before daylight,
+the <i><span lang="fr">vice-commissaire</span></i> doing me the honor not only to lend me
+his Berliet and his Annamese chauffeur again, but rising
+to accompany me in person across the plateau and on into
+magnificent pine-forests. The road, planned to be continued
+some day across the next province to the borders of
+Siam, died out about seven in the morning at a hut or two
+called Muongsuoi. Within an hour the alleged horses that
+had been sent there days before to wait for me were ready,
+and I was off on the next stage of the journey. Two
+Laosian men chosen by the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> himself did their
+utmost to accompany me, as I hurried on all day by a
+trail through abrupt mountains covered with mighty forests
+along which it would have been a delight to saunter for
+weeks. Now and again a tropical rain did its best to delay
+me—first, as a warning, some isolated drops, astonishingly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>large and heavy, then suddenly a general tambourining
+on the leaves, quickly followed by torrents of water beating
+down in mad fury, the light lowering until it seemed
+to be growing dusk at midday. But I could not afford
+to be delayed merely to save myself and the men behind
+me a drenching, and except for the briefest noonday halt
+for cold fare washed down with red wine I raced incessantly
+on, into the evening, darkness, the blackest of nights.
+The little horses had long since lost all ability to carry
+me at anything like the pace I could make on foot, even
+had it been possible to ride them in the stumble-footed tunnel
+beneath the forest where it was impossible to see an
+obstacle even at the moment of sprawling over it. The
+last hour or more was down what felt like a great trough
+in the earth, set at a sharp angle, and in this I slid down
+to the Nam-khan River at 9:30, establishing a new record;
+for never before or since, many a French colonial and
+native ruler has assured me, has any human being gone
+from Xieng Khuang to Muongyu in a single day. I admit
+it sadly rather than boastfully, however, for though fate
+seems always driving me on at top speed, the record I would
+prefer through such scenery and bucolic delights as lay
+behind me would be that of the sloth family.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Out in the far outskirts of the earth one who at home
+is but a mere human insect among our wealthy and political
+great, our nobility of prize-fighters, football and movie stars,
+had been mistaken for a real personage, and the king of
+Luang Prabang himself had sent his own son-in-law to
+bring me to his capital. He was to be the fourth or fifth
+king I had ever seen, the second or third with whom I had
+spoken or exchanged the hand-clasp of greeting, and the
+only one, perhaps forever, who was so glad to make my
+acquaintance that he had sent to fetch me. The kindly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>reader, I am sure, will pardon my emotion. For I suspect
+that even he would boast of such extraordinary honors, equal
+in their Oriental way to being commanded to present one’s
+self at court in Windsor—with a foot-note as to Queen
+Mary’s sartorial requirements!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The plain facts of the case were that <i><span lang="fr">Chao</span></i> Duong Chan—the
+“Chao” meaning prince in the language of this region—seemed
+to look upon me, even in the incredibly mud-bespattered
+state in which I burst forth from the jungle night,
+as his social superior. At first, evidently, he refused to believe
+I was I, not because of the bedraggled rags to which
+the day had reduced what no longer ago than that morning
+had been a costume fit to be seen at a <i><span lang="fr">commissaire’s</span></i> table, but
+because a telegram had apprised him of my departure, and
+every one in Laos knew that I could not reach Muongyu
+that same evening, whatever the evidence of the five senses.
+But in time the impossible was admitted accomplished,
+and the rest-house to which I had retired became a place
+of pilgrimage. We were down in the realm of woven bamboo
+splints again, and they were used for everything—walls,
+floors, rafters, granaries, fences, beds—though not
+for boats, as in Annam. The building to which I had
+climbed well above the damp and snaky ground was therefore
+so soft underfoot that there was really no need to
+open my cot, though nothing in the form of furnishings
+was to be seen. Gradually a murmur in the night became
+the sound of muffled voices; torches flashed here and there
+in the darkness, and at length there crept silently up the
+very slanting ladder masquerading as a stairway one barefooted
+smiling Laosian man after another, each bringing me
+a bouquet of heavy jungle-flowers in a banana-leaf cone,
+the traditional greeting to honored visitors to the kingdom,
+as the flower necklace is in Hawaii. Behind these village
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>authorities, after a fitting lapse of time, came the prince
+himself, manfully erect, who presented a document from the
+government of Luang Prabang setting forth his rank and
+explaining the errand on which he had been sent. He was
+a slender young man of aristocratic features, this <i><span lang="fr">gendre
+du roi</span></i>—son-in-law of the king, to translate one of the two
+languages on the paper he had laid before me—a prince
+in his own right many generations before he had married
+one of the royal daughters. He wore a reddish <i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i>,
+the adult diaper of Siam, Laos, and Cambodia, and a white
+jacket of French military cut, starched and spotless, as did
+also the chief local authority. He spoke excellent French;
+had in fact, unless my memory fails me, been at school in
+France, and all in all was a man whom any one might have
+thanked a king for offering as a companion on such a journey
+as lay before me.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>We were off down the small river about seven next morning.
+To have started earlier, with a heavy fog filling the
+whole valley of a stream bristling with rocks and rapids,
+would have been dangerous. The king’s son-in-law and I
+each had a boat, though I should have liked better to have
+had him with me, for the sake of information as well as
+companionship. The craft were what the French call
+<i><span lang="fr">pirogues</span></i>, long and narrow, as slim and long in proportion
+as a lead-pencil, sharpened at both ends, and just about
+as easily turned over. They were frailly made of boards
+barely an inch thick, tied together with vines, with a prairie-schooner
+top of banana-leaves held in shape by a network
+of bamboo splints, and movable back and forth as sun,
+wind, rain, or lack thereof suggested; and mine had a
+raised platform with a mat in honor of my super-princely
+rank. It was of about the size, and the comfort, or its
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>antithesis, of the mule-litter of northern China, which it
+strangely resembled in its jerky overbalanced gait, teetering
+so incessantly that I could not even write rough notes in
+it. I had four boatmen, two at each of the slightly raised,
+distant, pencil-like ends of the craft, all wearing tattooed
+breeches but not much else. Sitting cross-legged and half
+pretending to paddle, these typical <i><span lang="fr">piroguiers</span></i> of Luang
+Prabang seemed the personification of laziness, until one
+saw them in the rapids, the rock gorges, the genuine waterfalls
+they dare to shoot.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The prince in another pirogue always followed me as a
+sign of my high rank, not, I am sure, because he wished
+me to risk the countless rapids first. Each time I was certain
+the frail craft, writhing beneath me like a living being,
+would be dashed to pieces on the rocks that bristled everywhere
+and on which it scraped its bottom ominously at
+every drop. I was astonished, astounded as often as we
+emerged safely from another of these racing foaming perils.
+Yet though they worked like demons in the rapids, these
+boatmen of the Nam-khan, compared with the Chinese, with
+the Indians of the Amazon when they shovel water, were
+lazy after all, dabbing their narrow paddles into the stream
+and pulling them out again like playing children, and most
+of the time resting completely from that exertion. Again
+I disclaim any desire to criticize; had theirs been my lot
+in life I should certainly have worked as they did, rather
+than at the beast-like pace of labor that prevails in China.
+It was natural, since they can always pole their way up-stream,
+that they had never learned to toil like their South
+American prototypes, except in short spurts in the rapids.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now and again the prince and I got out and walked ahead,
+while the boatmen stopped to study a maze of rocks that
+we were quite satisfied to let them try alone. Every few
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>hours a cluster of jungle houses stood out in a tiny half-clearing
+on the high bank of the river, and most of these
+we visited. At each village the chief and the other men
+of importance, usually including several yellow-robed priests,
+came to pay their respects. Instead of snatching off hats
+or head-cloths, and performing an antic between a courtesy
+and an exaggerated bow, the form of salute in Luang
+Prabang is to come to a complete squat. Obsequious as
+this looked, it was evidently merely a gesture of politeness,
+for even the men of highest rank who had any intercourse
+with the prince, representative of the king in person, dropped
+to their haunches, and rose to human stature again only
+when the interview ended. In making any request of him,
+or in receiving anything from him, even the boatmen
+squatted, holding both hands, palms together, above the
+head. The village notables wore <i><span lang="fr">sampots</span></i> of many colors—purple,
+pink, grass-green—topped by khaki coats of uniform
+cut, which they evidently donned in our honor.
+Always they brought us leaf-wrapped cones of flowers,
+usually on banana-leaf platters. A supply of these bouquets
+of greeting, one concluded, must be kept on hand for
+emergencies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The women were usually the first to see us, for they were
+constantly bathing themselves and their naked urchins in
+the stream; and they were clever at getting into or out of
+their barrel-like single garment without unduly exposing
+themselves. I saw more bathing on that journey down the
+Nam-khan than during my two years in China, and less
+uncleanliness in all Laos than in the smallest Chinese village.
+The women of Luang Prabang, especially along the
+rivers, are no burden to their fathers and husbands so
+far as clothing is concerned. In every village we visited
+they were naked to the waist, and did not know it; at least
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>they did not seem to be conscious that in other, often less
+modest lands, such a costume might be frowned upon. They
+wore a single piece of cloth, spun from cotton grown on the
+spot, and woven on hand-looms under their long-legged
+houses. Colored in the thread with dyes made from nuts
+and vegetable growths of the region, this strip is simply
+wrapped about the waist. Or, in the case of a few of
+the youngest, which in that backward land still means the
+more modest women, the unmarried perhaps, or at least
+those who had not yet borne a child, it is wrapped about
+the lower two thirds of the breasts, with correspondingly
+more of the legs showing. Thus one recognized the girls
+of flapper age by their shapely brown legs and the matrons
+by their resemblance in costume to the Venus of Milo.
+Once a child has arrived, the exposure incident to suckling
+it seems to overcome virginal modesty; or in the absence
+of offspring pride no doubt soon joins carelessness in casting
+out the habits of maidenhood, so that there were displayed
+the scrawny pendent udders of the sterile as well as
+the withered rags of old age. The sight of a white man
+appeared to move some of the women to cover their breasts,
+a mere matter of deftly raising the garment. Whether this
+gesture was a recognition of the susceptibility of the French—who
+surely could not have issued non-exposure decrees!—or
+a mere matter of politeness, like the male squat, there
+was no means of knowing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though they did not thrust themselves forward, the
+women of this region were not so retiring as those of
+most of the Orient. Some of them were distinctly good-looking,
+well formed, their skin of an almost golden color,
+enhanced by the frequent bathing of most tropical peoples;
+and at least one of these village maidens would not have
+looked at all out of place in a famous Broadway review—except
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>that she was far too modest both in dress and demeanor
+for such company. With the conversation at
+Muongsen still in mind, I took care not to touch these
+fair damsels in getting photographs of them, though with
+difficulty, since it has become almost second nature during
+two decades of wandering among camera-shy peoples to arrange
+by hand my subjects to the camera’s liking. It would
+have been a sad ending to so officially attested a trip to
+have been charged with one of the most serious crimes in the
+Laosian code!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The people of Laos struck me as the most pleasing unspoiled
+race with which I came in contact in all my Far-Eastern
+wanderings, though I might have formed a less
+favorable opinion if I had tried to make my way among them
+without being sponsored by king and princes. We brought
+up at the end of the first day at Sop June—at least so
+it sounded—in time to photograph most of the inhabitants
+before concocting a dinner from our supplies over a beach
+fire. There was barely room in my narrow boat at the
+foot of the village bank to set up my cot, but with China
+and its crowded, filthy, noisy waterfronts in mind this
+was a haven of rest indeed. Next morning two big fat
+otter came out to gaze upon us from the foot of the
+often precipitous shore, looking in their wet coats, shining
+in the slanting rays of the rising sun, as large as seals.
+To my satisfaction, since I have none of the hunter in my
+soul, they disappeared in the water again before my royal
+companion could get his rifle ready, much less aimed. Something
+convinced me that he, too, was just as well pleased,
+that the Buddhist within him really condemned this aping
+of ruthless Western ways, with the added Oriental risk
+of losing face if he had shot without bringing down the
+quarry. Birds in comic-opera costumes flitted singly and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>in groups across the faces of the inclosing forest walls,
+a flock of parrakeets, screeching like a dismissed chorus,
+sometimes flying clear across the river. Big fish now and
+then jumped well out of the water, as if to take a look
+at us or at the scenery. Or they may have been reconnoitering,
+for curious wigwam-shaped fish-traps, held down
+by heaps of stones on a platform part way up them,
+are placed at the heads of rapids on the Nam-khan. Then
+there were weirs, draining into jug-shaped baskets with
+small entrances which forked prongs made almost impossible
+as exits, with a single opening in them just wide
+enough for the narrow pirogues to slip through; and even
+these were made impassable to the fish by a row of bamboos,
+one end of each held down in the river and the
+upper floating one pointing down-stream.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The villages were as much alike, once one had seen a
+few of them, as our own stereotyped cities: from half a
+dozen to a score of woven-bamboo-and-leaf shacks, light
+as big baskets, raised on posts, in a little clearing overrun
+with children, curs, pigs, and chickens—four forms of life
+all but universal the world over—and little else except the
+surrounding jungle. Chickens of both sexes, perhaps I
+should have specified, for in this one matter the people
+seemed to believe in monogamy and to have as many roosters
+as hens. It was in one of these villages of the Upper
+Nam-khan that I saw the first of still another race, the
+Kha, which some consider the real aborigines of these forested
+mountains of the ancient kingdom, as they are indubitably
+the oldest remaining inhabitants. They were wild
+but harmless-looking men, wearing earrings, their women
+adorned with still larger ones. A Kha woman down from the
+mountains—for like the Miao they are a highland people—had
+tattooed arms and, at least while the prince and I were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>there, was completely clothed from neck to calves, in derided
+contrast to the river-village women. In another
+village several dirty Chinese peddlers, plainly not much
+liked by the natives, sat almost insolently on the soft bamboo-splint
+floor of the clean <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> maintained for more
+cleanly visitors. It was in this same village that our boatmen
+knelt before the assembled authorities and asked that
+new boats, or new boatmen, be provided, as they were tired
+or homesick or something. To any one accustomed to
+seeing the boatmen of China toil many times harder, often
+day after day for weeks at a time, than these tropical fellows
+had for little more than a day, there was something
+childish about them. The petition was promptly refused,
+and in due time we took our leave and went on down the
+ever wider and gradually less swift rapid-bristling river.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Finally, in the middle of the second day, we were forced
+to grant the boatmen’s request, for there came a rapid so
+Niagara-like that no boats can navigate it. All our baggage
+and supplies were turned over to coolies, behind whom we
+walked in blazing noonday sunshine and deep sand around
+the falls to another pair of pirogues, waiting for us ever
+since the prince had passed here on the slow up-stream
+trip to meet me, and were off again down an increasing
+river until well after dark. The new crew were twin
+brothers of the old, and the change of boats had made
+little change in the endless series of rapids, for rarely
+was there not at least one roaring in our ears—until, toward
+evening, they came farther and farther apart as the river
+spread out into a wide and almost placid stream. Palisades
+and precipices had marked the place of changing boats;
+farther down there were rock cliffs again, the ever larger
+river cutting circles among them, mighty rocks that seemed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>to have tumbled down from them jutting forth from the
+edge of the stream. The current was still swift, yet after
+a long afternoon of racing down-stream there was the same
+jagged heap of mountains just behind us, turning reddish
+lilac and purple from the setting sun ahead. Bamboo rafts,
+with little houses on them, made their way more slowly
+down the stream, so placid now that it mirrored the ever-lower
+hills densely covered with jungle-forest, networks
+of lianas, some trees completely shrouded in vines, whole
+hillsides of huge banana-plumes, flashes of birds across
+them. Women wearing nothing but skirts were getting water
+from the river; others, especially at sundown, were bathing
+themselves and their naked children. Bonzes in dirty yellow
+robes, loafing, or horse-playing to use up the energy
+their calling does not permit them to waste in work or
+domestic happiness, showed themselves here and there along
+the way. The people seemed darker, burned to an almost
+Madrasi color.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We landed well after dark, climbing a long flight of
+steps cut steeply in the earth bank, to find ourselves in a
+considerable town, as towns go in Laos, with a big, almost
+a palatial rest-house for distinguished travelers, and a military
+commander in khaki to greet us. To my astonishment—and
+to that of many others, it transpired—I found that
+my boat trip was ended. From just over there in the woods,
+it seemed, an “automobilable” road ran to the royal capital,
+and a Ford would come for us in the morning. Royally
+done indeed! Usually it takes nearly a week for this
+journey down the Nam-khan, but the high waters of spring
+had favored us beyond all precedent.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Next morning we strolled a couple of kilometers through
+splendid forests, to ride twenty-seven more in America’s
+most plebeian conveyance along a fair dirt road that the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>jungle had already covered with grass in places, through
+incessant forest. Kapok falling from huge vegetable-cotton
+trees whitened the ground in large patches. Some of the
+tribes of Indo-China weave it into cloth. There were trees
+so covered with white flowers that they looked incongruously
+like those of our northern clime shrouded with the wet
+snow of spring.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I reached Luang Prabang town before the sun was high,
+being delivered at the door of another hospitable <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>,
+this time still young and energetic and with a French
+wife equally devoted to her official duties and to their two
+small children. All the little French colony was still breathless
+with the news the telegraph had brought them the
+evening before, that I had accomplished the journey from
+Xieng Khuang to their very doors, as it were, in three days.
+There were hints that they credited this partly to American
+black magic. For in this wilderness land of perfect
+telegraphic service I had not only exchanged greetings
+with my family in Hanoï every evening except the one on
+the river, but the authorities at Xieng Khuang, Luang
+Prabang, Vientiane, even Hanoï, Paris itself for all I know,
+had been instantly advised of every step of my journey.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XVI<br> <span class='c011'>KNIGHTED IN THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE BUDDHA</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>Luang Prabang, venerable capital of the ancient
+kingdom of the same name, is a spacious town of a
+few wide French streets, softly paved, if at all, with narrow
+Laosian streets like lovers’ lanes between them. It
+is well wooded, with roomy yards usually whispering with
+palm-trees. In other words it is not a city at all, in the
+crowded, noisy, Western sense, but a leisurely congregation
+of separate dwellings of simple lines, each in its ample
+garden-park, or at least with sufficient ground so that its
+opinions or doings need not interfere with its neighbors.
+In short Luang Prabang town is in many ways what idealists
+picture the cities of Utopia to be, whatever insurance companies
+may think of the fire-risks involved in more thatch
+than tile roofs. It sits on a bank of the upper Mekong,
+more exactly the Me Nam Khong, that snaky dividing-line
+between Siam and at least half of Indo-China, which in
+time becomes one of the most important rivers of the
+Far East. Just here it happens that it is not the dividing-line,
+for a large chunk of Luang Prabang kingdom lies on
+the Siamese side of the river. Tiresome persons of statistical
+temperament tell us that the capital stands 340 meters, about
+1135 feet, above sea-level; but one would hardly know
+it from the number of overcoats required. In fact, though
+it was still April, my host the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> knew the futility
+of expecting a guest from the temperate zone to sleep until
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>he had been cooled off with a jaunt by Ford through the
+tepid after-dinner night.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were two Fords in Luang Prabang, that which
+had come for me at Don-mo and one belonging to the
+king. It would of course have been bad manners for the
+<i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> openly to emphasize his real bosshood by sporting
+the better car; besides, the garage mechanics of the
+capital are as inexperienced as filling-stations are rare; hence
+the transportation that had been placed at my disposal
+lacked something of the regality of its rival, particularly
+in the matter of diligent polishing. There were also some
+horses, a few elephants, several victorias, even three or
+four rickshaws, though these, except perhaps that of the
+king inside the palace grounds, might as well not have
+been imported, for there were no men in this languid Eden
+both able and willing to pull them. Nearly every one walks
+in Luang Prabang, barefooted and silent, unless he travels
+by boat. For the most important conveyances are the long
+narrow pirogues, some of them surprisingly large, hollowed
+out of single tree-trunks, which ply the Mekong and the
+Nam-khan that flows into it above the town. On the bow
+of each boat there is almost sure to be a bouquet of flowers,
+a pretty custom, even if it is probably based on a superstition,
+and one in keeping with this gentle people of a
+land so kindly treated by nature. Huge fish are caught in
+the Mekong, weighing a hundred and fifty, two hundred,
+sometimes even two hundred and fifty—not pounds, but
+kilograms, fish so big that it takes ten men to carry one
+of them and one man to carry a severed head. It is easy
+to understand what the flap of such a fish-tail sometimes
+means to the fishermen in their frail vine-tied canoes. But
+it is just the fishing for such a people in such a climate;
+for every time they catch a fish they can—and usually do—rest
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>for a week without going hungry. Racing pirogues
+as much as twenty paces long lie bottom up on bamboo-horses
+under little thatch roofs here and there upon the
+high weed-grown river-bank at the edge of the capital, being
+used only in November during the annual regattas. For
+rowing—more exactly paddling—is the athletic sport of
+Luang Prabang.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The main street of the capital, dying out at either end
+in semi-jungle, is lined by a long market, facing the entrance
+to the king’s palace. But for that matter there is
+a market just outside the royal palace in Madrid, too, and
+many beggars also, which here seem to be unknown, unless
+we count the yellow-clad priests sauntering along with their
+begging-bowls in the early morning. Even such an Eden
+as this is not without its serpents, however; and rattling
+chains on the legs of prisoners working about the town
+make strange contrast both to its quiet gentle atmosphere
+and to the regality of its king. The gay garments, especially
+of the female branch of the population, make doubly picturesque
+the market and the long lanes of greenery that
+represent streets. The women of Luang Prabang capital,
+unlike their country sisters in the rest of the kingdom,
+usually wear a thin silk or cotton scarf of bright color over
+their bare breasts, half covering them, and slipping coquettishly
+off when they wish to make an impression on one
+of the opposite sex. The Laosian women of the bush think
+no more of their uncovered breasts than they do of their
+bare feet; these sophisticated girls of the silken scarf in
+the capital recognize them as an asset. There was something
+about their every gesture that recalled our own
+flappers—with betel-nut taking the place of gum and of
+lip-stick. Yet their coquetry may be largely innocent, for
+the French assured me, in some cases rather regretfully, I
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>thought, that in Laos there are few of the <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i> facilities
+so common in Annam.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The king’s wives, and the girls of the royal family and
+of the wealthier class, wear a kind of swimming-vest, usually
+white, in addition to the brilliant scarf. Perhaps his
+Majesty does not wish charms meant for his own eyes
+alone to become even visually common property. Yet the
+royal wives themselves on the way to market had about
+them a hint of coquetry, even toward a foreigner, which
+seemed to be totally lacking among their sisters of the bush.
+Many of the girls of Luang Prabang wear enormous silver
+or pewter anklets, some of them weighing twenty piastres
+or more. Others wore chains of ten-cent pieces. So many
+French silver piastres have been turned into these anklets,
+bracelets, the metal collars of the Miao, and other forms
+of adornment that it is little wonder Indo-China now uses
+almost exclusively paper money.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Luang Prabang means Kingdom of the Divine Buddha.
+What more natural then than that there should be many
+Buddhist temples, shrines, and monasteries in its capital?
+Indeed there are so many on both sides of the river that the
+town might easily be mistaken for a holy city, devoted to
+priests and pilgrims. Some of the temple compounds are bare
+ground scattered with yellow-roofed buildings of Siamese
+or Burmese character, with big stupas made of mud bricks
+and more or less overgrown with vegetation, with mere cells
+raised on piles, in which languid bonzes meditate. Others
+are covered with groves of trees, shaded by masses of palm
+and banana leaves; but in them all great calm and quiet
+reigns. Just behind the main and market street fronting
+the royal palace is a rocky ridge called Pagoda Hill, two
+hundred feet above the plain and half encircled by the
+Nam-khan by which travelers unworthy of Fords come to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>the capital from the east or south. It is worth climbing if
+only for the view it offers of the idyllic city and its
+surrounding semi-jungle; and along it ramble queer old
+religious structures, including one built over a gigantic
+“footprint of Buddha” in the native rock. What feet that
+far-famed son of India had, and what seven-league boots,
+to have scattered, so long before the coming of railways
+and Fords, his bare footprints so far and wide over the
+Orient!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some of the old priests of Luang Prabang are honored
+as demigods by the people of the kingdom. They step
+forth from their holy dwellings only with a ceremonial parasol
+held over them, by one of the surrounding group of
+youngster attendants in the same bright yellow; and the
+French <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> himself was almost servile in the respectful
+politeness with which he treated the most holy
+of them all, whose attitude sometimes suggested that it
+was he who had the upper hand. These bonzes may not
+even kill a flea, though the provocation must often be
+almost too strong to be borne; but they may eat beef and
+the flesh of other animals killed by some one else. Even
+the cynical French residents say they are real celibates,
+that they would be expelled from the order if they were
+caught breaking this particular vow. It might be harder
+to keep were not all young men expected to be priests for
+a year or two, as those of European lands become soldiers,
+only the ones to whom the monastic life appeals retaining
+the yellow robe, which the great majority soon discard
+for marriage. Little less sacred than the priests are the
+dogs that all but overrun the capital, eating the food laid
+out for gods and bonzes, much as the sacred oxen of India
+take their toll from pious shopkeepers. Held in a kind
+of Buddhist reverence by the people and more or less
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>protected by the priests, these mongrels are not even subjected
+to muzzle or license, though the French would like
+to improve their rules of sanitation to the extent of exterminating
+the harmless but self-confident curs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But the French do not insist on imposing their religious
+beliefs on their wards and colonies. In Luang Prabang they
+go so far as to provide for the up-keep of the temples and
+monasteries in the annual governmental budget. In a way
+this is a means of supporting the educational system, for
+the priests act as schoolmasters to their novices. In great
+contrast to China, there is not a single Christian missionary
+in all the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha, not even a
+Catholic priest. There was almost a sense of relief in
+finally getting completely beyond the reach of missions,
+however good an opinion one may form of mission work
+in some of its phases. For in certain moods one feels a
+species of boastfulness in our insistence that so alien a
+race give up its own beliefs in favor of our more or less
+generally accepted guess as to the after-world and how to
+reach it, in our Western efforts to impose our philosophy of
+life upon a people that has a not unworthy one of its own,
+and one that seems to make them much happier than we are.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I had come to Luang Prabang, however, on the special invitation
+of its king, and my chief duty and pleasure was to
+pay him my respects. Ignorance is ever embarrassing, so the
+natural prelude to such an honor as a royal audience was
+to find out something concerning the king and his kingdom,
+as one skims through the chapter-headings of an
+author one is about to meet. That ancient land is hardly
+known even to our encyclopedias, to say nothing of our
+school-books, but a few basic facts were available in the
+jungle-framed French offices of the capital, offices strangely
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>similar in their atmosphere of <i><span lang="fr">paperasses</span></i> and official dignity
+to those French staff headquarters I had served in during
+the war. Languid as it is, Luang Prabang’s history
+is not without its exciting moments. For its origin one
+must go back to that great Nan-chao kingdom, with its
+capital at Tali-fu in the southwestern corner of China,
+founded in 629 <span class='fss'>A.D.</span> and destroyed six centuries later (1234),
+not by the Chinese but by their Mongol ruler, Kublai
+Khan. The Kingdom of the Divine Buddha is one of the
+remnant kingdoms of the great Tai race which, once holding
+a part of what is now China, was gradually driven west and
+south, losing or attaining culture until it varied from the
+high civilization of the Khmer to almost illiterate tribes,
+according to where its new lot was cast. Best known to the
+outside world by the Siamese word for man (<i><span lang="fr">lao</span></i>), or as
+<i><span lang="fr">shan</span></i>, from a Chinese word used in Burma, this people still
+prefers to be called Tai.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Laos has eight divisions, of which Luang Prabang is
+the largest and the only one still boasting a king of its
+own. A century ago most of it belonged to ethnologically
+related Siam. I have already mentioned that this greatest
+division of French Indo-China, about as large and of much
+the same shape as Italy, has fewer inhabitants than Detroit.
+This is largely because it was so often sacked, and
+its people killed by the Chinese, who wanted the land, or
+carried off by the Siamese to populate her sparsely settled
+regions along the Menam. A traveler who visited Luang
+Prabang in 1872 found it the most compactly built city of
+Siam, with the single exception of Bangkok, which it in
+some respects resembled. But of several disasters the greatest
+seems to have been in 1887, when the Black Flags of
+Taiping days in China burned and almost completely destroyed
+and depopulated it, so that perhaps it is not by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>choice of its up-and-coming citizens that it is so roomy,
+pastoral, and ideal a city to-day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The same altruism and love of their fellow-man that has
+given the French the arduous task of protecting the rest
+of Indo-China led to their present position in the affairs of
+Laos. About the time the Chinese from Yünnan were
+pillaging Luang Prabang kingdom a Frenchman named Pavie
+was sent there on a mission. The father of the present
+king, born <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Kham Souk, who lived from 1837 until
+1904 and reigned under the name of Ritthithamaronjsac—though
+he was more popularly known as King Zacharine,
+and probably not entirely on account of his sweet disposition—was
+an absolute despot, descended from a long direct
+line of similar rulers. For the Kingdom of the Divine
+Buddha has been a kingdom as far back as the memory
+of its people goes. Zacharine became a great friend of
+Pavie, at least according to such data as was available in
+the French government offices of Luang Prabang, and when
+the Siamese failed to protect him, as they had promised,
+against the Chinese, he went to Siam under Pavie’s wing;
+and later, in a quarrel with the Siamese, who had burned
+and looted and carried off most of the people of Vientiane
+and Xieng Khuang, he made the mistake, like his royal
+neighbors of Annam and Cambodia, of calling in the French.
+By 1893 Siam had been compelled to give up all claim to
+this ancient kingdom and to the magnificent highlands of
+Tran-ninh, and all Laos became a European dependency
+under the protection of France.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>My host the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> chose a victoria for our descent
+upon his royal ward, no doubt feeling that to have used
+his Ford would be to call unnecessary attention to himself
+as the only possessor, besides his Majesty, of so regal
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>a conveyance. Besides, the leisurely open carriage was far
+more in keeping with the calm and woodsy atmosphere of
+the metropolis of Laos. The king’s palace is a building
+mainly in French style, more like a hotel with a steeple-cupola
+than the abode of an Oriental potentate. It stands
+in a fairly spacious yard, not quite large enough to be
+worthy the name of park, on the eastern bank of the Mekong,
+at the foot of the hill graced by Buddha’s footprint; and
+it was somewhat in disorder. Chairs were kicking about
+the foreign-style dining-room, and there were other suggestions
+of a late party and oversleeping servants. The building
+was quite new, it seemed; there were few decorations
+on the walls yet, though a man had come all the way
+from Paris to cover them with paintings. Evidently he had
+found the climate not conducive to constant work, particularly
+work paid for by the day by a protected people; for surely
+he could not have discovered a means of squandering his
+time in the social amenities of the king’s harem, and there
+was no other means of accounting for his Oriental leisureliness
+of execution.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Royal servants went to announce us, though word of
+our coming had been sent ahead, and while we waited I
+mentally reviewed the information I had gleaned from the
+Oriental Almanach de Gotha it had been my privilege to
+consult at French headquarters on the eve of my royal
+reception. I make no claim as to its exactness, and still
+less to that of my memory; but there is a probability that
+both of them are approximately correct. <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Sisavang
+Vong Somdet Prah, present king of Luang Prabang and a
+direct descendant of an endless line of its kings, was born
+in 1885, on July 14—no wonder he is a favorite of the
+French—and succeeded his father Zacharine in 1904. His
+mother was not his mother, so to speak. For <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Thong
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>Di, first wife of Zacharine, still known as the Queen Mother,
+and real ruler of the royal household, bossing even the
+king himself in domestic matters, according to reliable
+verbal information from a French and feminine source, had
+no male children. The second-rank wife, <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Thong Si,
+daughter of a high mandarin related to the royal family,
+gave birth to the present monarch; but in Laos as in China
+every child is officially the offspring of the first wife. His
+father Zacharine seems to have been a temperate person,
+considering his advantages, for the king has only three
+half-brothers and six half-sisters; though it is possible that
+Zacharine died with certain secrets buried in his bosom,
+Occidental fashion. Half-sisters and half-brothers may marry
+in Luang Prabang, by the way, which is not without its
+effect on the reigning house. Also <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Sisavang Vong
+Somdet Prah has at least this much in common with his
+English colleague, that he had an older brother who died,
+leaving him unexpectedly heir to the throne.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The latest calculations were that the present king had
+fifteen wives and about forty children; on this second point
+he did not seem to be very exact himself, no doubt finding
+it difficult to keep strictly up to date in domestic events
+within his household. Yet he did not look either worn or
+dissipated, when presently he came in to shake hands and
+sit down with us, perhaps because the Queen Mother takes
+so many of the palace cares off his shoulders. Seven of
+his sons were studying at the <i><span lang="fr">Lycée</span></i> in Hanoï; and the crown
+prince, Savang Vathama, then sixteen, was nearing his
+bachelor degree in a similar institution at Montpellier in
+France, with the avowed intention of studying law afterward.
+The king himself had a purely Laosian education
+under Buddhist priests until King Zacharine sent him to a
+French <i><span lang="fr">collège</span></i> at Saïgon. Later he went to the Ecole
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>Coloniale in the Rue de l’Observatoire in Paris, where
+French youths prepare for a career in the colonies. He
+came home once when his father was ill, but upon his
+recovery was sent back to France to get together a printing
+establishment with Laosian characters and to learn how
+to run it, which makes him more or less related to the late
+kaiser, bookbinder.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The king was plump and pleasant, handsome for his race,
+by no means betraying his all but forty years. It was easy
+to imagine the girls of Luang Prabang, if not indeed of
+France, “just crazy” about him, quite aside from his royal
+rank. He had a frail Oriental mustache and that beautiful
+bronze-brown complexion of his race. Unlike most European
+monarchs he is purely of the blood of those he reigns
+over. But his Majesty indulges in the chief minor vice
+of his people, and the only blot on his manly beauty, and
+not even that of course to the fair ones of his own land,
+was that his teeth, though they were not enameled, were discolored
+and his lips somewhat bloody with betel-juice. Even
+now he seemed to be nursing a quid, though with a regal
+finesse that it would have done our secret chewers of tobacco
+good to see.</p>
+
+<div id='i_306' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_306a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Wind-sieved rice is the principal food of the rural inhabitants of Luang Prabang</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_306b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>With a silk scarf worn loosely over a shoulder the women of Luang Prabang capital are more coquettish than their waistless sisters of the country districts</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_307' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_307a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The palace of the king of Luang Prabang sits placidly on the bank of the upper Mekong</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_307b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>The king turned out his chief dancing-girls and masked male entertainers for my approval</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>He wore a white cork helmet, a black bow-tie about a
+standing white collar on a stiff white shirt with the round
+cuffs of a decade or more ago, and a snow-white three-button
+coat which, in so far as my meager knowledge in sartorial
+matters is trustworthy, was of the latest model. The fact
+that the middle buttonhole was attached to the upper button
+may have meant either a dreadful ignorance of Western
+ways or merely unseemly haste in leaving his harem; or it
+may have had no significance whatever. His feet were quite
+properly incased in low black shoes of faultless last and
+luster, but—let the spinster reader blushingly turn the page
+here—he wore no trousers! His rank and calling, it seems,
+forbade him these final touches to an otherwise perfectly
+European costume. Instead, his thighs were inclosed in the
+<i><span lang="fr">pha</span></i> or <i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i>, such as is worn by both sexes in Siam and
+adjoining countries under Siamese influence. It was a
+kind of short skirt, evidently of silk and of colors verging
+on the gaudy, drawn between the legs and tucked into the
+belt at the back, reaching to just below the knees in front
+and “rather less than ‘arf o’ that be’ind.” Naturally a full-fledged
+king could not leave the hiatus uncovered and keep
+his self-respect. Therefore between <i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i> and shoes the
+royal legs were clad in silk stockings of which the most
+regal young lady of our own land might have been proud—except
+that in her case they would no doubt have been of
+a color to deceive the uninformed observer into thinking
+she wore no stockings whatever, whereas in backward barbarian
+Luang Prabang this would have been bad form.
+These were jet-black and reached so far up the back as to
+suggest that they were held by a band about the waist.
+Indeed, it was immediately evident that the king had missed
+a splendid chance for extra decoration by not wearing a
+pair of red garters just below the knees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A goodly proportion of the royal income must be spent
+on stockings. For I was assured, not merely by common
+rumor but by all the Frenchwomen in Luang Prabang—of
+whom there are three or four—that his Majesty will under
+no circumstances wear anything but silk about his shapely
+legs, and that a stocking with the slightest hole in it is immediately
+discarded. It would be easy to imagine his wives,
+of whom he fortunately has fifteen, scrambling for these
+discards of the royal wardrobe, and racing for their darning
+needles, were it not that in Laos even the wives of kings
+do not wear stockings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>But do not for a moment gather from all this that
+<i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah had the slightest hint
+of the barbarian in his appearance. Except for the sacred
+<i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i> in place of trousers, and the proof of a king’s income
+between that and the shoes, his Majesty would have
+attracted no attention whatever in a Palm Beach crowd,
+unless it were by his athletic build and his agreeable undissipated
+smile, and, at close range, the light touch as of
+fresh blood on his lips beneath the thin well clipped mustache.
+In fact of all the kings with whom I have hobnobbed
+he was the most pleasing to look upon, and to all outward
+appearances a gentleman not even given to bullying his
+wives. His lapel was adorned with the little red button of
+a French decoration—the Legion of Honor, I fancy, though
+I confess to a deplorable ignorance of these important matters—and
+a gold watch-chain hanging from this drew attention
+to what was evidently not the thinnest of watches
+in the outside breast-pocket. A signet-ring not unlike those
+of our West Point and Annapolis graduates encircled his
+wedding finger, and he wore a cord of what looked like ordinary
+string about each wrist.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This cord decoration is something peculiar to Luang
+Prabang. The <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> wore them also, as did his baby
+son; possibly his charming lady did too, though I am not
+sure that mere women are worthy of them. Cords are put
+about the wrists amid elaborate ceremonies and must be
+worn for at least seven days if they are to be effective in
+preserving the wearer from evil. The king himself had come
+to tie those about the wrists of the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire’s</span></i> newly born
+son and heir and thereby assure it constant good luck through
+all the menaces to health among European infants living in
+the tropics. The French are good colonists partly because
+of their wisdom in keeping up and even taking part in such
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>simple and harmless native customs, which the average American
+and British colonial official would probably scorn as
+“poppycock,” if he did not actually try to uproot them.
+“Poppycock” it is, to be sure, but the effect which a little
+sympathy in such matters has on native populations is not.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The king spoke a fair but throaty French, but was not
+exactly talkative in that tongue, whatever he may be in
+his own and in the intimacies of his harem. In fact, contrary
+as it may be to our movie and popular-novel conception
+of royalty, he was rather bashful, with a school-boy
+dread of making a mistake in the foreign tongue he
+was using, and at the same time evidently fearful of doing
+or saying anything that might displease the French. His
+demeanor was a curious mixture of regal old-family pride,
+a pride reaching so far back that we mere moderns from
+a barbarian world were not worthy of knowing the secrets
+of life behind it, and of the anxiety of the star in a royal
+movie being filmed under the eye of the manager of the
+great Jewish corporation that is “putting him across.” All
+of which did not remove the first impression that <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i>
+Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah would be a fine fellow to
+take along for a tramp or a swim, and that it would not
+be long before one could begin calling him “Prah Old Top.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All hands seemed a little ill at ease. Having exchanged
+the usual platitudes, we stood about doing nothing much,
+paused with admiring mien before a new bronze bust of
+the king, covered with medals and decorations, and a good
+likeness, though of no better color than his actual complexion,
+but showing neither the betel-red lips nor the cigarette
+that drips almost incessantly from them. His Majesty
+handed out atrocious French tobacco-monopoly cigars worthy
+of a Chinese <i><span lang="fr">tuchun</span></i>, but wisely stuck to cigarettes himself,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>smoking one after another in rapid succession. We chatted
+a little on general subjects, the impression growing that
+the king’s French was good enough if only he could have
+thrown off the feeling that it would be an intolerable disgrace
+for a king to make an error in speech. Can it be
+this that makes modern monarchs and presidents so taciturn?
+Among the thoughts that passed between us I gathered
+that he wished to visit the emperor of Annam when Khai-dinh
+celebrated his birthday the following year. I have
+never heard whether he was able to do so, but if he and
+his fellow-protégé, whom he so far had never met, were
+allowed to get together out of hearing of the French they
+must have had a great chat—provided of course that they
+had a language in common.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At a mere suggestion from my companion, and as if it
+were a relief from a tense situation, his Majesty graciously
+stepped to the main doorway of the palace, an excellent jet-black
+background for a blazing tropical sunshine that outdid
+anything Hollywood can devise in lighting-effects, and posed
+for his photograph. Another merest hint from the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>
+and <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah went off at
+once like a small boy to dress up for his picture, and came
+back in a surprisingly short time in his most regal robes, a
+radiant royal costume quite beyond my power to describe.
+All the medals on the breast of bronze near-by were now
+in place on the living model; he was again in women’s silk
+stockings, quite evidently brand new, and this time held
+up by round-the-leg garters of brilliant hue. A green and
+saffron flowered-silk <i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i>—but how foolish for a man
+who cannot even describe a ball-dress well enough to give
+his wife any conception of it to attempt so impossible a job
+as this!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Never have I found a king more docile in meeting my
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>every suggestion. Barely a whisper from me and he ordered
+his throne-room decked out in its coronation best, had his
+royal attendants summoned. Cringing flunkies brought in
+swords of state, big golden bowls, a marvelous hat of half
+cowboy half women-of-the-plume-days style, studded with
+jewels, and with a Burmese-pagoda top. Ascending his
+throne, the king assumed his most regal aspect, his white
+gloves flashing like those of a traffic policeman during a
+Catholic procession. The master of ceremonies of the palace
+himself brought tables and other regal paraphernalia to offset
+my lack of a tripod; two men in green, each holding a
+great sword, knelt fearfully at the foot of the throne, and—and
+I muffed the picture. No doubt the nervous tension of
+photographing kings on their thrones in their coronation-robes
+would be enough to cause an even calmer and more
+experienced photographer to misjudge tropical light conditions;
+at any rate I so under-exposed that strip of film
+that only those with keen eyesight can make out more
+than the general lay-out of the throne, and the king’s white-gloved
+hands on his richly sampotted knees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Lesser catastrophes have left broken hearts, but it did
+not so much matter about that throne-room picture after
+all, for, again at the merest suggestion of the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> and
+as promptly as a circus seal obeys its trainer, the king once
+more stepped to the spotlighted doorway of the palace, hat,
+robes, medals, and all, to give my camera another trial,
+finally posing with his French boss at his side. The <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>
+was also in all his glory. Three great medals that
+proved he had done this, that, or some other brave deed—for
+he was not a man to have successfully bootlicked this,
+that, or the other high authority—blazed over his heart.
+His white uniform coat and black trousers had fancy neck,
+waist, wrist, and trouser-seam bands; he wore a sword,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>with rich belt-tassels, and carried white gloves, though the
+white <i><span lang="fr">casque</span></i> on his head and the black shoes on the blistering
+pavement had nothing unusual about them. In short his
+dress was as out of keeping with his plebeian name of Mill—were
+names translated—as it was with the simple backwoods
+life about us. Finally his Majesty, of his own volition
+unless my eyes were momentarily off their guard, was
+graciously moved to insist that I also stand beside him in
+the doorway spotlight and let the camera again do its worst.
+In vain did I plead my unworthiness to be thus immortalized,
+like one of the boon companions of his Majesty, particularly
+in my vagabondish incongruities of rumpled semi-whites,
+once-tan shoes still half decided to be black, a necktie
+that insisted on the right to be temperamental in a tropical
+climate, a pocket bulging full of—how should I know what?
+The king, I long afterward noticed, wore quite a different
+face in these pictures in true royal garb than that of
+the genial boulevardier he presented in mufti, something like
+his own elder brother, with all the cares of state upon his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But all this was only the beginning of the honors that
+were heaped upon me before that epoch-making day was
+done! Immediately after the signal distinction of being
+photographed by the resplendent <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> at the side of
+the even more luminiferous king I was knocked breathless—or
+at least I might have been if the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> had not
+that morning whispered to me the possibility of what was
+to happen next, probably before the king himself had
+thought of it; in fact there had been subtle hints to that
+effect as far back as Xieng Khuang, if not in Hanoï itself—by
+the announcement that his Majesty was about to confer
+upon me his most regal decoration, the most prominent of
+the many medals on the breasts of the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> and of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>the king himself, both in bronze and in the flesh, the highest
+honor of which this protected Oriental potentate is
+capable, something corresponding in Luang Prabang to the
+order of the Rising Sun in Japan, to wit: the order of the
+Million Elephants and the White Parasol! For you must
+know that Luang Prabang is not only the Kingdom of
+the Divine Buddha but even more officially the Kingdom of
+the Million Elephants and the White Parasol, just as King
+Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah’s real title is Master of Heaven
+and of Life. I do not know whether it is actually claimed
+that there are so many pachyderms in the kingdom at the
+same time, but a little exaggeration is always admissible in
+the tropics; or it may be that the souls of departed elephants
+are also included in the reckoning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The king announced his magnificent intention by a little
+speech in French, with a manner strangely like that of a
+school-boy sentenced to make the class presentation speech
+to a favorite teacher, and from it I gathered that I was
+to be decorated because I was the only American—and the
+word he used made it mean of either North or South America—who
+had ever done his humble capital the honor of
+visiting it. The only one of whom there is any official
+record, no doubt he meant, if indeed he was not indulging
+in a bit of royal spoofing; for it is known by many, if
+not by the king himself, that at least one Protestant missionary
+once came through the kingdom on a scouting expedition,
+and the chances are that he was American. But
+naturally he had not announced himself to the constituted
+authorities of a country that does not allow Christian mission
+work, and it may be that he did not enter the capital.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had hitherto always been under the delusion that the
+bestowal of an order meant the pinning on of the corresponding
+medal by the bestower’s own fair or sunburned
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>hands, and with war days in France in mind I knew not
+what moment I might get a betel-juicy royal kiss on either
+cheek. But this dreadful misgiving was but another evidence
+of my appalling ignorance. On the contrary, to be
+decorated evidently meant merely being given permission to
+decorate myself. It is true that there was handed me later
+in the day an engraved diploma, in Siamese and French,
+bearing here and there three elephant-heads surmounted by
+a white parasol, and with my name written on the dotted
+line by a master penman who certainly had not learned his
+calling in a Buddhist-monk school. It was neatly rolled inside
+a section of bamboo to protect it from the rainy season
+that was almost certain to break upon me before I reached
+modern forms of transportation again. In fact I am not
+sure that the king did not personally bring me this diploma,
+though I do know that it was prepared in the French-staff-like
+government offices far from the royal palace. But
+the medal itself, the visible public proof that I have been
+honored beyond any of my fellow-countrymen, any of my
+fellow-hemispherites for that matter, I should have to spend
+many francs for in a department-store at Hanoï, if ever
+I reached there again. Being as Scotch of disposition as
+I am abhorrent of the red tape incident to making a purchase
+in a French department-store, I should certainly never
+have squandered that hard-earned money, even with the
+franc at one of its lowest ebbs, had not the family tyrant
+absolutely insisted, refusing even to discuss the matter.
+She won of course, and the gaudy elephantine-parasol trinket
+and the ribbon in Spanish colors that goes with it has been
+tucked away somewhere among my rarely-unpacked belongings
+ever since. Ah, those happy bachelor days when a
+man could do exactly as his whims or his conscience
+prompted!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>I might wear that medal now, or at least the modest lapel-ribbon
+that stands for it, if I did not realize the injustice
+that would be to those of my veteran friends who, having
+risked their eyesight and digestion at Paris and Chaumont
+over maps of the western front, are entitled to display similar
+adornments to an envious, disappointed world, or if I were
+not fearful of being mistaken for a visiting Elk or Moose or
+some other fraternal wild animal and dragged into the
+gilded cages provided for those creatures. My resentment
+at being forced after all to decorate myself, by way of the
+pocketbook, has subsided, for it seems the same rule is
+true of Phi Beta Kappa pins and class numerals; but I
+shall never entirely forgive Luang Prabang for bringing
+me as near as I ever expect to come to the divorce courts.
+For when everything was over, and I had broken the great
+news to my son at Hanoï in the telegrams we exchanged
+on that most auspicious occasion, which chanced also to be
+his fourth birthday, I discovered to my domestic dismay
+and perpetual regret that the order of the Million Elephants
+and the White Parasol is also conferred upon women—at
+least of France and allied countries—and that if the king
+had suspected that I had a wife—queer I did not show
+it after nearly five years of married life!—he would have—but
+what is the use of bewailing what is past and done with
+and irreparable?</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>The decoration speech over, the king ordered out his
+dancing-girls, deathly pale with hastily floured faces, and his
+male entertainers, in masks meant to be terrifying, the gaudy
+colors of their festive garments contrasting with the scarcity
+of soap discernible through the crevices of their costumes.
+They posed rather fearfully. Some of the girls were as
+young as ten, I am sure, and certainly none of them were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>over twenty, for the king has a Broadway taste in these
+matters. Dancing-girls and masked male figures alike wore
+an elaborate head-dress in the form of a pagoda—the Rangoon
+style of pagoda, not those of China—which suggested
+a close cultural relationship between Luang Prabang and
+Cambodia. As to the welter of colors that flashed forth from
+them in the blazing tropical sunshine I shall not even attempt
+to say anything; just let the bootlegged imagination
+run riot, so long as you do not forget the reddish teeth and
+the swollen lips driveling with betel-nut that gave them the
+look of ghouls that had just eaten a warm corpse, or of
+harmless childish-faced trolls that had been caught in the
+act of gorging themselves with currant jelly in the royal
+jam closet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Neither the dancers nor their king gave any sign that I
+had outstayed my welcome; nor was I expected to back away
+from his Majesty when at last I voluntarily took my leave.
+But I have a suspicion that there was more frankness in
+the attitude of the baby elephant that was cavorting about
+the royal lawn in the wake of its chained and mahout-ridden
+mother. For when I tried to coax it into a proper filial
+position for a photograph the little beast set out after me
+in a manner entirely out of keeping with its status as the
+property of a tame king. So graphically could I still describe
+this experience when I reached Hanoï again that to this day
+my son regards the time when the elephant “switched its
+trunk” about me as the height of my intrepid career.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The king of Luang Prabang keeps a number of royal elephants;
+and he is no nonentity as a business man either, by
+the way. Supplementing his salary, if the word suits a
+monarch, of forty-six thousand piastres a year, and thereby
+offsetting his consumption of silk stockings, he has much
+private property, including great forests and sawmills, in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>which many of his elephants work for him. For a time some
+of the royal elephants were assigned the task of dragging
+rollers used in the making of roads about the capital; but they
+are a tender beast, for all their size and reputed longevity,
+and even with only four or five hours of labor a day, at their
+two-mile-an-hour gait, with the privilege of resting every
+third day, two of them died from this unwonted exertion.
+The king, evidently no figurehead in his capacity as business
+manager of his personal estates and property, protested,
+and from four to six water-buffaloes to each roller now take
+the place of an elephant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In theory the many wild elephants in the Kingdom of the
+Divine Buddha also belong to the king. When new recruits
+are needed in the royal stables, some of the wild beasts
+are caught by digging pits. Then a tame and a wild one
+are chained together, leaving the wild elephant to tug furiously
+at a collar with sharp iron points in it. The most
+bellicose are fastened to a tree by a lasso about a hind leg
+until they are worn out with struggle and hunger, when
+the two largest <i><span lang="fr">éléphants de chasse</span></i> available take the captive
+between them and shake and roll him until he decides,
+like the man who foresees the lawyer fees involved in an
+action for divorce, that after all he will be happier in the
+domestic state. Most of those captured do not wait for this
+third degree, but, suddenly resigned to their new fate, give
+in to the barbed collar and stroll homeward with their false
+brother, pulling up tufts of good grass as they go and calmly
+tapping each mouthful on a front foot to shake the earth off
+the roots before transferring it to their dainty mouths.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Whatever the baby elephant may have meant by accelerating
+my exit from the palace grounds, the king himself evidently
+had no intention of dismissing me so cavalierly. For
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>within an hour of our arrival home, that is, at the rambling
+one-story soft-brick house of the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>, with its crowing
+roosters—if I could rule a king I should at least banish
+roosters from the back yard on which the windows of my
+honored guests opened—his Majesty came alone in his Ford
+to return my call and stay to lunch. He had changed back
+into civilian garb—not the same garments of course in which
+he had first received me—perfectly European again except
+for another gay silk <i><span lang="fr">sampot</span></i> and black silk stockings out of
+a newly opened box. Were kings relieved of the task of dressing
+and undressing, what duties would there be left for most
+of them anyway? He was received like any other invited
+luncheon guest, though he was always addressed as <i><span lang="fr">Majesté</span></i>
+by the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> and his well chosen wife, and the half-dozen
+French functionaries they had been able to scrape
+together in the kingdom. In lieu of a box of chocolates his
+Majesty had sent ahead some Laosian food that is served
+as dessert at the royal table. One dish was a kind of custard
+cooked in small cocoanuts, the base of the husk cut down to
+resemble the shank of a goblet, and preserving the cocoanut
+taste. Another was a kind of vermicelli covered with nut
+dust, not unlike a similar dish in China. The ordinary people
+do not indulge in such delicacies, which are reserved for the
+royal palace. Even there, according to my hostess, there
+are few changes of menu. The king was well versed in
+Western table manners, though he did not take a very active
+part in the conversation, which of course was in French.
+He showed up best as a sympathetic listener, and was easily
+amused. In so far as my own almost unknown country
+was concerned, he seemed to be particularly interested in the
+Mormons and in what the French call the <i><span lang="fr">régime sec</span></i>. He
+laughed for some time in his merry yet kingly way when
+told that Brigham Young had forty wives and a corresponding
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>number of children, apparently without seeing any connection
+between this and his own fifteen and forty respectively.
+Or it may be that he was laughing at the plight
+of Brigham from the vantage-point of his own experience.
+The <i><span lang="fr">régime sec</span></i>, in other words, prohibition, he plainly did
+not understand at all, any more than does the average Frenchman,
+and there was nothing to be gained in trying to make
+clear the American point of view on the subject. He would
+of course have been horrified to learn that there are persons
+in that benighted wineless land from which I came who
+have never heard of his ancient kingdom; nor did I feel it
+quite safe to pad out the conversation by bringing up the
+question of silk stockings in its relation to our national
+economic problem, for one can never be sure just how sensitive
+kings may be on these very personal matters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It became more and more evident, however, that <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i>
+Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah was not born anybody’s fool,
+even if circumstances and the foolishness of his father
+Zacharine had left him and his kingdom in an embarrassing
+position. There was something behind his Oriental-Gallic
+courtesy and his almost perpetual smile. Nor did he seem
+to take himself or his regality or his white elephants or any
+of the rest of his royal trappings too seriously. On this
+subject of white elephants, by the way, he mentioned that
+one was now supposed to be on its way to him, some Laosian
+merchants among his loyal subjects having captured or purchased
+such an animal that had been seen in a distant part
+of his kingdom. He thought Bangkok used to have one
+but that his Siamese peer was now forced to do without this
+adornment to their respective kinghoods. They were not
+white anyway, he went on, but rather a pinkish light-gray,
+like the albino water-buffalo; and his manner implied that
+whatever his royal cousin of Siam might think about it, a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>white elephant to him would be merely an interesting addition
+to his menagerie. “May you live as long as an elephant!”
+is a common form of greeting in some parts of
+the East; but quite aside from the doubtful kindness involved,
+it is based on one of those many mistaken beliefs of mankind,
+according to the king, corroborated by all the French
+present, who asserted that no elephant ever lives longer than
+have many men and women. As monarch of what may be
+the most elephant-infested corner of the globe he should
+be a credible witness on the subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All through the luncheon the punka over our heads had
+moved in fitful spurts, for the coolie squatting on the cool
+<i><span lang="fr">dalles</span></i> of the veranda outside fell asleep even in the presence
+of royalty. His Majesty was as hard to get rid of as an
+awkward country cousin, and the hostess grew visibly fidgety
+before he finally remounted his Ford, for her other guests
+included the doctor who should long since have been back at
+the government hospital, and other functionaries eager to
+take up their protective duties again, yet who could not of
+course show any desire to leave so long as their monarch
+and master remained. One somehow had the feeling that
+a king would wish to get back to his affairs of state, or at
+least to his harem, as soon as possible, but this one gave
+evidence of so greatly enjoying his luncheon party that he
+seemed capable of sitting there forever listening and smiling.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>There are really four kings in the Kingdom of the Divine
+Buddha, or were until one of them recently died. None of
+them are to be replaced, however, as they pass on toward
+Nirvana, except this real one with the title of <i><span lang="fr">Majesté</span></i>. The
+others are merely <i><span lang="fr">Excellences</span></i>. Twice a year all the chiefs
+of Luang Prabang, which is a province of Laos as well as a
+kingdom, come to the capital for a conference under the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>French <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>. It is a leisurely conference, one fancies,
+for the people of Luang Prabang, high or low, do not include
+the word “hurry” in their active vocabulary. Not long
+before, the king had gone to Hanoï, whether for praise or a
+scolding no one but the governor-general seemed to know.
+Nine of his suite missed the return train to Vinh, and one old
+mandarin wept like a child because he could not believe that
+anything, six-o’clock trains particularly, started at the very
+moment these strange white people said it would. He had
+been barely half an hour late, yet the conveyance had left
+without him! From Vinh, by the way, all but the most important
+members of the party had to walk home with the
+coolies, while the king proceeded by automobile over the
+route by which I had come. Even the prince who had been
+sent to meet me at Muongyu had made this long tramp. Evidently
+the position of prince has its drawbacks in an ostensibly
+absolute Oriental monarchy—for that Luang Prabang
+still purports to be, with the French merely advisers to the
+hereditary despot. You may marry a king’s daughter, but
+that does not mean that you may ride in the king’s Ford. But
+the travelers by automobile gained nothing in time, for the
+whole outfit had to wait a couple of weeks at Xieng Khuang
+until the baggage caught up with it, while the undressed monarch
+remained officially incognito until his trunks arrived.
+On another occasion a French aviator took him to his forest-girdled
+capital in a single day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are ceremonial occasions when the king comes to
+the home of the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i>, not by Ford but on an elephant,
+and is carried up the steps seated on his throne, white parasols
+over him and a great retinue about him. The French
+residents condoled with me particularly because I had not
+reached Luang Prabang <i><span lang="fr">quinze jours</span></i>—a fortnight—earlier.
+For in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha New Year’s
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>had fallen on April 12 that year, and with it comes the ceremony
+of the <i><span lang="fr">petit serment</span></i>, as distinguished from the <i><span lang="fr">grand
+serment</span></i> in November; that is, the swearing of fealty to the
+French and to the king—please note the order. Then the
+king rides on several elephants, I gathered, though probably
+only one at a time, and is carried through the town on his
+throne, followed by long processions of notables and mandarins
+in white jackets and <i><span lang="fr">sampots</span></i> of every color of the
+rainbow, if not indeed several which it lacks. The common
+people, all the inhabitants of the capital except the Annamese
+and the French, kneel and bow their heads to the earth, for
+then they must not look upon their king, though it is said a
+few of the least reverent sometimes do get a glimpse <i><span lang="fr">à la
+dérobée</span></i>. To judge by the pictures French residents had
+taken of the recent ceremony it was a sight worth coming two
+weeks earlier to see. In them all the inevitable cigarette was
+dangling from the king’s lips; no ceremony is so solemn, no
+place so sacred, that <i><span lang="fr">Tiao</span></i> Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah will
+go without his smoke. As many a photograph of the few
+remaining European monarchs and their possible successors
+shows, he has good precedent for thus openly indulging.
+Perhaps it is a sign of increasing democracy; or such informal
+and plebeian habits may always have been shared by
+kings, though our expurgated histories do not mention them.
+Cigarette or Ford, however, the people of Luang Prabang
+take their king very seriously, more seriously than he does
+himself. The native doctor at the government hospital, educated
+in Hanoï and outwardly entirely French except in
+complexion, kneels and touches his forehead to the floor
+before he gives medicine to one of the king’s sons in the
+palace nursery.</p>
+
+<div id='i_322' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_322.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Knighted in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_323' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_323a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Two royal elephants saw me off from the palace, the youngster showing a desire to make me depart on the run</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_323b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A Miao woman on her travels carries bed and food</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XVII<br> <span class='c011'>SPEEDING SOUTHWARD</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>From the capital of Luang Prabang I again broke all
+existing records by making the trip overland to Vientiane,
+the French capital of Laos, in five days. Normally
+this takes twelve, or at the very least ten, and every articulate
+person in the metropolis of the upper Mekong insisted that
+it would, or at any rate should, be quite impossible to accomplish
+this journey within the time I chanced to have at my
+disposal. Fortunately my ideal host of Luang Prabang, and
+a few others who had also seen our army in France, though
+neither he nor they had ever been in the Western Hemisphere,
+admitted that perhaps an American could do it, especially
+an American who had made the trip from Xieng Khuang
+to Luang Prabang capital in three days and a couple of
+hours. At any rate the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> and the king he served
+offered to do all they could to help in what they considered
+a very dubious undertaking.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Once again I loudly disclaim any desire to hurry; there is
+nothing I dislike more. Yet as between the misery of rushing
+and that of missing some important part of a country
+through which I am permitted to pass once in an existence I
+prefer to hurry. If only I had been born believing in the
+delightful doctrine of the transmigration of souls, with the
+assurance that there would be plenty of other lives after this
+one in which to roam through every corner of this interesting
+if often disillusioning old footstool of ours, no doubt I could
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>be as phlegmatic and time-impervious as any Oriental backwoodsman.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This time I had to hurry because the fortnightly steamer
+from Vientiane was to leave on the following Thursday
+morning, the first day of May, and it was already midnight
+on Friday when I finished my packing, got my bamboo-protected
+diploma of decoration safely tucked away and a
+few supplies bought, and turned from a final social evening
+with the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> family into the last soft wide bed in
+some days to come. It was doubly too bad that I had not
+arrived <i><span lang="fr">quinze jours plus tôt</span></i>—a fortnight earlier, for then
+I should not only have seen the ceremony of the <i><span lang="fr">petit serment</span></i>
+but I might have avoided the hardships both of hurrying
+and of the overland trip. Perhaps I am getting lazy in my
+old age, or it may have been the climate, and the recent exertions
+of swift travel and royal excitement; at any rate I
+should have preferred to go down the Mekong with a floating
+village that had been prepared for a party of Frenchmen,
+and women, who had left just before I arrived. But for
+the automobile disaster on the way to Xieng Khuang I might
+have joined them; though I might not have reached Vientiane
+in time for the steamer, for with the water as low as it was
+then those floating villages sometimes take two weeks for
+the trip.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>More exactly they are floating furnished houses, a combination
+of raft and boats surmounted by three or four rooms
+and servant quarters, two small windows on each side of the
+superstructure, and all those refinements one expects among
+such a comfort-loving people as the French. At high water
+these house-rafts can go down the Mekong in fewer days
+than are required for the overland trip through the jungle,
+though by no means so fast as I proposed to make it; and
+at all times this way of leaving Luang Prabang is so usual
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>that rarely does a Frenchman in the colonial service go by
+land. In fact most of those bound for the capital come up
+the river also, though that is a hard and tedious job—for the
+native boatmen. An official salary continues unabated irrespective
+of speed. Upon due reflection, no doubt, an income
+forever dragging at the heels of my personal exertions has
+much more to do with my weakness for hurrying than have
+any impressions on the transmigration of souls. This trip
+down the river is not only comfortable, but interesting and
+sometimes exciting, if not dangerous. The <i><span lang="fr">piroguiers</span></i> say
+prayers and throw food into the air, or place it, as well as
+flowers, on the bow of the boat before passing bad rapids,
+that the unseen spirits may be propitiated. But on board, all
+the amenities of French civilization prevail, from whist to
+the three-cornered drama, and romance has culminated and
+domestic disaster befallen during these long and too restful
+journeys.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By trail Luang Prabang is 347 kilometers from Vientiane,
+nearly 225 miles, which was quite a distance to be divided
+among five days, even with a slope of several hundred meters
+in my favor. Luckily those twenty-seven kilometers of
+“automobilable” road at the Luang Prabang end would again
+be useful, and there were about a hundred, with a growing
+tendency, stretching northward from Vientiane, leaving me
+something like a hundred miles of mountainous trail to cover
+on foot and horseback. To make matters worse it rained
+most of that Friday night, so that when I set off before the
+crack of dawn in the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire’s</span></i> Ford, the Annamese
+chauffeur did not promise to make record speed. This soft
+dirt road gets very slimy on the least provocation, and there
+were slopes enough during that mildly up-and-down ride
+through the forest to provide many a skidding place. By
+seven, however, we were back at the village of Don-mo, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>if the local Frenchman had not been so slow in breaking away
+from his <i><span lang="fr">congaïe</span></i>-shared breakfast in his thatched hut I should
+have been off again at once instead of half an hour later.
+Here I found three good horses, the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire’s</span></i> own
+mounts, with comfortable French cavalry-saddles. One was
+bestridden by a Laosian sergeant who had won two decorations
+in France, and one by another prince, <i><span lang="fr">Chao</span></i> Thong Souk.
+Related to the king and to my former emissary, <i><span lang="fr">Chao</span></i> Duong
+Chan, he was an equally delightful and helpful companion,
+a bit younger and, I gathered, unmarried, a youth of most
+pleasant manners and disposition, speaking excellent French.
+He had left the capital the morning before, with the horses,
+the sergeant, and half a dozen coolies carrying some supplies
+and all but the nightly indispensable portion of my modest
+baggage; now he and the coolies sped on ahead, leaving the
+sergeant with me as guide and body-guard, while I passed
+the unavoidable courtesies with the Frenchman in native
+garb.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That over, we were off by a trail that had been cut more
+or less directly through the jungle-choked forest, first across
+the flat, then up a hill so steep that sweat ran even on horseback.
+Up this we had quite a job coaxing along the Laosian,
+or Pwun, coolies, who wished to stop and eat even before we
+overtook the prince and the others. When we did join them,
+it carried me back to my old care-free vagabond days to hear
+again the cry of “Kin kow!”—the Siamese equivalent to the
+“Come and get it!” of our army cooks—like the voice of a
+friend of long ago and far away. For the language of Luang
+Prabang is almost that of Siam, the writing quite the same.
+We ate and drank and pushed on again; one secret of breaking
+cross-country records is to give less than French attention
+to the delights of the table. It looked strange to see men
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>wearing only a loin-cloth, and a dagger in a scabbard woven
+like a basket and held by a fiber band across the chest, putting
+up telegraph-poles; but the French insist on being able to
+talk to one another anywhere in Indo-China, and government
+ownership of telegraph lines has at least one advantage over
+the high-cost private system of the United States and China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No wonder the Chinese drove out the Tai! Two Laosian
+carriers bore between them about half the load of one Chinese
+coolie; they made much less speed, not to mention their
+many complaints along the way, and at that they had to be
+relieved every few hours, or at least at the end of a day.
+For a load I had often seen one Chinese jog along under
+day after day of from ninety to a hundred <i><span lang="fr">li</span></i> we had eight
+men; the cot or the valise that a Chinese coolie would carry
+at one end of his shoulder-pole, with as much at the other,
+and any odds and ends on top, these tropical fellows put in
+the middle of two long bamboos between two men.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Do not misunderstand me as blaming them; as between
+the two I should act like the Laosians. But the difference
+indicated how great is the adaptability of the human frame,
+for these men were if anything larger, sturdier, certainly
+more visibly muscular than Chinese carriers. They were like
+those muscle marvels one sees in gymnasiums and in physical
+culture magazines, no good at all beside the wiry little shrimp
+when it comes to real sustained hardships. Unless hunger
+or the white man drives them, the Laosians do little work;
+they are so happy-go-lucky in their tropical fairy-land that
+their rulers even have trouble making them keep their communal
+granaries filled against possible famines. For that
+matter, neither do the Chinese work unless driven, of course;
+but they have been incessantly just one jump ahead of starvation
+for so many centuries that they do not remember, cannot
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>imagine, anything else, until their frames have grown to
+endure, on far less food, what would kill a plump muscular
+Laosian.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Up and down we went, through cool forests and over red-hot
+mountain ridges where too much good shade had been
+cut away for the telegraph line, with one hard river to cross.
+In this I lost the precious army canteen that had served me
+all through China, the sergeant having tied it to my saddle
+with a piece of vine. I might have known that there was no
+real string in such a land and been less careless about seeing
+my orders carried out. It was the most serious mishap of
+the trip, for without water always within reach even riding
+becomes a hardship in tropical jungle where streams are often
+hours apart.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While prince, sergeant, and I looked in vain for the rushing
+stream to cast up the canteen, the coolies went bathing.
+They were all of the “black paunch” tribe, as distinguished
+from the “white paunch,” or untattooed ones, though it is
+not really the paunch that is decorated. The man of this
+branch of the Laosian or Tai race is never without his pants,
+even when he is stark naked. Nearly all of them are solidly
+tattooed in blue—invisible alas to the ordinary camera—from
+the waist to the knees, a wide tattooed belt with lacy
+ends about the floating ribs and a lacy effect like ruffles just
+below the bend of the knees. The design of this hip and
+thigh covering is always “lions” within squares with rounded
+corners, all touching one another, either as a protection
+against or to give the wearer the bravery of the lion. With
+the figures are mingled sacred texts, said to be Pali in
+Laosian or Siamese script. The priests especially are covered
+with these sacred writings, it is said, but one can never really
+know what is under the yellow robe. Women seldom if ever
+wear these tattooed substitutes for the Scotchman’s kilt, say
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>those who should know, perhaps because they are in no
+danger from evil spirits, or cannot be saved anyway. Some
+of the men also had red tattooing on the upper part of the
+body, red squares on the chest, all sorts of things on the
+back, though none of them obscene nor as crude as the tattooing
+on some of our sailors. One of my men was overrun
+with red lizards; some were whole picture-books or comic
+supplements or intricate signs of the zodiac. There was one
+fellow whose whole back was covered with a lesson in arithmetic
+or geometry, even trigonometry for all I know, as if a
+small brother or a schoolmaster had used him as a slate.
+Others had only one leg tattooed, generally the left, or both
+of them only on the buttocks, or simply the fronts of the
+thighs, or merely spots here and there, all according to personal
+caprice, taste, swank, or an attack of cowardliness before
+the job was finished. Unlike most tribal decorations of
+the sort this tattooing may be put on at any age, whenever
+courage is ripe.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I thought several times that afternoon that the men were
+going to give up entirely. They lay down in the road as if
+completely exhausted, something I had never seen a Chinese
+carrier do in all my two years of wandering in China; but
+finally we coaxed them at dark into a scattered little thatched
+town in the jungle on the edge of the clear rushing river
+that had made off with my canteen. The place was named
+Ban-long, with a waterfall to lull me to sleep in the basket-weave
+<i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> where I soon stretched out on my cot, for we had
+to start very early again. There was difficulty in getting men
+in time, and without the prince I should not have been
+able to get them at all. But he, working most of the night
+through the obsequious village head-man, collected twelve
+substitutes for our eight lazy Pwun or Nuong carriers, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>we were off in the soft, black tropical night between two and
+three in the morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Two of the new men had gathered some sections of dried
+bamboo six or eight feet long to be used as torches, which
+made it to some extent harder than ever to see the way
+through the steep gullies cut deeply into the soil of the densest
+possible jungle and forest. Particularly was it hard going
+after the torches had gone out, much worse than if we had
+never had them, and for more than an hour we struggled in
+utter darkness over a devilish trail. It was one of those
+damnable trails that are always wading a stream, always the
+same stream at that, like a chatterer who can think of nothing
+original to say, and now and again climbing steeply up and
+down the bank of it. Daylight showed the dense vegetation
+deeply green, a land as far from China as if we were on
+another continent, and disclosed our dozen carriers to be Kha
+wild from the mountains, picturesque figures even in a land
+as out of the ordinary as Laos.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Instead of tattooed pants or cloth <i><span lang="fr">sampots</span></i> these primitive
+fellows wore short cloth breeches like running-pants, and
+some of them had more or less of an upper garment also.
+They showed no tattooing, or at least very little, but rattled
+with bracelets of glass and other cheap materials, and had
+large earrings of all shapes, preferably not mates and if possible
+utterly unlike on the two sides of the same head. The
+few who did not have earrings put flowers or vine strings
+or leaves in the holes in their ears to keep them ready for
+more prosperous times. They had the eyes and the ways of
+the real wild man; yet, being former slaves, they were more
+docile than the Laosians or Pwun.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the aboriginal tribes driven into the mountains by the
+Tai invasion of nearly two thousand years ago, it is estimated
+that there are still a hundred thousand of these Kha
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>and other more or less indigenous stock. Thus there is a
+great mixture of races under King Sisavang Vong Somdet
+Prah, besides the “black paunch” and “white paunch”
+Laosians of his own race. At Muongsing, chief town of the
+military territory, administered by Luang Prabang, in a far
+corner of Laos, a French official counted thirty-two races,
+each in its own costumes and with its own customs, at the
+weekly market day. The Kha are a hill people who made
+complete submission to the former rulers of Luang Prabang,
+admitting themselves slaves, and now they accept the present
+monarch as king and are loyal to him, lending help of this
+kind upon royal demand, though one could not hire them as
+carriers in the ordinary way. These fellows carried a slim
+ration of glutinous rice in little round baskets with a telescope
+cover, and some uncooked rice in a cloth at the back of the
+waist, just as do some South American Indians. At their
+sides hung a kind of machete, in a sheath made of half a
+bamboo with wooden strips across it, much the sort of thing
+a Boy Scout turned loose in the woods might contrive. They
+were as small as upper grammar-school boys, and though they
+looked hardier than almost any tame people, they were really
+even less useful as carriers than the Pwun. They prefer to
+carry by a band across the forehead, but as my baggage was
+not arranged for that method most of them were forced to
+endure one end of the stiff whole-bamboo that takes the place
+of the wiser springy split-bamboo or hickory carrying-poles
+of the Chinese—because one of them alone cannot carry a
+real load. Yet on the whole the long file of silent, rather
+anemic fellows made better time, thanks perhaps to their
+lighter loads, than those of the day before.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Unlike the talkative Laosians and in great contrast to the
+chattering Chinese these aboriginal mountaineers made hardly
+a sound as they plodded along. The language of Laos or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>Luang Prabang is less noisy than the guttural up-and-down
+Annamese. The men of the first day had spoken with an
+almost English intonation; Kha speech seemed a bit more
+Chinese, with much rolling of the <i><span lang="fr">r</span></i>. Some of them spoke
+Laosian, but with what my prince called a “malabar” accent.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the mountains of Luang Prabang kingdom, high over
+several of which I passed on my overland trip, especially
+on this Sunday, one of the longest days of my life, the Kha
+live in as primitive conditions as in the days of Alexander
+the Great. The Kha villages I saw were the lowest type of
+human dwelling; filth and stupidity seemed to be the prevailing
+characteristics. All our romantic yarns about the simple
+life of savages leave us with the false impression that they
+are hardier than civilized people, and the writers rarely mention
+the dirty, the truly animal conditions in which they live.
+The Kha are as innocent of any idea of cleanliness as the
+lowest class of Chinese, in great contrast to the Tai about
+them, and it is not strange that they have more smallpox
+than the rest of the population. Some were so timid that
+I had to drive them out of their reed and grass huts into
+the light necessary for photography, just as one might drive
+some wild animal out of its warm but dirty lair, so timid that
+I had to manhandle a group of both sexes that came along
+the trail one day, before they gave up their temptation to
+run away without posing for my dreaded camera. In most
+of the huts grandmother and even skinnier grandfather were
+tending the third generation while the intermediate one was
+out in the hills in quest of a livelihood. Some of the villages
+had their basket-like thatched-top huts raised above the
+ground, like those of the other people of Laos; the commoner
+custom was to squat on the ground itself in a thatch
+structure like a flat wigwam. The women, and for that matter
+the men, were all naked to the waist, a disgusting custom
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>in the case of the old women, whose breasts were as shrunken
+as if they were about to dry up and drop off. They gave
+one an unhappy reminder of how brief is the span of human
+existence. Old men and women alike had holes in their ears
+large enough to hold a cigar.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All day we climbed over great hills, one veritable mountain
+range. Most of these were densely wooded; yet in places
+there was little real forest, but mainly <i><span lang="fr">brousse</span></i>, especially
+the swift-growing bamboo, because they had so often been
+burned off. Here and there patches of hillsides, even of
+mountain-sides, were being or had recently been cleared in
+this primitive way and were now more or less velvety-brown
+and strewn with fallen charred trees. For like the Miao the
+Kha still burn a new strip of forest whenever they wish to
+plant, cutting down mammoth trees just to clear the way,
+and leaving them to rot. What the coffin-makers of China
+would not have given for some of them! But I saw nothing
+planted, perhaps because the end of April is too early in
+these highlands, as in the grass-grown rice-fields we came
+upon lower down. Every now and then a tiny hut as bright as
+if it had been made of new straw stood forth in the middle
+of a recent clearing, the sleeping-place evidently of a pioneer
+husbandman too far from home to commute. Upland rice,
+needing no flooding, and other jungle products are grown by
+the Kha and the other hill people, and sometimes carried to
+Luang Prabang itself, though most of them merely grow
+enough to feed themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The little clusters of very simple huts of the Kha were
+not near even this rarely traveled trail, but in places half inaccessible—and
+for many people wholly so—beyond valleys
+or great gullies across which they can look and see in miniature
+the very thin trickle of traffic and consider themselves
+in the world but not of it. One fancied they would not enjoy
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>an apartment at the corner of Broadway and Forty-second
+Street. These hardly accessible places were often so far
+apart that it would take hours of climbing to call on the
+nearest neighbor. No wonder, when the cluster of huts of
+the nearest girl is across three chasms and two ridges, that
+the swain knocks her on the head and brings her home without
+further formality, to save himself the labor of courting
+under such onerous conditions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In contrast to China, the only visible evidences of religious
+belief in these wilder parts of Luang Prabang kingdom are
+bamboo arrows and bits of woven wicker squares and the
+like, beside the trail here and there. These, the prince told
+me, were warnings, either that a trap of arrows had been
+set for wild animals somewhere on the path leading off into
+the <i><span lang="fr">brousse</span></i>, or that a Kha village was engaged in formalities
+to which strangers were not invited. Docile as they are, the
+Kha have been known to kill even Frenchmen who have overlooked
+or persisted in disobeying these warnings. Hence
+little is known of the religion of this primitive tribe, except
+that it acknowledges innumerable genii, good and bad, and
+that there are many things the visitor must not do, many
+things taboo not only for the Kha themselves but for any one
+who enters their villages, because to do them would be to stir
+up the evil spirits to wreak vengeance on the villagers
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Now and again there was a mighty granite mountain with
+the sheer sides of the sky-scrapers it dwarfed in size, clothed
+with as much vegetation as can get foothold, vegetation
+made wilder and more hardy by the struggles of its ancestors
+in such places. But for long distances there were no signs
+of man, except the twelve carriers snaking along through the
+tall grass, touches of red in their old and often ragged and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>always weather-faded garments contrasting with their brown
+bodies and their black heads bobbing above the vegetation.
+We went for hours along a mountain ridge in a path all but
+obliterated by a wild grass often horseman high, with many
+splendid tiger-lairs. Great bamboos or trees had here and
+there fallen across it, so that there was sometimes just room
+for a horse to pass without its rider. These ridges opened
+out great green vistas of scrub and forest on either hand,
+and of the striking peaks of the long range over which we
+climbed most of that arduous Sunday, to end in rain and
+slippery going through ever hotter jungle. For at the end
+we went down miles of trail steeper than any stairway, into
+shaded jungle lanes, with rivers to cross incessantly, the
+raging rivers of another watershed. Down, down, down to
+what in season would again be flat rice-fields with earth
+borders set like trays one above the other. On the swift
+slope we passed an old man and a boy with a crossbow and
+some pencil-like arrows, who were evidently stalking birds,
+for all the rain. One of the pleasant things about simple
+“wild” people is the companionship between old men and
+boys—and, I suppose, between old women and girls when
+they are off by themselves—so much closer and more congenial
+than among civilized people, where the old have usually
+been educated entirely out of the naïve childhood point of
+view and cannot forget how much more they fancy they
+know than the child knows.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Unlike the Chinese the Kha coolies were not afraid of the
+rain—or at least they were less afraid of it than of the prince.
+They slashed down banana-leaves as umbrellas and kept right
+on going. Yet a little rain makes a jungle journey quite different.
+The slopes become toboggans, the trails impetuous
+streams or quagmires, rivers rise until they cannot be forded,
+all vegetation wets whom and whatever it touches, leeches
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>sally forth to seek whom they may devour—so that we were
+glad indeed when the rain let up a little and insects began
+again to chirp and birds to whistle rather than sing their
+gladness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We came down at length into the valley of Ban-napha,
+with a splendid sky-line of mountains behind it, and finally
+brought up, rather weary, at a <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>, just long enough before
+dark so that we could hope to make preparations for another
+early start in the morning. Village chiefs bent low before
+the emissary of the king, putting their hands on their knees,
+for evidently this prince was not close enough to royalty to
+be worthy of the complete squat; or the people here may
+have been more independent. In turn the head-man of a
+village is a real boss—provided he has a very commanding
+way. This one of Ban-namon, otherwise known as Muong
+Kassy—<i><span lang="fr">ban</span></i> seems to mean town, and a <i><span lang="fr">muong</span></i> is a division
+something like the commune of France—did not have much
+head-man personality, or he had less respect or fear for
+princely orders than his attitude suggested; so that when I
+went for my daily conversation with my family I had also
+to wire back to the <i><span lang="fr">commissaire</span></i> and insist on fresh horses,
+for none had been provided, the strict orders of the king
+and the French notwithstanding. I did not wish to abuse
+the stout animals of my good host of Luang Prabang, and
+two days over such trails was a good week’s work for any
+horse, though I walked as much as I rode. But the threat
+to go on with them served excellently as a lever to move the
+prince to force the head-man to have other horses available
+in the morning. We knew they could be had, for we had
+seen not a few well fed ones in the fat wet fields of the little
+valley, along with water-buffaloes taking their ease in their
+beloved mud-holes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I found my way back from the telegraph hut through the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>densely dark and humid night to a two-room <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> with the
+usual springy floor of woven-bamboo splints, set in a wide
+grassy yard beside the trail. The sergeant, for whom this
+forced march was hard work, since he seemed to have brought
+back tuberculosis as well as a decoration or two from his
+war days in France, was worn out; and even the prince
+admitted that he was tired, though at his age one never
+really is. The Kha should have been most weary of us all,
+but they crawled obsequiously in on their hands and knees to
+bring me water in a section of bamboo or to hand me anything
+I asked or the prince sent them for. They ate jungle
+food that had very little in common with ours, out on the
+soft floor of the raised porch on which they slept. Somehow
+I was sorry to lose these simple picturesque fellows when we
+left Ban-namon.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We were off again at daylight, with poor native horses,
+as if the head-man had picked, or had imposed upon him,
+the leanest in town, and with somewhat less “wild” coolies.
+We had marched in the rain for barely two hours when the
+cavalcade all halted at another town, with an humble <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i>,
+for a lunch all around and to change coolies again, though
+those from Ban-namon had hardly gone five miles. Probably
+that was all the weak head-man could get them to agree
+to do; or it may be that certain towns are definitely stations
+on this overland trail. The prince had only to order the
+village chief, or the inhabitants themselves, to furnish new
+carriers, however, and they were soon there, though from
+then on we changed as often as we came to a village, sometimes
+two or three times a day. The coolies still seemed to
+be Kha, but they were men who had come into more contact
+with the outside world than those who had been with me
+all that strenuous Sunday, and they had lost some of the
+ornaments, simplicity, and politeness. Perhaps they were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>not Kha at all, for they had all sorts of tattooing, and some
+of them had raised welts, like the bush negroes of Dutch
+Guiana. Each man according to his fancy wore a kind of
+kilt that was really a mere strip of cloth wound about him
+from waist to knees. Now and then we passed a woman on
+a journey, in a costume in which she would not have been
+unnoticed on Broadway, wearing earrings, neck-rings, two
+bracelets on each arm, and a barrel-shaped strip of cloth
+from nipples to knees, and carrying her bed and belongings,
+consisting of a sack hanging down from her forehead and
+on her back a rolled-up grass or reed mat on which to spend
+her virtuous nights.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By this time I had fourteen coolies for what one Chinese
+would have, and often had, carried—except that the prince
+and the sergeant had a few things. With every change we
+seemed to get more carriers, as if they were bent on dividing
+the task until no one had anything much to carry; and at
+that they dawdled along, using every possible excuse to halt.
+Fancy me traveling with three horses and fourteen men, and
+most of my things in Hanoï at that! It was almost like a
+<i><span lang="fr">safari</span></i> in central Africa, such as my wealthy fellow-wanderers
+can afford. Certainly the passive resistance of which we
+have been hearing so much of late is no new doctrine in the
+East; your Oriental carriers or servants were past masters
+at it long before Gandhi was born.</p>
+
+<div id='i_338' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_338a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A Kha home in the mountains of Luang Prabang</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_338b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Grandfather and grandmother of the primitive Khas tend the children while the intermediate generation seeks the family livelihood in the hills</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_339' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_339a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Wherever his habitat, the water-buffalo is happiest when immersed to the nostrils in a mud-hole</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_339b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>One group of the many Laosian carriers who bore my few belongings across Luang Prabang</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>Or perhaps the fellows were spreading out my baggage
+as much as possible in order to give me more honor; for
+in Laos the importance of a traveler depends upon the amount
+of baggage he carries, the amount of trouble he puts the
+country to in getting him through it, even as in many other
+lands. The king never travels without an enormous retinue
+and tons of baggage, whether he needs it or not; and if he
+gets separated from it he withdraws into incognito. One
+reason the coolies of Laos cannot carry more is that each
+of them has a <i><span lang="fr">musette</span></i> containing his personal belongings and
+food, a knife in a wooden scabbard, and increasing odds
+and ends, until by this time they had nearly as much baggage
+as we, in sharp contrast to the Chinese, who, in a land of
+strong and constant competition, carry almost nothing of
+their own. On this third afternoon two men carried nothing
+but the loads of the others, and they seemed to be getting
+weaker as their own loads grew ever bigger. If this kept
+up I should have to have two men for every one who was
+actually carrying for me and my escort.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>Rocky mountain scenery increased, with great sheer cliffs,
+filtered sunshine on wet vegetation and brown. Here banana
+blossoms were a beautiful pink instead of the usual beautiful
+purple; there were giant ferns in great clusters, one leaf
+easily twenty feet long, a tree so covered with vines that it
+looked like an old ruined pagoda, cathedral aisles of damp
+and deeply shaded path. We crossed many streams; and—who
+says “wild” men do not know enough to invent speedy
+measures?—found on either side of them several of the two
+or three section pieces of bamboo which the people of this
+region use as water-pails. The men caught them up on one
+side of the stream, scooped them full of water as they crossed,
+drank as they walked, and threw them away again, to be
+picked up once more by the next comer from the opposite
+direction. All that third afternoon we went down with a
+small river through a narrow corridor of magnificent cliffs,
+everywhere wooded except on the sheerest faces—spires,
+turrets, pinnacles, stalactites and stalagmites, whole Milan
+cathedrals of jagged rocky peaks, scenery which, were it
+within two hundred miles of New York, would have a hundred
+thousand visitors every Sunday; yet here no one but a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>rare roving foreigner ever gives it a passing glance. Lost
+in the <i><span lang="fr">brousse</span></i> and unnoticed, it was like many an unknown
+thing, deed, person, in the self-styled civilized world—far
+greater than others many times better known because they
+happen to have won publicity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This region is noted for its leeches, especially during the
+rainy season that was now descending upon us. On that
+rainy Sunday afternoon the feet of my Kha were all bleeding,
+and were covered with the scars of what were evidently
+old leech-bites. These pests snatch upon the passer-by from
+the bushes overhanging the narrow trails, particularly after
+a shower; they get in somehow, even though one is not barefooted,
+soak the traveler’s legs and socks in blood before
+he knows they are there, and he may be all day or all night
+in getting the flow stopped. In the middle of this third
+afternoon, chancing to pass a hand over an ankle, I felt a
+disgustingly soft lump under one of my high socks. Suddenly
+feeling the other leg with misgiving, I found it had
+two such unwelcome guests. Not far beyond we halted at
+a lonely little rest-house in the bush, and while the men
+rested and washed their feet, some of them put lumps of
+tobacco, such as they used in their long slim pipes, and other
+jungle leaves, on the three wounds; but at least one of them
+did not entirely stop bleeding until the next day. In the
+shade of the rest-house sat an aged priest in trail-worn
+yellow robe, who was making his way slowly northward,
+though he was old enough to be done with earthly traveling,
+at least in his present body. If that lasted, he hoped—or
+perhaps we should say expected, for he looked like too true
+a disciple of Gautama to be still burdened with the earthy
+desire we call hope—to reach Luang Prabang toward the
+end of the next month.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The last half of that day was bright with sunshine, through
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>ever lower jungle between mountain ridges, until we put up
+on the broad springy floor of a <i><span lang="fr">bonzerie</span></i> in a place called Ban-phatang.
+The sergeant and his helpers from among the
+carrier coolies did our cooking out on the covered porch,
+some of the village round about languidly looking on; but
+the priests who occupied with us the building and porch
+showed little curiosity indeed. I had time for a shave, to
+the surprise of the beardless natives, then for a bath in the
+clear little river that raced past the town. Down this shot
+now and then a man with only a loin-cloth over his tattooed
+thighs, riding a little green bamboo raft, the only part of the
+craft above water being a raised place for a bundle of a few
+clothes and other belongings, and a jackfruit for possible
+hunger. Simple travel indeed! It made one long to be a
+care-free youth on the road again. Women were bathing
+children and themselves here also, especially now toward
+sunset, but no one came to stare at me, though in China
+there would have been a regular circus audience. Nor was
+this for lack of energy, for on the whole these were a well
+built, muscular, and very healthy-looking people, with few
+if any signs of a social disease so common in Annam and
+China and with almost none of the filth diseases. Though
+the women all showed their breasts and thought nothing of
+it, one never saw even a bathing man completely naked. So-called
+barbarian peoples, though they commonly wear only a
+loin-cloth or its feminine equivalent, are usually as exacting
+about having that in place as we are with our own clothing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The uncrowded, simple, but commodious houses of these
+Laosian villages are always set well apart and high above
+the ground, back among palm-trees, banana-plants, and the
+like. They do not have to crowd together and save all the
+arable land for rice to feed too numerous mouths, for here a
+gentle Buddhism takes the place of an ancestor-worship so
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>ardent that offspring must be had at any effort and cost.
+Most families have round or square granaries like huge
+covered baskets made of wide woven splints and covered by
+a big thatch roof, all raised off the ground out of reach of
+rats. The simple houses themselves were of similar materials,
+a ladder of half a dozen bamboo or pole rungs leading
+up to the big porch at one end, and close to the floor, a tiny
+window or two that can be pushed open to one side. Such a
+village is a thousand per cent more pleasant than a Chinese
+town, even when there is no public stopping-place except
+in the same room with slightly supercilious priests who sometimes
+break sound sleep with their devotions. There is an
+incredible amount of bathing and great quiet compared to
+densely packed Chinese existence. Such a village is like
+a country home in its atmosphere, while those of China resemble
+tenement-living on the worst of East Sides.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The half-naked women had little objection to posing for
+their pictures, though they were fully as modest as their
+sisters anywhere else. Some of them would not have commanded
+princessly salaries in a New York extravaganza,
+unless they could have worn masks; others were distinctly
+attractive even in features. Yet all this South Sea talk about
+the ease of life in such tropical Edens is largely nonsense.
+They take life more tranquilly, it is true, but they have a lot
+of hard work to do for all that, much more hard work than
+do the citified people of our own land who rave about this
+idyllic life on the sweat-band of Mother Earth, many things
+which they would in fact be quite unable to do; and there
+seems to be just as much force of public opinion, the same
+politicians and similar nuisances to make life miserable. If
+there are no coal strikes or gasoline despots, on the other
+hand there are leeches in a more literal form; though there
+are no trolley or motor cars, in compensation spring chickens
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>sell at a nickel and really fresh eggs at two or three cents a
+dozen. A gentle unspoiled people, too obsequious by our
+standards, on the whole they lead a visibly happier life than
+do our own serious and hurried people of the West.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These Laosian villagers grow their own cotton, and the
+women spin this and the kapok of their great tropical trees
+on a crude wheel without a felly, then weave it on hand-looms
+into the garment they wear as skirt or wrapper. Beneath
+many a house, or under the projecting porch roof at
+the end of it, may be seen the lady of the family, in the
+usual comfortable and economical upper garment of nothing
+at all, leisurely engaged at her household tasks, while others,
+some of them far from ugly, sit in the shade beneath their
+pile-raised dwellings weaving their simple wardrobes, in
+rather striking patterns and of excellent wearing qualities,
+on the crudest of looms, with a stick shuttle that is thrown
+back and forth by hand. They hull their rice as it is needed,
+by stepping on the end of a long pole ending in a big wooden
+pestle, which falls monotonously into a wooden mortar, a
+hollowed section of large tree-trunk. These seem to be the
+chief occupations, but there are many others, as the traveler
+with time to watch their goings and comings during a few
+evenings will discover. As in southern China, the pan-basket
+in which rice is screened and prepared for cooking is made
+of bamboo splints, but they use clean water rather than any
+filth in which to wash it. The most hurried Laosian journey
+is a great relief from the putrescence, the crowding curiosity,
+the debauching superstitions of China. I thought I liked the
+Chinese, but I was less sure of it after this trip among the
+Laosians of gentle Buddhist faith.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The smallest village has a few Buddhist priests, the support
+of whom by giving them food seems to be almost the only
+religious practice of the lay inhabitants. The younger bonzes
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>make the rounds each morning with their begging-bowls before
+the sun is high, and now and then a man or woman
+kneels on the ground as a priest pauses to perform for a
+moment or two some hocus-pocus in reward for the charity,
+and then turns abruptly away, as if to imply that the giver
+has had his money’s worth. Begging is not looked upon as in
+the West, but as something perfectly natural, so that neither
+giver nor receiver seems to feel he is doing anything out of
+the ordinary. If I may judge by my two princely companions,
+all Laosian Buddhists say their prayers before going
+to bed as religiously as any Christian, nay, as any true Mohammedan.
+But they were more like people thanking a
+kindly benefactor with unforced gratitude than like men
+praying out of dread of a punishing God, and the true
+Laosians at least showed little if any of the fear of demonology
+rampant among the super-superstitious Chinese. No
+doubt nature is so gentle with them that the religion of
+fear, the dread and consequent attempts at propitiation of
+innumerable evil forces always waiting to do them harm,
+does not grow up within them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the other hand these naïve jungle-dwellers do not lack
+physical fear. They crouched at the trail-side raising palmed
+hands to me; in the more settled districts farther south long
+rows of them crowded against the wall of the mountain road,
+even turning their faces away, as if fearing a blow, which
+seemed to speak badly for their rulers, whether the old ones
+or the present French—or were they merely dazzled by my
+magnificence? When our pace grew too slow to be borne, I
+could always drive the coolies on by galloping after them
+shouting, whereupon they actually ran. But soon they settled
+down to an almost lazy stroll again, covering hardly
+half the ground of the incessant dog-trot of the indefatigable
+Chinese; nor were there by any means as many smiles and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>childish pleasantries as among those far harder workers and
+sufferers of many times greater hardships.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>There were good horses at Ban-phatang, and no difficulty,
+at least so far as I was concerned, in getting three excellent
+ones for another daylight start. We rode on down a fertile
+but narrow valley, closely walled on either side by high mountain
+ridges that gave us the sensation of descending a corridor
+of mountains all that fourth day. But as in China there was
+no place purposely provided for a road; we were constantly
+climbing rice-field dikes and making our way haphazard
+across what would soon again be flooded trays of pale-green
+paddy. There was one very striking wooded precipice—which
+would have been still more striking if some of the
+myriad rocks that seemed ready to fall at any moment had
+done so just as we were passing beneath them. Little huts
+on stilts everywhere awaited the coming of laborers to the
+fields, lying fallow in grass now, but planted in July and
+harvested in November. There is no water for flooding at
+other times, because it does not rain enough, though with the
+industry and ingenuity of the Chinese they could easily harness
+the rivers that run away toil-less to the distant sea. But
+there is no need to do so, because there is no such crowding
+and consequent hunger as in China and its slender little offspring,
+Annam. In many parts of those ardently ancestor-worshiping
+lands, particularly in Annam, there are three
+harvests a year, as there might be here if this people went
+in as strongly for children.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On that fourth day I was riding well ahead of my party
+when I passed near a great jungle fire far up on a high hillside,
+probably set to dear off ground for new planting. Great
+masses of red flames, and brown, almost reddish swirls and
+columns of smoke, licked at the sky, and there was a great
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>roaring miles off. At a mile it was like a battle on the Western
+Front, a constant irregular musketry that was evidently
+the bursting of the chambers of the bamboo and louder
+cannon-shots that were probably great trees falling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Had it been in China or South America, this important trail
+between the two principal capitals of Laos would be impassable,
+in spots at least, which is the same thing so far as an
+overland trip is concerned, during the rainy season that
+was now upon us. Thanks to the few French overlords,
+however, mile after mile was welded together by many woven-bamboo
+bridges that sagged like bed-springs under our
+weight. Birds sang; a gentle air and people made the trip a
+constant delight in spite of the perpetual necessity of forever
+hurrying on. The French hope to colonize the Laos, but I
+hope that they fail; it would be a pity not to have any such
+virgin lands and simple peoples left for our children and our
+children’s children to see.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then the country grew tamer, the people more independent,
+perhaps because we were now outside Luang Prabang kingdom,
+where the prince, having only French backing to his
+commands, was recognized as the servant of an alien king.
+We lunched at Vang-vieng, where a lone Frenchman in
+jungle-torn sun-scorched garb, who was doing some sort of
+work there with a band of coolies, probably in connection
+with the telegraph lines, insisted on loading me down with
+a bottle of wine. The little I had brought had given out,
+and he was sure I could never complete my hurried journey
+alive without that prime necessity. We changed coolies there,
+and again, with more trouble and a longer wait than we had
+ever had before, at another village well outside the old kingdom,
+and brought up by sunset at a jungle <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> in the wilderness,
+kept by a family sent there for that purpose by the
+French rulers.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+ <span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>
+ <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XVIII<br> <span class='c011'>VIENTIANE AND BACK TO HANOÏ</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_7 c006'>We were off again soon after dawn, by a road instead
+of a trail, a wide road that is by this time no doubt
+“automobilable,” though a car could hardly have gone over it
+then even if one could have reached it, an execrable new road
+of five hours of incessant <i><span lang="fr">montagnes russes</span></i>, constant ups and
+downs, and sadly in need of the shading tree-tops of the
+narrow trail. The prince and I left the coolies far behind
+before this torture was ended. The French are gradually
+pushing a highway from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, and
+the last few miles of this unfinished portion still had high
+earth pillars left in the cuttings to show how much was due
+the contractors whose coolies had excavated them with handbaskets.
+I lunched with the Frenchman in charge of the
+road-building, whose Annamese companion had recently
+given him another hostage to fortune, in a house on a hilltop
+overlooking a great vista, that in some ways resembled a
+South American hacienda. Here I took leave of the prince,
+who had changed his mind and decided not to go on to Vientiane.
+It was plain that he would have given much to do so,
+but evidently either the French or the king, or both, had him
+under strict discipline. A miserable Ford, that had been
+waiting for me since the day before in order that my hurried
+trip should be crowned with success, cranked up, and at
+two we chugged away in great heat over the last 106 kilometers
+to Vientiane.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>There was nothing of interest to me on this last ride,
+though there would have been for one who had not made
+the delightful overland trip. The people were much less attractive
+nearer what we are pleased to call civilization, especially
+the road-gangs. Half-way in we met the big automobile
+of the chief ruler of Laos, sent to find what had become
+of me, thanks to a strong but unwarranted suspicion that the
+Ford had broken down. Thereafter the view of the surrounding
+landscape was as from an airplane, and I reached
+Vientiane in time for a glimpse of it before dark, and dinner
+with the cream of the large French colony—with children
+as scarce as elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Vieng-chan, which under the French has become Vientiane,
+is a place of former glory and power of the Tai race, capital
+of another of those kingdoms of earlier days. Its last great
+period of prosperity was between 1628 and 1652, after which
+civil wars dispersed its power and Luang Prabang declared
+its independence, though even in the eighteenth century it
+was still powerful. Then, in 1828, the Siamese destroyed
+the city, carried off and dispersed the people, and it has
+never been rebuilt. In 1893, when a treaty with Siam gave
+all Laos, all the land east of the Mekong and some west of
+it, to France, Vieng-chan became the French capital of Laos,
+as Luang Prabang is the chief native center.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Formerly Vientiane had a hundred and twenty magnificent
+temples, so well built that, in addition to many ruins lost in
+the bush, some still remain symmetrical and perfect in general
+form, though their beams have rotted away and the masonry
+has been exposed to tropical sun and rain for a century.
+There are some striking doors giving entrance to roofless
+ruins; within the falling shell of a temple near the <i><span lang="fr">Résidence</span></i>,
+in which I was lord of all I surveyed because of the absence
+of the “résuper,” two big Buddhas sit in the infinitely
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>patient attitude of the East, though the rains fall and the
+sun beats down upon their coiled-serpent-covered heads,
+while the vegetation piously strives to clothe and hold them
+together as the mud and stone of which they are made
+crumble bit by bit away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Perhaps there is really nothing incongruous about Buddhist
+priests in bright-yellow robes riding the latest style of bicycle,
+or even about women who, wearing only a kind of skirt,
+with at most a thin gay scarf thrown hastily over the breasts,
+indulge in the same frivolous form of locomotion. But
+these things are likely to catch the attention of the visitor
+to Vientiane, at least during his first day there. Though the
+French have brought a few automobiles, the humped-ox cart—a
+curious cart with a movable axle and huge wheels higher
+than a man—is still the more common type of conveyance.
+Vientiane has an avenue of flamboyants of which it is justly
+proud, and a lot of good French residences, with a pleasant
+woodsy atmosphere out of keeping with the solemn air of
+French officialdom.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Siam lies just across the river, and here the same race
+lives on both sides of the Mekong, though the Laosians on
+the other bank rarely come over to work for the French.
+From Muongyu onward all the men had worn their hair
+pompadour; at about the place the last Ford picked me up
+even the women, no doubt influenced by their Siamese sisters
+across the river, rather than by any world-wide movement to
+do away with the chief glory of the sex, took to cutting their
+hair man-fashion. At Vientiane the women on both sides
+of the Mekong have these absurd Siamese hair-cuts, each
+hair standing on end as if the eyes beneath it had seen a
+whole flock of ghosts, and as they also chew betel-nut to
+make themselves still more repulsive it does not matter that
+one can rarely tell the two sexes apart.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>The steamer of the Messageries Fluviales got stuck on a
+sand-bank just as its picturesque Corsican captain was moving
+up to take on his passengers, so that I not only had the
+residence of the chief ruler of Laos entirely to myself for
+nearly twenty-four hours, but was able to take in all the
+sights and meet nearly all the hospitable French residents.
+The boat got away at 2:30 and was off down the river, leaving
+me behind after all my strenuous exertion to overtake
+it. But that did not matter, for the thoughtful French had
+planned it that way, so that their distinguished guest might
+finish his siesta and spend no more time than necessary on
+the uncomfortable craft. About four some of them leisurely
+set out with me by automobile and put me on board at a
+stop made for my especial benefit as far down-stream as the
+road then reached beyond Vientiane.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That afternoon we touched Siam and finally tied up at a
+place called Ban-along, where I slept well only because there
+happened to be room to set up my cot on deck, until we
+pushed off again at three in the morning. All day we
+steamed down the Mekong between Indo-China and Siamese
+jungles, now and then stopping at the French or at the farther
+bank. After the manner of the aggressive West, the French
+claim all the Mekong and allow no Siamese steamers on it.
+For centuries the Siamese and Chinese had most of the trade
+with Laos, which came and went by way of Siam; now the
+French are gradually diverting it, illustrating another of the
+advantages of protecting backward countries. No small
+amount of smuggling still goes on, especially in opium, and
+mainly engineered by the wily Chinese. Once some Laosian
+opium-smugglers who had tied up for the night at the Siamese
+bank were arrested by the Siamese police. The
+French, in keeping with their claim to the entire stream,
+made this a serious “diplomatic incident,” and to-day the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>Siamese can do nothing against smugglers and similar lawbreakers
+until they actually step ashore with their loot.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A fierce storm at dark on the second day drove us up
+against the Siamese bank again, at a place that seemed to be
+called Ban-naqué, but we were off once more at daylight and
+pulled into Thakek while it was sitting down to its midday
+meal. There an automobile that had been sent over the
+mountains from Vinh was ready to carry me off at once, but
+there was time to spare and interest enough in this frontier
+post so that I decided to stay out the day. The chief French
+official was languid with fever and bored with life. The
+head of the police, on the other hand, with a still larger native
+family, seemed to enjoy this placid tropical existence, and
+when the sun began to show an appreciable decline he called
+a queer-looking official craft and took me across the river
+to Lakhone in Siam, the first time I had actually set foot
+in that progressive land in nearly twenty years. As far at
+least as this frontier village was concerned there did not
+seem to be any great change. The natives were of the same
+race and similar customs as those of Thakek, but had an air
+about them of saying inwardly, “Well, at least we are not subject
+to French nagging.” The difference between them and
+their cousins across the river must be much like that between
+a bachelor and a henpecked husband—and their communal
+housekeeping bore out the same analogy. Leg-irons seemed
+to be no detriment to prisoners who wished to run after us
+and beg money to buy opium, neither of which things would
+be permitted their fellows in French territory, at least within
+sight of Europeans. On the other hand there is less active
+unkindness to prisoners on the French side.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were a few games of tennis in Thakek when the
+sun was low, with even two or three white women among
+the players, and next morning comfortably after six I was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>off for Annam. A native secretary of the ruler-in-chief of
+Laos diffidently shared the back seat of the big open car with
+me, and the Annamese chauffeur of course had his assistant,
+confidant, and water-boy, for your Oriental driver will not
+go without company, be it only to have some one as a receptacle
+for his conversation. It had rained and there was
+much skidding between Thakek and Nakai; in fact at that
+time of year automobiles usually cannot get through, and
+ours was the last one that did before that season’s rains settled
+down in earnest. I had never been sure of getting back
+to Annam by this route—until I got there. Had it become
+impassable as early as usual I might have gone on down the
+Mekong by the incommodious Messageries Fluviales clear
+to Pnom Penh in Cambodia, with a bit of railway about some
+falls, and made all the journey from Saïgon to Hanoï over
+again, unless I could have crossed the mountains from
+Savannakhet, by a road still less likely to be “automobilable”
+in the rainy season.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We turned up in time for lunch at a mountain shack in
+dense forest in which the “résuper” of Laos and his wife,
+about the most delightful people I met in Indo-China, were
+roughing it for a few days with their small son. I trust that
+the reader has not confounded Laos with Luang Prabang,
+which is merely the largest and most western division of it,
+its lone king decidedly subordinate to this lean and competent
+Frenchman whose palatial <i><span lang="fr">Résidence</span></i> I had occupied
+in Vientiane. Besides Luang Prabang and the 5<sup>me</sup> Territoire
+that goes with it, and spacious Tran-ninh of Xieng Khuang,
+there are half a dozen other divisions in this sparsely settled
+territory ruled over by my <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i> host across the plain
+board camp-table.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The secretary and even the extra chauffeur remained at
+the camp, as I should have done for the rest of that Sunday
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>myself had I suspected how good the road still was from
+there on. Besides, an elephant-hunt was at its height
+near-by, an unusually large herd having been discovered almost
+within shouting-distance of where we sat. In Siam it
+is forbidden to kill elephants, because they all belong to the
+king. So they do in theory also in Laos, or at least in Luang
+Prabang, but with the French ruling over it and the Chinese
+ready to pay high prices for tusks, the sacredness of the
+king’s protégés is limited. In Canton we wondered where
+the carvers of myriad ornaments got all their ivory, rather
+suspecting them of relations with the local slaughter-house;
+in Laos one wonders where the hunters find sale for so many
+tusks. I heard much concerning the life of this region during
+that convivial <i><span lang="fr">déjeuner</span></i>. Elands abound, and there are great
+herds of gaur, that wild cattle-like survivor from an earlier
+age which seems to be found nowhere else, a red-brown beast
+weighing on the average two thousand kilograms. There
+were at the camp half a dozen heads of this animal, shot
+within the past day or two, the foreheads unnaturally high,
+the female horns closer together than those of the male.
+The birds of these parts build no nests in the trees, because
+the monkeys, especially the black long-armed gibbons, steal
+their eggs. On the other hand partridge and quail, after
+building their nests in holes in the ground, roost in the trees
+as a protection against serpents.</p>
+
+<p class='c012'>I thought often of that <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> of a Cambodian province
+who broke five ribs by running into a deer, as we raced on
+eastward by a forest-walled road as unpeopled as if it had
+been built for my especial use, bounding every little while
+over bridges held by vine and woven-bamboo cables, the
+bridges themselves merely a larger form of wickerwork or
+basketry. To my astonishment and, I am sure, to that of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span>the chauffeur also, we had no difficulty in making the entire
+run from Thakek to Vinh in a single day, though it had
+not been certain that we could even make it in two, and a
+day later we might not have been able to make it at all.
+But even nature seemed to take an interest in my record-breaking
+trip, and we were agreeably surprised to find astonishingly
+dry parts of the road which should have been
+sloughs of despondency. It was still only a little after noon
+when we halted at the village <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> that had been officially
+chosen as my night’s stopping-place, just long enough to
+tell the servants that their guest was flying onward.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Soon afterward we picked up a Chinese merchant from
+Yünnanfu, whose mandarin was nearly enough like that
+of Peking so that I astonished him by managing a meager
+conversation in his own tongue. He had two bullock-carts
+loaded with tigers—everything except the flesh—and many
+deer-horns, all valuable in the medicine-shops of his native
+land, especially the tiger-claws, to be powdered and drunk in
+wine by the faint-hearted, if I fully understood him. At the
+pace his native Jehus were making he would have been from
+ten days to a fortnight in reaching Vinh. I am notably softhearted,
+so when he and the chauffeur joined in coaxing me
+to let the Celestial go along with us, it seemed so much like
+making a man a present of ten days of life, more precious
+than money, that I succumbed—and for my pains was
+cramped for the rest of the trip into the off front seat, the
+left of course, usually occupied by the assistant chauffeur.
+The Chinese showed all signs of glee, even though he was of
+a race to whom ten days is no more than five hours, and
+paying off his simple Laosian bullock-drivers, he began loading
+his moth-eaten trophies into the car. I had miscalculated
+the loads, or fancied he would throw most of the worthless
+stuff away in order to ride with us; but no, indeed—I began
+to wonder whether he was even going to try to tuck the
+bullock-carts away in our maltreated conveyance. Of course
+the chauffeur got a nice little thing out of it—in fact he as
+much as said so in his hybrid Annamese-French, with a subtle
+hint that for this favor he did not expect me to tip him
+at the end of the run—and I have no doubt that all this had
+been cooked up between them when bullock-carts and automobile
+met two days before a few miles farther west. That
+would explain the extraordinary occurrence of leaving the
+assistant chauffeur behind; probably he eventually got his
+share of the grateful Yünnanese’s gratuity, for walking back
+to Vinh during the rainy season.</p>
+
+<div id='i_354' class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_354a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>This ancient monument in Vientiane, French capital of Laos, is the most curious remnant of its regal days</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_354b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>A door of a ruined palace or temple of Vientiane</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div id='i_355' class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_355a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Within the ruined temple the Buddhas sit, in the infinitely patient attitude of the East, crumbling away under the rains and disappearing beneath the encroaching jungle</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id003'>
+<img src='images/i_355b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic002'>
+<p>Though the French have brought automobiles to Vientiane, this ancient form of conveyance still predominates</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>There were some coffee plantations, among corn and rubber-trees,
+that afternoon, the largest of them belonging to
+the man whom I had met at Cuarao on the outward trip; but
+he was not at home—this home, at least. We had already
+begun dropping down out of the great Annamese chain, the
+road in places a serpentine succession of descending curves
+magnificently framed in vine-clothed forest and precipices,
+and by three we were back in Annam again, another world,
+with its groves of slender <i><span lang="fr">aréquiers</span></i> climbed by betel-vines, its
+many villages surrounded by high thick bamboo hedges, its
+water-buffaloes of elephant and albino colors, its tombs and
+grave-mounds, its <i><span lang="fr">bacs</span></i> and rice-fields, its joss-houses and
+red-saliva-splotched roads, its myriad people in parasol-hats,
+diamond-shaped breast-covers, necklaces of grains of gold,
+black cheese-cloth overcoats, gowns of the color of tobacco-juice,
+its endless files of pole-carrying coolies of both sexes
+and all ages; in thinly populated Laos the battle with hunger
+is not so keen that children need to begin their labors so early.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese and his tigers got off in the outskirts of Vinh,
+lest the government hear of the misuse of its official transportation,
+and the air was still more reminiscent of afternoon
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>than of evening when I entered the same room of the French-Spanish
+hotel I had occupied when I first came northward
+along the Mandarin Road three months before. The chauffeur
+had protested that his orders were to drive me to the
+<i><span lang="fr">Résidence</span></i>, but I felt that I had been overdoing French
+colonial hospitality, now that it was possible to provide for
+myself. Yet I was forced to dine with the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> who had
+driven me away toward Xieng Khuang twenty days back,
+and he and his wife succeeded in convincing me that they
+were really disappointed because I had not come to occupy
+the palatial room they had once more prepared for me. For
+one can have no secrets in Indo-China. The incessant telegraph
+keeps one’s doings more in the public, or at least the
+official, eye than does the most flagrant of our yellow journals,
+and barely had I passed the village <i><span lang="fr">sala</span></i> that had been
+officially chosen as my stopping-place that night than a telegram
+had warned the <i><span lang="fr">résident</span></i> that the wild American was
+again breaking records.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In early May the Vinh-to-Hanoï landscape is a sea of
+ripening rice from which those great black-gray rock hills
+of strange form and varied strata stand forth like fantastic
+islands. I cannot remember ever having endured a hotter
+day than that train-ride. This was the hottest time of the
+year, just before the summer rains, utterly cloudless and
+often without the slightest breeze. With June come torrential
+downpours and cooler weather. There was a wind that day,
+but it happened to be blowing in the same direction in which
+I was traveling. Going south would probably have been
+pleasant riding; going north was intermittent torture. When
+we stopped, as fortunately we did often and sometimes for
+fairly long periods, the breeze from the south made life quite
+agreeable; but as long as the train was moving, sweat poured
+forth as from a fountain. Even when it blew to advantage
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>the wind was as if it came off a red-hot stove, and all day
+long there was not a fleck of cloud in the sky to temper the
+wicked sunshine. Cattle lolled in groups under the trees;
+water-buffaloes, if they were to be seen at all, squatted in
+their mud-holes; but though “citadels” were waffle-irons and
+the highway a burning strand, men and women in their broad
+hats and coppery-brown garments still trotted in endless
+files along it and the by-roads that were mere thin lines
+drawn in a vast expanse of greenery; for rice must be had
+for hungry mouths no matter what the weather.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_inside_back.jpg' alt='Endpaper' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_inside_back2.jpg' alt='Century VAGABOND BOOKS of TRAVEL' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c004'>
+</div>
+<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+ <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
+ </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+ <ul class='ul_1 c002'>
+ <li>Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78626 ***</div>
+</body>
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+</html>
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