1900.] on Life in Indo-China. 275 



a telegraph pole awaiting the departure of a herd of buffaloes which 

 waited impatiently below throughout the day. The buffalo, when he 

 is not too sulky, is used for ploughing, for treading out the padi, and 

 for drawing the big buffalo carts. But the ship of the jungle of 

 Indo-China is the elephant. He is to be found in every upland 

 village of the Lao country, swinging his trunk among the cocks and 

 hens, or minding the baby in the back-yard. From the forest he 

 slowly hauls the teak trees to the nearest river, or climbs patiently 

 along the hill sides with his master's last crop of cotton or tobacco on 

 his back. Mr. Smyth went on to speak of the methods of capture and 

 training the elephants in different parts of the peninsula, and re- 

 marked that it is a singular fact which speaks well for the intelligence 

 and humanity of the Asiatic, that not a single race which has come 

 into contact with the elephant has failed to make use of his sagacity 

 and strength by domesticating him. It is interesting to note that the 

 price of the elephant in most parts of Indo-China is about that of the 

 horse in this country, but it varies greatly with his age and attain- 

 ments. In the teak districts, large sums amounting to over 200Z. are 

 paid for a good hauler. The lecturer briefly referred to the ponies 

 and mules which are used for purposes of transport by the Moham- 

 medan traders of the north. 



He proceeded to refer to the people of Indo-China, and remarked 

 that no country in the world presents so many different types, or 

 provides such an interesting field for the ethnologist. It was com- 

 plicated by the perpetual warfare which has to our own times been 

 waged between the various races with ever-changing fortunes since the 

 dawn of their history, and which has prevented settled government 

 and has not given an opportunity for the development of peaceful 

 industries. Mr. Warington Smyth passed over the semi-Chinese 

 inhabitants of Tong-King, the Annamites, the Cambodians, the 

 Malays, the Siamese and Burmans, and went on to speak more 

 particularly of the Laos and the Shans, and other tribes about which 

 information is not so easily accessible. All the Lao people had 

 adopted Buddhism, but at the same time they retained a large ad- 

 mixture of spirit worship. Speaking of the tribe known as the 

 Musur as the Lao call them, or Musho as the Burmese Shans style 

 them, the lecturer remarked that it was stated on good authority that 

 M. Pavie, the French Commissioner, during the Anglo-French Com- 

 mission, was ready to claim the whole country on the ground that 

 these were evidently French subjects, else they could not have been 

 called by a name which was so evidently a corruption for Monsieur 

 by their neighbours. The badness of the pun was said by unkind 

 persons to be equalled only by the quality of the claims made by 

 France to this district. 



Going on to speak of the architecture of the Indo-Chinese Penin- 

 sula, Mr. Warington Smyth said that the traveller would notice two 

 primary forms in all the Buddhist — and there was practically no other 

 — architecture of Indo-China, the spire-like pagoda, taking various 



