INDO-CHINA 19 



by conditions of soil and climate. In Indo-China indeed 

 two main landscapes strike the eye of the traveller : the 

 rugged mass of wooded mountains through which swift 

 and mighty streams have carved their deep channels, 

 and the low swamps rapidly encroaching on the sea by 

 means of the colossal deposits which are spread broad- 

 cast by the rivers when in flood. All the big rivers, 

 Si-kiang, Song-ho, Mekong, Menam, Salwin, and Irawadi, 

 thus create vast belts of half-emerged swamps, covered 

 by an inextricable network of sluggish, muddy, and ever- 

 changing tidal waterways, like the sundarbans of the 

 Ganges. On these shaky muds have sprung into exis- 

 tence low, gloomy, impenetrable tangles of evergreen 

 swamp forests, corresponding to the vargem or igapu 

 of the Amazon, with their canopy almost resting on the 

 water during the monsoon period. An excess of ground- 

 water here counterbalances the effect of the dry season. 



A great part of the land thus conquered by the 

 shallow seas, is however being reclaimed by man and 

 enclosed by levees before it has time to develop its own 

 vegetation. Rice-fields (or ' paddy '-fields) are planted on 

 the undried silt, and rivers are bordered by areca and 

 other palms, bambu-thickets and groves of banana- 

 trees. The luxuriance of these 'paddy-lands' is un- 

 bounded ; areca and coco-nut palms, manjack fruit, 

 tamarind, orange and lemon, bread-fruit, and cinnamon 

 trees yield profuse crops. Besides rice, the land, divided 

 as a chess-board, gives pineapple, tobacco, indigo, cotton, 

 and all the variety of tropical produce. The waste-land 

 remains in the state of undrained, impassable reed- 

 swamps, where there is an extraordinary abundance of 

 game. 



The mountains of the interior hardly know a period 

 entirely devoid of rainfall, and are therefore clad with 



