HANOI TO MONGTSE 



same which had already seen service with me from Koulja to 

 Tonkin, five years before. Who knew what countries it was to 

 behold this time ! 



It took us two days and a half to reach Mongtse, sleeping 

 each night in the corners of the inn stables. On the way we 

 passed a strange series of isolated hills, like detached sugar- 

 loaves, and christened them the Cone Chain. " At their base we 

 came across many funnel-shaped depressions, which in semblance 

 might have been the moulds in which the cones had been cast. 

 The only vegetation was scanty grass but ill covering the grey 

 stones. Although only at an altitude of 6,175 feet, we received 

 the impression of high summits. A closer view revealed that 

 these mountains could not be attributable to volcanic formation, 

 as one had first been inclined to believe. They were of grey 

 limestone, like those of the bay of Along. Traces of coal in the 

 neighbourhood tended to confirm the idea that the same geological 

 forces that in Tonkin appear as cliffs here showed themselves in 

 cones. 



After descending from the Cone Chain, a march of varied 

 elevation brought us to a rocky gap surmounted by a little 

 pagoda. Before us lay the great plain of Mongtse. For two 

 hours we continued at a round pace through cultivated fields, 

 and past the small town of Si-ngan-tso, until we checked our 

 beasts beneath the walls of Mongtse, in front of a spacious white 

 building used as the French Consulate, and were received by 

 MM. Guerin and Mark. 



This last-named grentleman bore on his hand the trace of a recent 

 wound. Some time before, he had been attacked in his house 

 by six men armed with spears. He defended the door of his room 

 behind a barrier of chairs, but received a blow from a pike through 



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