FROM TONKIN TO INDIA 



characters nothing but rude representations of agricultural imple- 

 ments. I am inclined to believe he was right. 



At a hamlet some furlongs from the river we called a halt 

 for a day to rest our tired animals, one of which we had been 

 compelled to abandon that morning. The dwellings in this place 

 were white, with gabled roofs cemented with lime ; and had it 

 not been for the hideous red paper with which the doors were 

 plastered, one might have believed oneself in an Arab country. 

 As night fell, the mist that wrapped the opposite shore was 

 cloven by the glare of a conflagration : a fiery serpent writhed 

 on the hillside and coiled itself in the hollows, to rear a 

 glowing head as it crept upwards to the summit. P'or hours I 

 watched with awestruck admiration this spectacle of splendid 

 devastation. 



On the morrow we resumed our march by the zigzag course 

 of the Song-Coi, which here varied in width from about fifty 

 yards in the stream to three hundred yards in the bed. Houses 

 were grouped in terraces upon the promontories, sometimes with 

 verandahs, Thibetan fashion, with flat adjoining roofs, which 

 afforded drying ground for the hay and means of communica- 

 tion for the inmates. The latter were Pais, or, to speak more 

 generally, Laotians, clad in Chinese garb. Sao addressed some 

 words to them in Laotian, and was understood. The whole 

 of this part of the Red River valley showed traces of a 

 bygone prosperity, and must have been ravaged by the Mussul- 

 man war. 



The path at this point left the lower level, and climbed under 

 craggy rocks to which clung the taper-like cactus, and by slopes 

 where the sward lay like a fleece, over which one felt inclined 

 to pass one's hand ; when ruffled by the breeze its surface broke 



48 



