FROM MONGTSE TO SSUMAO 



Bo, passes, in less than a week's journey below where we stood, 

 Muong-le (Lai-chau). The natives talked of Tonkin, to the dispirit- 

 ing of Sao, who imagined that by embarking here on a raft we 

 might be back there in a week. Nam, too, whose geographical 

 knowledge was of the vaguest, and placed Saigon close by, thought 

 he must be near home. They both wondered where in the world 

 we were taking them, and what possible object we could have in 

 wandering- about such uninvitinsf and monotonous countries. 



The passage of the river was easily accomplished by relays 

 in a long pirogue, only two of the beasts requiring to be towed 

 •over, and the rest beginning quite to take to swimming. 



In leaving the Black River I too threw a regretful glance 

 behind me, like my Annamites, though my motive was not theirs. 

 The knowledge of the life of a part of India, of Central Asia, 

 •embracing several hundred million beings, was becoming intel- 

 ligible to my perception. For the moment I yielded to the 

 witchery of Nirvana. . . . 



But at night we were rudely recalled to the realities of lite 

 by an unforeseen peril. Under the pretext that tigers were in 

 the vicinity, our men set a light to the brushwood round our hut. 

 It was too late to check them, and presently we were walled in 

 with a ring-fence of roaring flame, which, if it saved us candles 

 to write by, also only missed the destruction of our persons and 

 property by the providential absence of the least wind. 



We reached Muong-le on the 28th (March) ; the later stages 

 having been performed over a paved and widened road through 

 a. pretty country positively homelike in its foliage and grassy 

 slopes. One might almost have imagined oneself in some corner 

 of France, until by a turn of the path one came upon a mud- 

 walled village with yellow roofs in a clearing of cane-brake and 



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