FROM TONKIN TO INDIA 



Among our informants was one who said that from Moam it 

 was a sixteen days' journey to Atsara (the Thibetan name for 

 Assam), where there was a big river, and on it boats with houses 

 that went like the wind. Clearly there was a road from Moam into 

 Assam, and we already saw ourselves navigating the Brahmaputra. 



The allurement of all the delights awaiting us in Moam led us 

 to set out from M^lekeu on the i6th (November), notwithstanding 

 that Briffaud was lame from a bamboo splinter. Our gaping boots, 

 scarce held together by many a strip of hide, no longer saved our 

 feet. In our impatience for a horizon we made the best of our 

 hobbling speed towards the summit of a col, in view since the 

 preceding night. It was but 5,200 feet ; but every step was a slip, 

 each leaf a shower-bath, while overhead the monkeys greeted our 

 efforts with ceaseless mockery. There before us it lay at length ; 

 still far away, but revealed. A wide expanse of apparent inundation 

 enveloping lagoons of land ; but what to our eyes seemed swamps 

 were no doubt paddy-fields. Upon its farther verge rose folded 

 hills to the ridgre of the frontier chain of Assam. What mattered 

 it to us then that fresh snow powdered the distant crests ? The 

 plain for which we longed lay between us and them. 



We pushed on, leaving the main body of our carriers to follow. 

 At four o'clock in the afternoon we discerned the blue smoke of 

 a habitation, and presently became aware of a noisy gathering 

 under a shed. Chattering, laughing, and gesticulating all at once, 

 a band of almost naked men, women, and children were pressing 

 round a large cauldron. We had lighted upon a Kioutse harvest 

 fete in propitiation of the mountain deity, to whose satisfaction, and 

 their own, copious libation of rice wine was being made. Every- 

 one was merry, most were tipsy. Old men babbled, women play- 

 fully pushed each other, a child harangued an aged individual, most 



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