7038 Natural-History Collectors. 



the rowers go in the evening to look for the fire where they 

 in the morning had cooked their rice. I sailed up it in a small bark 

 with three rowers, and the current was so strong at the turning of the 

 river that it was almost impossible to proceed; it was necessary to 

 make a thousand efforts and even to hold on by the rushes, so as not 

 to be carried away by the current. Eight days after leaving Pinhalu 

 I arrived at Pempticlan, a large Cambodian village, from where 

 it was necessary to travel by land. There remained one hundred and 

 sixty miles to accomplish in chariots towards the east. I met with a 

 good reception from the mandarins placed by Government over all 

 this part of the country, and on the evening of the following day 

 1 was able to set out. The first day the chariots upset, and I found 

 it almost impossible to proceed ; we met with fearful bogs, quag- 

 mires and marshy ground, but still more terrible, the chariots sunk to 

 the axletrees and the buffaloes to their bellies. The following day, 

 happily, the road became better, but during three weeks we saw 

 nothing but a few poor rice fields near the villages, and we had to 

 continue our way through a marshy plain covered with thick and dark 

 forests, which remind one of the enchanted forests in the description 

 of Tasso, and it seemed almost that from every trunk which was 

 struck, there was about to appear some enchanted being; and it is 

 easy to understand that the imagination of this Pagan people 

 fancied those dens of monstrous and fearful animals to be the 

 dwellings of malevolent spirits : twenty times in an hour the troop of 

 men who — beside the conductors of the chariots — accompanied me, 

 were obliged to raise the large branches and cut down the trunks 

 which obstructed our passage, and at times to make a new passage 

 altogether. Beyond Penhalu the Cambodians were much surprised 

 to see us go amongst the Stiengs, and at the worst time of the 

 year, for there the rainy season had commenced ; even those 

 who live nearest them dare not venture to approach them, so that had 

 I not brought from Siam the two domestics which I had in my service, 

 I could not have been able for any money to have found a single 

 individual to follow me ; even they felt the greatest repugnance to 

 advance. As at Siam, Cambodia has a terrible reputation of in- 

 salubrity, and unhappily for ray domestics and for myself, all were 

 attacked with fever in the middle of the forests ; and since then 1 have 

 had instead of their services, two patients to take care of. In passing 

 through a village, peopled two-thirds by a barbarian race of 

 Annamites, I risked being taken by them and finishing my explora- 

 tions in a dungeon, where I should have found no other insects but 



