1840.] Mission to the Court of Siam. 5 



equally varying in colour. Buffaloes, bison, and wild cows 

 have long disappeared, but deer and wild hog are still plentiful. 



January 2bth. — Camboorie, 5h. 20m., fifteen miles. Thermr. 

 6 a. m. 66% Noon 90°. Notwithstanding the repeated assurance 

 of our old Siamese guide, (hitherto they have been Talines,) 

 that the vile water we were drinking was the only water 

 within many miles, the elephant people, when looking for 

 their elephants this morning came on a beautiful stream with- 

 in 100 yards of us, just when it was too late to be of any use 

 to us. We started at 8 a.m. and marching along a dead level 

 plain, averaging from two or three to six miles in breadth^ 

 thinly covered with low trees, very little underwood, with strong 

 crop of coarse grass, the soil apparently good, reached in an 

 hour another stream of water a little N. W. of the road ; the 

 march was of one uniform character throughout, and at no 

 great distance from the See-sa-wat river, between which and 

 the road runs a low range of hills, and another of greater 

 altitude, and more rugged and abrupt, between us and the May- 

 nam-noi; at 10h.30m. passed another small run of water spring- 

 ing out of some rocks in the plain, the water of which is 

 soft and unpleasant. Here we halted half an hour ; from this 

 the grass is shorter, but still rank and coarse. At 12h. 45m. 

 we saw the first paddy fields since leaving Maulmain, near 

 which we march till lh. 25m. when we enter a plantation 

 of cotton, (which was high and flourishing) plantain, and to- 

 bacco, close to the See-sa-wat, which we should have known 

 to belong to Chinese, even had we not seen them at work in the 

 fields, so incomparably superior are they in all their opera- 

 tions, agricultural or mechanical, to the indolent slovenly natives 

 of Indo-China. Along this our route lay till lh. 50m. when 

 we crossed the See-sa-wat, about three and a half or four feet at 

 the deepest, but of considerable width, perhaps 160 paces wide ; 

 after waiting an hour at a shed, about thirty feet wide and forty- 

 eight long, enclosed by a palasade of bamboos close to, and 

 partly in the river, and no notice being taken of us, I sent the 

 Siamese interpreter and writer to announce my arrival, and pur- 

 pose of my visit to the Myo-won, and request an interview to- 

 morrow. The great man was as usual reported to be asleep, 



