158 Notice of a Chinese Geographical work. [Feb. 



Its shores are covered with extensive forests, abounding in large apes 

 and monkeys, and in beautiful birds whose songs are heard in all 

 directions. The villages of the natives are numerous, and the cultiva- 

 tion is extensive. In the season of cultivation, entire families proceed 

 in boats to dig and sow* [the lands] : and having finished that, they 

 return home, without remaining to weed. "When the grain is ripe, they 

 proceed back again by boat, and reap it. The stalks of this paddy are 

 about twenty cubits in length. The tribute is paid in the produce of the 

 soil. As they finish planting the young rice, the waters of the Hwang ho 

 come down. The young plants increase with the waters : if these rise 

 one cubit, the rice grows one cubit : if the waters rise ten cubits, the 

 rice grows ten cubits. It is in no wise destroyed or injured. When 

 the waters retire, the rice ripens. One branch of the river enters the 

 Central Kingdom. Its current is very violent. Another branch enters 

 the countries to the west, and turning again through Tung po chdi and 

 Tsim lo, enters the sea with a moderate current. The lands are greatly 

 enriched by its waters, and hence the country is very productive of 

 rice ; the very stones seem propitious. 



It is generally asserted that they catch deer on the tops of trees. 

 They draw their cattle upon a raised platform lest these too be carried 

 away and lost by the current like the deer. They remain on platforms 

 on the tops of trees. They have huts, too, in the vallies, erected in 

 the midst of the water. They take their cattle up into these. Should 

 a man be eaten by a tiger, or swallowed by an alligator, they respectfully 

 announce it to the native sang.f The sang utters imprecations, and 

 the tiger approaches ; with incantations they throw a cotton thread in 



over Camboge and lower Cochinchina, and causing the same fertility as the Nile 

 does in Egypt. What Maltebrun speaks of a traveller having arrived at Laos from 

 China by descending one of the rivers and crossing a lake, does not prove that the 

 Camboge river has its source in China ; this on the contrary accords exactly with 

 the Cochinchinese map ; about the 23d or 24th degree of latitude one of the rivers, 

 which flows from the mountains of Ligum-nam, enters the great river of Camboge. 

 This Portuguese traveller must have taken the junction of these two rivers for a 

 lake." (J. A. S. VII. 322). 



* M. Klaproth, " a l'epoque des travaux champetres, ils ferment leur maison^ 

 cachent leurs bateaux et leur rames, et s'occupent de l'agriculture." 



t |g The Chinese transcript of the Sanscrit ^flT sanga. 



