GEOGRAPHY OF THE UPPER MEKONG. 
547 
there within your two hours, and find a glorious cool stream alongside. 
With the exception of trifles of that sort, everyone is invariably most 
anxious to please ; and so far does this carry the kind-hearted Lao 
that as you pound along the trail, asking him the name of this and 
that, he is contriving a most plausible scheme of names for every 
stream and brook and mountain you pass ; and only next day. if you 
go over them again from your notebook with someone else, will you 
find how far the good fellow was willing to perjure his soul simply to 
give you what he conceived was a pleasure to you. He knew you 
wanted names, and would be annoyed if you couldn’t get them. So 
he gave them you ; you can’t complain. 
Muang Nan . — Across the watershed from Paklai, westward, lie a 
confused mass of forested bills, the highest points rising to 3,000 and 
4,000 feet, full of game, and teak and other fine timber, 'and but 
sparsely inhabited by the temperate Nan men and their elephants. 
In fact, if you are searching for a model State, you will find about the 
nearest thing to it among those hills, where no thieving or violence 
are ever dreamed of, opium is not allowed, and the chaws (or chiefs) 
are imbued with the extraordinary and primitive notion that the chief 
must he a leader in deed as well as in name, and must be an example 
to his people for good ; that if opium-smoking is not permitted to the 
people, the chief himself were better dead than infringing against 
that law. In all the villages, even the most remote, you will find a 
tidy sala (or rest-house) kept in excellent order for the passing 
traveller. You will have a large audience of women and jolly children 
come to meet you with cocoanuts, and when the men and lads return 
at evening a gang of them will come and sit round the fire, the chill 
night through, to guard you that no evil befall while in their village; 
and any time you wake you may see them squatting or lying round 
the blaze, wrapped from the heavy dew in their long red and white 
cloaks, and hear their low talk and gentle laugh. No Nan Lao ever 
talks five minutes without a laugh thrown in, and quarrelling and hard 
words are beneath him, and moreover are ill for merit-making, as he 
learned when a pupil iu the monastery hard by. 
His ideas of wealth and prosperity are a buxom wife (even though 
she bo afflicted with goitre), some hardy boys to help him in the jungTe, 
an elephant or two, and a dug-out iu the stream. In the forest liis only 
needs are his long curved dlrnp, his cloak, and flint and steel, with a 
handful or so of hill rice, and a little sugar-cane and tobacco in his bag. 
Elephants . — As the camel in the desert, and the dog upon the 
icefloe, so the elephant is indispensable in the forest of Nan, whether 
for hauling teak, carrying cotton or tobacco down to Nan, or bringing 
home the jungle produce. And naturally enough round every Lao 
fire he forms, with the tiger and the pi, or spirits of the mountain, the 
hero of many a camp yarn. 
Monhot (and Colquhoun copies him) says that they never carry 
more than 250 to 300 lb. ; but three to four picul is nearer the mark (400 
to 500 lb.), aucl for short journeys rather more, the average pace not ex- 
ceeding two and a-half miles an hour for a day’s march on the hill trails, 
which are often very rough for any beast of burden. They differ very 
much in gait, the big teak-hauling elephant having a regular jack-tar roll, 
which is not pleasant for many hours’ ride, and is indeed more bearable 
in the mahout’s place upon the neck. A hill elephant, accustomed 
