GEOGRAPHY OF THE UPPER MEKONG. 
549 
Further south lies the valley of the Nam Sak flowing into the 
Meinam- — a kind of border-land between Siam proper and the Lao 
people, and consequently pretty full of cattle-lifters, elephant-stealers, 
and the like. It is a region rich in mineral — from scanty gold in the 
Mekong sands and alluvial gravels to massive deposits of haematite, 
lodes of galena, tellurium, bismuth, and other minerals, which cannot 
be got at to any purpose until communications are improved. 
Below Chieng Kan there is a* series of difficult rapids with which 
the river starts on its course eastward to Nongkhai. In places are 
huge bays carved out by the swirling eddies from the dark slate rocks, 
which tower aloft 30 or 40 feet in the low-water season, and are sub- 
merged by the rushing brown surface in the floods. Often the river 
is not 200 feet wide, a cauldron of seething whirlpools, with no bottom 
at 20 fathoms, and for a quarter of a mile on each side above the rocks 
stretch the hot banks of blown sand, with deep pools among them, over 
which in flood-time the waters can find an exit; then the Lao boats 
creep up along the banks close beneath the trees, and far from the 
tearing current in the centre. The banks are hilly and covered with 
fine forests; and, as further north when the time comes, will yield 
endless valuable heavy woods and dyes, of which the present scanty 
population can use but little. 
Wieng Chon . — A s the river turns more south toward Nongkhai it 
opens out in wide spaces of still water, which, at the great expanse of 
Ang Pla Bilk, is over a mile across, and a famous breeding-ground for 
the fish (said to he a sturgeon) of that name. 
Below, on the left bank, lies Wieng Chan, the old capital of a 
formerly powerful Lao State, which was destroyed in 1827 by the 
Siamese. Though long ago in ruins, it is the centre of a number of 
thriving villages, which have every appearance of prosperity. The 
French, now they possess that bank, could not do better than make it 
once more the head-quarters of the surrounding country, so advan- 
tageously situated is it, and so full of association to the Lao mind. 
Southward, again, in wide placid reaches, winds the Mekong, here 
some 500 feet below its level at Luang Prabang. Though subject to fits 
of violence iu the squalls of March and April, it is on the whole tamed 
for a long distance in its course. ITence to Kemmarat steamers will 
be able to ply, and And fairly deep water all the year, and a compara- 
tive immunity from rapids; but I am inclined to think that Nongkhai 
is more likely to feed through Bangkok than they to feed Nongkhai. 
Nongkhai . — This town is the Siamese administrative and com- 
mercial centre of the Eastern Lao States, and the middle Mekong 
region. To the southward stretches the flat expanse of the Korat 
Plateau, at a mean height of about 600 feet above sea-level ; a plain 
of salt-fields and extensive swamps, draining for the most part into the 
Nam Moon and its tributaries. Between the swamps and salt 
districts lie the open jungles known as kok , productive, so far as 
mv experience goes, of little else but hard- woods, thirst, and heat. 
Trade . — The whole of the trade of this region is in the hands of 
1,000 or so of Chinese, living chiefly in Korat and Nongkhai; the 
Eastern Lao, distinguished from our northern friends by their absence 
of tattooing, as well as their methods of life, never having been very 
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