OVER THE MOUNTAINS TO LAOS
Early April found me back in Hanoï, this time as a family of five rather
than a foot-loose individual. It was not the place I had left two months
before. Constantly heavy skies gave it a gloomy oppressive atmosphere
not at all like those brilliant days of late January. Almost perpetual
rain, even though it was not always heavy, made the life of the city
less chic, less lively. With even the big wide streets covered with a
light _couche_ of mud and water, the large French community seemed to
dress in its older clothes rather than in its Parisian best. In a
hundred ways the change in weather made other things different. But the
natives, especially the toiling masses, were evidently used to a season
that had befallen them yearly for who knows how many centuries; for,
covered with big pancake hats and palm-leaf rain-coats, they splashed
about in their bare feet almost as happily as in the brilliant month of
January.
Luckily Sunday managed to be fine long enough to confirm my reports on
the zoo and _guignol_ and the band-concert in the governor-general’s
park, and convince all three generations of my family that a month in
the little Paris of the East would be the great contrast to life in
China which my first glimpse of it had promised. It was still brilliant
too, and already hot, when I took the train next morning for Vinh,
through a land everywhere lush green now, to be met at the station that
evening and carried home by the _résident_ in person. For though I had
not known it until a day or two before, the journey through Laos,
Indo-China’s largest, most distant, and least known division, could only
be made more or less officially, with the willingness and connivance,
sometimes the actual help, of the French authorities. That part of it
which I proposed to visit could hardly be reached even on foot without
government permission and aid, and only those whom the governor-general
considers _personæ gratæ_ may expect either. The time will soon come
when that great region northeast of Siam will be made the commonplace
stamping-ground of tourists, but so far the roads were only started and
the hotels not yet begun even on paper. Still, the French were not
averse to begin to let the outside world from which tourists eventually
come know what will some day be in store for them.
The _résident_ did me the honor of driving his big Peugeot next day
himself, though to save face he took along his native chauffeur, as well
as a “boy” to act as general servant. We turned back north for
thirty-five kilometers along the railway by which I had come, then swung
sharply west from the macadam road upon a gravel one that was by no
means poor. At the first village officially recognized by the French the
army turned out—a score of Annamese soldiers in white knickerbocker
uniforms and red wrap-leggings, with the familiar brass-tipped mushroom
hats, all of them barefoot except the sergeant, whose heavy high shoes
on the ends of his thin legs gave him a resemblance to a diver about to
descend to the bottom of the sea. With stiff leather cartridge-boxes in
the pits of their stomachs, their French rifles with the long sharp
bayonets, usually carried sidewise high on their shoulders but now held
stiffly perpendicular before them, and as spick and span as only native
troops under European command can be, they stood at rifle-salute behind
their young French officer with raised sword, the very personification
of the East under Western training, while the _résident_ leisurely got
out and inspected them as deliberately as if it were a pleasure to stand
motionless in full dress beneath a tropical sun. Once these formalities
were over, however, and arms had been grounded, the two Frenchmen shook
hands and fraternized like exiled brothers.
While they are hardly a military people, any more than the Chinese, the
Annamese had compulsory military service for all men between the ages of
eighteen and sixty long before the French came. In fact they were so
often called to arms that the field-work was largely left to their
wives, which is perhaps why the women seem even to-day more at home in
the fields than the men. Nor has the country lost its militaristic
aspect under the French. Besides the white conscripts from overseas to
be seen at important points, native soldiers are constantly in evidence.
Astonishingly well groomed and set up compared to the armed ragamuffins
of China, they commonly salute all Europeans with a gravity that further
distinguishes them from the saucy, leering uniformed coolies of the
soldier-ridden land to the north.
Naturally, most of these _linh_ are Annamese, though each of the four
protectorates has its own soldiers, nominally under command of its king
or emperor—“semi-volunteers” they are usually called, and quite
properly. For even to-day it is no business of the king or emperor, much
less of the French, whether or not they are volunteers in the true sense
of the word. Mandarins or other officials tell each commune how many
recruits it is required to furnish, and they are duly furnished, without
embarrassing questions. The notables of each village choose those who
shall leave it for eighteen months of service, at the ratio of one
recruit to every six adult males, and naturally they do not include
their own sons among them. Their training over, the youths may return to
their homes, but are subject to call until the age of sixty. Many prefer
to remain under arms longer than is required, and with this system
France—or the native sovereign—has a reserve of very respectable size,
some of whom have served five, ten, and even fifteen years. The French
assert that conscription is hardly necessary, that most of the soldiers
of Annam are real volunteers, that all the men of Annam wanted to go to
France at the time of the war to fight for the “mother-land.” If so,
this indicates a patriotism, or at least a wanderlust, not in keeping
with the manner of most of them, though it is true that a visible pride
shines forth in the brown faces of those few native soldiers, usually
noncommissioned officers, who display two or three French medals across
their breasts.
An hour or more later we crossed a river by a _bac_ and raced
comfortably on along grass-grown roads for the rest of the morning. The
rice-fields had given way to brush and forests, the plain to ridges and
ravines, to a semi-wilderness in which the scarcity of people was in
great contrast to the endless files of cinnamon-clad coolies of both
sexes jogging under their shoulder-pole burdens, the files of
wheelbarrows carrying produce to market, pack-animals among which our
snorting conveyance created a panic reminiscent of the early days of the
automobile, and to the crowded hat-roofed markets themselves, close
beside and even in the road, on what might be called the Annamese side
of the river. For though we were still geographically in Annam, almost
no country in the world is so narrow as this one in the vicinity of
Vinh, and almost nowhere do conditions change more quickly, once the
crowded, rich, flat coast-land between the Gulf of Tonkin and the
Annamese chain has been left behind. Already we began to meet
tribespeople very different from the Annamese. Barely two hours from the
railroad there appeared women dressed from just above the nipples barely
to the knees, in primitive skirts wrapped about the lower waist,
carrying heavy loads of wood, with a forehead-strap similar to that of
our Indians. They were Muong, that is, “wild people,” though their
wildness showed mainly in their timidity as they slipped off into the
jungle below the raised road. We had not merely changed regions at the
_bac_; we had entered a new world, stepped back several centuries.
We raced incessantly westward, for all the grass in the road, along
which a path meandered as constantly as if forever dodging the evil
spirits that can only move in a straight line, like a rifle-bullet,
never encountering another vehicle—except once, when we missed by inches
meeting head on at a brush-hidden turn the only automobile of the day.
Toward noon we stopped at a Muong village, where we picked up a French
colonist with holdings scattered among the foot-hills of the Annamese
chain. The two Frenchmen of course were already acquainted, and there
was the usual _apéritif_ before we sat down to a surprisingly good
_déjeuner_ in a more or less public rest-house. More exactly it was no
longer surprising to find good meals provided even in the wilderness,
for your Frenchman will not endure gastronomic hardships; and since good
meals are always more important to him than arriving, nearly three hours
had slipped away before there was any indication that we were to move on
again.
Meanwhile, on the heels of our arrival, the Muong chief of the village,
closely followed by three or four retainers in bare feet, loose white
panties, and more or less picturesque regalia, had come to welcome my
high-rank companion. The chief wore a blue suit, instead of the usual
black or cinnamon brown of the Annamese, and in honor of the occasion
and of his own standing he had a blue cloth wound turban-fashion about
his head. Also a volumnious cloak of mosquito-netting or cheese-cloth
with huge sleeves, in which he clasped his hands together in a manner
that increased his resemblance to a Chinese Buddhist priest, covered him
to the bare ankles. He and his satellites brought us, as the city
fathers of Muong villages do all important visitors, according to the
_résident_, a basket of eggs and several bottles of what looked like
water. Knowing that such a beverage would be an insult to a Frenchman, I
made inquiry and found that the bottles were filled with a native liquor
of such deadly voltage that even my wine-loving companions did not
venture to sample it. While the chief acted out his respects, the most
lowly of the attendants laid out the ten eggs on a brass platter and set
it with two of the bottles of rice-alcohol on the earth floor before the
seated _résident_. Only then did the chief speak, accompanying his
greetings with many low bows, showing none of the friendly half-gaiety
of the Chinese, but rather an air of being inwardly frightened. The
_résident_ replied, somewhat carelessly, with a bit of the native tongue
that was at least fairly fluent. Then the chief and his attendants
withdrew, and the eggs and the bottle stood where they had been placed
until we departed, when they were either retrieved by the chief or fell
to the lot of the rest-house servants.
The colonist went on with us to the night’s halt by a road now crawling
along the edge of a precipice, now across serried ranks of what my
companions called _montagnes russes_, sharp ridges over which we
incessantly bounced, alternating with constant drops to low filled-in
runways in place of bridges, a wilderness all about us. But after all,
tropical jungle has less of interest, at least after the first visit, to
any one except the trained naturalist, than the seemingly greater
variety of flora in the temperate zone. There was still something left
of the afternoon, for all our generous midday halt, when we reached the
military post of Cuarao, across the river from the highway and a mud and
reed garage offering tropical accommodations to a car or two. One of its
several white buildings of an official character, which looked so
imposing against the background of Muong houses and jungle, had rooms
for the three of us, opening off the soldier-trodden compound and
roughly comfortable except for the heat.
There are three crops of Indian corn a year in this region; and among
the small craft of various sizes on the river below were many narrow
little boats full of ripe husked ears that gave the scene flashes of
color. The Muong prefer rice, according to the _résident_, but the land
left them is so hilly that the toil of raising it is more than they will
endure. Wild-looking Muong mail-carriers, each with a small bag, hung
about the rowboat ferry between the garage and our quarters as if they
were in no hurry whatever to cross and be off on their fifteen
kilometers of the Postes et Télégraphes relay. It was a reminder that
the mail service of Indo-China under the French is by no means the
equal, in proportion to the difficulties involved, of that of China
under international tutelage. But on the other hand one can telegraph
anywhere within the colony, from almost any hut, at a cent a word, in
English, French, or the native tongues, and be sure of prompt and
accurate delivery. The traveler long inured to the unreliable,
expensive, often hopeless telegraph system of China, unfortunately not
under foreign management, could forgive the French almost anything for
this boon. During all my journey through Laos I never took the trouble
to write letters to my family in Hanoï, with the probability of reaching
there again before they did, but spent a few cents each evening for a
telegram, and kept as closely in touch with them as if I had gone home
each evening; for never once was I more than two hours in receiving a
reply.
I have spoken before of the complete security of Europeans almost
anywhere within France’s Indo-Chinese empire, whatever the complaints of
the natives. No doubt it was to make us feel doubly safe that soldiers
beat a hubbub on bamboo sections all night long about the post as a
proof that they were awake and on guard. But there are dangers,
according to some of the tales with which my companions whiled away the
evening. The _résident_ of one of these wilder provinces, for instance,
had broken five ribs when his automobile ran into a deer unfamiliar with
modern traffic rules. A French soldier stationed on the Tonkin border
was attacked by a tiger, an animal reputed always to take its victim by
the back of the neck; and as this man chanced to be carrying a
blanket-roll across his shoulders, he killed the beast with his knife—or
his bayonet, for he himself was never clear on that detail—without
getting a scratch. Tiger stories are legion in Indo-China, and many of
them are as free from doubt as this one, which is fully authenticated—or
documented, as my fellow-travelers put it.
The _résident_ drove me a few miles farther in the morning, halting at
the edge of another river, where we had made telegraphic rendezvous with
the authorities of the next province. Here and there a path went off up
into the woods to clusters of Muong houses; now and again we met a file
of these jungle people sidling along the edge of the road. The men did
not look greatly different from the Annamese. Their eyes were a little
less oblique, their faces at close range shaped more like our own; there
was a bit more wildness, naïveté, timidity, or something countrified
about them; but the surest way of telling apart the males of the two
races was the manner in which they carry their burdens—the Annamese on
the shoulder-pole, the Muong in baskets on their wives’ backs. The men
themselves sometimes carry in baskets also, and even larger loads, but
only when the available supply of females makes it necessary. The women
who trail behind them could not possibly be mistaken for those of Annam.
They were much less independent, each hiding behind her husband at sight
of us, following close on his heels as they hurried silently on. They
wore little above the waist except the loads they carried on their
backs, secured by a band across their foreheads. A cloth about their
heads and another barely covering their plump breasts were evidently
concessions to the prudish world of the highway, for at home in the bush
a blue-embroidered skirt from the waist to the lower thighs seems to be
all that Muong public opinion requires. A long bodkin protruded from a
queerly arranged knot of hair worn somewhat to the side of the head. The
long round basket on the bare back drew taut the supporting cord across
the forehead, a small board with two holes in it keeping the two strands
apart. Each woman wore at her left side a section of bamboo as a pocket,
and carried by another cord over one shoulder a canteen in the form of
another piece of bamboo, several feet long, and filled with river-water
with which to quench the thirst of her lord and master. Some of the
brick-colored male savages bore a lance over one shoulder, and most of
them had a long tobacco pipe of tiny bowl thrust like the bodkins of the
women through their knot of hair, or worn in the belt like a cutlass.
There was some evidence of tattooing, but the naïveté of their faces and
manner and the attitude of the half-naked women were the most typical
features. Between the men and the women there seemed to be a deep social
gulf, something like that between servants and masters among the wealthy
of other lands.
Here and there within sight along the road were a few Muong houses, all
standing man-high on piles, a kind of gang-plank with cleats forming an
outside stairway to a rounded veranda under a low overhanging thatch
roof at one end. Men squatting over their long pipes and children at
play evidently monopolized this portico, which the women only approached
with the obsequious manner of those who feel themselves intruders. A
smaller veranda at the other, always the southern and sun-baked end,
served them as kitchen and place of recreation. Most Muong hamlets are
far from the grass-grown highway, and one can scarcely blame them for
preferring solitude and simplicity, though their roosters and cur-dogs
probably make the nights as hideous there as the soldiers with their
bamboo drums had ours at the post of Cuarao. The _résident_ whiled away
the time with stories of this “wild” timid race, one of which concerned
a great chief of the Muong who had always gone about as naked as his
forefathers of pre-French days, until, having been decorated with the
medal of the Legion of Honor, he went to Vinh and bought himself a
magnificent jacket to pin his decoration on. Since then he had never
been seen without the jacket, and his brother was always following him
with envious eyes, though whether he envied him the medal or the jacket
was not clear.
We had waited nearly an hour when there appeared on the other side of
the not very large stream a sumptuous Fiat strangely out of keeping with
the wilderness about us and a startling contrast in transportation to
the leaky old _bac_ by which I crossed to it amid the blessings of the
_résident_ of Vinh. It was to have been there at daylight, but it soon
became evident that even a high-priced Italian car cannot move faster
than the chauffeur that drives it. We were off as soon as my modest
baggage had been stowed away, along a still grassy road cut between the
steep mountain-side and the stream, the scars of the evidently recent
road-building already almost completely obliterated by the impulsive
tropical vegetation. Here and there a path meandered along the road, and
on it passed picturesque Muong women in scanty garments, all of them
carrying baskets and some of them suckling babies as they walked,
climbing the rocks as high as possible whenever they caught sight or
sound of us. Birds of rich colors flitting in and out of the jungle gave
us as hasty glimpses of themselves as did the Muong women who sought
refuge in the thick underbrush on the stream side of the road. There
were flapper birds, too gaily dressed to be useful or even virtuous
members of ornithological society. One of them had a brilliant blue
back, tail, and wings, red feet, and a velvety-brown throat above a
snow-white breast that gave it the appearance of wearing either a
low-necked evening-gown or the white shirt of a dinner-jacket. Its
fantastic Semitic beak and cardinal-red head was topped by a purple hat
adorned with a single aigret. There were matronly birds in black, with
wings of the rich brown of Tonkinese clothing, actress birds in
exaggerated, even indecent costumes, birds that changed appearance
entirely, as if they had suddenly put on a disguise, when they opened
their wings and showed the under side of them; there were birds that
were mere streaks of white, flashes of fire in the sunshine, birds with
tails longer than themselves, birds that made a noise like the pounding
of a section of bamboo with which Chinese watchmen make nights
miserable, or Buddhist bonzes call upon the charitably minded. Yet they
sang less than did the crickets or katydids, less than the queer members
of the lizard family sunning themselves on the rocks, confirming a
memory that the whistle or call of jungle birds is often monotonous but
rarely musical. Once I caught sight in the stream below of a ridiculous
member of the duck family, swimming and strutting about among his modest
female mates in a costume so gaudy and incredible that he must have
designed it himself. We were so closely flanked by the prolific
vegetation that this part of the trip was like taking a journey through
the heart of the jungle in an easy-chair, or on the magic carpet of
Arabic legend. Memories of the tiger stories I had heard the evening
before, and elsewhere, crowded upon me. There were panthers in these
forests too, and herds of gaur, a wild cattle like the aurochs, two
meters high, of little trouble to the people but very dangerous to the
hunter. Yet the only visible peril was the constant tendency of the road
to make hair-pin turns on the sheer edge of great gorges.
The chauffeur, dressed in full European style even to his tropical
helmet, seemed to be a mixture of French and of several Indo-Chinese
bloods. Instead of driving like the madman that most chauffeurs of
Indo-China resemble, making every turn an attempt at suicide, every
downward slope an effort to hang up a new speed-record, he was so
overcautious that I no longer wondered at his failure to be on time at
the rendezvous. While I am not one of those who like to fly along the
brinks of precipices, I rather prefer that to crawling like an ox-cart
when a stretch of straight wide road lies in clear view ahead. Twenty
kilometers from the _bac_ he halted where we should have been three
hours before, at a village which seemed to be named Muongsen, and
announced that he could not reach our destination that day. It happened
that my trip through Laos was absolutely set in cement, since I had to
be somewhere else at a definite date, and this fellow and his chief, the
_commissaire_ of Xieng Khuang, had been advised of that fact by urgent
telegrams from the governor-generalate itself. But the Caucasian part of
him seemed to have exhausted itself in his appearance without touching
his character. Or perhaps he had once run into a water-buffalo or
spilled himself down a mountain-side.
I was protesting against halting for the day while it was still fully an
hour short of noon, when a white man unexpectedly turned up. He was a
tall, good-looking, splendidly built fellow, with the appearance of a
big blond Frenchman who had lived all his life in the open; and he wore
the blue uniform of a French colonial officer. Yet he was no Frenchman
for all that, but a native of Bavaria, who had lived as a boy in New
York—at Sixty-fourth Street and Second Avenue, he still remembered. Now
he could speak only French—besides Annamese and several tribal tongues
of Indo-China—and was as Gallic in temperament as he was blond. Having
entered the Foreign Legion when he was fourteen, he had been with the
French ever since, and was now a second lieutenant in command of a
village station higher up on the plateau ahead. With him was a
French-Annamese woman of possessive manner, though no startling beauty,
who called him husband.
Hospitable as he was handsome, he insisted that at least I could not go
on until we had performed the Frenchman’s midday rites. We had to
prolong the _apéritifs_ an hour or more before we could sit down to a
several-course lunch in a hut grocery of very respectful serving manners
and a not total ignorance of French cooking. For according to the
lieutenant and his no less hospitable companion, it would have been a
great breach of bush etiquette not to wait for the other “European” in
the village. He was the chauffeur of the general-in-chief of all
Indo-China, and had been left behind with his car _en panne_ while the
general had climbed on into the mountains in a Citroen “caterpillar”
that had been serving him as baggage-trailer.
This other “European” turned up at last and proved to be a Guadeloupe
mulatto, who lost little time in claiming that his grandmother had once
been a great personage in Bordeaux—which, after the way of French
ladies, was not at all impossible—and who either had never heard of
American conventions where negroes are concerned or judged from my
hand-shake that I had outgrown any such prejudice. Simple and naïve, yet
with all those amusing little idiosyncrasies of courtesy and their
opposite common to the French, he was a bit bashful at first, until
convinced by my manner that I accepted him as a social equal. His
misgivings had plainly nothing to do with color but with the natural
gulf between a mere corporal turned general’s chauffeur and a traveler
sponsored by the governor-general himself. Thereafter he was at his
ease, and his big eyes rolled like those of a minstrel-show end-man
whenever he heard anything even mildly surprising, and he became
convulsed with gaiety at the slightest suggestion of anything humorous.
The lieutenant thought I might get more willing service out of my
chauffeur if we invited him also to sit down with us; and what with the
Muong and the Laosian servants who waited upon us, the mixture of races
about the rough but well garnished table at which we finally gathered
could hardly have been increased without going in search of other
individuals.
The conversation hovered chiefly about the women of Laos. The lieutenant
asserted, and was borne out by his wilderness companion of the sex under
discussion, that to touch the hair or breasts of a Laosian woman is a
more serious crime than actual violation. In fact Laosian law prescribes
a much more serious penalty for the former than for the latter
indiscretion, and the lieutenant in his judicial capacity had often been
called upon to try cases under this strange code. Naturally, he
explained, again abetted by his lady-love, what the Western world
considers the lesser of the two crimes might be committed entirely
against the will of the victim, while the other.... In brief, here was
an example of Oriental wisdom to which the other side of the earth has
not yet attained.
In a case of what, in the language we were then using, is called
_tromper le mari_, the Laosians again outdid us in their sense of
justice. By their law the lover is punished for the first offense, the
woman for the second, and the husband for the third! For, as the
lieutenant said, and his domestic partner again agreed, the woman who is
party to such an act a second time must have some of the guilt; and the
husband who is so inattentive as to be _trompé_ three times is either a
fool or is knowingly permitting it, and deserves punishment in either
case.
[Illustration: The women of Tonkin combine hat, sunshade, and umbrella
in one unwieldy contraption]
[Illustration: The Muong women wear little above the waist, except the
loads they carry]
[Illustration: The guard turned out to greet my companion, the
_résident_ of Vinh, at the first village on the way to Laos]
[Illustration: The Muong chief of our noonday village came in state,
bringing eggs and native fire-water]
The gentleman of color from Guadeloupe confirmed all these statements
and added the information that when the husband, or the “man,” is a
soldier, like himself and the lieutenant, or is for any other reason
away from home for six months or so at a time, it is impossible for him
to avoid betraying his wife, or she him. This recalled to the lieutenant
that the code of Laos allows the woman a divorce without contest if the
husband stays away from her longer than the length of time he said he
would when he left. What an importation this would be in our civilized
West! One might fancy that it would make the men of Laos more punctual,
more aware of the value of time, than the subway victims of our great
metropolis. Yet it is not so, far from so. The lieutenant contended that
this is a very just law, for the suffering of the woman from long
absence, whetted by the uncertainty of the return, is obviously more
than she can stand, more than she should be expected to stand. His own
darling feebly denied this, but the men agreed with many sage shakings
of the head. It is as bad as expecting a man to live six months without
a woman, they went on, with extravagant gestures, as if trying to clinch
the argument with the most ridiculous analogy they could hit upon.
Gradually the tone of the conversation drifted to the other side of the
shield, the subject of parents. Both men asserted that they had loved
their mothers but not their fathers. “A man’s mother can only be one
person; there can be no doubt about her,” the mulatto argued, with all
the gravity of a chief justice, “but his father may be any one of
thirty-six.” Whereupon there were general roars of laughter and
agreement, while the typically French dinner came to its end with
demi-tasses as naturally as a sentence does with a period.