VIENTIANE AND BACK TO HANOÏ
We were off again soon after dawn, by a road instead of a trail, a wide
road that is by this time no doubt “automobilable,” though a car could
hardly have gone over it then even if one could have reached it, an
execrable new road of five hours of incessant _montagnes russes_,
constant ups and downs, and sadly in need of the shading tree-tops of
the narrow trail. The prince and I left the coolies far behind before
this torture was ended. The French are gradually pushing a highway from
Vientiane to Luang Prabang, and the last few miles of this unfinished
portion still had high earth pillars left in the cuttings to show how
much was due the contractors whose coolies had excavated them with
handbaskets. I lunched with the Frenchman in charge of the
road-building, whose Annamese companion had recently given him another
hostage to fortune, in a house on a hilltop overlooking a great vista,
that in some ways resembled a South American hacienda. Here I took leave
of the prince, who had changed his mind and decided not to go on to
Vientiane. It was plain that he would have given much to do so, but
evidently either the French or the king, or both, had him under strict
discipline. A miserable Ford, that had been waiting for me since the day
before in order that my hurried trip should be crowned with success,
cranked up, and at two we chugged away in great heat over the last 106
kilometers to Vientiane.
There was nothing of interest to me on this last ride, though there
would have been for one who had not made the delightful overland trip.
The people were much less attractive nearer what we are pleased to call
civilization, especially the road-gangs. Half-way in we met the big
automobile of the chief ruler of Laos, sent to find what had become of
me, thanks to a strong but unwarranted suspicion that the Ford had
broken down. Thereafter the view of the surrounding landscape was as
from an airplane, and I reached Vientiane in time for a glimpse of it
before dark, and dinner with the cream of the large French colony—with
children as scarce as elsewhere.
Vieng-chan, which under the French has become Vientiane, is a place of
former glory and power of the Tai race, capital of another of those
kingdoms of earlier days. Its last great period of prosperity was
between 1628 and 1652, after which civil wars dispersed its power and
Luang Prabang declared its independence, though even in the eighteenth
century it was still powerful. Then, in 1828, the Siamese destroyed the
city, carried off and dispersed the people, and it has never been
rebuilt. In 1893, when a treaty with Siam gave all Laos, all the land
east of the Mekong and some west of it, to France, Vieng-chan became the
French capital of Laos, as Luang Prabang is the chief native center.
Formerly Vientiane had a hundred and twenty magnificent temples, so well
built that, in addition to many ruins lost in the bush, some still
remain symmetrical and perfect in general form, though their beams have
rotted away and the masonry has been exposed to tropical sun and rain
for a century. There are some striking doors giving entrance to roofless
ruins; within the falling shell of a temple near the _Résidence_, in
which I was lord of all I surveyed because of the absence of the
“résuper,” two big Buddhas sit in the infinitely patient attitude of the
East, though the rains fall and the sun beats down upon their
coiled-serpent-covered heads, while the vegetation piously strives to
clothe and hold them together as the mud and stone of which they are
made crumble bit by bit away.
Perhaps there is really nothing incongruous about Buddhist priests in
bright-yellow robes riding the latest style of bicycle, or even about
women who, wearing only a kind of skirt, with at most a thin gay scarf
thrown hastily over the breasts, indulge in the same frivolous form of
locomotion. But these things are likely to catch the attention of the
visitor to Vientiane, at least during his first day there. Though the
French have brought a few automobiles, the humped-ox cart—a curious cart
with a movable axle and huge wheels higher than a man—is still the more
common type of conveyance. Vientiane has an avenue of flamboyants of
which it is justly proud, and a lot of good French residences, with a
pleasant woodsy atmosphere out of keeping with the solemn air of French
officialdom.
Siam lies just across the river, and here the same race lives on both
sides of the Mekong, though the Laosians on the other bank rarely come
over to work for the French. From Muongyu onward all the men had worn
their hair pompadour; at about the place the last Ford picked me up even
the women, no doubt influenced by their Siamese sisters across the
river, rather than by any world-wide movement to do away with the chief
glory of the sex, took to cutting their hair man-fashion. At Vientiane
the women on both sides of the Mekong have these absurd Siamese
hair-cuts, each hair standing on end as if the eyes beneath it had seen
a whole flock of ghosts, and as they also chew betel-nut to make
themselves still more repulsive it does not matter that one can rarely
tell the two sexes apart.
The steamer of the Messageries Fluviales got stuck on a sand-bank just
as its picturesque Corsican captain was moving up to take on his
passengers, so that I not only had the residence of the chief ruler of
Laos entirely to myself for nearly twenty-four hours, but was able to
take in all the sights and meet nearly all the hospitable French
residents. The boat got away at 2:30 and was off down the river, leaving
me behind after all my strenuous exertion to overtake it. But that did
not matter, for the thoughtful French had planned it that way, so that
their distinguished guest might finish his siesta and spend no more time
than necessary on the uncomfortable craft. About four some of them
leisurely set out with me by automobile and put me on board at a stop
made for my especial benefit as far down-stream as the road then reached
beyond Vientiane.
That afternoon we touched Siam and finally tied up at a place called
Ban-along, where I slept well only because there happened to be room to
set up my cot on deck, until we pushed off again at three in the
morning. All day we steamed down the Mekong between Indo-China and
Siamese jungles, now and then stopping at the French or at the farther
bank. After the manner of the aggressive West, the French claim all the
Mekong and allow no Siamese steamers on it. For centuries the Siamese
and Chinese had most of the trade with Laos, which came and went by way
of Siam; now the French are gradually diverting it, illustrating another
of the advantages of protecting backward countries. No small amount of
smuggling still goes on, especially in opium, and mainly engineered by
the wily Chinese. Once some Laosian opium-smugglers who had tied up for
the night at the Siamese bank were arrested by the Siamese police. The
French, in keeping with their claim to the entire stream, made this a
serious “diplomatic incident,” and to-day the Siamese can do nothing
against smugglers and similar lawbreakers until they actually step
ashore with their loot.
A fierce storm at dark on the second day drove us up against the Siamese
bank again, at a place that seemed to be called Ban-naqué, but we were
off once more at daylight and pulled into Thakek while it was sitting
down to its midday meal. There an automobile that had been sent over the
mountains from Vinh was ready to carry me off at once, but there was
time to spare and interest enough in this frontier post so that I
decided to stay out the day. The chief French official was languid with
fever and bored with life. The head of the police, on the other hand,
with a still larger native family, seemed to enjoy this placid tropical
existence, and when the sun began to show an appreciable decline he
called a queer-looking official craft and took me across the river to
Lakhone in Siam, the first time I had actually set foot in that
progressive land in nearly twenty years. As far at least as this
frontier village was concerned there did not seem to be any great
change. The natives were of the same race and similar customs as those
of Thakek, but had an air about them of saying inwardly, “Well, at least
we are not subject to French nagging.” The difference between them and
their cousins across the river must be much like that between a bachelor
and a henpecked husband—and their communal housekeeping bore out the
same analogy. Leg-irons seemed to be no detriment to prisoners who
wished to run after us and beg money to buy opium, neither of which
things would be permitted their fellows in French territory, at least
within sight of Europeans. On the other hand there is less active
unkindness to prisoners on the French side.
There were a few games of tennis in Thakek when the sun was low, with
even two or three white women among the players, and next morning
comfortably after six I was off for Annam. A native secretary of the
ruler-in-chief of Laos diffidently shared the back seat of the big open
car with me, and the Annamese chauffeur of course had his assistant,
confidant, and water-boy, for your Oriental driver will not go without
company, be it only to have some one as a receptacle for his
conversation. It had rained and there was much skidding between Thakek
and Nakai; in fact at that time of year automobiles usually cannot get
through, and ours was the last one that did before that season’s rains
settled down in earnest. I had never been sure of getting back to Annam
by this route—until I got there. Had it become impassable as early as
usual I might have gone on down the Mekong by the incommodious
Messageries Fluviales clear to Pnom Penh in Cambodia, with a bit of
railway about some falls, and made all the journey from Saïgon to Hanoï
over again, unless I could have crossed the mountains from Savannakhet,
by a road still less likely to be “automobilable” in the rainy season.
We turned up in time for lunch at a mountain shack in dense forest in
which the “résuper” of Laos and his wife, about the most delightful
people I met in Indo-China, were roughing it for a few days with their
small son. I trust that the reader has not confounded Laos with Luang
Prabang, which is merely the largest and most western division of it,
its lone king decidedly subordinate to this lean and competent Frenchman
whose palatial _Résidence_ I had occupied in Vientiane. Besides Luang
Prabang and the 5^{me} Territoire that goes with it, and spacious
Tran-ninh of Xieng Khuang, there are half a dozen other divisions in
this sparsely settled territory ruled over by my _déjeuner_ host across
the plain board camp-table.
The secretary and even the extra chauffeur remained at the camp, as I
should have done for the rest of that Sunday myself had I suspected how
good the road still was from there on. Besides, an elephant-hunt was at
its height near-by, an unusually large herd having been discovered
almost within shouting-distance of where we sat. In Siam it is forbidden
to kill elephants, because they all belong to the king. So they do in
theory also in Laos, or at least in Luang Prabang, but with the French
ruling over it and the Chinese ready to pay high prices for tusks, the
sacredness of the king’s protégés is limited. In Canton we wondered
where the carvers of myriad ornaments got all their ivory, rather
suspecting them of relations with the local slaughter-house; in Laos one
wonders where the hunters find sale for so many tusks. I heard much
concerning the life of this region during that convivial _déjeuner_.
Elands abound, and there are great herds of gaur, that wild cattle-like
survivor from an earlier age which seems to be found nowhere else, a
red-brown beast weighing on the average two thousand kilograms. There
were at the camp half a dozen heads of this animal, shot within the past
day or two, the foreheads unnaturally high, the female horns closer
together than those of the male. The birds of these parts build no nests
in the trees, because the monkeys, especially the black long-armed
gibbons, steal their eggs. On the other hand partridge and quail, after
building their nests in holes in the ground, roost in the trees as a
protection against serpents.
I thought often of that _résident_ of a Cambodian province who broke
five ribs by running into a deer, as we raced on eastward by a
forest-walled road as unpeopled as if it had been built for my especial
use, bounding every little while over bridges held by vine and
woven-bamboo cables, the bridges themselves merely a larger form of
wickerwork or basketry. To my astonishment and, I am sure, to that of
the chauffeur also, we had no difficulty in making the entire run from
Thakek to Vinh in a single day, though it had not been certain that we
could even make it in two, and a day later we might not have been able
to make it at all. But even nature seemed to take an interest in my
record-breaking trip, and we were agreeably surprised to find
astonishingly dry parts of the road which should have been sloughs of
despondency. It was still only a little after noon when we halted at the
village _sala_ that had been officially chosen as my night’s
stopping-place, just long enough to tell the servants that their guest
was flying onward.
Soon afterward we picked up a Chinese merchant from Yünnanfu, whose
mandarin was nearly enough like that of Peking so that I astonished him
by managing a meager conversation in his own tongue. He had two
bullock-carts loaded with tigers—everything except the flesh—and many
deer-horns, all valuable in the medicine-shops of his native land,
especially the tiger-claws, to be powdered and drunk in wine by the
faint-hearted, if I fully understood him. At the pace his native Jehus
were making he would have been from ten days to a fortnight in reaching
Vinh. I am notably softhearted, so when he and the chauffeur joined in
coaxing me to let the Celestial go along with us, it seemed so much like
making a man a present of ten days of life, more precious than money,
that I succumbed—and for my pains was cramped for the rest of the trip
into the off front seat, the left of course, usually occupied by the
assistant chauffeur. The Chinese showed all signs of glee, even though
he was of a race to whom ten days is no more than five hours, and paying
off his simple Laosian bullock-drivers, he began loading his moth-eaten
trophies into the car. I had miscalculated the loads, or fancied he
would throw most of the worthless stuff away in order to ride with us;
but no, indeed—I began to wonder whether he was even going to try to
tuck the bullock-carts away in our maltreated conveyance. Of course the
chauffeur got a nice little thing out of it—in fact he as much as said
so in his hybrid Annamese-French, with a subtle hint that for this favor
he did not expect me to tip him at the end of the run—and I have no
doubt that all this had been cooked up between them when bullock-carts
and automobile met two days before a few miles farther west. That would
explain the extraordinary occurrence of leaving the assistant chauffeur
behind; probably he eventually got his share of the grateful Yünnanese’s
gratuity, for walking back to Vinh during the rainy season.
[Illustration: This ancient monument in Vientiane, French capital of
Laos, is the most curious remnant of its regal days]
[Illustration: A door of a ruined palace or temple of Vientiane]
[Illustration: Within the ruined temple the Buddhas sit, in the
infinitely patient attitude of the East, crumbling away under the rains
and disappearing beneath the encroaching jungle]
[Illustration: Though the French have brought automobiles to Vientiane,
this ancient form of conveyance still predominates]
There were some coffee plantations, among corn and rubber-trees, that
afternoon, the largest of them belonging to the man whom I had met at
Cuarao on the outward trip; but he was not at home—this home, at least.
We had already begun dropping down out of the great Annamese chain, the
road in places a serpentine succession of descending curves
magnificently framed in vine-clothed forest and precipices, and by three
we were back in Annam again, another world, with its groves of slender
_aréquiers_ climbed by betel-vines, its many villages surrounded by high
thick bamboo hedges, its water-buffaloes of elephant and albino colors,
its tombs and grave-mounds, its _bacs_ and rice-fields, its joss-houses
and red-saliva-splotched roads, its myriad people in parasol-hats,
diamond-shaped breast-covers, necklaces of grains of gold, black
cheese-cloth overcoats, gowns of the color of tobacco-juice, its endless
files of pole-carrying coolies of both sexes and all ages; in thinly
populated Laos the battle with hunger is not so keen that children need
to begin their labors so early.
The Chinese and his tigers got off in the outskirts of Vinh, lest the
government hear of the misuse of its official transportation, and the
air was still more reminiscent of afternoon than of evening when I
entered the same room of the French-Spanish hotel I had occupied when I
first came northward along the Mandarin Road three months before. The
chauffeur had protested that his orders were to drive me to the
_Résidence_, but I felt that I had been overdoing French colonial
hospitality, now that it was possible to provide for myself. Yet I was
forced to dine with the _résident_ who had driven me away toward Xieng
Khuang twenty days back, and he and his wife succeeded in convincing me
that they were really disappointed because I had not come to occupy the
palatial room they had once more prepared for me. For one can have no
secrets in Indo-China. The incessant telegraph keeps one’s doings more
in the public, or at least the official, eye than does the most flagrant
of our yellow journals, and barely had I passed the village _sala_ that
had been officially chosen as my stopping-place that night than a
telegram had warned the _résident_ that the wild American was again
breaking records.
In early May the Vinh-to-Hanoï landscape is a sea of ripening rice from
which those great black-gray rock hills of strange form and varied
strata stand forth like fantastic islands. I cannot remember ever having
endured a hotter day than that train-ride. This was the hottest time of
the year, just before the summer rains, utterly cloudless and often
without the slightest breeze. With June come torrential downpours and
cooler weather. There was a wind that day, but it happened to be blowing
in the same direction in which I was traveling. Going south would
probably have been pleasant riding; going north was intermittent
torture. When we stopped, as fortunately we did often and sometimes for
fairly long periods, the breeze from the south made life quite
agreeable; but as long as the train was moving, sweat poured forth as
from a fountain. Even when it blew to advantage the wind was as if it
came off a red-hot stove, and all day long there was not a fleck of
cloud in the sky to temper the wicked sunshine. Cattle lolled in groups
under the trees; water-buffaloes, if they were to be seen at all,
squatted in their mud-holes; but though “citadels” were waffle-irons and
the highway a burning strand, men and women in their broad hats and
coppery-brown garments still trotted in endless files along it and the
by-roads that were mere thin lines drawn in a vast expanse of greenery;
for rice must be had for hungry mouths no matter what the weather.
[Illustration: Endpaper]
[Illustration: Century VAGABOND BOOKS of TRAVEL]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
1^{st}).