terior. Chinese merchants here waylay the elephant-trains from Battabong and Laos, exchanging salt and Chinese or European wares for horns, hides, silk, oil and cardamoms. Mines near Kabin are said to furnish the most ductile gold in the world.
Leaving our boats, elephants and a buffalo-cart are engaged. We step from the veranda of the hut perched on poles to the elephant's head and into the howdah. The driver sits astride his neck, guiding when needful with an iron-pointed staff. A military road from Kabin leads to the borders of Cochin-China. Sesupon, the first Cambodian town, on the frontier of provinces wrested by Siam from Cambodia a century ago, is first reached. Some of the people, including the Siamese governor and officials, speak both languages.
It is possibly harvest-time; in the fields the reapers are among their crops. Some of the plains are covered with tall grass ten feet high. There are perhaps burnt patches or a spark has just started a fire, and the flames, swept on by the wind, are roaring, crackling and sending up dense columns of smoke in their wake. As we pass under the overarching branches of trees in the forest our elephant keeps an eye the while ahead, and when some lower limb would strike the howdah he halts, raises his trunk and breaks it off. We toil up and over the watershed and
