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Title: East of Siam
Ramblings in the five divisions of French Indo-China
Author: Harry Alverson Franck
Release date: May 6, 2026 [eBook #78626]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1926
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78626
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EAST OF SIAM ***
[Illustration: Endpaper]
[Illustration: Century VAGABOND BOOKS of TRAVEL]
EAST OF SIAM
[Illustration: There was a young lady of Laos]
EAST OF SIAM
_Ramblings in the five divisions of French Indo-China_
BY
HARRY A. FRANCK
Author of “A Vagabond Journey Around the World,” “Roving through
Southern China,” “Vagabonding Down the Andes,” “Four Months Afoot in
Spain,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS
OUT-OF-THE-WAY PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR
GROSSET & DUNLAP
_Publishers_ :: :: _New York_
By arrangement with the D. Appleton-Century Company
Copyright, 1926, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Printed in U. S. A.
TO
THE HOSPITABLE FRENCH COLONIALS
PROLOGUE
Those of us who had the good fortune to take part in that great
adventure known as the World War can scarcely have failed to notice,
among the many kinds of French colonial troops, some little men in khaki
and brass-topped mushroom hats, most of them with black teeth. It was
not until five years after the Comedy of Versailles that my perpetual
wandering over the face of the globe brought me to the land from which
they came—Annam, “Kingdom of the Eminent South.” There was not only the
motive of satisfying, by seeing them at home, the curiosity raised by
these little brown men in the French army; as far back as I can remember
I had felt inquisitive toward that strangely shaped spot on the map,
that slender country which drips like a stalactite of candle-grease down
from the southeast corner of China.
Besides, during all my two years of roving about the once Celestial
Empire I heard frequently of the wonders of the ruins of Angkor in
Cambodia. So one day in early January, a propitious season, I dropped
down to Saïgon, visited those astounding remnants of the past, and
returned overland all the way to Canton. Later, toward the end of April,
I brought my family to Hanoï for a month of Parisian change on the way
to Yünnanfu, and took advantage of the opportunity to journey through
Laos, largest, most interesting, and least known of the five divisions
of France’s Indo-Chinese empire. So in the end I traveled not merely the
length and breadth of Annam but saw all five parts of that
dumb-bell-shaped land east of Siam which the French consider their most
important colony in the Far East.
So unusual was my luck during those travels that only my overwhelming
modesty has kept me from entitling this unpretentious tale of them
“Hobnobbing with Kings”; and so very interesting a trip was it to me
personally that in the face of my hard-earned knowledge that our ever
more herd-minded general public is as fearful of the unknown and the
unfamiliar as the most superstitious of wild tribes, and would much
rather read of the deeply tourist-trodden streets of Rome and Paris, I
have insisted on performing this unassuming task.
Those two well separated months were more than a mere vacation from
Chinese travel. To jaunt through French Indo-China is to see a sample of
what China itself would probably be under European control, white-man
rule—were any nation powerful enough to accomplish that many times
larger task—as Formosa suggests what it might be under the Japanese. I
hope I have at least made it clear that Indo-China is not in any sense
China, but the living line of division between two ancient and very
different masses of Oriental civilization, even as its name signifies.
HARRY A. FRANCK.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I EQUATORWARD 3
II ON INTO CAMBODIA 28
III THE JUNGLE-GUARDED RUINS OF ANGKOR 46
IV THE CAMBODIANS AT HOME 74
V NORTHWARD FROM SAÏGON 86
VI THROUGH ANNAM TO ITS CAPITAL 103
VII MAROONED IN HUÉ 124
VIII AN IMPERIAL HAPPY NEW YEAR 147
IX THE PEOPLE OF THE EMINENT SOUTH 166
X HURRYING ON TO THE NORTHERN CAPITAL 185
XI HANOÏ AND THE TONKIN 201
XII THE FRENCH IN INDO-CHINA 219
XIII OVER THE MOUNTAINS TO LAOS 244
XIV EN PANNE! 260
XV DOWN-STREAM TO LUANG PRABANG 278
XVI KNIGHTED IN THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE BUDDHA 296
XVII SPEEDING SOUTHWARD 323
XVIII VIENTIANE AND BACK TO HANOÏ 347
ILLUSTRATIONS
There was a young lady of Laos _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Cholon architecture is neither exactly French nor
Chinese 18
A funeral procession in Cholon, Chinese suburb of Saïgon 18
A decreasing form of conveyance in Cochinchina 19
Unlike China proper, great sections of Indo-China are
covered with magnificent virgin jungle-forests 19
One may still crawl about Angkor by elephant, though
Fords are much more à la mode 82
Buddhist priests took their saffron-clad ease in the
shade along the great moat of Angkor-Vat, beyond the
tourist bungalows in the background 82
A rural Cambodian family at home 83
Motor-buses link together the railways of Indo-China,
crossing broad sandy river-banks on strips of woven
bamboo splints 98
In Annam prisoners working in the streets wear a light
remnant of the old neck-torturing Chinese _canque_ 98
In the “Marble Mountains” are many grottoes, some of
them elaborately fitted up as temples 99
An Annamese summoning a ferry from across one of the
many rivers which still offer no bridges to
automobiles 99
An Annamese girl, chaperoned by her small brother, sells
her wares in the market-place of Hué 114
When it rains in Annam, as it does on every provocation,
a simple straw raincoat covers either sex among the
masses 114
Like the southern Chinese the Annamese are expert
boatmen because they learn their calling long before
they reach the dignity of clothing 115
Swinging in the village squares is a favorite diversion
of the Annamese populace during the lunar New Year’s
season 115
Overlooking, from his flagpole, the palaces of the
emperor of Annam 130
China itself cannot outdo the old bronze urns before the
main palace of the Annamese emperor 130
The throne-room of the emperor of Annam, on the
afternoon before the New Year’s ceremony 131
The waterfront of Hué, capital of Annam, offers a
contrast between its native craft and the French
bridge 146
Once a visitor surreptitiously snapped this glimpse of
the mandarins of Annam kowtowing before their emperor
on New Year’s Day 146
The scores of homes of mandarins within the “citadel” of
Hué were all richly decorated for the lunar New Year 147
Inside the “citadel” and near the sumptuous palaces of
the emperor of Annam are the perhaps more comfortable
homes of his humble subjects 147
An Annamese mandarin all dressed up for his New Year’s
honors to his emperor; his servant behind 162
Servants of the mandarins carry home after the ceremony
the ancient Ming accoutrements of their masters 162
Emperor Khai-dinh of Annam on his French-supported
throne 163
Some of the most effective of Annamese tombs are covered
with pictures and designs made of broken porcelain
dishes set in cement 163
With each new year the Annamese clear of vegetation the
graves of their ancestors, back to remote generations 194
I asked a living caretaker to fill the place of one of
these of stone which guard the entrance to a royal
tomb of Annam 194
In the heart of Hanoï, northern capital of French
Indo-China, stands a delightfully picturesque lake of
goodly dimensions 195
Annamese girls hold Sunday morning flower-market at this
corner of the city-girdled lake of Hanoï 195
The ladies of Annam lose any claim they have to beauty
when they open their mouths on black-enameled teeth 210
Thi-ba, who did her best as guardian of our children,
was equally set against bobbed hair and skirts 210
For days one may steam in and out among the fantastic
rock islands of the Bay of Along 211
Tropical vegetation sometimes commandeers sustenance on
the rock peaks 211
The women of Tonkin combine hat, sunshade, and umbrella
in one unwieldy contraption 258
The Muong women wear little above the waist, except the
loads they carry 258
The guard turned out to greet my companion, the
_résident_ of Vinh, at the first village on the way to
Laos 259
The Muong chief of our noonday village came in state,
bringing eggs and native fire-water 259
The chief sport of the mountain-dwelling Miao of Laos is
the making of assorted neck-rings of silver dollars
that might better be spent for shirting 274
The Miao woman of Laos take no back seat for their men 275
A Kha woman of the semi-wild tribe that is said to be
the aboriginal race of mountainous Laos 275
Wind-sieved rice is the principal food of the rural
inhabitants of Luang Prabang 306
With a silk scarf worn loosely over a shoulder the women
of Luang Prabang capital are more coquettish than
their waistless sisters of the country districts 306
The palace of the king of Luang Prabang sits placidly on
the bank of the upper Mekong 307
The king turned out his chief dancing-girls and masked
male entertainers for my approval 307
Knighted in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha 322
Two royal elephants saw me off from the palace, the
youngster showing a desire to make me depart on the
run 323
A Miao woman on her travels carries bed and food 323
A Kha home in the mountains of Luang Prabang 338
Grandfather and grandmother of the primitive Khas tend
the children while the intermediate generation seeks
the family livelihood in the hills 338
Wherever his habitat, the water-buffalo is happiest when
immersed to the nostrils in a mud-hole 339
One group of the many Laosian carriers who bore my few
belongings across Luang Prabang 339
This ancient monument in Vientiane, French capital of
Laos, is the most curious remnant of its regal days 354
A door of a ruined palace or temple of Vientiane 354
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 355
Though the French have brought automobiles to Vientiane,
this ancient form of conveyance still predominates 355
EAST OF SIAM
CHAPTER I
EQUATORWARD
One of my jaunts up-country in Kwangtung Province dragged, and I missed
the French liner at Hong Kong. Luckily the _Panama Maru_, bound on one
of the trips around the world that bring her back to her home berth in
Kobe every seven months, also made Saïgon her next stop. We sailed early
in the afternoon of one of those brilliant days that double the blue
intensity of Hong Kong harbor. The Japanese freighter served no free
wine with her meals and had none of that interior ornateness that
suggests the Paris Opéra gone to sea. But perhaps for that very reason
she was more successfully mopped and dusted; and the Nipponese
atmosphere aboard was more interesting than the cosmopolitan scent of
the fortnightly Messageries steamer to Marseilles. True, she made barely
ten knots an hour. But the French could hardly have served better food;
the two “boys” were unspoiled, and Captain Ichikawa was a friendly
little soul, even inviting me to make free of the chart-room. The quiet,
all but noiseless, efficiency of his crew was a startling contrast to
the incessantly shrieking chaos of Chinese craft. The three or four
first-class cabins opened abruptly upon the dining-room rather than upon
the deck; yet even the baby in one of them was Japanese, like everything
and everybody on board except myself, and seemed never to cry. A lone
Japanese would certainly not have been more courteously treated on an
American boat than was the sole non-Nipponese being on this.
It is often said that the Japanese are not individualistic in
personality. There were certainly as many types as passengers, however,
gathered about our table. The energetic son of Tokyo, now in business in
Saïgon, who shared my cabin, was tall and handsome, as agreeable a
companion in cramped quarters as any American man of commerce, and he
spoke both French and English perfectly. On the other hand the
peanut-headed undersized youth across the table looked and acted like
the “nut” his cranium suggested. Then there was a medical graduate going
out, with the assistance of the mikado’s government, to practise upon
the Japanese laborers on the coffee plantations of São Paulo—who one
evening managed to tell me in near-English that he had read, both in my
tongue and his own, all the published plays of Eugene O’Neill. He would
give much to see them played, he added, but had never seen a Western
drama on the stage. The two women who sometimes graced our board were as
different as were the quiet brown and gorgeous-figured red kimonos they
respectively wore on such occasions. Even the half-dozen officers
rounding out the tri-daily gathering were divided by as distinct lines
of demarcation as are their colleagues of any nationality.
Gently we rolled southward, with a drift to the west, over a
densely blue tropical sea. It grew too warm, first in our
open-on-the-dining-room cabins, then on the deck itself. Summer
curtains and awnings appeared; electric fans took up their duties
once more, and in one cabin at least spun all the night through.
The third morning brought one of those lazy perfect days when
loafing in a deck-chair seems the nearest tangible approach to
heaven. We sighted the coast of Annam that afternoon, hazy, almost
mountainous, apparently as treeless as China itself, and had it
always in sight thereafter, a lighthouse winking at us all through
the evening. If possible the weather was even more peerless on the
fourth day; the sea, flat as a floor, blue as if saturated with
indigo, was covered with light ripples that made it look like a
vast piece of watered silk.
Unfortunately it had not turned tropical quickly enough to save one of
our fellow-passengers. A youngster who had taken pneumonia during the
crossing from Japan to the coast of China died during the third night.
Another child had gone the same way, two days out of Nagasaki, and many
in the general quarters below the main-deck still had heavy colds. This
boy of three had been the only son of one of the score of families going
out third-class to Brazil. The funeral, at which the captain personally
requested my presence, took place on the fourth evening. Most of the
passengers and such of the crew as could be spared stood about a kind of
altar improvised on the poop. First the captain, then others stepped up
and bowed low before this, repeating some sort of litany that ended with
the sprinkling of incense. Last of all came the parents, to go
impersonally through the same ceremony. They did not weep, though their
drawn faces showed that they had given way in private to grief to which
it would be bad Japanese form to yield in public. The Buddhist service
was as simple as it was quiet, wholly un-Chinese, without a sob or a
loud voice, even as the little box wrapped in the flag of the rising sun
floated away astern in the moonlight. It was as much that atmosphere of
the uselessness of giving way to the inevitable, I think, as the fact
that I had left behind in Canton a three-year-old son of my own, which
made me so depressed that I was still pacing the deck at midnight.
By that time we had anchored at the mouth of the Mekong, near a
lighthouse. Off again at dawn, I sat, after a last salt bath, wearing
the few garments that Japanese custom permits, in a delicious tropical
morning breeze as the steamer made its way up a tide-water river with
dead-flat banks of low, apparently uninhabited jungle stretching as far
away as could be seen in any direction. The stream was as wide as the
misnamed Pearl River at Canton, but clean and blue, flecked here and
there with a tiny boat top-heavy with its clean-white pointed sail; and
it wound so constantly all the fifty miles from the mouth to Saïgon that
we headed again and again to every point of the compass. The low jungled
banks gave way to brown plains with patches of palms, low thatch houses,
and what looked like haystacks scattered far and wide. The inevitable
Socony plant appeared, and some distance beyond we ran down at last the
flat evasive town, the steeples of which had betrayed its location, now
to port, now to starboard, again over our stern, like the ears of some
startled jack-rabbit trying in vain to dodge its pursuers.
There was a reminder of Martinique about the already sweltering city
half seen beyond a wharf dotted with white helmets. I had rather
expected to be called upon as interpreter, but the fat,
bored-with-the-tropics French doctor who sweated up the steep gang-plank
knew some English, though he spoke it more laboriously than did our
captain and several of my fellow-passengers. There was something amusing
in seeing these people of two nations which have no overwhelming love
for us of the English-speaking races forced to use our tongue in their
intercourse. In his perpetually bored way the port doctor was very
insistent that every Japanese on board show proof of a recent
vaccination, though only my cabin-mate was landing; but when I began to
do likewise he waved me politely aside and took my word for it in a way
that implied that as a Caucasian I was in a class by myself. An equally
courteous, if less bored, official pocketed my passport and gave me the
freedom of the half-way station between Hong Kong and Singapore.
Before the dock lay behind me I regretted the habitual lack of foresight
that had led me to bring only an extra winter suit instead of half a
dozen white ones, and was praising the superior wisdom of the thoughtful
wife in Canton who had insisted on my taking along a tropical helmet in
January. Luckily other travelers seem to be in the habit of misjudging
the winter climate of Saïgon, and Chinese tailors at the foot of the
principal street are used to correcting such oversights in a hurry.
Though it was Sunday they promised me a _complet_ or two of duck within
two days, at twelve _piastres_ each—and while I am on the subject let me
mention that the piastre of Indo-China is equal to the “Mex” dollar of
Hong Kong and China, averaging a little more than half our own, and not
given to fluctuating with the franc.
The Rue Catinat, grilling now beneath the late morning sun, drew me
inland. Mingled with its all too plain evidence of propinquity to the
equator was that of a considerable relationship to Paris. Between
window-displays that might have come almost intact from the Rue de la
Paix, black and brown fellows in red fezzes, locally known as
Malabars, squatted in booths raised well above the narrow
sidewalks—money-changers, sellers of tobacco, and the like. Here and
there a Hindu merchant stared out into the white light of the gently
yet perspiringly mounting street. Here Sunday was no British Sabbath.
Annamese waiters bustled about the marble tables of hotel cafés well
peopled with white men and women instantly recognizable as French.
Business as usual seemed to be the motto of all but the most important
establishments. Yet even the diaphanously clad Oriental strollers of
various origins shuffled along in the narrow streak of shade before
one row of shop-fronts.
Saïgon’s main street flowed out before long into a sun-stewed square
with a cathedral trebly hot in its red brick garb. The view from its
tower across the well streeted city, almost forested above the section
of wharves and commerce, would have been worth a less perspiring climb.
Farther on, the American to whom I had a letter lived in simple bachelor
splendor in a low house of thick walls and disproportionately large
rooms. Languid with long tropical residence, this former captain in the
Philippine constabulary who now represented our great oil corporation
seemed to recognize no pastime except the lolling in a reclining-chair
with a cold drink within easy reach. I am no suitable companion in the
consumption of British whisky—that could be had in this stronghold of
its French rivals only by something closely resembling smuggling—and I
drifted down toward the port again.
All Saïgon sizzled now in noonday repose. Not merely on Sunday, I later
learned, are all offices, all shops except those of the heat-impervious
Orientals, closed from eleven until two for the daily siesta. One of the
shocks due the rare hurried business man or tourist from the West who
drifts into Saïgon is to find it virtually dead daily from the early
French lunch-hour until the sun nears the western tree-tops. Here and
there an enervated rickshaw-man dragged his empty vehicle slowly behind
him. A few dozing Hindus, a fez-wearer or two asleep with open eyes on
his haunches among his wares, were visible in the unbroken rows of
shops. Heaps of coolies reposed under the trees of other streets, under
raised porches, their thin legs tangled together, open-mouthed like dead
fish. Otherwise the streets were empty; not a European was outdoors. All
the governing race were asleep in the breeze of electric fans, such
garments as they still wore pasted to their bodies. Had one of them
spied me wandering the streets at this hour I should no doubt have been
taken for mad.
The new-comer soon finds that he too is better for his siesta, and that
there is nothing to be gained in going without it, for there is little
that he can do and no one whom he can see. No wonder the white residents
all seemed tropicalized, if I may coin a word greatly needed in any
attempt to describe life in Saïgon. Two or three hours of broken nap,
and they must get up again, wearier than ever, spirits and body alike
languid and stiff; for work or its substitute begins anew. One by one
each leaves his house, jumps into a rickshaw with burning cushions, and
goes to shut himself up once more in office or shop. There only the
tropically experienced and the well-to-do can manage a comfortable
coolness in which those not used to the equator as a close neighbor can
either think or work. The streets begin again to swarm with
_pousse-pousses_—for in spite of the all too evident fact that it is
pulled the French insist on calling the rickshaw a “push-push,” perhaps
in memory of the converted baby-carriage from which this now widespread
vehicle was fashioned. Thinner, more washed-out in appearance than more
northerly men of their laborious calling, the pullers nevertheless
charge madly down upon every possible client, just as in China. But here
they are more orderly, a trifle cleaner perhaps, with an air of being
kept closely within bounds by foreign rules as well as by the climate.
Less cheery than their Chinese prototypes, they seem more optimistic.
The rickshaw-man of Indo-China holds out both hands at the end of his
run, as if expecting such a fortune for his services to one of the
dominant race that one hand would not hold it. But his optimism rarely
materializes, and no dispute with one of the race that rules over his
land seems to be worth the effort in such a climate.
Meanwhile, unable to adapt myself so quickly to the do-nothing of
tropical midday, I had wandered to the end of the town. It was the same
old France, even this far afield—outwardly imposing buildings generously
adorned with plump naked females in stone, and within, dusty bureaucracy
where the buying of a postage-stamp is a transaction, with much
bookkeeping involved. Saïgon is in theory the capital of all Indo-China,
though in practice the governors-general have all preferred somewhat
more northerly Hanoï. Their palace here, like the cathedral, the Postes
et Télégraphes, the Municipal Theater, and all the other examples of
elaborate French architecture misplaced in the tropics, is set off in
its grass-covered square at the end of some broad avenue. Palatial
European residences with an atmosphere of lavishness emphasize the
conspicuous scarcity of native buildings, whether towers, temples,
ancient gates or palaces, or high-class dwellings. For that matter the
native residents seem few, at least until one reaches the outskirts,
though Saïgon was an important center before the French came.
Farther out are big brick barracks, where young French soldiers
conscious of no color-line mingle freely with colonial troops ranging
from black Malgaches to pale-yellow Annamese. Wide tree-lined roads lead
on to the Botanical Gardens, in which men and women Parisian in dress
and manners drive or stroll in the semi-coolness of evening; and just
across the arroyo bounding it on the farther side is the bush—jungle and
thatched huts and primitive living, where one glimpses hammocks in
hovels of faded thatch on bare ground among banana-plants that carry the
mind back to rural tropical South America.
European health used to be so bad in Saïgon that French residents often
had the experience of playing baccarat with a friend one evening and
accompanying him next morning to Bangkok—not the capital of Siam but the
Saïgon cemetery for foreigners, popularly so-called among them from the
street that leads to it. The story is still told of a misinformed French
journalist in France who was moved to protest at the extravagance of
sending all the dead to Siam, “in order not to alarm the population.”
To-day conditions are better, as healthful as could be expected for
wine-drinkers in an equatorial country. But the French seem less at home
here than the Annamese in their black two-piece garments, shiny as
oil-cloth, their wooden clogs scraping noisily on the cement sidewalks,
on the stone-faced roadways beyond, splotched with the red saliva of
this race of betel-nut chewers. Their hair, usually in topknots that
peer from beneath black band-turbans, the black-enameled teeth they
consider so becoming, and the betel-nut that drips blood-red over their
lips they have in common with their more wealthy compatriots in coats of
transparent black gauze over light-colored gowns.
With sunset comes the great French rite, _l’apéritif_. Men in fresh
white and women in their best summer frocks gather on the terrace—in
other words most of the public sidewalk, with slight respect for
pedestrians—of the Hôtel Continental, a scene suggesting the Café de la
Paix of Paris in a tropical setting. The awnings are trussed up, and the
night life, the chief life of Saïgon, at least of the visible variety,
grows with the evening. The very common-sense custom of the European men
in going bareheaded after sunset is a delightful relief from the heavy
sweat-begetting cork helmet. All the Frenchman’s comforts of home, from
creamy curaçao of oil-like texture to rich green _absinthe frappée_, are
trotted forth by Annamese “boys” in white gowns, topped by their
inevitable band-turban, jet-black as the coarse hair most of them wear
in a Psyche knot. All manner of French colonial types join the
appetite-seeking throng—the anemic rounder, the sturdy colonist in his
black shovel-beard, the humped bureaucrat in his pince-nez. Rare indeed
is the man who is not accompanied by at least one member of the fair sex
who could have come from nowhere but France, garb, manner, and all, in
spite of her pallor and reduced vivacity born of tropical residence.
As a hostelry the Continental was full. But one of the most agreeable
surprises about Indo-China, at least to the man who comes there from
wandering in China itself, is the number of its hotels with all the
comforts of Paris. They are very French hotels indeed, from the menu to
the thrifty eagle-eyed madame behind the bottle-flanked zinc counter,
even though the midday _déjeuner_ cannot of course be served out on the
sidewalk. Rooms may be spacious or small, but they are always furnished
with a big double bed, symbol of the Frenchman’s horror of sleeping
alone. This is unfailingly flanked by the _bidet_, in enameled tin on
loose wooden legs or of the latest bath-tub style. Bath-tubs themselves
are rare, but in a land where perspiration drips at every crook of a
finger the shower-baths, often in a cement-paved corner of the room
itself, are alone worth the price of admission. All this and more I
found at exceedingly reasonable rates at the Hôtel de la Rotonde, just
across the street from the starting-place of the biweekly steamer to
Pnom Penh.
Autobuses leave Saïgon in various directions; toy-like French
automobiles may be had for the hiring. Where the former, and sometimes
the latter, leave off, one may descend to thatch-topped carts behind
humped cattle, or climb into queer little vehicles something like the
jaunting-cars of Ireland. The well-to-do natives of Cochinchina seem
still to prefer the _malabar_, a horse-drawn box on four wheels, so
named from the Indian immigrants who appear to have brought it with
them. The bus ride to Thudam disclosed an industrial school where the
old Annamese arts that show signs of dying out, such as inlaying
furniture and bric-a-brac with mother-of-pearl, are being retaught under
French principals. Annamese boys of the working class are recommended to
it by the village elders and are paid a bit while learning. In such
matters as these, and the good roads leading to them, French rule is
visibly an advantage. The rather dusty ride out to the Falls of Trian is
also one of those worth while among the radiating routes covering little
Cochinchina. On almost any of them mangosteen trees stand forth to make
one’s mouth water, though it has never been my luck, thanks to
persistent off seasons, to taste this untransportable vegetable
ice-cream, reputed the finest fruit in captivity.
Smallest and oldest of the five divisions of French Indo-China,
Cochinchina is the only colony among them. The others are
“protectorates,” though the difference is hardly visible to the naked
eye. But at least its strictly colonial status simplifies the task of
its governor. He came from Mauritius and was part negro, according to
the official propagandist for more tourists who insisted on taking me to
call on him. I should hardly have suspected it in his cool and deeply
shaded offices, and certainly not from a later glimpse in more social
circles of his beautiful French wife of queenly dignity. A colonial
governor ranks high in the matrimonial market of France, whatever his
complexion. But if I fancied there was no color prejudice in this motley
dependency I was disabused by the secret scorn my companion expressed,
as we left the palace, for the African strain in the superior to whom he
had been so deferential in official intercourse, though he himself
seemed to go out of his way to mention his own Annamese wife and
half-caste children. To each nationality its peculiar point of view.
Trains, trolleys, autobuses, automobiles, rickshaws, _malabars_, and
boats, not to mention pedestrians, ply constantly between Saïgon and
Cholon, its rich Chinese suburb. Tiresomely Chinese in many of its
details, this wealthy city testifies to French tutelage. Instead of
shoulder-wide streets garnished with roaming pigs and untended garbage,
there are good pavements, and a modern water-supply in place of the
bucket-brigades from river or mud-hole. Still no Elysium, it is
immaculate compared to China proper. Here live Chinese who own costly
automobiles; here diamonds and other valuable jewelry are widely worn in
public; here where it is safe to indulge such inclination under foreign
rule, is altered the impression one carries away from the bandit- and
soldier-ridden old empire to the north, that the Celestials are the
antithesis of the Hindus in this matter of personal adornment. In every
shop, whether of a grocer or a seller of porcelains, of medicines or of
silks, there is a mighty heaping up of wares, and six clerks where we
would have one. Among them an old man fat and cheery of aspect as the
Laughing Buddha at the entrance to Chinese temples, naked except for
thin cotton trousers and slippers, sits manipulating the balls of his
calculating-board. Flat, dry, lacquered ducks, transparent at the edges,
hang along cords like bats taking their day’s repose. Pigs blown up like
their toy counterparts of rubber, lie at their ease, polished and
hairless, with outstretched legs, grinning their deathly grin at the
passing throng. Now and again a funeral goes by, gaudy and noisy as if
the chief actor were among the graves of his ancestors, but more richly
ornate and lacking the usual tawdriness, like the town itself compared
to old China. But those who have been there then say that the time to
see Cholon is during the week of Têt, as the lunar New Year is called in
Indo-China, when the canvas and cardboard dragon is promenaded through
the streets, opening his enormous maw and twisting his long disgusting
body, in which a score of sweating coolies are hidden.
In Indo-China one seldom speaks of going to the grocery; it is rather,
“I am going to the Chinaman’s.” The Annamese, and still more so the
other races that make up the native population, are lazy, or at least
languid as merchants, and the Chinese get the business and the riches.
To speak of retail commerce is to mean the Chinese, and in larger
matters they are by no means outsiders. For a hundred and fifty years
they have been installed at Cholon, and from there they have spread over
all Cochinchina, all Indo-China for that matter. They arrive thin and in
rags, and leave, if at all, fat and placid; and as fast as they get rich
other gaunt wretches take their places at the foot of the ladder. It is
as if they were being perpetually passed through a fattening-machine;
and if some of them have no luck, lack sufficient cuteness, there is the
recompense of opium to make a plank as comfortable as a rich man’s bed.
More or less respected by the people they feed upon, they are discreetly
or insolently superior to them, depending on their individual status of
the moment. Formerly they made great fortunes quickly in rice. That way
is hampered now, because the government sends out rice quotations that
reach even the peasants. But still they get rich. So greatly are they
the gainers that Indo-China has been called a “Chinese colony
administered by Frenchmen.” Economically the Celestial is master of the
country; his activity, his intelligence in business affairs, his
commercial cleverness, his very temperament would make him so, even
without the great advantages of a population given to gambling and
gifted with a lack of forethought that make for usury at high rates.
Thirty-six per cent is legal interest even in the French courts of
Indo-China, and the wily Chinese often gets everything merely for
lending ten piastres—land, house, furniture, sometimes the whole family
as slaves.
A gambling game known as “the thirty-six animals” sweeps through all the
villages, especially of Cambodia, like _o bicho_ in Brazil. In Cambodia,
as in Siam, as in China, slavery has been legally abolished, but it
continues to flourish. In the old days the work of the slave for debt
covered only the interest; it never paid the principal and set him free.
To-day the peasant who borrows in a lean year or after a bad wager may
hope that at least his children will get out of the meshes of the
spider-faced Chinese lender.
Even from the political point of view the Chinese are a privileged class
in Indo-China. Though they have no diplomatic representatives of their
own, they virtually have the rights of extraterritoriality under the
protection of the French. Every Chinese in the colony must belong to a
_congrégation_, a kind of association that is responsible to the state
for all its members, civilly and pecuniarily. Each man between the ages
of eighteen and sixty pays a tax of from 6.60 to 200 piastres, depending
on the category to which he belongs. There are six of these categories,
with bankers and merchants in the highest class and coolies in the
lowest. Though they pay this to the “congregation,” it really goes to
the government. This is no bright French idea, but was the lot of all
Chinese living in Annam long before the French came. Besides this
varying head-tax there is a “prestation tax”—whatever that may be—of
from two to fifty piastres a year; and any Chinese who wishes to travel
beyond the town in which he is registered must pay for a
_laisser-passer_, good for two weeks and twice renewable, so that those
who are always traveling contribute considerably to the government
during the year. Women, children, the sick, and men over sixty pay only
a yearly tax of one piastre, and may travel when and where they wish;
but even the son of a Chinese by an Annamese woman, and born in the
colony, remains a Chinese and must belong to some “congregation.”
The Chinese of Cholon and of Indo-China in general rarely speak a word
of Annamese or of French and of course no English; nor for that matter
do they speak Chinese, for they all come from the southern coastal
country where dialects reign. Canton, Amoy, Swatow, and Hainan furnish
the chief “congregations.” Such intriguing names as Hai Chin and Hung
Long Tom are to be seen on their shop signs. Except for the Cantonese,
who usually bring wives with them, nearly all these happily expatriated
Celestials take temporary native wives, usually Annamese. But they
_never_—the italics are those of a French writer—leave temporary wife
and children behind without assuring their livelihood. The same cannot
be said of the French in Indo-China—nor, the French might retort, of
Americans in the Philippines.
If I had come too early to see Cholon in the throes of the Chinese New
Year, at least I was just in time to attend the most important annual
celebration of another alien group that fattens on the native
population. Every January the Chettys, a Hindu caste of bankers and
usurers to be found in all the ports of the Far East, give a great fête
in honor of their protectress, the Goddess Souppramanya. It was the most
barbaric spectacle I have ever seen in many years of globe-trotting. In
the evening all Indians of this class in Saïgon, from mere street-booth
money-changers to big bankers, enveloped themselves in their
curtain-like muslin costume, with a spongy towel about the neck, and
formed a procession to their temple in the Rue Ohier. This Pagode des
Chettys—one must get used to the French way of saying _pagode_ for
temple and _tour_ for pagoda—is rich and elaborate for its setting,
though only mildly so compared to such structures in India. The contrast
between its ornamental tower and the _défense d’afficher_ signs lavished
upon its bright pink walls is not likely to escape even the languid
passer-by lolling in his _pousse-pousse_.
[Illustration: Cholon architecture is neither exactly French nor
Chinese]
[Illustration: A funeral procession in Cholon, Chinese suburb of Saïgon]
[Illustration: A decreasing form of conveyance in Cochinchina]
[Illustration: Unlike China proper, great sections of Indo-China are
covered with magnificent virgin jungle-forests]
Unlike what would have happened in India, here there seemed to be no
objection to my presence; the worshipers in fact gave me subtle hints
that they were rather pleased at my attention, though the stern watchman
at the door waved away natives of the colony. There may have been great
inner meaning, plethoras of mysticism quite beyond my simple ken, in the
ensuing ceremony, but to me it was rather a shock to know that what are
popularly accepted as our fellow-Aryans could be so crassly
superstitious. Yet such things no doubt are all a matter of degree and
inherited point of view; the unfamiliar always has a hint of the
grotesque, even of the hideous.
Great Hindu bankers naturally wear many diamonds; otherwise these
overfed worshipers were only in white flowing loin-cloths, some with a
fold of cheese-cloth over one shoulder. With three fingers each further
prepared himself by smearing on his forehead, his flabby arms, and the
hairy chest that attested his Aryan blood, whitish stuff mixed by
low-caste members of his race from cow-dung and other ingredients. Hindu
musicians supplied an absolutely unbroken caterwauling splendidly in
keeping with the rest of the insane ceremony. One of them in particular
should easily have won the world record for long-windedness. For a full
hour, if not indeed much longer, he kept his cheeks blown out to their
capacity without an instant of interlude, thereby keeping a barbaric
kind of fife miauling without cessation and at the same time beating a
drum incessantly with his fingers.
One by one the fat, bediamonded, all but naked bankers stood before the
opened shrine, itself a vision of untold riches, sometimes singly,
sometimes in small groups, and with their hands high above their heads
shook and twisted and contorted themselves like madmen suffering the
extremes of torture. The object of these revolting attempts of all too
solid flesh to resemble a snake in the throes of pain or anger were, as
nearly as I could gather, to deceive the goddess into the belief that
the worshipers were acutely suffering at sight of her divine splendor,
or that they were ready to suffer any agony in her honor. One by one
they threw themselves on the cement pavement laid in small brightly
colored squares and writhed and squirmed, twisting their heads fiercely
from side to side, rolling over and over, in a way to make mere
groveling a pastime, the sweat of torture and of an equatorial climate
pouring from their brown bodies until the floor was wet beneath them.
The paunchiest creature of them all, his fingers covered with diamonds
large enough, in the vernacular of the day, to choke a horse, his
dough-like face riddled with the marks of smallpox, doubly repulsive
with his great hairy naked paunch, went through contortions nauseating
to the hardiest stomach. His voluntary convulsions suggested that he was
the chief of the caste, as his diamonds implied that he was the leader
in successful usury. If only our bankers and money-lenders had to do
some such penance annually instead of merely going to church weekly in a
silk hat and a limousine!
At length their divinity, Souppramanya, which like any American worthy
of attention looked easily worth the million repute and her incredibly
bejeweled appearance credit her with, was taken down from her niche. A
dozen men in loin-cloths carried the idol to her silver chariot; two
great cream-colored sacred bulls, or, more exactly, steers, wearing
fancily embroidered robes over their single humps, were led forth from
their sumptuous stables within the temple, and the second phase of the
ceremony began. Between two rows of torches, surrounded by oriflammes,
sacred parasols in gay colors, and inexhaustible musicians, the
extravagant equipage of the goddess set out around the walled inclosure
of the altar. Huger than water-buffaloes of the fields, their sleek
fawn-colored hides shining, their expression that of their human
prototypes haughty with generations of adulation, the sacred cattle trod
slowly at the head of the worshipers, their spoiled-aristocrat dignity
unruffled by the frequent slipping of their silver shoes on the smooth
hard pavement, or at the sometimes painful pulling at the cords attached
to their perforated nostrils. Sacred as they were, such coercion by
their idolizers was evidently necessary to keep them in order, and this
they endured as if even sacred beings were not wholly free from the pull
of circumstances. Behind, surrounded by a milling throng of naked
smeared Hindu men and boys writhing with religious fervor, came the
martyr without whom the ceremony would be in vain. He had prayed and
fasted for a week in order to be able to endure his suffering. Lances
pricking his feet, an enormous pin thrust through his tongue, he drew a
little chariot fastened to him by traces ending in silver hooks that dug
deeply into his flesh. His eyes twisted in their orbits, foam driveled
from his lips, a figure horrible to behold, urged on by the clamors of
the frenzied money-lenders, who now and then still threw themselves in
abject contortions on the pavement. The crowd jostled and pitilessly
crowded upon a second martyr, who had transformed himself into a
pincushion, with needles and pins sticking out of his flesh in every
direction. It was an astonishing as well as a revolting spectacle, a
vision of fanatical India such as I had never seen in India itself,
doubly surprising because of the freedom with which we two white men and
a Frenchwoman were allowed to mingle with the worshipers.
Two, three, four times the barbaric procession made the circuit of the
temple. A curious noise that seemed to come from within the chariot
puzzled me, until I managed to crowd closely enough to discover that the
ambulating altar contained a little motor which lighted it with
electricity! The gaunt Hindu in charge of this howled and writhed with
the others; but in a fold of his loin-cloth bulged two or three
electric-light bulbs to replace those that might burn out.
Then quickly the whole performance subsided. The regal-mannered steers
were led back to their stalls; the swollen cheeks of the musicians
deflated in a final piercing yowl; the goddess was carried back to her
permanent throne. In a twinkling the frenzied bankers returned to the
placid every-day behavior of their calling, and went to squat on the
floor in a raised place too sacred for ordinary beings, where low-caste
Indians began to pass trays of food among them. This consisted mainly of
cocoanuts cut in two and filled with bananas, red fruits, and several
unrecognizable forms of Hindu delicacies. The hairy-paunched favorites
of fortune helped themselves more than generously; the small fry, and
the children scattered among them, got only handsful of sticky rice,
carelessly tossed to them by the servers.
This spectacle was repeated every evening for ten days. It was very easy
to guess what might have befallen those who had dared to wear such
diamonds or publicly parade such idols in China, or for that matter in
our own expensively policed land. Here no fear of robbery seemed to
trouble the pious Chettys, most opulent of the thousands of castes of
India. All the evening there had hovered near me a man from Pondicherry,
that tiny patch of India still ruled by the French. Dressed in the
tailored garb of Europeans in the tropics, his decidedly Aryan features
merely a glossy brown instead of white, speaking perfect French, he
seemed far removed from the men of his race who writhed on the floor in
their diamonds and loin-cloths. The ceremony was evidently commonplace
to him, for he showed no surprise even at the height of it. His fervor
seemed to be political rather than religious, and like many a man of
color in the French colonies he was almost boisterously Francophil. A
dozen times during the evening his voice rose high enough above the
fanatical tumult to assure me in as many ways of expressing it that
India would be the happiest land on earth if only France rather than
England held it.
The ease with which I got permission to visit the Saïgon establishment
where opium is prepared for sale implied that the French made no secret,
whether or not they saw anything wrong in it, of their official
sponsoring of this traffic. Opium is a government monopoly in
Indo-China, with a similar establishment in Tonkin to the north. In a
big airy room of armory-like ceiling, a hundred or more feet long and
half as wide, a score of Annamese were at work. What with the heat of
caldrons and of the climate, and the sickeningly sweetish smell of the
drug, their labor with heavy ladles was no sinecure. In fact the whole
personnel works only three hours out of the twenty-four, eighteen hours
a week. The poppy-juice comes from India—at the northern establishment
especially southwestern China now supplies great quantities, but this is
of course not officially admitted—in balls of the size of a cocoanut, or
resembling still more closely the Brazil-nut in its native state, for
the shell is nearly an inch thick—but made of leaves. These leaves are
eventually sold to the natives, who chew them with their betel-nut, no
doubt getting some opium-like effect from the soaking of poppy-juice.
The brown jelly-like substance inside is dumped into huge brass pans
over fires and ladled constantly as it boils, sweat running literally in
streams from the workers. When it has cooled and been well kneaded the
resultant dough is placed in other such pans and rubbed down into a
concave cake two or three inches thick. This in turn is placed upside
down over a very hot charcoal brazier, and every minute or two a workman
peels off a skin of the thickness of leather and throws it into still
another pan. When all the cake has been skinned away, the leather-like
layers in the new pan are treated with water, for they would otherwise
be brittle as glass, and are worked again into a very brown dough which
gradually swells to fill the pan. Handfuls of specially prepared
interior of bamboos, soft and resembling vermicelli, are then thrust
into the mass, and brown water runs slowly from these through cloth
filters into buckets. Only this liquid is of any value, the residue
being thrown away, useless even as fertilizer.
Reduced to a semiliquid form once more, this final product is placed in
iron barrels, a single one of which is worth twenty thousand piastres.
The stuff may now be sold at any time, though if possible it is allowed
to settle six months or more, for like wine and marriage the longer it
is kept the better it becomes. Then in the form of a paste closely
resembling russet shoe-blacking it is put up in tins of five, ten,
twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred grams each. The first retails at
barely two piastres, so that every rickshaw-man and errand-boy may
afford it; the largest, at twenty-five. The de luxe opium is put up in
purple boxes, a special mark on the very best of them indicating that
they are reserved for the king of Cambodia. Great quantities of this
best purple variety are sent to the old Cambodian sovereign each
December, as the Christmas present of the government. His royal
colleague, the emperor of Annam, is supplied from the Hanoï
establishment. The ordinary tins, with no marks upon them except a
cryptic number, are placed in heavy wooden boxes simply marked
“Benares”—other code names distinguishing the better grades—and go out
in great loads to all parts of the colony. The stuff is sold in these
tins to any one who can pay for it, in every little _débit_
distinguished by an “O.R.,” for “Opium Régie” on signs similar to those
indicating authority to retail for the French tobacco monopoly. What
with government preparation, license fees, and the like, the drug brings
an enormous profit to the government; that is, to France.
The official who took it upon himself to get me started right in my
sight-seeing called the opium monopoly “the shame of Indo-China”; and
some other French residents felt, or professed to feel, the same way
about it. But even he insisted that if it were not thus openly sold and
regulated the people would smuggle it in; and if it were prohibited
entirely there would be a revolution! So there would be, though perhaps
not in just the sense the speaker meant to imply.
We all know that France takes a somewhat different view of “vices” than
do we of the English-speaking races. The French attitude seems to be,
let vice flourish and abound, that each may learn to save himself from
temptation, or decide for himself how much indulgence he can allow
without serious personal harm. There are hints that this may perhaps be
as effective in the end as our own growing custom of forcible
suppression. Even in novels based on life in Indo-China the French
attitude toward opium seems to be about what ours as a nation is toward
tobacco. Many, some say three fourths, of the eighteen thousand French
in the colony smoke opium, as do most of the various indigenous races,
many Chinese, and some Hindu residents. There are not a few French
residents of the better class who contend that it does no great harm.
Among the natives, men with the opium habit are treated with indulgence,
but the women “never” smoke it; any who did so would be considered the
lowest of human creatures. On the whole the Japanese seem to have
handled the problem better in Formosa, for they at least strive to keep
their own people free from the habit, and are systematically reducing
consumption within their own territory, rather than trying to increase
it. The smoking of opium, a Chinese importation, was not a common vice
in Indo-China, unless perhaps among the Annamese, before the French
came. In Cambodia and among some of the other gentler races that make up
the protected federation, market-days and big gatherings are needed to
overcome the inertia toward the habit even to-day. But the government
forces it upon the people for the benefit of the treasury; and the
development of obligatory military service has spread it everywhere.
Lists of villages are sent out by diligent functionaries with the
information that they are not consuming their pro rata of opium, just as
great business houses in other lands protest to their agents that such
and such territory should take more of their goods, and local officials
are told to urge shopkeepers with the “O.R.” license to add to their
stocks and push them over the counter.
The opium monopoly in Indo-China is by no means airtight. In Laos there
are many Miao who grow the poppy up in their hills far inland, and as
they can get little more than half as much for their product from the
French monopoly officials as from the Chinese constantly engaged in
illicit opium traffic, only a fraction of that grown and really sold by
the Miao is ever reckoned in government reports. The Chinese smugglers
have their own _pirogues_, slender swift boats for the inland rivers,
and with these they are constantly getting opium out of the country,
mainly by way of Siam. Luang Prabang reports only eight hundred thousand
piastres’ worth of opium a year, yet every one knows that far more is
smuggled out of that kingdom than is sold to the government monopoly,
and so easily that customs officers are kept on the Laos-Siam and
Laos-China frontiers chiefly for appearance’s sake.
CHAPTER II
ON INTO CAMBODIA
The French move freely in and out of Indo-China without passports, but
all “foreigners” are tightly bound with red tape. Germans and Russians
are not yet admitted at all, and even harmless tourists are treated as
suspicious characters. In these days of rapid transmission of
information, and its more exciting sister, misinformation, it was
something of a surprise to find, five full years after the signing of
the Treaty of Versailles, that news had not yet reached the colonial
bureaucrats even of this far-flung dependency that the World War was
over. Having been officially robbed of my passport upon landing, as
happens to all _étrangers_, I could recover it only by appearing next
morning at a police office and filling in on both sides a large form
designed to bring out in elaborate detail all the past, present, and
future history of the signer. One question in particular was puzzling:
“Have you ever been in the enemy country?” Since I had been laboring
under the impression that France was just then at peace with all the
world, I asked the official in charge of my case to elucidate. He seemed
to betray a hint of annoyance beneath his perfectly Gallic exterior, and
finally explained that the forms were still those used in war days. “The
high cost of printing, you know....”
One question naturally leads to another: were a few months of helping
his countrymen to hold the bridge-heads on the Rhine to be counted
against me? But he seemed to be growing suspicious of my straight face;
besides, since he was the one functionary in the passport division who
flattered himself on speaking some English, his attention was largely
taken up with seeing that I did not address him in French, or that I at
least should not sully the carefully Anglicized form by answering some
of its questions in that tongue. How could that one of his colleagues
whose laborious monthly duty it is to translate a dozen or more of these
forms for foreigners back into French, as the beginning of a lengthy
_dossier_ on each such individual admitted to the colony, meet any
suspicion that his berth should be abolished, if foreigners were allowed
to do their own translating? The expense of putting those forms into
English, back in war days, would moreover hardly be justified if they
were not used for foreigners as intended; hence nothing more natural
than that even those foreigners whose French is far more fluent than
their English should be compelled to give their history on these
translated forms, even though the official beside me had to help them to
turn their French into English.
I had been too long familiar with French bureaucracy to suppose that my
passport would be returned at once, merely for a bare hour of filling in
a questionnaire. Naturally this had to be taken to men higher up, “for
study,” before so final an action could be taken. But I could prepare to
take the evening steamer to Cambodia “in all tranquillity,” the
philologist of the passport bureau assured me—in his own tongue now, no
doubt because the information was unofficial. My passport would be
handed me on the steamer before she sailed, he confided. His manner was
such that it was hard to keep from flattering myself that my notoriously
honest face had led him to make an admission to me which he would never
have dreamed of making to an ordinary traveler.
He had spoken truly too; the passport was returned, even as he had
foretold, and the manner of its returning showed how valuable are the
services rendered by the swarms of officials who look after such
matters. I had strolled across from my hotel to the steamer _Mekong_
long enough before to be already deep in deck-chair conversation with
the charming young American lady and her merely more elderly chaperon,
whom our tropic-emaciated consul had told me to expect among my
traveling-companions, when a young man in what looked like a disguised
uniform began pacing the deck shouting for “Monsieur Ügh,” as nearly as
his cross between a grunt and a word can be rendered in English. The
fourth or fifth time he disturbed the absorbing pleasure of meeting
one’s own people, of the preferable sex at that, unexpectedly in a far
distant land, I noticed that he waved in one hand an American passport.
About the same moment my returning wits confided to me that the noise he
was making so incessantly was the Frenchman’s most sincere attempt to
pronounce the name “Hughes.” In a whole-hearted desire to help him out
of what was evidently on the verge of becoming a troublesome duty, I
rose and asked the shouter’s permission to look at the document. It was
my own passport. I thanked him cordially for the two forms of relief
this discovery brought, and returned to my conversation.
Before long my attention was distracted once more by another stentorian
voice, this time calling for “Mademoiselle Ügh!” I offered my services
again—and retrieved the passport of the young lady beside me, whose name
was no more Hughes than is my own. Barely had she stowed it away in that
intricate way ladies have of risking their valuable possessions when a
third voice, paging “Madame Ügh!” began to punctuate the summer night. I
recognized the man who had despoiled me of my passport before allowing
me to land from the _Panama Maru_. It was natural that the same official
could not be expected to hand out more than one of the documents that
evening, with so few to go round. Besides, this man had hardly had three
days in which to recover from the task of receiving me into the country.
It caused me no great surprise to find that the paper he now flourished
about his head belonged to the elder of the two ladies beside me, though
her deceased husband had borne a name not even remotely suggestive of
the prolific family Hughes.
Priceless sources of information must the voluminous _dossiers_ of
visitors to Indo-China be, so carefully compiled by the division of
police inspection charged with drawing up and “studying” them. It was
not until I had time later to do some studying of my own that I examined
my passport, with its square yard or less of stamping and annotation by
the French authorities, in an effort to solve the mystery of the name
under which we had evidently all three been registered in the annals of
Indo-China. Only then did I notice that even more prominent, on the face
of the official permissions so generously granted by our Department of
State for American citizens to proceed abroad, than the name of the
holder, was that of one Charles E. Hughes.
Ah, well, what are colonies and “protectorates” and mandated territory
and spheres of influence for if not to provide posts for more officials?
The episode might soon have been forgotten in the glories of a tropical
night, had not so much surprise been shown by the passport officials and
the ship’s company that Monsieur and Madame Hughes had booked separate
cabins. Our passports were again taken away from us in Pnom Penh,
restamped and returned to us there, stamped and registered once more
upon our return to Saïgon, and my own was manhandled I know not how many
more times in sundry places before my travels in Indo-China were over;
but I neglected to obtain exact figures on the increase of the Hughes
family before finally leaving France’s rich Far-Eastern possession
behind. In contrast to all this, I was asked to show my passport once
during two years of roving in China, and the asker was quite contented
with a visiting card instead.
It was a noisy night about our frail little cabins on the _Mekong_, and
dawn found us anchored at Mytho, to which we could easily have taken a
train from Saïgon that morning in time to board the craft before she
pushed off again. Because the Messageries Fluviales have a monopoly on
the rivers of Indo-China against which even the French, of unofficial
standing, protest loudly but in vain, travelers pay high for the
thirty-six-hour journey from the capital of Cochinchina to that of
Cambodia on these rather uncomfortable little river steamers. But again,
why trouble with colonies and protectorates if they give no monopolies?
For that matter the French steamers between Marseilles and Shanghai
charge more for the passage from Hong Kong or Singapore to Saïgon than
between those two British ports, where competition reigns.
All day we plowed our way, with frequent stops, up a wide river through
a dead-flat palm-tree and banana country. Between halts there was little
of interest except our fellow-passengers, and even they were not
particularly unique. Eight travelers lolled in the breeze under the
tarpaulin above the first-class deck, to which our complexions confined
those of us of so-called European race. Besides the young American lady
and her chaperoning compatriot, there was an English couple to whom
tropical travel was an ordeal to be endured only because Angkor is
something one must see. Made miserable by every deviation from the
accustomed ways of their foggy native land, Mr. and Mrs.—shall we say
Piffton-Smith? no matter what, so long as we do not forget the hyphen
and disgrace them by the mere name of Smith—suffered acutely from
everything: the French food, the French meal-hours, the French language,
the delightful climate, even the friendly little ants in the cabins.
What a pity one cannot find everything just as it is at home when off on
one’s travels in quest of the strange and the different! Only by
constant mention of their youthful daughter, Lady So-and-so, recently
married to the far from youthful governor of—er—a British crown colony,
could Mrs. Piffton-Smith endure the martyrdom at all. One must not
forget that daughter any more than the hyphen, though for that matter
there was little danger of doing either; trust Mrs. Piffton-Smith for
that. It was evident that no one in the family had ever been a Lady
before.
But let us be charitable; perhaps it is not merely the women of
foot-bound China who have more cause for complaint than the favored sex.
While we mere men had to use our oven-like little cabin only as
dressing-rooms between a day of loafing and a night of sleeping on the
cot-provided deck, the ladies were cruelly confined during their
nightgowned hours. Three lively young French officers on a furlough from
their regiments, one of whom spoke excellent English, completed the
cabin passenger list. French soon came to seem the natural tongue, so
that the Piffton-Smiths had new cause for complaint in being left out of
the conversation. Under the back awning behind the orange-box
“staterooms” was a much larger collection of passengers, untroubled with
cabins, cots, or the fear of creasing their garments. As the day wore
on, the human type there gradually changed. The throng grew less Chinese
as Annamese travelers wandered ashore at the frequent stopping-places,
became more Hindu, more Aryan, the eyes large and straight, with well
defined eyebrows, mustaches shading the lips of the men, some with
almost Russian beards. Those rare inhabitants of the banks, half seen
through the trees and reeds, also took on Aryan features, for all their
chocolate color.
Daylight found us at Pnom Penh, capital of the French protectorate of
Cambodia. It was a calm, well kept little city, with hardly any of the
hubbub of China and none of its filth—at least within sight. The air was
less deadening than at Saïgon, less charged with electricity and
water-vapor, though still so hot that there was no joy in doing anything
equal to the joy of doing nothing. Half a dozen wide streets, much
shaded by trees, invited the stroller about a town in many ways quite
up-to-date, pleasant as it was with tropical languor. Pnom Penh has been
called the Little Bangkok, as Saïgon is the Little Paris. I was at last
completely beyond Chinese civilization, though there were some Chinese
residents, mainly merchants; most of the commerce of Cambodia is in
Celestial hands. White people were not numerous, but there were plenty
of other foreigners—black and brown French soldiers from other colonies,
representatives of nearly all the lands of the Far East. Yet all other
races stood out merely as individuals among the Cambodians, so closely
related to the Siamese in clothing, language, the uneven pompadour
hair-cuts of the women. With rather stupid faces from the mouths of
which dripped betel-nut juice, above perhaps the ugliest female costumes
in the world, ending in the inevitable _sampot_, a kind of pants-skirt
drawn up between the legs and tucked in behind, they were far from
attractive. Gentle effeminate-looking men with long bobbed hair or black
tresses wound together in a knot at the back of the neck meandered about
between the shafts of rickshaws or toiled slowly about the
steamer-landing.
The first men in the flowing saffron robes of Gautama whom I had seen in
the two decades since my Siamese journey—though I had seen Buddhist
priests and to spare—stood out against the less gaudily garbed laymen.
The bonzes are the bosses of the country—always of course after the
French. There had been sixty thousand of them in Cambodia the year
before, for the Cambodians are very religious. But they pay no taxes,
and under the French they are gradually being _supprimés_, so that now
they were reduced to 42,250, according to official statistics. Still,
these languid beings in bright yellow robes, often set off by red, rose,
purple, and other draperies, with shaven heads and Hindu skins, were by
no means scarce. Groups of them with their begging-bowls stood before
many a shop and house while the sun was still low, sauntering on to make
their silent plea to others after a handful of rice or a saucer of
cooked fish had been poured into their bowls by the pious inmates.
There was something very French about Pnom Penh, for all its very
Oriental aspect. French bread was on sale everywhere; the “Grand Hôtel,
N. Manolis, Propriétaire,” might, like all the others in Indo-China,
have been in Paris—except for the heat—tourist prices and all. Here
again were the same marble-topped tables, the same zinc _comptoir_
presided over by a sharp-eyed and caustic-minded matron, the same flimsy
newspapers in awkward holders, the same letter-paper headed by an
advertisement of the Maison Dubonnet. Fortunately we were sailing again
that evening and needed its monopolistic accommodations only in the way
of food and drink. Midday, with its lassitude, its invincible
somnolence, followed so closely upon the déjeuner, however, that its
shelter, and at least the repose offered by its chairs, with the
marble-topped tables serving as props, were essential. The most ardent
sight-seer could hardly have found pleasure in roaming about Pnom Penh
with the unclouded equatorial sun directly overhead. Dinner in the
evening was to the strains of a native orchestra that might have done
worse, and a veritable stage-lighting effect was produced by the
swirling wings of the big electric fans suspended from the ceiling amid
clouds of insects.
Pressed by his more belligerent neighbors, Norodom, king of Cambodia,
placed his country under the protection of the French in 1863, and since
then the nominal ruler is merely a play king. The real boss is the
_résident supérieur_ sent out from France. It goes without saying that
the royal figurehead is surrounded by all the riches and sumptuous state
which the French and his own doting subjects can supply him, while the
“protector” does all the work. The arrangement seems to be much like
that between the couple who agreed that one should decide all the small
questions and the other all the large, and so far there have been no
small questions in Cambodian affairs. Old pagodas of the Burmese rather
than the Chinese style stand forth here and there in the older part of
the capital as a reminder of independent days when a head fell at the
motion of the kingly finger. But most of Pnom Penh dates from the years
of the protectorate. Little more than half a century has passed since
Norodom confided his country to France, and already much that the French
built in the capital has taken on an air of age, under the perpetually
burning sun and the seasonal rains that drive vegetation to
super-vegetable performance. The beautifully straight streets traced by
the French, so out of proportion with the population that passes along
them, are green with grass outside the busiest section. In the far
outskirts hover the thatched huts, often on stilts, of the mass of the
population.
The gilded steeples of the throne-room, however, within the great royal
inclosure, infallibly draw the eye that catches them. This and several
others of the palaces are so new that they were not finished when the
World War broke out, and two of them still had scaffolds about their
needle-pointed spires and along their swift golden roofs. Inside the
outer wall of the inclosure runs a long series of life-sized paintings
from the sacred texts, before which groups of pilgrims bow down in
worship, and squat in contented repose during the hours of siesta. One
of the palaces has a silver floor thirty-six by a hundred and twenty
feet, the solid silver _dalles_ half an inch thick. A gold Buddha,
studded with diamonds, that is said to be worth sixty million piastres
is among the many precious things, as well as much tinsel, inside the
plain bright-yellow walls of the palaces, to which there are no real
barricades. Cases containing jewels of great price in the Silver Temple
are not locked, but are protected merely by pasted strips of paper, with
the name of the guardian written on them. The Cambodians still consider
their king so sacred that they never steal his possessions, and alien
thieves seem never to get this far afield. Of the far-famed Footprint of
Buddha within its own special pagoda there is nothing to say except that
it is about six feet long, in solid rock, studded with jewels, with the
toes all exactly of the same length.
Our day in Pnom Penh was well chosen, for in the afternoon the king had
a dance performed in the wall-less pavilion of the palace grounds for
the pleasure of visiting French and British officers. It was a far
different dance from those which kings of Europe give in honor of
visitors. While the white strangers in town sat as at a tennis
tournament beneath the shade of the pavilion roof in seats provided for
those who do not naturally squat, two girls, the youngest hardly in her
teens, appeared in the center of the floor. Among his other playthings
the octogenarian king chooses annually two hundred and forty girls from
the prettiest of the upper class, to be trained to dance before him. But
either his eyesight is poor, the choice extremely limited, or he had
deliberately set out to insult these guests foisted upon him by the
French rulers, for even a popular novelist could not have called this
chosen pair beautiful. Flour, or some white powder closely resembling
it, covered their faces in ghastly thoroughness, faces in which not the
suggestion of an expression seemed to be permitted by the rules of
Cambodian dancing, and flour in which streams of sweat cut strange
arabesques during the ceremony. On their heads were replicas of the very
pointed steeples of the throne-room; costumes gaudy with gold and many
colors, quite unlike the every-day dress of Cambodian women, somewhat
resembling in fact the garb of a Spanish toreador, covered them from
neck to knees. Two big silver anklets clinked above each of their bare
feet. It was a costume by no means scanty enough for the climate, and if
the truth must be told at all costs there was a conspicuous call for
soap and water just where their floured faces joined the gaudily garbed
bodies.
Dancing? Yes, perhaps, for want of a word more exactly descriptive. It
really was posturing, more or less to the rhythm of an orchestra of
native players on strange instruments squatted on the floor at one end
of the open pavilion. There was never a quick movement, not a hint of
animation in the white faces, though there was considerable expression
in the lithe arms and posturing bodies; more, no doubt, than we ignorant
Western spectators suspected. But it was impossible to picture the
youths in an American dance-hall even suspecting, to say nothing of
admitting, that this was dancing. Through it all an old woman tossed
from the side-lines, like a football coach, hints to the perspiring and
apparently stiffly embarrassed performers. Little by little all the
rabble in town sneaked up, noiseless on bare feet, and squatted just
within the shade along one side of the pavilion. Cambodia’s king, one
gathered, was democratic in his attitude. The only element of the
population lacking before the ceremony ended were the priests in their
yellow robes; like their colleagues of Spain on the day of the
bull-fight, they may not morally mingle with the laymen during such
ceremonies.
Old King Sisowath himself was not there, except perhaps in spirit. His
eighty-four years made him chary of excitement. But before we went off
to the later afternoon band concert in a park at the other side of town
we had seen his crown, his seven parasols in as many different colors
for each day of the week, his two even more gaudy ones for fête days,
his two palanquins for state and ordinary occasions, and all those other
baubles which the tourist so often mistakes for the rewards of travel.
The Cambodian sovereign mounts his throne only once in his life, even so
long a life as Sisowath’s—at his coronation. On other days he holds
audience sitting on a cushion at the foot of it. Yet barefooted servants
wandered about dusting and fingering everything, reminding one that even
emperors must have charwomen. Crude, violent colors were much in
evidence. When the king goes forth in state both he and his chair are so
covered with gold and precious stones that the eye quails before him in
this equatorial sunlight. Poor old figurehead! Little did Norodom dream
to what depths his demand for French protection would so soon sink his
successors. Nothing is more symbolical of the real position of old
Sisowath than the well known story of how his favorite concubine yielded
to the urgings of a young French official on the steamer bringing his
Majesty back from Paris a few years ago, and of the king’s impotence to
punish either of them.
The _Barsac_ was somewhat more comfortable than the _Mekong_, though the
mother of Lady So-and-so would not admit it. No doubt this was because
it confined itself almost entirely to carrying visitors to Angkor rather
than making its passengers adjuncts of its freight. A pilot in the
head-dress of a Chinese nurse-maid, a sailor adorned with a West Indian
bandana, short-haired women and all but naked men paddling about in
dugout canoes of very fat belly and narrow upturned ends, sometimes with
a supercilious drone in a yellow robe among them, mildly enlivened the
early hours next morning. The larger boats were pushed along by one oar
in the hands of a standing boatman, or boat-woman, as in China, and
Venice. Flocks of white birds almost like seagulls skimmed across the
yellowish water; all was pleasant as long as we kept moving; only the
breezeless halts were painful.
It was in fact a beautiful day’s sail up across the Tonlé Sap, the Great
Lake formed by the Mekong in high-water time, now nearing its close.
This mid-January excursion was indeed probably the last to Angkor for
the season, unless later travelers succeeded in making the journey by
automobile along the new road soon to be completed. In place of houses
on pole legs, twelve or fifteen feet above the ground, there came
floating villages, scores of houses tightly bound together. Enormous
quantities of fish are taken in the receding waters, and as the lake at
its height covers vast areas the population is reduced to this form of
earning a livelihood. The fish heads are boiled for oil, the highly
offensive scent of which now and then reached our nostrils, and the
fish, gutted and salted, are sent to China and Singapore. Once the sea
covered this region, with only an island where there is now a part of
the mainland, so that salt-water fish are still caught in the lake, and
in the flood season freshwater fish are taken far out in the ocean.
All day we steamed through a veritable Gatun Lake, now with jungle and
an occasional floating village on one side, now with a hazy range of
hills far off on the left, sometimes with nothing but the yellowish
waters as far as the eye could see. Occasionally there was not even a
junk in sight, no more trace of man than before his appearance among the
terrestrial fauna; at other times the great expanse, broad as a sea, was
flecked with sail-boats with almost diamond-shaped sails. But the
flooded forest was not dead or dying as at Gatun, for the waters recede
in time each year to save it from extinction.
We were to have reached Angkor toward the noon following our evening
departure from Pnom Penh; but I for one was glad we spent all the day
sailing across the Great Lake, if only for the sunset. The lake was flat
as glass, one side lost on an ocean-like horizon, the other a low
distant endless line of trees. A delicate lilac spread along all the rim
of the sky; then on the western side the limpid air became pink, and
almost suddenly everything was tinged with this color: the surface of
the lake itself, the entire circle of horizon, every tiniest fleck of
cloud in the sky above. Ahead, a line of beautiful green showed the
endlessness of the drowned forest; on the west, in contrast, there came
a quick heaping up of masses of dark, chaotic, terrifying, gigantic
things which stood upright and seemed to weigh upon the waters, like
fantastic blocks of mountains, standing out as clearly as if their
summits were painted along the clear sky, yet looking as if they were
preparing for a formidable crumbling away, such as one might fancy the
end of the world to be. Gradually, like some mammoth holocaust, the
blood-red sun burned its way down into the clouds massed along the
western horizon, clouds which outdid themselves in strange shapes, from
impossible crags, on which trees seemed to be falling in rapid
succession, to snow-clads farther off; and then, after it had been gone
entirely for a while and one thought it had disappeared below the edge
of the earth, the sun reappeared, a demon face red with rage peering
forth as from a cave, from which it advanced down to the very water’s
edge, spilling blood far out across the lake. Then red chaos, and
purple, and lilac, and finally soft mauve night.
Not long afterward we got off into sampans with happy laughing rowers
and went away through the inundated forest, among great trees bathing
clear to their upper branches, the water under their armpits, or only
their heads emerging, like modest women. Higher rose the ever thicker
forest close about us; we found ourselves ascending a narrowing stream;
and at length, soon after the moon appeared, we bumped against something
more or less resembling a pier. It was the end of an excellent road,
raised high on an embankment for some distance, and we climbed into—ah,
well, it is a small commonplace world at best, this twentieth-century
globe, even in its most distant recesses—into what our English friends
called motor-cars, though they were those more than familiar things
built by an inventive and once eccentric but now widely known
ex-Sunday-school teacher of Detroit, and were off for a moonlight ride
behind a careful chauffeur who wore no shoes. It was a tepid night,
dotted with fireflies, the musical silence forming an undertone to the
droning of the cars broken now and again by the soughing of big
water-wheels raising water from the small river that turned them. In the
palm-tree jungle on either side we made out many little houses on
slender legs, the inhabitants of both sexes lolling or strolling in a
single piece each of Scotchy plaid wrapped about them like a short
skirt.
It was nearly eleven at night when we reached the _sala_, a comfortable
spreading bungalow erected by the French for the accommodation of the
fussy modern visitors to Angkor. Two decades ago Pierre Loti took all
day along that road in a jolting two-wheeled ox-cart, and put up in the
stilt-legged shack of Buddhist monks. But we had arrived at a lucky
moment, as was evident from the sounds of revelry by night that came to
us from beyond the moat just across the road from the _sala_. It was a
supernaturally broad moat, looking at least a hundred yards wide in the
light of the full moon that drifted lazily across a great building
rising to pointed towers that bulked forth out of the night far beyond.
An ancient stone causeway across it led to this gigantic structure of
Angkor-Vat, before the partly ruined front doorway of which a
torch-lighted throng was gathered. Visitors who had come before us,
headed by a French novelist and the queenly wife of the governor of
Cochinchina, had sent to Siem Réap at the edge of the Great Lake for
Cambodian dancers, and with them had come fifty boys bearing torches and
most of the native population of the district.
There were a score of girls in the gaudy garments and the steeple-shaped
head-dress of the calling, chewing betel-nut, and giggling like a bevy
of New York typists as they danced, though the rules call for silence
and wholly expressionless faces. Banked behind a dozen seated Europeans
in white, and forming a compact circle around them and the dancers, two
or three hundred natives of both sexes squatted or stood, many with
naked youngsters between their knees. Small boys with blazing torches
outlined the inner arc of the circle; the little torch-bearers squatted
on the flagstones formed an enchanted circle of flames tapering upward
to smoke about the dancers. Some of the spectators had taken places on
the steps and the balustrade of the bridge; other half-naked Cambodians,
and Annamese with their effeminate knots of hair, gave the gathering a
ragged fringe. The ancient temple seemed to have returned to life, the
days of very long ago to live again; it was easy to imagine these living
dancers the descendants of those carved in stone on the pillars in the
background, for all their black teeth and what looked like
blood-dripping mouths.
The Annamese spectators were solemn, like men so impressed with their
own importance that they dare not break their dignity; the Cambodians
were simple happy children, taking the joys of life as they come and
giving no more thought to to-morrow than to stone-dead yesterday. The
croaking of frogs in the broad shallow moat mingled with that of some
loud-voiced species of cricket; birds of the night passed overhead with
a startled cry—or was it applause?—at the strange scene below, profaning
the great doorway of the dead temple. Beneath the brilliant tropical
moon that all but blotted out the Southern Cross well above the horizon,
the floured faces of the dancers took on, now a ghastly, now a clownish
aspect, as they posed and postured, moving noiselessly in their bare
feet slowly to and fro on the century-worn stone pavement. Dressed like
the Hindu gods they seemed to be impersonating, they undulated back and
forth on the glass-smooth stones, their supple arms waving as if they
were mere antennæ without rigidity anywhere, in contrast to their
stiffly immovable bodies.
There was a story to be read, evidently, in their deliberate
pantomiming, a solemn if not a tragic tale, for all the occasional
bursts of embarrassed or prankish giggling, like plantation darkies at a
cotton-field celebration. One gathered that a demon with several faces
wished to carry off Siva, beautiful lady-love of Rama, and when the two
rivals of the ancient legend faced each other with threatening gestures
all the childish part of the audience began to shriek, as at the meeting
of hero and villain in a Punch-and-Judy show or at the movies. Indeed
the spectacle was insured against flagging interest by the behavior of
the rapt happy throng in the flickering light before the ancient temple
more than by the dancers it encircled. Young and old seemed to follow
the story easily; to us Westerners without their background of ancient
legends and Oriental symbolism it was merely a picturesque scene, made
doubly fantastic by the circle of torches and weird with the thump of
tom-toms that lasted deep into the night.
CHAPTER III
THE JUNGLE-GUARDED RUINS OF ANGKOR
Soon after sunrise next morning Fords carried us off to some of the more
distant ruins of the ancient city buried in tropical forest. With the
heart of the day unbearable in the sunshine, it is wise as well as
customary to get under way early at Angkor, and French breakfasts are
brief, if not quite to the point. An excellent road, considering the
place and the climate, set off close along the sides of the moat, then
shot off at a tangent at the second corner. An abnormally broad moat it
still seemed, wide as the Panama Canal even by sunlight; and it was all
but covered with water-cress and beautiful white and pink lilies, or
their tropical counterparts.
To visit Angkor is no longer a proof of prowess, except of the
Ford-endurance needed to make the circuit of ruins covering forty
kilometers of throttling forest-jungle. Even as recently as the
beginning of the present century visitors had to scramble through the
wilderness about Angkor as best they could. To-day there is a network of
good roads, French even to their sign-boards, to all the important
ruins, with so few ox-carts or other native traffic on them now that
they are almost as commonplace as our national highways—until suddenly
they burst out again upon some other mammoth ruin.
Described by a Chinese traveler two hundred years before America was
officially discovered, and many times since, Angkor is still little
known to the world at large, though it is perhaps the greatest
collection of ruins on earth. Neither Java nor India can show so
extensive and so perfectly preserved an architectural ensemble; Machu
Picchu, similarly lost in dense tropical forest, though high up among
the great ranges of the Andes instead of down at the dead-flat sea-level
of Angkor, is a mere village by comparison. Once this Khmer city, buried
for centuries and long left to desolation, was one of the splendors of
the world. Its monuments still tell the story of the luxury of its royal
and military life; its carvings give an inventory of its riches, from
jewels to dancing-girls. The least observing must soon realize that this
was once the heart of a magnificent kingdom; and what an immense city it
was—and is. Angkor-Thom was larger than the Rome of Augustus; the great
temple of Angkor-Vat alone has a space four times as large as the Place
de la Concorde, which is larger than Columbus Circle.
It seems that about the time of Alexander the Macedonian a people
apparently detached many centuries before from the great Aryan race
migrated from the direction of India and came to plant itself on the
shores of this great river, the lower Mekong. Others say that when India
and Burma were being conquered by barbarians at about the time of Christ
these Khmer came down from northeast Burma, hillmen with a virility that
has since died out, so that they in their turn have now long since been
conquered, as they subjugated and mixed with the unspoiled aborigines of
this region, “men with little eyes who worshiped serpents.” On what
queer bases are civilizations built! Just as the old Nile, with its silt
alone, caused a marvelous civilization to grow up in its narrow valley,
here the Mekong, spreading out its waters year after year, deposited the
richness that prepared the wealthy empire of the Khmer. The city of
Angkor-Thom (Angkor the Great), capital of this empire, reached the
nadir of its glory between the ninth and twelfth centuries of our era.
The Khmer brought with them the gods of Brahmanism, the beautiful
legends of the Ramayana, which seem to have come to them through the
Hindus at about the time of Christ, and as their opulence grew in this
fertile delta of the Mekong each king vied with his predecessors in
clearing away the forest and in building everywhere magnificently
decorated palaces, and gigantic temples chiseled with thousands of
figures.
Some centuries later—no one knows exactly when, for the existence of
this once important people is largely effaced from the memory of man—the
powerful sovereigns of Angkor saw arrive from the West missionaries in
bright yellow robes, bearers of a new light at which the Asiatic world
was just then marveling. The savage temples of Brahma became Buddhist
temples; the statues of their altars changed their attitudes, lowering
their eyes and softening their faces with gentle smiles. The Khmer
empire of the Mekong delta appears to have started on the downward path
during our thirteenth century. The history of its rapid and mysterious
decline has never been fully written, and the invading forest guards the
secret of most of it. There are evidences of a connection between it and
the history of China; for it was not long after the Tai or Laos race
that we commonly call the Siamese, masters even of Canton until 1053
A.D., were driven out of what is now southwestern China by a series of
battles along the West River, that the Khmers were in their turn
dispossessed by this hardier though fleeing people. Time had moved
swiftly with them. At least in the art of their monuments the Khmer were
at their height during the twelfth century, and by the fourteenth they
were so weak, perhaps because of the softening influence of tropical
living, that they fled before the Siamese and founded a new capital to
the southward. The little Cambodia of to-day, conserver of complicated
rites the sense of which is almost completely lost, is the last remnant
of this once powerful empire of the Khmer, which for more than five
hundred years has ebbed away, until it has been all but extinguished
under the silence of trees and mosses.
From the end of the fourteenth century Angkor belonged to Siam, which
changed its name and set over it a king of its own. Since then the great
palaces and temples had been left to time and tropical vegetation, until
little more than half a century ago the first European discovered, ruin
by ruin, this marvelous city lost in inextricable jungle. This
rediscovery is credited to Henri Mouhot, in 1861; but it was not until
1910 that the uncovering of the ruins began. Annamese armies had long
invaded Cochinchina, then a part of Cambodia, and to save herself from
complete destruction the weakened nation became a protectorate of
France, barely a year after Mouhot’s explorations. Angkor still belonged
to Siam; but some wise Frenchman seems to have discovered that it was
formerly a part of Cambodia and insisted on a return to the ancient
_status quo_; or on applying that doctrine of “self-determination” on
which unimperialistic France is so strongly set. At any rate Siam was
“induced,” by the treaty of 1907, to “give back” to Cambodia all
Battambang Province, including the Angkor region. Then communication was
opened to the ruins, which had been at the mercy of the elements for
nearly a thousand years.
Yet they were not so badly ruined as they might have been. When the
Khmer fled before the Siamese of the fourteenth century they could
hardly have expected that their architectural marvels would merely be
swallowed up by the voracious forest, but rather that they would be
destroyed root and branch; and probably for generations they thought
this had happened. But even the destroying of such massive works of
stone is hard labor in an equatorial land, and the Siamese confined
themselves to the destruction of the buildings of a political nature and
left untouched the temples and other religious monuments. Buddhism was
less respectful, for all its gentleness, and caused many of the Brahman
glories to disappear, or replaced them with Buddhist statues and tawdry
trappings.
There are monuments vying in size and artistry with the best the ancient
world has to offer, scattered through all the forest-jungle over nearly
twenty square miles. The French have done a splendid job in uncovering
and restoring these marvels of the past. We of the land of boasted
efficiency would probably have cleared away and restored too much, for
comfort and convenience’ sake, and spoiled the effect. In places even
the French archæologists have in their professional zeal driven off the
forest too ruthlessly, and left some ruins in the sad state of nudity of
a stone quarry. But in most cases they have been thoughtful as well as
careful. Great green plumes waved high over our heads as we sped along
by road or strolled by side-trail to mammoth ruin after ruin. Trees that
would be giants beside any of those of northern climes except our
redwoods carried without apparent effort mighty loads of vines and
parasites that would have stifled the sturdiest elm or oak. All this
vegetation gave one the feeling of being so completely surrounded that
he might never get out of it again; yet it was not such a forest-riotous
wilderness as I had expected, and it was hard to believe that herds of
wild elephants were trampling it down only a few miles away. Here and
there were expanses of natural half-clearing; white birds in flocks
escorted water-buffaloes through swamps that might almost have been
passable by Ford.
Yet there was a greater rage for destruction among the plants than had
ever been shown by the Siamese. The Prince of Death, Siva of the
Brahmans, has given to each beast the special enemy which eats it, to
each creature its destroying microbes; and he seems to have foreseen
that puny man would try to prolong himself a little by constructing
durable things, and imagined a thousand destructive agents to annihilate
his efforts. Huge trees which the French call _fromagers_—though I saw
no cheese upon them, and our own name of “silk-cotton tree” seems more
justified—their trunks as if whitewashed, or spotted with leprosy, or,
more exactly still, as if they had been painted in lilac and cream by
some fantastic-minded artist, roam the ruins with their buttress roots.
Queerly grown in and over the great stone piles like inquisitive
serpents, these roots have in some cases wandered thirty yards away in
search of sustenance. Laocoön roots lifted great stones in their
embrace; one had disdainfully shoved aside a huge pillar and taken on
the job of supporting the mass of masonry itself. The banyan, with its
aerial roots, does not overthrow the ruins; it gathers them, strains
them to its bosom, as it were, so that enormous heaps of rocks that
would otherwise long since have fallen apart still maintain the form the
Khmer gave them. Trickery rather than force characterizes even the
vegetation here in the tropics, though the trees too have learned to
fight when necessary. The more brutal _fromager_ bursts walls asunder by
the slow force of its growing trunk, squeezes ancient buildings to death
like the boa-constrictor, swallows them in its great maw. Especially
what the French call the “fig-tree of ruins” is irresistible; it reigns
as master to-day at Angkor. In the beginning it was only a little seed,
sowed by the wind on a frieze or the top of a tower. But from there its
roots, like steel cables, have insinuated themselves between the stones,
descending by a sure instinct toward the earth; and having at last
reached it, they have grown quickly from its nourishing soil and become
enormous, disrupting, unbalancing everything, opening thick walls from
top to bottom, sometimes completely destroying the edifice. Among the
palaces, above the temples it has so patiently disintegrated, it spreads
its pale smooth branches with their serpent spottings, and shades the
débris with its superb broad domes of foliage as with great green
parasols.
Here and there along the roads and trails magnificent trees have been
mutilated by man, rare and furtive as he is in these parts. Deep holes
are burned in many a trunk in order to collect in earthenware pots resin
for the making of candles, as the Landais of France gather pitch from
their pine-trees. Now and then the road is straddled by stone gateways
above which smile huge human faces with long tresses of lianas. But for
all the centuries they have had free play, neither the slow encroachment
of the forest and jungle nor the heavy dissolving rains have been able
to wipe out the impression of Angkor-Thom as a city of splendid
architecture, or the ironic bonhomie, as Pierre Loti calls it, of these
mammoth stone faces, much more disquieting than the grimaces of the
monsters of China.
Though they were remarkable architects, the Khmer were rather poor
masons. They knew no more of how to build a vault than by piling up huge
stone after stone in horizontal layers, each reaching a little farther
out toward the center. Their arches are crude, made of immense stones
laid one on top of another, and instead of a keystone they simply placed
a larger stone on top. Their total work is all the more surprising, and
its duration that much more marvelous, their roofs, though they must
always have leaked, as they do now, all the more wonderful because the
Khmer so little knew how to build them. Some have been shored up by the
French; some of them were evidently repillared by the builders
themselves. Yet scores still stand, after nearly a thousand years,
without any such assistance.
Most of the stones themselves are not so well fitted as at Machu Picchu
in the Andes; but the decorations on them outdo anything the ancient
civilizations of the Western Hemisphere have to offer. The greatest art
of the Khmer was their taste in sculpture, the finish of their
execution, their treating of colossal things with the care and delicacy
of jewels. Everywhere are figures, bas-reliefs, carvings without end, so
delicately chiseled that one might think them lace pasted upon the
stone, façades as carefully worked as the most patient embroideries. The
stones all have round holes in them, suggesting how they may have been
carried to the places they were needed. The reddish, comparatively soft,
sandstone or composite of which much of Angkor-Thom was built is common
in this part of the world. A French geologist asserts that it is old
lava. Yet the task of building such a city even with that was a task
indeed in such a climate.
All that first morning, and the next, we kept coming upon new masses of
striking architecture in the forest. Now and again the modern road ran
beneath towers bearing on each of their four sides mammoth human faces,
always alike and said to represent Brahma. Many single faces were carved
on eight, ten, a dozen huge stones awkwardly put together. These
Cambodian _préasats_, as archæologists call them, whether or not they
are adorned with the quadruple face of Brahma, are as characteristic of
Khmer art as the palm-tree is of the Cambodian landscape. In one place
the road was flanked by a great stone balustrade, a hundred yards long,
and by the remnants of what was once another, each in the form of a
gigantic cobra with raised head, upheld in the arms of a score of
mammoth stone men. The cobra-head motif everywhere suggested a former
ardent worship of snakes; human figures with a beak in place of a nose
were almost as common. One great wall was covered with a procession of
life-size elephants; beyond were walls formed inside and out of
thousands of closely set Hindu figures. Here and there were suggestions
of the Maya ruins of Central America, but this probably proves merely
that minds which have reached a similar development run in similar
channels, rather than that tropical people of a millennium ago crossed
the great ocean.
The tourist-minded Fords rushed us about all the Saturday and Sunday
mornings following our arrival, but left us to our own devices the rest
of the four days. The _sala_ where they duly deposited us again after
each flight outdid the best hotels of Indo-China, except that the
roosters housed just behind it might have been spared. But guests of
course must have their eggs and their roast chicken, and no Frenchman
would be so cruel as to deprive even a hen of its mate. Every living
being, European or native, retired immediately after the eleven o’clock
_déjeuner_ and did not rise again until two or three in the afternoon.
To think of doing anything else was all but impossible, to say nothing
of actually doing it. Not even the Cambodians, used to this climate at
least for centuries, seemed able to endure those burning hours out of
doors. For all my tropical experience I soon found that the only way to
bear life during that atrocious period was to revert to the reputed
costume of Adam before the unfortunate apple episode, turn the electric
fan squarely upon my recumbent form inside the mosquito-net, and succumb
to the fond hope of perhaps getting a nap.
Those of us who knew nothing of real hardships also fancied we suffered
one other terrible infliction in that otherwise comfortable bungalow.
The French food naturally was good, with neither wine nor ice lacking,
but the principal meal was made so miserable by swarms of mosquitoes
under the tables that poor Mrs. Piffton-Smith—though of course she would
violently resent the adjective—had to wear even at dinner the oven-like
riding-boots she endured among the ruins out of an abject fear of
“reptiles,” though, except for the stone cobras, the less imaginative of
us never saw so much as a fleeing serpent’s tail. If there were duly
presented newcomers at table she mitigated her martyrdom somewhat by
frequent references to her daughter Lady So-and-so, wife of Lord
So-and-so, governor of—and so on. But few travelers came after us; Mrs.
P.-S. naturally knew no French, and obviously she could not speak to
strangers without the formal introduction that was often lacking; and
those of us who had long since learned that extraordinary daughter by
heart were not, I fear, very sympathetic listeners even to new anecdotes
concerning the Lady of the family. Those of the women who had no such
antidote for those mosquito-tortured hours wrapped napkins, newspapers,
anything at all, about their legs, and burned under the table
joss-sticks enough to supply a Chinese temple, being unjustly denied the
male privilege of relieving their nerves by such remarks as now and then
rose from a man who, driven beyond endurance, tried a slap or two—and
left a splotch of blood on his white trousers.
After my first drenched nap I set out to roam through Angkor-Vat, most
striking of all the ruins scattered over that twenty square miles of
tropical forest. Vat, by the way, is the Cambodian and Siamese word for
temple. Just across the lake-like moat, with its shimmering watery
carpet of lilies and water-cress, on the outer shore of which the _sala_
sits, the mighty building was heaped into the sky in the center of the
only real clearing in the region. From the big stone doorway of long ago
through which one emerges upon the great stone bridge and causeway
leading to it, the central mass ahead bore a certain resemblance to the
Kremlin; yet that is small beside it. The enormous stone slabs of the
causeway were worn smooth as polished marble, in places even hollowed
out, by the feet of men and women and elephants already dead a thousand
years. For the few shod tourists who have followed it during the past
decade can scarcely have made more impression on those cyclopean blocks
than do the bare feet of pilgrims and of the bonzes in their yellow
robes who still patter along it. Strange processions indeed must have
trodden this aged causeway, flanked by a massive railing of gigantic
stone cobras standing sentinel with raised heads—seven heads each,
spread out like fans, the necks swollen as when the deadly snake is
ready to strike.
Life had become endurable again, yet the afternoon heat from the stones
blazed upon all day by an unclouded equatorial sun was a succession of
physical blows as distinct as my heavy Western footsteps along the
causeway toward the basilic phantom ahead. Once inside the inner
inclosure, this gigantic edifice dominated everything, a more impressive
sight, in its way, than the Taj Mahal itself, as beautiful, almost as
symmetrical, losing mainly by over-elaboration. Nowhere in the world
perhaps has man piled up so many stones as in this mountain-temple.
Crushing masses of sculptured rocks, terraces, stone-carved bas-reliefs,
stairways leading swiftly upward into towers that seem to scrape the
cloudless heavens, gave me a feeling akin to depression. At first sight
all one’s impressions were jumbled together; disorder and confusion
seemed to emanate from this hill of chiseled blocks. It is not simple in
its lines, like Thebes and Baalbek, like Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal,
but has the exuberance, the dismaying complications of Hindu art, so
that it is not merely by its enormity that it staggers the beholder. He
who tries to see it all at once suffers the fatigue so common in
museums; one must come back often, each time studying a little of it in
detail, and then gradually a perfect symmetry asserts itself.
Two monsters, darkened by centuries and bearded with lichen, though
under the French they are now shaved from time to time, guard the front
entrance to the temple itself, like dragons stationed before legendary
grottoes. The base of this mighty pyramid of a structure is more than a
kilometer square, and completely about it runs a great gallery that
stretches far to right and to left from the four entrances on as many
sides of the building. Beneath the tropical sky without a fleck of cloud
that never for an instant left us during those four Angkor days the
mountain-temple glowed with a golden-brown radiance, so that the
greenish demi-day that suddenly replaced the glaring sunshine outside
gave one the impression of entering a subterranean passage, though on
the outside there are merely massive pillars. Those galleries
surrounding the main structure are nearly three quarters of a mile in
length, and for the entire circuit every inch of the wall is carved with
an endless bas-relief giving the whole history of the Khmer up to the
building of Angkor-Vat, the whole story of the greatest Hindu legend.
For the incredible chiseled painting along the four outer walls of the
temple has for its inspiration one of the noblest and most ancient epics
conceived by the men of Asia, those Aryan ancestors of ours—the
Ramayana. The uninterrupted bas-relief unrolls as long as the legs will
carry one, an inextricable series of battles, warriors gesticulating
with fury, combatants by the thousand, caparisoned elephants, ancient
engines of war, war chariots with wheels strangely up-to-date,
interminable scenes fleeing forever ahead in straight perspective, until
they seem still more infinitely long than they really are.
This wall of endless carvings looks like a single piece for hundreds of
yards. One must look closely to discover the joints between the enormous
stones put together without cement, yet adjusted with a precision as
rigorous as in the monuments of Egyptian antiquity. I found myself often
comparing with Machu Picchu this gigantic heap of sculptured stones, and
at least in this encircling wall of Angkor-Vat the stone-fitting was
equal to that at which the few visitors to the long lost city of the
Andes have marveled.
There are indeed two miles of galleries in the Vat, twenty-six thousand
feet of bas-reliefs chiseled in stone, archæologists tell us. All these
pictures were formerly painted or gilded, but they have been at the
mercy of the elements for nearly a thousand years, and have lost all the
brilliancy of the original colors. Sweating with the eternal humidity of
the tropics, the panoramas have taken on a sad blackish tint, with, in
places, the gleam of wet things. Then, too, up as high as the puny
mankind of to-day can reach, the bas-reliefs—five meters high on those
outer walls—are worn glass-smooth by the rubbing of secular fingers. In
times of pilgrimage the whole multitude makes it a duty to touch every
figure it can possibly reach. Here and there, in the parts lighted by
the beautiful little windows with thick carved-stone bars that are among
the chief glories of Angkor-Vat one may still see tracings of the
original coloring, on garments or faces; and sometimes, in the tiaras of
queens or goddesses, a little gold spared by the weather continues to
gleam after all these centuries.
In the middle of the face of each quadrilateral a portico opens in this
great gallery and gives access to a central court in which the temple
itself, properly speaking, rises, a prodigious heap of sculptured
sandstone climbing into the blue sky. The grandiose spreading out of the
courts of the second story and the formidable upward surge of the
central mass all but take the breath away. Such a complication of lines,
what a beauty for all the heaviness in the silent ensemble! The infinity
of decorations is incredible; the Khmer certainly did not pay their
workmen the union wages of to-day; for one thing there would not have
been so much care and artistry in the work. The building seems to have
been done by Cham and Tai prisoners of war and by regular levies of the
Khmer populace itself—much as black Christophe built his citadel in
Haiti. Evidently we must have some species of slavery to produce
monuments of this kind; “free” workmen cannot furnish the constant
enthusiasm and infinite care in details that they require. But in a way
those tropical toilers so long since returned to dust had things better
than our trade-union bricklayers of to-day, impossible as that may seem.
For the story goes that there was one architect for every five hundred
builders, and each of the builders had a hundred coolies to keep him
supplied with stone! Then artists came to cover every available surface,
with the care of painters working on canvas. For the Khmer were of the
Hindu point of view, abhorring simplicity and uncovered surfaces.
There are no obscenities among the myriad carvings of Angkor-Vat, even
from our Puritan point of view, though somehow one expects them. But the
Khmer kings evidently liked their musical comedies, or at least their
ballets, even as does the tired business man of to-day. For there are
Apsarases carved everywhere, in infinitely repeated groups, chiseled on
every side of every stone pillar, not merely here at Angkor-Vat but
throughout most of the ruins of Angkor-Thom, forever dancing before
their long departed masters. These perpetually virgin though constantly
violated nymphs of the Hindu paradise, everywhere sculptured in stone,
under the porticos, in the verandas, in the clear-obscure of the
galleries, beneath the hard sunshine that falls through crumbling
vaults, make the dead walls live. Everywhere they dance, among the
falling lianas, on the bases of temple altars, their arms supple, their
busts stiff and upright, as millenniums ago on the shores of the Ganges
for the amusement of Indra, as at Pnom Penh their living descendants
dance before the octogenarian king on the silver pavement of his
palace-temple. The artists of ancient times chiseled and polished as
lovingly as any modern sensuous denizen of the Latin Quarter these
dancing virgins—who can say what has become of the beautiful women from
whom these perfect torsos were copied?—and all these figures in
bracelets and rich adornments rather than clothing have been so often
caressed in the course of the bygone centuries that their beautiful bare
throats shine like polished marble. It is the women especially who,
during their pilgrimages, touch them passionately, begging from them the
gift of becoming mothers. Unfortunately, like those on the bas-reliefs
of Egypt, the feet of these lovely creatures are badly done, being
always drawn in profile even when the dancer is facing forward, so that
what might seem art to the followers of the reputedly funniest of our
“movie artists” merely testifies that the myriad beautiful stone
goddesses of Angkor were the work of a primitive humanity, still
struggling with the difficulties of design.
I raised my eyes to the mass above me, and almost without volition my
neck craned to its utmost that I might gaze upon the four giant towers,
topped by a central one still larger, in which the temple rises. Nothing
lives up there—except flocks of bats—and the stairways of startling
height fall under the ardent sun like a cascade of sandstone. The Khmer
were no more expert at making stairways than with roofs and arches and
the feet of their dancing-girls, and Angkor-Vat has the steepest stairs
in the world—even we who so love superlatives will not deny them this.
Stairs that are all but sheer walls lead to the lofty heights of this
mountain of a temple, stairs so steep that the knee-caps strike on the
step above, and so narrow that the foot can only be set down sidewise;
and even then there is many a slip, especially in descending. The bygone
architects should have been more thoughtful toward dizzy tourists; the
Piffton-Smiths never got above the ground floor at all—which was like
coming to Rome and going home again without seeing the Colosseum. Even
the surest-headed of us clung to the hand-polished old walls in
descending, losing our footing often on the worn and sometimes wet
steps.
One must climb these cascades of stone, too, between recumbent lions,
beasts suggesting Assyrian sacred bulls in stone, cobras spreading out
their seven heads like a fan above their angrily swollen necks, as well
as between smiling Apsarases, perpetually dancing for their long dead
masters. A hard climb, even for me, whose strength lies mainly in legs,
and I found myself on the first of three platforms, with a second story,
of a height double that of the first, defying me with still more abrupt
stairs, still more closely guarded by smiles and grimaces in stone. Then
when I certainly had the right to think that at last I had arrived,
there suddenly sprang up before me the third story, of a height double
that of the second! It was like climbing the Andes, like fronting life
and discovering to one’s astonishment that what at first looked like a
struggle, perhaps an insurmountable obstacle, is only the easy
preliminary to ever harder and higher tasks beyond. This progressive
doubling of the heights, from one story to another, was a clever
architectural discovery, enlarging the temple by an illusion from which
one cannot escape. The Khmer were clever architects, as I have said
before; and the memorable stairway that leads to the topmost platform,
with its narrow worn steps on which grass grows even while the French
are striving to keep this most magnificent of the monuments of Angkor
clear of it, while pilgrims and tourists are constantly going up and
down them, for their respective motives, is steep enough to give any one
vertigo; even the sailor we know as Pierre Loti found it so. “One would
say that the temple grows larger, prolongs itself indefinitely,
straining itself toward the heavens, so that climbing Angkor-Vat is like
those fatiguing nightmares in which one strives toward a goal that
forever flees on ahead. The gods no doubt wish to make themselves more
inaccessible the more one tries to approach them.”
There are four of these stairways, watched over by the enigmatically
smiling Apsarases, one on each side of the temple. As I mounted, the
forest seemed to mount with me, spreading out on all sides to the
horizon, unbroken as the sea clear to the circle of that horizon. The
topmost platform must be at least a hundred feet above the plain, yet
the great monument seems submerged, drowned in the midst of its verdure.
It is the greatest extent of forest I have ever seen, except perhaps
from the eastern slope of the Andes, where South America falls away into
the enormous Amazon basin that stretches to the Atlantic. Formerly, in
place of this silent sea of vegetation below, stretched the city of
Angkor-Thom, perhaps no more forested then than Peking or a New England
city to-day. If one could only push aside the roof of interlacing
branches one could still see beneath them the walls, terraces, temples,
the long paved avenues flanked by divinities in stone, balustrades,
gigantic serpents with raised heads, Brahma-faced towers, all now
swallowed up in the jungle. But the forest has become again what it was
for incalculable centuries before the beginning of man, so that nothing
visible remains of the work of those Hindu-like adventurers who many
hundred years ago came here to tempt fate and clear the space of a city
of nearly a million inhabitants. It endured only a millennium and a
half, that episode of the empire of the Khmer; in other words a very
negligible period compared with the longevity of the vegetable kingdom.
The scars are reclosed, nothing now appears for all their labors, and
the “fig-tree of ruins” spreads everywhere its parasol of green leaves.
It is true that in our day other adventurers, from far off to the West,
have founded near here the semblance of another empire; but it is small
and puny compared to that of the Khmer, not likely to rival it in
duration any more than it has in lasting monuments. When these
pale-faced conquerers shall have gone their way also, they will merely
have cleaned up a little the works of a greater race, and will be
remembered only as the charwomen may be in the ruins of our sky-scrapers
of to-day, by a charred broom or a broken dust-pan left here and there
among the débris.
All afternoon I climbed and loafed about that mighty pile of masonry. In
the immense clearing within which the giant temple sits enthroned,
defended by moats and walls, one had the impression of perfect security,
quite unlike the feeling among the other ruins, for all the nearness and
immensity of the great forest that hangs its black curtain all about it.
Tigers do not cross the great stone bridge, even though the doors are
never closed. The Vat was never finished. When, at the end of our
thirteenth century, the Khmer empire fell, for no good reason that has
ever been discovered, it was still in process of construction. As this
great work of theirs surpasses any of our own, at least when we consider
the tools they had, it is little short of presumptuous to suppose that
we will endure longer than did that doughty empire of the tropical
forests.
The Chinese scholar who visited this mysterious empire on the eve of its
decline and left the only known documents on its splendor tells us that
the fifth tower of Angkor-Vat, rising above all the rest and most
imposing and complicated of all, seeming to give the temple a mountain
summit when seen from afar off, but dwarfed by the very size of the
edifice when one is close beneath it, was crowned with a golden lotus so
large that one could see its sacred flowers gleam in the air from all
parts of the city that is to-day buried in the jungle. Leaning over from
the upper platform at the base of this tower one looks down upon an
entrancing scene below, most of it a hundred feet below. From up there
one sees that what with the tropical sun and rain and long abandonment
each of the superimposed layers of the temple has become a sort of
suspended garden in which the immense leaves of the banana mingle with
white tufts of the fragrant jasmine. The comfortable French bungalow
across the moat is no larger than a dove-cote. Scattered about the
temple clearing are slender palm-trees up which men climb by single
bamboo poles tied with vines to the trunk, carrying over their shoulders
bamboo buckets that they exchange for others hanging from cut fronds
until they are filled with a sap from which is made a brown sugar. Even
the almost naked men among the giant leaves of these trees that looked
so high from below were far beneath me here. In the forest that
surrounds the temple hundreds of parrakeets shrieked; one might think
they had come from the four corners of the forest to enliven the
solitude of the little stone dancers, who in their turn give the ruins
life, and they never leave off chattering until night settles down upon
them, as no doubt the dancers themselves chattered when the forest was a
park and the ruins a palace.
Under the trees at the edges of the clearing are the shacks of monks
where Admiral Viaud, alias Pierre Loti, slept, almost twenty-five years
ago now, when he came to Angkor in his two-wheeled cart and went away on
an elephant. The frail little houses, to which tiny stairs that are
barely ladders lead, are made of wood and mats; some have little
festooned windows from which shaven skulls peer now and then, and they
stand on poles, well above the ground. All the inhabitants are dressed
alike, in bright yellow robes set off by a drapery of orange and other
colors that stand out against the old walls, gray with age, sometimes
reddish, especially near sunset, as it was now, startling flashes of
color against the dense curtain of greenery beneath the clear sky. Too
accustomed to Europeans to be curious toward them, they seem to take us
as unavoidable nuisances, and when they sing in a low voice and
monotonous rhythm they gaze at us without interrupting their tranquil
litany. Now some of them are walking abroad, languidly and without
haste, their hairless heads shining beneath the low sun. Theirs are
curious villages, where there are no women, no animals except mongrel
curs, no tillers of the soil, nothing but these monotonous singers,
yellow of face and dressed in two brighter tones of the same color. For
furniture their simple dwellings have nothing but an old Buddhist altar,
with gods in faded gold, before which little heaps of ashes testify to
the constant burning of joss-sticks to their tawdry divinities. About
two hundred of these bonzes of Cambodia and Siam guard the sacred ruins,
and nearly that number live here perpetually, psalming day and night
about this pile of titanic blocks of stone heaped up by their more hardy
ancestors, or by those whom their more hardy ancestors defeated and
drove away.
Sunset, quickly followed by a bright full moon, came, and the lighting
of the immense stage-setting about me diminished until the forest,
already full of shadows under an ashen sky, in which a yellow
phosphorescence mingled with an ever darker green, died down to a great
spread of vacancy without details or distinctness. In the last light of
the day, leaning over the edge of the uppermost platform, I had seen a
procession of multicolored women drawing away along the great causeway
across the moat, a saffron-clad priest with a rolled parasol across his
back leading them. Cruder Buddhas have here and there replaced broken or
fallen Brahman figures in the great temple, especially within the base
of the central tower in the lofty third story. They are ugly things of
mud and wood compared with the ancient Khmer deities, and to look upon
them gives one the feeling one sometimes has toward the crude
missionaries from our own land who are trying to replace the more
fitting as well as older beliefs of the East with their own. A quantity
of Buddhist idols of all sizes sit on thrones in this upper story,
smiling at nothing, and pilgrims go about, bowing down before statue
after statue, indifferent, and no doubt unaware, whether they are
praying to Vishnu or to Buddha. Sometimes pilgrims from far-off Burma
come in the silence of the night to lay a flower or burn a joss-stick
before each of these figures, with a musty smell now, that are crumbling
away into the dust from which they, like the rest of us, came. A word
from the leader, which one can guess to be some such warning as, “Let us
hurry or the hour of the tiger will overtake us,” and they make their
devotions more hastily, cut even shorter their reverences, and soon
their barefoot tread is lost in the drone of a Buddhist service below as
they descend the steep stone stairways.
Whatever else one may see at Angkor, one always comes back to the great
temple, and that not merely because it is so near the _sala_. I found
myself almost unconsciously wandering there in the moonlight every
evening after dinner. For one thing it gave a respite from the prattle
of tourists, very few of whom ventured into the structure after dark. On
the first day I had met two childlike monks in their yellow robes going
along the gallery with a broom and a scoop of woven bamboo strips. They
were picking up the wherewithal to fertilize some little monastic
garden, no doubt for the growing of flowers, since the pious laymen
furnish them their food, and the tilling of the soil for useful purposes
is not one of the duties of their calling. There is no lack of
fertilizer to be had in Angkor-Vat. The pavements that are not open to
the sun are everywhere carpeted with the droppings of bats, so thick in
many places that one seems to be walking on felt. An almost intolerable
odor permeates all the interior, and the squeaking of what the French so
fittingly call “bald mice” up under the sharp vaults of the crude
massive roofs is always in the ears even of the visitor by day. Then, if
one’s eyes are sharp, they may make out myriads of the repulsive
creatures hanging head down by their claws to the rough stone ceiling,
looking during these their sleeping hours like sacks of dark velvet.
By night, clouds, avalanches of these flying rats, aggressive and
tireless, greet the intruder. As my steps resounded in the obscure
corridors, along which I advanced feeling my way foot by foot, for all
the brilliant moonlight outside, sharp little cries multiplied to a
concert, as of thousands of angry rats above my head. The horrible odor
seemed to increase as one after another of the sleeping creatures
unfolded its hairless membranes and joined in the general movement. It
is always half-night up there under the vaults and roofs, and perhaps
they do not sleep too soundly, or know the hour exactly, even by day;
with the night the least intrusion turns chamber after chamber into
swirls of the squeaking creatures. They descended to touch my hair; the
wind of their wings was like the breeze of electric fans running riot in
the darkness, cold in the tepid night as the breath of death. They
swirled about me in swarms on their silent wings, uttering their angry
little cries, as if banding together to repel an invader. One might have
fancied them the unappeased spirits of the Khmer gods of long ago, or
the unsaved souls of those who built the mountain-temple, resenting the
profaning of the sacred edifice in the solemn hours of the night by the
crude, heavily shod being of the modern world. If I stood perfectly
still for some time, the chorus decreased, died down, disappeared, as if
they had all gone back to sleep again. But with the first step forward
they detached themselves once more, one after another, and soon the same
noisome gyrations of unseen squeaking things was all about me again. My
flesh crept at the damp contact of their wings, at the very thought of
their touching me, and for once I was almost afraid of the dark, a
feeling I had not known since early childhood. I kept myself with
difficulty from fleeing headlong out into the moonlight.
No longer paled by the excess of sun, the bas-relief of the gallery, the
figures on the terraces, the dancing Apsarases everywhere took on a
nebulous clarity that in a way made them all the more beautiful. The
moon shone in silver streams through the carved stone bars of the narrow
windows; out in the courtyards the massive block of Angkor-Vat with its
five towers seemed more gigantic than ever, too enormous to be merely
the work of pygmy mankind. The more than steep stairways had about them
something so uncanny that it took more exertion of the will than of the
thighs to climb them; I had the feeling of entering a mammoth
burial-vault from which there would never again be any escape. As if
fearful of having to accuse myself of cowardice I climbed the first
story, doubly high to the second, forced myself up to the third. A light
like a fallen star twinkled at the top of the highest stairway, at the
door of the sanctuary beneath the central tower. It was the votive-lamp
of the Chettys, the Hindu money-lenders of Cholon and Saïgon, who offer
this eternal flame to the abandoned gods. Then suddenly the squeak of
swirling bats became more than my nerves could bear, and I retreated,
slowly only because of the indignity of frankly running away, and the
likelihood of tobogganing down those long cascades of narrow slippery
steps at a false movement made in haste.
On Monday I set off on foot to Bayon at the crack of dawn, knowing how
painful walking becomes soon after the sun rises above the tree-tops.
The Elephant Terrace and Bayon, with some of the striking old ruins in
their vicinity, about which I spent the morning, I had already hastily
seen as we were Fording bungalow-ward on the first morning in order not
to delay Mrs. Piffton-Smith’s luncheon and nap. Now, alone and at
leisure, I found them second only to Angkor-Vat. Bayon, impressive as a
cathedral, is the oldest sanctuary of Angkor-Thom, two centuries older
than the great temple in which the genius of the Khmer terminated. In
its day it had half a hundred towers, each and every one of them bearing
on all its four sides the face of Brahma, the highest rising nearly
fifty meters above the plain. Now many have fallen, been destroyed, or
been removed by the French to save the others; and still there are so
many of them that one feels the futility of trying to get out of sight
of their myriad-faced god. Those enigmatical faces of Brahma, or Siva,
some of them two men in height, crowned by diadems in stone, gaze so
multitudinously down from even what remains of the pyramidal mass that
one has a feeling of self-consciousness as when one is the focus of the
eyes of a living multitude. Those visages with the enigmatical smile,
the half-closed eyelids, the great flat noses, all with the selfsame
expression of ironic pity, are not merely on every face of every tower;
they gaze even from worn stones, no larger than a fist, picked up in the
underbrush.
Toward the end of the ninth century, four hundred years before the
decline of the Khmer, Bayon, ruder and even more enormous than
Angkor-Vat, was in its glory. The fifty towers of different sizes formed
several stories, and the topmost could be seen from any part of the now
abandoned city. To-day most of it has to be reconstructed by the
imagination, including the vast cleared space that made it possible to
see the crushing stature of the ensemble. In fancy one can rebuild the
successive terraces, the great stairways, the sumptuous avenues which
led to it, bordered by so many columns, balustrades, divinities,
rampant-headed cobras, and monsters, now crumbled away in the grass. But
even the faces of Brahma that remain gazing to the four cardinal points
of the compass seem to affirm, to force upon the beholder, the
omnipresence of the god of Angkor.
A shower-bath, lunch, and a nap, and I was off again, for a three-hour
elephant ride. There are two of these great beasts attached to the
_sala_, but like the goat-cart at the zoo they are now rather
curiosities than useful means of transportation. Akin to all holders of
sinecures, they stood before the door lazily swinging their trunks and
watching with cunning little eyes the Fords that have taken nearly all
their work away from them. The American ladies mounted one of them, Mr.
Piffton-Smith and I the other. The mother of Lady So-and-so would not
risk her precious life in such an adventure, and how her husband
persuaded her to let him undergo this terrifying experience is a
domestic secret to which I have no key.
I shall forevermore think of the elephant as a synonym for caution, for
slowness and docility too, for that matter. The _cornacs_, as the French
call what we know as mahouts, drove these pacific monsters more easily
than we do a horse, nay, as easily as one can drive an automobile,
except that nothing would induce them to move faster than two miles an
hour. Like domesticated man, there was nothing whatever wild about them,
and with every step up the only hillock in all the region the prudent
beasts felt every stone before trusting their weight to it, until they
seemed to personify the precautious mother of a Lady whom we had left
behind. Little by little we dominated the immense sea of absolutely flat
forest. Here where once there were innumerable palaces gleaming in the
sunshine, little more was visible above the endless spread of vegetation
than the block of Bayon and the five towers of Angkor-Vat. The view
across the vast forest-jungle left even that great temple like a needle
lost in a haystack, so tiny was it in its immense setting in the midst
of what looked like an endless and a trackless wilderness.
So terrifying was this experience of rising a hundred feet or two above
sea-level on these cautious monsters that poor Mr. P.-S. had to be
helped down at the summit like an infant, and only the impossibility of
covering on foot the mile or two back to the _sala_ induced him to mount
again. Cambodian workmen, under orders of the French, still toil in
several of the ruins, and here they laughed and shouted as they threw
blocks of stone down the slope with insulting words. Then we went
slowly, more than slowly, back, and across the mammoth bridge over the
moat for a circuit of Angkor-Vat. It was as if, knowing they could not
compete in speed with the Fords that have replaced their fellows, the
beasts had no intention of trying; or it may be that there is an
elephant union. That would even better account for their skill in
wasting time at every movement, at every moment, making their journey
the shortest possible within the three hours allotted us. The foundation
of Angkor-Vat and the bridge leading to it are raised two or three
meters above the ground, to facilitate mounting and dismounting from the
elephants that were once the only beasts of burden in this region. But
there was no time to dismount and mount now; the hour of the tiger would
indeed have come before the lethargic animals took up their funereal
march again. As we crept slowly round the temple, the elephants tore
large branches from some of the tropical trees high above our heads, and
munched them as languidly as a plumber eating his lunch on some one
else’s time. Men in breech-clouts were still walking up the frail
palm-trees with bamboo buckets in which to gather their sugary sap; the
bonzes were chanting their monotonous litanies from their stilt-legged
huts; and then the sun disappeared swiftly in the sea of jungle and gave
us that brief fleeting twilight of the tropics.
On Tuesday morning I mounted a tiny horse and rode away alone through
the woods, the delightful freshness of an early tropical morning all
about me. A light two-wheeled cart was also to be had, but I preferred
the miniature sample of the equine world—until the blazing of the sun
began in earnest. Though there are on the whole few feathered creatures
in the forest that has swallowed up Angkor-Thom, as if even they were
afraid of the denseness of the jungle, the singing of birds and insects
made a mild ceaseless music. Sometimes it sounded as if a bird was
whispering a cordial invitation to me from the bush—or was it merely
whistling to keep up its courage? There was such a wall of verdure on
either side that, like will-o’-the-wisps, they were never really
visible. Monkeys dashed from branch to branch, scores of monkeys, though
not one had we seen during the official trips by Ford. Evidently they
keep out of the way of tourists, perhaps because they cannot endure
their inane chatter. But now they played by the dozen about the ruins,
as freely as if they recognized in me a close relative, and indulged in
a pantomime, worthy of any stage, that was plainly an imitation of the
workmen among the remains of Angkor-Thom. A Cambodian legend assures us
that monkeys formerly talked like men, until the men made slaves of them
and forced them to work. The monkeys did not like this, and as they are
timid but intelligent they simply ceased to talk like us and pretended
not to understand, so that from that time forth they have lived in
peace, gathering nothing except for their dinners, and gamboling among
the trees to their hearts’ content. The thin Cambodian coolies who toil
for the French about the ruins have not been so clever.
CHAPTER IV
THE CAMBODIANS AT HOME
The efficient French manager of the _sala_ at Angkor, and those few of
my fellow-guests who saw me set out on foot for Siem Réap that Sunday
afternoon, gave me credit for being at least half mad. I have often
suspected as much myself. The native town was nearly five miles away
along that almost excellent French road by which we had come from the
edge of the flooded forest on the evening of our arrival, and obviously
it would be at least as great a distance back to the _sala_ again. But
it was a delightful walk, even while the sun was pouring its rays like a
molten flood of gold down into the roadway, and with every step forward
its aim became less exact, so that the infinitesimal streak of shade
along one dense forest wall gradually grew to be worth attention.
There were road-signs as in France, now and then an ox-cart with two
wheels drawn by as many oxen. On the whole, though, the road was
deserted, and for a long distance there was nothing but the Chinese wall
of unbroken forest close on either side, with frequent visions of lianas
in blossom, and in the streak of sky above, occasional flashes of
strange tropical birds. Then there came scattered villages,
water-buffaloes at pasture, more bourgeois birds sitting serenely on the
spines of the beasts as on a telegraph-wire, naked children who live in
the water, their gleaming skins mirroring the sun like the scales of a
fish. At length, some little distance from the ruins of the ancient
city, there began an almost endless succession of thatched huts back
among the trees, stilted villages, so to speak, for every one of them
was raised head-high above the ground on more or less haphazard posts
that had once been the trunks of small trees. None of these simple homes
had a clearing about it. The inhabitants had wisely cut away only enough
of the underbrush to give themselves room to move and to plant a little,
and they lived completely in the shade of the great forest about and
high above them. Steps were cut in the earth bank of the little river
that more or less followed the road, down to the water’s edge and what
seemed to be fish-traps. There were also some simple but ingenious nets,
and strangely shaped boats, the smaller ones paddled, the larger poled.
A quiet Sunday-afternoon languor that was probably perpetual rather than
only weekly hung over everything. The leisurely splashing of water
called attention every little way to a large wheel, made of now
age-blackened bamboo, that forced the river to lift itself by the
scoopful into the little gardens beyond the houses. The slow regular
thump of a wooden pestle worked by foot-power betrayed here and there
woods-dwellers caught in the act of having to hull rice for their
evening meal, in the hollowed upright section of log that serves them as
mortar. Otherwise, there was only the forest and its natural noises.
Siem Réap, of which I had once before had a fleeting moonlight glimpse,
was almost a city, in the Cambodian sense. For the Cambodians are not a
townspeople, but prefer the woods, which, with a bit of tilled soil,
gives them all they need. The place was entirely Siamese, its little
houses all perched on piles and its temple decorated with golden horns;
and even these were tucked back into the forest that crowded the wider
place in the road closely on either side. Evidently the inhabitants
sleep on the openwork bamboo-splint floor of their porches, as some of
them were already, or still, doing now, with the sun barely touching the
tree-tops. It was not always easy to tell the sexes apart at a glance,
for girls and younger women cut their hair in the ugly Siamese pompadour
fashion, slightly longer than that of the men. Grandmothers, old men,
and priests dispensed with theirs entirely, having more or less recently
shaven skulls. Both sexes wore like a short skirt a mere piece of cloth
wrapped about the hips and thighs, a costume so simple that most
Cambodian girls never learn to sew. Some of the younger women,
especially if they were far from the family clearing, had a cloth thrown
carelessly over their breasts; but about the house and in its immediate
vicinity they had nothing above the waist to hamper them from working,
or from suckling one of their interminable infants, carried on the hip,
Hindu fashion. There seemed to be much bathing and washing of clothes,
such as they were, reminding one of Ceylon. Bougainvillea hung in purple
masses about the wooden house of the French _résident_ and some of the
other better buildings. Police in half or full khaki uniforms, topped by
a kind of tam-o’-shanter, seemed out of place in this languid Eden.
The Cambodians are a slow and quiet race compared with the Chinese, even
with the Annamese, so gentle that even the shoulder-poles of their oxen
are seldom weighted down with heavy loads. The Tai, as the race to which
they belong is better known, are about equal in civilization, under
equal circumstances, to the Chinese, according to those who know them
well, except that the Tai are superior in personal cleanliness and the
lack of monkey-like curiosity, and the Chinese in foresight and
industry. Here there was none of the crowding of staring or chattering
throngs about the foreigner, so common an experience in China. The
Cambodians seemed to have a greater sense of personal dignity. As a
people they appeared a little surly toward the French, therefore toward
white men in general, though this may only have been bashfulness.
Physically the individual type is more sturdy, and observers agree that
they are much more reserved in their personal habits, than the
surrounding peoples. In situations where the Annamese squirms and howls
the Cambodian shows neither fear nor excitement. Simple timid souls,
however, manly and infantile at the same time, they are too naïve to be
any match for the world of to-day. Though they are physically stronger,
laborious in their leisurely way, intelligent, and not easily swayed
from their purposes or beliefs, they will let a puny Annamese chastise
them without any attempt at retaliation, because they are afraid of the
tricks this more sophisticated fellow might play upon them if they dared
to resist. For though the Annamese really look down upon, even hate, the
French, they are regarded by the other races comprising Indo-China as
the special pets of the foreign rulers. Being nearer in their own
sophistication to the modern wisdom, or trickery, of the Westerner, they
know much better how to turn the presence of the French to their own
good than do these isolated woodsmen of Cambodia, a prey to all sorts of
rascalities. The spirit of tolerance, renunciation, non-resistance, of
this timid forest-dweller who ornaments his body with symbolic
tattooings is so great as to make what in the Chinese seems to be that
quality appear none at all.
So while Cambodia is rich, the Cambodian is poor. “Wealthy as Cambodia”
was for centuries a byword among the Chinese. The yearly flooding of the
Mekong, the Nile of Indo-China, annually brings down a new covering of
rich soil for all the delta. Yet even the hasty traveler notes the far
greater prosperity of less fertile Cochinchina. There is only thatch in
Cambodia; in Cochinchina, inhabited by all the races of Indo-China,
including the Cambodians, there are tiled wooden houses, always a sign
of prosperity, for the fear of fires causes any race to get beyond the
thatch stage as soon as possible. Not merely the Chinese, with their
special privileges, but the Annamese, so easily outdone by the
Celestials in commerce, become in their turn the harsh commercial
exploiters of their simpler neighbors, not only the Cambodians but the
Moï, the Muong, and the Laosians. Even the recently arranged export of
Cambodian cattle to Manila has proved of no real help to the people
themselves, for they are often cheated out of their working cattle by
the tricky Chinese or Annamese traders.
The Cambodian is exclusively an agriculturist. Even though he makes his
own tools, carts, and houses, that is merely an adaptation to his
isolated life. In whatever he does he works with the spirit of the
genuine artist, which means that he gives too little attention to
getting all possible material benefit from his labor. Thus during the
past several centuries this little people—they are barely a million and
a half—has been terrorized, vanquished, despoiled, forced to fly, in the
dry season, before the Siamese, at the mercy, in the wet, of the
Annamese flotillas. The first were looking for slaves, and deported
people en masse to cultivate their lands of the Menam; the second came
killing the people off and driving them out in order to take their lands
for themselves.
To come through the forests and see so low a type of humanity, at least
in so far as ambition and the ability to build lasting things go, and
then suddenly see the towers of Angkor-Vat, through the half-cleared
vista of the old cart road, is to refuse to believe that the ancestors
of these built that. It shakes one’s belief in the equality of man; for
surely without masters of higher type than these hut-dwellers of to-day
this people could never have produced such things. But no, one reflects,
peoples, like individuals, have their day, their prime, their productive
years. They develop for centuries, then at a certain level accomplish
rapidly for a time, then sink into old age. All our own real progress
has been during the past few hundred years; we may soon cease to be
productive, perhaps not even remain static, like the Chinese, but drift
back down-stream, like these simple gentle Cambodians. Possibly some of
their once great creative ability might be revived; more likely not.
Besides, it is better to let others have the next chance, just as we
each give way in turn to the rising generation, than to try to
resuscitate what is past, as we sometimes try with the individual. For
it is impossible to backwater in life.
Though they have lived more or less intermingled for centuries, there
has been little racial intermixture of the Cambodians and the Annamese.
They are too nearly like oil and water, the real dividing-line between
the Chinese and the Hindu world which makes the name “Indo-China” so
fitting. It is only recently that Cambodian girls have not been
forbidden to marry foreigners, and there are far fewer _mariages à
terme_ with the French, and the resultant half-castes, than in Annam.
Yet it is said that the Cambodian, interbred with some other race having
more aggression in its fiber, makes an excellent human specimen. There
is little repulsion between the Tonkinese and the Cambodians, for those
two groups are historically little acquainted. But the two discordant
races are so different that to train a French official in Annam, or even
in Cochinchina, and then send him to Cambodia, is almost as bad as to
send one from Algeria to Madagascar.
Whereas the Annamese language is a singsong of many tones, like the
Chinese, and they use, or did at least until the French came, Chinese
characters for their writing—so that Japanese and Annamese, Korean and
Chinese, could all read, though not speak, together—the Cambodian tongue
is in one tone, like our own, and their writing is similar to that of
Siam and India. Cambodian music seems such to Western ears. Their
freedom from the cacophonic hullabaloo of the rest of the Far East gives
the traveler ground for hoping that here at last he is running into our
own Aryan influences again. The Cambodians accompany themselves on a
kind of guitar, and are the only people in Indo-China who have so far
been taught to play band music well.
The favorite game of Cambodian boys is to keep a ball made of bamboo
splints in the air as long as possible, kicking, striking, butting it
with any part of the body except the hands—real football, which of
course ours is not. Their dances, of immemorial tradition, are a kind of
drama of pantomine ballet, perpetuating the old Hindu epics, given only
by troupes of imperial dancers from the royal harem. The people
themselves do no dancing.
Once from the north, influenced by the more mystic Buddhism of Tibet,
with Sanskrit as the language, the Cambodians are now of the Ceylon or
southern Buddhist school, the language of which is Pali. The Annamese,
on the other hand, inherited the harsher northern Buddhism by way of
Mongolia and China. Thus the clergy, as disdained in Annam as in China,
has great prestige in Cambodia. The monks are very simple, and in their
piety at least are worthy the profound respect with which they are
surrounded. Though they live only on what they can beg, they are not
hermits and anchorets, as in the Chinese atmosphere of Annam, but live
the monkish life in common in the numerous temples of the country, quite
independent of one another. Priests become laymen, and vice versa, very
easily; all Cambodians are in fact expected to don the yellow robe at
least once in their lives. Most of them being country people, the monks
do not find it repugnant to engage in manual labor. There are many
woodsmen, brick-makers, even clock-menders and other industrious
“artists” among them. Personally I saw none of this, but only meditation
and begging; and I am quite ready to admit that I am hopelessly
prejudiced toward those who withdraw from their share of the world’s
work and troubles the world over. During the three months of the rainy
season the monks of Cambodia practise “the retreat” and refrain from all
pilgrimages; the rest of the year they go and come almost at will. Their
five commandments are: thou shalt not kill, steal, lie, drink
intoxicating beverages, or take the woman of another—which is not, be it
noted, celibacy in the Christian sense. It is said that at least they
never drink strong liquor, and so careful are they to avoid killing that
they have a special word (“Bahboh!”) and gesture to drive off the
militant mosquito without injuring it.
There have long been _salas_, or public houses maintained by the
government for travelers, along the principal roads of Cambodia, for the
same reason that there are _dak-bungalows_ in India. They do not want
strangers in their houses, which are semi-sacred; and from that to the
Hindu belief in caste pollution by so much as an alien shadow is no
great step. Suicide, as common among the Annamese as with the Chinese,
is rare among the Cambodians, not because they are greater cowards or
more generally happy, but because of their fear of vile reincarnations.
They burn their dead, like the Hindus and the real Buddhists farther
west; the Annamese practise the loathsome Chinese and Western custom of
burying their corpses and keeping them as long as possible.
The Cambodians have a feudal Hindu civilization, entirely distinct from
the mandarinic, communal, oligarchical civilization of the Annamese and
Chinese. In theory all land belongs to the king, and any that lies
uncultivated for three years may be demanded by some one else as a
concession. Only the produce is taxed, the assessments being gathered by
royal delegates quite independent of the provincial authorities. In
reality the French have not greatly changed the ancient order of things
during their sixty years as the “protectors” of Cambodia. They have
improved the ways of communication, beautified the old royal city of
Pnom Penh. They have done much against smallpox: formerly those who had
never had this disease were considered “not yet born to existence.” They
were exempt from taxes; a girl could not marry, a boy could not claim
the rights and duties of an adult, until a pock-marked face could be
presented as a certificate of maturity. The French have given the
country peace, external peace, that is; old residents say there is
piracy in the provinces as usual, even more of it the past twenty years
than a century ago. The French are impotent to stop criminal violence
against the natives, and the local authorities have every interest in
coming to an understanding with the robbers instead of fighting them.
The Chinese merchants of Cambodia pay pirate insurance.
[Illustration: One may still crawl about Angkor by elephant, though
Fords are much more à la mode]
[Illustration: Buddhist priests took their saffron-clad ease in the
shade along the great moat of Angkor-Vat, beyond the tourist bungalows
in the background]
[Illustration: A rural Cambodian family at home]
The French have kept the old forms of kingly rule; and “beneath an
appearance of order there still reigns the old anarchy,” said a French
doctor long resident there. Under cover of the French the ancient
injustices of despotic Oriental rule have been perpetuated and
modernized. It is next to impossible for an ordinary Cambodian with just
cause for complaint to get satisfaction. The mass of the people dare not
tell the wrongs done them, even were there some one both willing and
able to listen to them, because of the fear of reprisals. In a forested
Oriental country very few would risk giving testimony, even if it were
not the Hindu-Buddhist temperament not to complain; for vengeance is
easy. Native functionaries stick together; they are closely related to
the ministers of Pnom Penh. Even if a case is taken directly to the
French _résident_, about all he can do is refer the matter to the
governor of the province involved, “for information.” There are many
clandestine tariffs for legally gratuitous formalities. By law registry
of birth is free; in practice it costs all that those concerned can be
made to pay. There is a tax on furnaces used in the production of
fish-oil; but because the same Cambodian word also means a little
portable stove made of glazed earth, on which all Cambodia once did its
cooking, tax-gatherers have laid by great personal fortunes, and most of
the people have gone back to the three sticks stuck in the earth used by
their ancestors to hold their rice-pots over a fagot fire.
It is the old story of a very alien race unable to help, whatever its
good will, except in superficial things that are easily understood,
because it cannot get down into the deeper facts. In the French courts
the interpreter reigns as absolute master, and erects a stone wall
between the best judge and the parties before him. Even the making of
good roads has augmented rather than decreased the helplessness of the
people, for now French officials, often changed, dash to and fro between
their posts, whereas in the days of slow native travel they got perforce
some clear idea of the needs of the people. The French of course see to
it that their rule is treated with full honors, whatever the results of
it. There is a costly series of splendid fêtes at Pnom Penh in honor of
each new _résident supérieur_, which contrasts sadly with the
poverty-stricken people whom he comes in theory to help, and who must
pay for all such festivities. The fact is that he rarely comes for any
such purpose, but to follow his career with the least possible trouble
and the greatest possible advancement. But in the eyes of the Cambodians
the French are merely a passing phase, as the Siamese and their other
conquerors were before them, and they endure this brief affliction as
true fatalists do any other misfortune.
The minister of the palace is the real power in Cambodia. A former
interpreter—all who knew a little French when the French took upon
themselves the “protection” of Cambodia naturally got in on the ground
floor—imposed first upon Norodom as secretary-general of the Council of
Ministers, is now a kind of political comprador. An intelligent hard
worker, supple, well informed, speaking French fluently now, he has made
himself indispensable to the superficial and unstable French
administrators and is richer than old King Sisowath himself. Naturally
he drew a marvelous personal advantage out of a situation that he was no
doubt stupefied to find falling into his hands, and with an almost
Chinese point of view toward political matters he tends to perpetuate
himself, every day perfecting his double game between the king and the
French _résident_, peopling posts with his relatives and retainers,
keeping his political fences in order. It is the story of the rise of
Charlemagne’s forebears all over again, in an Oriental setting. Some
_résidents_ have tried to outwit this now richest and most powerful man
in the kingdom, but he always comes out best. He is the real master; the
other ministers, the crown prince, even the octogenarian king himself
tremble before him, mute and resigned.
To this have the descendants of the mighty Khmer sunk in the millennium
since they were forced to abandon Angkor-Thom. Yet after all the
Cambodians are the only people in the peninsula who have left enduring
works of their intellectual past. Their great art, in which the
grandiose perfection of the ensemble is combined with the most delicate
finesse of detail, is their certificate as one of the great races of
mankind.
CHAPTER V
NORTHWARD FROM SAÏGON
On a blazing Sunday late in January I was off at six on a little train
that carried me, not uncomfortably, from daylight until dark, through a
jungle country of few villages and no towns. Bienhoa, half an hour from
the Cochinchina capital, has rubber plantations of some extent, the well
spaced trees still small but already adorned with sap-gathering tin
cans. Beyond, jungle and forest soon began again, endless jungle-forest,
so that there are countless acres available for rubber, and before the
century is over this form of exploitation will no doubt have reached
vast proportions. The wilderness, broken only by little clearings for
occasional stations, was so dry in this hot prelude to the rainy season
that it had almost the autumn colors of the north. Most of the land was
deadly flat, but there were low hills now and then, densely wooded and
brushed, especially after little Cochinchina lay behind us and we
entered the great coastal strip known as Annam.
For all the wilderness, a splendid road, with huge native trees well
spaced on either side of it, followed the railway. Train and highway
used the same bridges, which custom I found to be common throughout
Indo-China. A horn manipulated by a loin-clothed coolie at either end
warns the automobile driver whether or not it is best for him to
proceed. For the bridges are only wide enough for one train or one
vehicle at a time, and though the trains of Indo-China are not large,
nothing short of a motor truck could dispute the right of way with them
with any great prospect of success. There are of course no unprotected
grade-crossings even in this faintly inhabited region, where an
automobile a day is an event, and where there are few ox-carts and fewer
pedestrians. As in France, the bridge and gate men govern themselves by
the time-table rather than by the facts, though here it is a languid
Annamese coolie instead of an old woman or a crippled war-relic who
holds up traffic so much longer than necessary.
The government owned and operated railways of Indo-China, destined some
day to be joined together in one system, are not yet continuous. The
eight hundred miles just then in running order were broken up into three
isolated jumps along the coast, not to mention the line from Hanoï up
into China that has been leased for a term of years to private
interests. All are of meter gauge, burn wood, and make very good speed,
considering their difficulties, as was proved by this day’s feat of
covering the more than 260 miles between Saïgon and Nhatrang—longest of
the three sections, even without counting the branch from the
Cochinchina capital to Mytho—in the twelve hours between equatorial dawn
and darkness.
The French have evolved a curious type of train to fit the peculiar
division of humanity in their Far-Eastern possession. The last car is
divided into first-, second-, and third-class compartments. First-class
accommodation consists of two crosswise seats facing each other in the
center of the coach, and the second, with twice that capacity, differs
mainly in the color of the leather upholstery. Third class, occupying
half the car, has bare wooden seats of American arrangement. The rest of
the train, unless it includes also a few freight-cars, is made up of
fourth-class box-cars innocent of springs and with four rudimentary
benches fore and aft the full length of them. Officials armed with
government _réquisitions_, or passes, usually monopolize the first
class, and even with their boxes and bags rarely fill it. Europeans with
purchased tickets, an occasional Eurasian, and now and then a wealthy
native, go second-class. Well-to-do natives, and the poorer French
residents, endure the hard seats of the rest of the car, and only in the
more populous regions do they fill them all. There are no color-lines,
except that Caucasians are not allowed to travel fourth-class. This
rendezvous of the Oriental masses is often packed to rush-hour
proportions, and is so free from cramping rules that even rickshaws may
be dragged in as baggage.
The half-dozen of these springless box-cars for every
first-second-and-third-class coach is symbolical of the proportionate
division of classes in the population of Indo-China. To the simple
countryman who occupies the rough _wagons_ making up the bulk of the
train, even the third-class compartment represents such luxury that he
comes to gaze in awe and what may be envy at the _richard_ who can
afford to ride there. Yet even in the deeply upholstered center of the
last car, fares are not so high as on our own railways. There are no
sleeping-cars, for the simple reason that the trains of Indo-China do
not venture forth at night. The back end of the last fourth-class car is
commonly taken up with a makeshift buffet-kitchen, in which the
privileged occupants of the rear coach may partake of not particularly
Parisian food, salted with such a jolting as may or may not be an aid to
digestion.
All through the hotter hours the train twisted and squirmed its way
among jungle-clad hillocks, the shades drawn, electric fans whirling.
Farther north were sandy half-arid patches; then, two hundred miles or
more above Saïgon, hills appeared and grew to be almost mountains,
fairly well wooded and thick with underbrush. At length the forest gave
way to scattered-bush land, resembling parts of Texas, untilled, perhaps
because it is too arid for cultivation. There were almost no
inhabitants, at least in sight. Here and there huddled half a dozen
miserable time-blackened and dilapidated huts made of palm-leaves; now
and then a garden-patch with a plastered house of dull-red tile roof,
and outhouses suggesting plentiful servants, testified to the presence
of some isolated French official or railway man. Perhaps there are towns
along the edge of the sea not far away, since fishing and farming are
the principal Annamese occupations.
From Phanrang near the sea a branch railway that degenerates into a
motor-bus carries passengers with time to spare up to the plateau of
Langbian. For high up in the distant mountains to the left toward which
the sun was descending is Dalat, an expensive hotel and hill-station
which the European residents of southern Indo-China call their
Darjeeling. All this mountainous region back of the narrow strip of
rice-growing coast-land is inhabited by Moï, “savages” who wear
breech-clouts and look at life accordingly. There are several
undomesticated tribes scattered throughout Indo-China, some of them
dangerous even to the white man who claims to rule over it. Many parts
of the hinterland are unexplored by the self-styled rulers, and portions
of it are impossible without a wild-man guide, who may not consent to
lend his assistance. Queer claims are those of the Caucasian and
Japanese races of ruling over this or that country when they only
control the modernized edges of it.
These Moï in their loin-cloths, most savage of the wild tribes of
Indo-China and looking not unlike our Indians, hold some clusters of
mountains where it is still not entirely safe to go. Some have renegade
Annamese leaders; one tribe lives in trees, in which it builds little
houses, out of wholesome respect for tigers. The visitor to the Moï is
expected to announce his arrival and friendly intentions by beating on a
drum set up at the entrance to every village, as we knock at a door. If
his visit is agreeable, a man bearing rice comes out to escort him, and
if he is prepared to give salt in return, he is made welcome. Though
they have little or no intercourse with the rest of the world, the Moï
suffered greatly from the recent epidemic of “flu,” and fevers and
smallpox have often ravaged them. The average Moï woman has ten
children, of whom only one or two reaches maturity. Thus the estimated
three hundred thousand Moï are constantly decreasing. It is curious how
many savage tribes have less success in raising their young than do most
wild animals. Perhaps it is nature’s way of keeping down an intermediate
creation.
The Moï language, with no tones in the Chinese sense, sounds almost
European. At the age of puberty boys and girls alike undergo the
formality of having their teeth filed down to the gums. With some kind
relative sitting on the chest of the sufferer, lying on his back with
his head between the legs of a primitive vise, and with a wooden bit
forced into his mouth, a medicine-man breaks off the teeth with stones
and hacks and chips them away. It is their idea of making themselves
beautiful, and the boy or girl who has not undergone this punishment is
not considered marriageable or otherwise of adult status. After a day of
this frightful work the operator leaves his victim covered with blood,
his gums in ribbons, his lips like hashed beefsteak, and incapable for a
fortnight of eating anything but liquids. Nor is this all, for the
patient is then given a stone with which to continue the beautifying
process himself, when he has a moment to spare, until not a sign of
tooth remains above the level of the gums. Among some of the tribes the
lower teeth are given a saw shape, so that the open mouth suggests that
of an aged shark that has lost its upper plate.
Dalat is the chief hunting-ground for tigers in Indo-China. So well are
these hunts organized by the French that the brave hunter bags his beast
as safely as royalty does. There is a French colonial official whose
chief duty it is to oblige those who wish to boast that they have killed
a tiger. One orders a tiger by telegraph—tiger _à la carte_, so to
speak; the official sends out coolies to lay a bait that has reached
just the right degree of olfactory attraction to the great cats, and in
due season the bold hunter lays one low without the slightest risk. Thus
Indo-China is full of successful tiger-hunters, without a scar to show
for it. The Annamese down on the coastal plain live in such dread of the
tiger that they never mention their greatest four-footed enemy except by
the respectful title of Ong Kop (Lord Tiger), and in the woods your
coolie will make a clawing sign rather than speak openly of the fearsome
beast. Children have been carried off by tigers within a mile or two of
the Annamese capital. Yet the Moï hunt them with primitive weapons that
are hardly more effective than a sharpened pole. “Moï,” by the way, is
simply the Annamese pronunciation of the Chinese character “man,”
meaning barbarian, a term much used by these two races to designate the
despised peoples who have not the honor of being of the same blood as
they.
Heavy clouds, and one gust of rain, as from the swiftly passing nozzle
of a celestial hose, swept over the train late in the afternoon, though
in Saïgon rain is unknown at that season. Near Tourcham real mountain
ranges climbed down to the edge of the plain and crowded the railway so
close to the sea that we caught several glimpses of it, and of waterways
beautiful at high tide. The name of this all but isolated station is
taken from the great Cham tower that stands on a hillock near it. The
Cham were an ancient people, of Hindu civilization also, who occupied
this coastal strip many centuries ago, long before the Khmer swept down
into the peninsula, and they left behind them gray stone towers that
stand forth weirdly in the wilderness of to-day. Mammoth rocks heaped
themselves up into half-jungled hills as we raced onward between low
mountains—the coastal group on one hand and the forerunners of the great
Annamese chain inland on the other. Toward sunset the arid landscape
grew green again, some paddy-fields and scattered villages appeared;
then the region as far as the eye could see turned frankly to rice
culture, though with cattle grazing now in long brown stubble. But this
fertility did not last, even where there was evidence of plenty of rain
recently; in its place came bush, primitive unpeopled jungle, trees in
white flower shrouded with vines, kapok trees shedding their vegetable
cotton, flatlands, or at most low hills. Patches of Indian corn and
tobacco flashed by, clusters of miserable wattled mud huts with old
straw or palm-leaf roofs that looked like beggars’ caps, but there were
no people at all compared to almost any part of China.
Nhatrang had a booming beach and a constant sea-breeze, and seemed
spacious and pleasant, a trifle cooler than Saïgon. But this I take
partly on faith, for I never saw it by daylight. Thick tropical night
had fallen when the train came to the end of its rails, and almost
before I knew it I had been whisked into the stopping-place provided for
Europeans. This was a cross between a government _sala_ and a public
inn, exactly what a French establishment in the tropics run by a
slippered Alsatian who had completely forgotten his native land, except
for its German accent, would naturally be. It seemed that I, the only
European to whom Nhatrang was to play host that night, had broken a
fixed rule of travel in these parts. Of two Annamese youths who had
boarded the train some miles away to drum up passengers for two rival
motor-buses, I had come to terms with the least respectable, whereas all
Europeans hitherto had patronized the official mail-bus belonging to
vested interests. But the terms were favorable accordingly, and as
between outsiders and vested interests my sympathies are inclined to
radicalism.
I was called at three, and we were off again in the bootleg autobus that
had clinched our agreement by carrying me from station to inn the
evening before. It was still dark when we crossed a broad estuary or
river by a _bac_ and struck off into what seemed to be mountains. A
_bac_, as all diligent students of French know, is a ferry, but the
genus that abounds in Indo-China is worthy a name of its own. How many
times during my gasoline-propelled travels throughout the colony my eyes
fell upon that capital T on its back like a helpless turtle, which meant
one more river to cross by the precarious Annamese method, I refuse even
to try to guess. As a special concession I might admit that there are at
least a thousand bridges in Indo-China that have never been built, some
of which I fear never will be. One is rolling serenely along a smooth
French highway, swathed in that delight which comes from swift
comfortable motion, so long as it is uninterrupted, when
“Brrgrrum!”—another sign-board with the overturned T. The vehicle
slithers down a steep and probably slimy bank, all but sinks a
collection of ancient planks criminally put together, and stops just in
time to keep from sliding off the farther end of them. If it is daytime,
two or three or half a dozen Annamese of either sex and any age have
been aroused from their siesta by the overworked horn and the compact of
automobile and their disjointed sleeping place, which they begin
forthwith to pole or gondolier across the fluid interruption to traffic.
If it is night, profanity and slapping on the part of the chauffeur and
his assistants may also be necessary to metamorphose the several huddled
sacks about the intrepid raft into living beings and to move them to
indulge in similar exertions. Sometimes, if the expanse of water is not
too great, there is a rope or chain from shore to shore. The boatmen use
chain-handles weighted at the end with a block of wood by means of which
they wrap themselves easily about the transfluvial cable as it is
dragged up from the slimy bottom. But whatever the method of propulsion,
the craft is sure to run aground or meet some other form of delaying
mishap before the crossing is completed, and to creak and groan and rend
itself in a way to assure the inexperienced that his trip is about to
end at the bottom of that particular strip of water. Nothing is more
adaptable than the human spirit, however, and within a week a _bac_
meant no more to me than entering the ring does to a bull-fighter.
I traveled first class, at two thirds what the same privilege would have
cost me in the regular conveyance of the _poste coloniale_. That is, I
sat wedged into a corner of the front seat with the driver. His
assistant, having yielded his usual place to me for whatever reward may
have been promised him by his chief, rode for two days on the
running-board, one bare foot hooked over the front door or one skinny
hand clutching a support of the baggage-laden roof. It was a place
convenient for his duties anyway, for these consisted in catching sight
of the next kilometer-post in order to compute the fare of each new
passenger, clambering along the side of the car like a chipmunk on a
wall to collect it, slapping or booting with a bare toe pedestrians who
did not speedily give the vehicle the widest possible berth, and
watering the radiator wherever time and water were to be had, as if it
were some jungle beast perpetually dying of tropical thirst. Behind me
rode an average of fourteen Annamese, with a few babies usually thrown
in. These second-class passengers enjoyed the privilege of being less
likely than I to catapult through the wind-shield at one of the sudden
stops that were always imminent; but no doubt the honor of my position,
and the lesser likelihood of being sprayed with betel-juice by some
garrulous fellow-passenger, made my double fare worth while.
The chauffeur, like his understudy, was dressed in tropical French
fashion, as was proper to his honorable calling, a soft felt hat crushed
down over his head, his shirt-collar wide open, after the latest fashion
of European beaches. Once he abandons the comfortable and pleasing garb
of his own people, the Annamese jumps to the most ultra-modern mode of
his rulers. Until I had met others of his clan who seemed to have
learned the chauffeur trade in a tailor-shop, I considered this driver
the last word in perpetual homicidal intention; looking back upon him
from the vantage-ground of uninjured escape from Indo-China, I grant him
perfection among Annamese wielders of the steering-wheel. For one thing
he wore shoes, which is by no means common among his brake- and
clutch-stepping compatriots, and the little French he tortured when
there was no visible way out of it was at times within reach of an
attentive understanding, in itself a rare virtue. His chief amusement
was the crushing of dogs, those thin yellow dogs that are almost as
numerous in Annamese villages as children and pigs. It was a kindness to
the gaunt curs perhaps, but I never reached the point of taking great
pleasure in seeing one of them disappear beneath us with one short
helpless yelp. When he could not find enough of these pitiful animals
within reach, he brushed against frightened _nha-qués_, the leisurely
peasants of Annam, in order to see how far they could remove themselves
in a single jump. Not a few of them made the records of mere athletes
seem the performances of babes in arms.
To be the driver of an automobile is to the Annamese more than a trade,
it is a title. The first chauffeur of the _Résidence Supérieure_ at the
capital of Annam wears the dragon decoration of his emperor, and other
chauffeurs passing through Hué go to his garage to kowtow before him.
The ease with which Orientals adapt themselves to our inventions is one
of the wonders of the East. One would suppose that a people quite
incapable of understanding, much less inventing, such a mechanical
contrivance as the automobile would stand in awe of it, and of those who
had contrived it. Not at all; on the contrary they take it as calmly as
they do the growths of nature, as they do the miracles with which they
credit their demons and invisible spirits, showing the same rage or
surprise if it does not respond to their senseless chastisement as at
their gaunt sore-backed domestic animals refusing to work under their
heartless lashings.
Thanks perhaps to French discipline, or because the Annamese are by
nature a more quiet leisurely race, my companion on the front seat was
not so wild as the average Chinese chauffeur. Yet on the whole it was no
great pleasure to ride beside this solemn little brown man in his
misplaced near-European clothes. Though it was always passable, the road
was in places atrociously surfaced, for all the road-gangs along the
way. Especially among the mountains that often came down to the edge of
the sea it is no joke even for such famous road-builders as the French
to keep up a highway in a land of tropical rainy seasons. An autobus of
the same bootleg line, lying upside down in a creek where a bridge had
broken down a week before under its thundering impact, did not give me
that reassurance of complete safety at his high speed which the fellow
himself seemed to have. It was bad enough to see one of the mangy yellow
mongrels that slink about every Annamese hut disappear under our wheels
every hour or two. I could comfort myself that these at least should be
glad to be so suddenly put out of their lifelong misery. But in the
course of the morning the nerveless Asiatic at the wheel succeeded in
running over a handsome foreign hunting-dog loping along beside its
shotgun-armed French master on a bicycle. Perhaps he did not
deliberately overtake the animal—unsuspecting, because of the kindly
European atmosphere it lived in, any such treachery as the orphaned
mongrels of Annam are constantly on the lookout for—but he could at any
rate easily have avoided it. The Annamese passengers, gazing back at the
writhing corpse in the dust as we sped away, seemed to look upon such
incidents as one of the pleasures of travel, due them in consideration
of the high fare on these strange foreign vehicles. One had the feeling
that they grinned and chattered and nudged one another not so much
because of a certain more or less natural antipathy toward the race to
which this particular dog was attached as out of sheer Oriental joy at
beholding suffering. On the tanned mask of the driver’s face there was
just the hint of two conflicting emotions; one the satisfaction of
having added another dog, better than the average, to his score; the
other a possibility of vengeance on the part of the Frenchman kneeling
in the dust beside his dying pet, that transferred itself into a more
deafening roar and breakneck speed than ever.
That autobus trip from Nhatrang to Tourane was through much prettier
scenery than the one by train the day before. For one thing the highway
runs much closer to the coast than does the railway. Outcroppings of the
great Annamese chain came down to the edge of the China Sea every little
while, especially during the first day’s stage from Nhatrang to Quinhon,
and our road wound and twisted, buckled and climbed, over high rocky
spurs, along the sheer edge of breath-taking slopes, up and down between
sea-level and several thousand feet above it, often with hair-pin turns
high up along precipitous cliffs on the very edge of the densely blue
ocean. It opened many magnificent vistas, of weird indentations, bold
headlands, charming little beaches, now and again an unbelievably blue
bay thickly speckled with the sails of tiny boats dancing in the
whitecaps as to Pan’s pipes, yet seeming to have no fear. They were mere
cockle-shells, these sea-going canoes of the Annamese fishermen, made of
bamboo splints tightly woven together and covered with pitch. Scores of
them, baking bottom up in the sun on raised frameworks and gleaming
under a new coating as with varnish, lay along the road through Annam.
Sometimes the road itself was made of bamboo splints, woven together
into great mat-like strips six feet or more wide and in some places half
a mile long. These carried the heavy autobus across deep sand, at either
end of leaky _bacs_, in which it would otherwise have floundered almost
as quickly as in the water itself.
[Illustration: Motor-buses link together the railways of Indo-China,
crossing broad sandy river-banks on strips of woven bamboo splints]
[Illustration: In Annam prisoners working in the streets wear a light
remnant of the old neck-torturing Chinese _cangue_]
[Illustration: In the “Marble Mountains” are many grottoes, some of them
elaborately fitted up as temples]
[Illustration: An Annamese summoning a ferry from across one of the many
rivers which still offer no bridges to automobiles]
Deeply green wet jungle surrounded us much of the time, cactus
stretching out spiny arms toward us. Blinding white salt marshes
contrasted with a road in places so red that the saliva of a nation of
betel-chewers did not spot it. Striking peaks of the coastal group
alternated with tame stretches of dusty highway down at sea-level, gusts
of rain from mountains of black clouds with blazing tropical sunshine.
Wherever mountains and foot-hills receded enough to leave a suggestion
of plain, however narrow, rice-fields filled every level space. The
young rice of the first crop of the year was deeply flooded now,
peasants plowing thigh-deep in it behind ponderous water-buffaloes that
seemed to be in their element wading in slime. Some men and more women
were clawing in the mud up to their biceps; others paddled about the
fields in the light canoes of woven bamboo. Stones were so rare in some
sections of this ancient route that the well-sweeps used for irrigation
were weighted at the short end with balls of mud and straw. Along the
road there was no more suggestion of fences than in China itself, but
the smaller foot-hills were here and there cut up into green fields by
thin lines of greener bushes.
With an hour’s hot halt for refreshments for man, woman, and
gasoline-consuming beast at a village boasting a tolerable Annamese
imitation of a French restaurant, we rode on through scorching midday
into the slightly cooler afternoon, ending the first day’s stage with
sunshine enough left to photograph pretty Quinhon. In the last few miles
big rice-plains had opened out; we had bisected a scattered town of some
size; files of coolies had increased until the road became an almost
continual procession of them. Quinhon is beautifully situated on a spit
of sand and earth projected out into a bay surrounded by mountainous
shores. Thus there are both mountains and sea on all sides of it, except
where the road enters the one long street of the native town, merging
beyond into shaded drives and foreign houses in garden-groves, none of
them a hundred yards from either beach. The French suppress somewhat
more successfully than the English-speaking races the tendency to insist
on erecting in the tropics dwellings exactly like those at home, and the
houses they build in Indo-China are not entirely unfitted to the
climate.
The ruling race monopolizes this tongue of sandy land running out into
the densely blue, very deep harbor surrounded by high hills, where one
small ocean steamer, flying the British flag, now rode at anchor. The
native town is little more than two unbroken lines of shops, and between
them and the French residences stood a whitewashed market building of
modern lines, even at this late hour half filled and all but surrounded
by squatting women in the woven palm-leaf hats of parasol shape that are
the most prominent feature of every Annamese market. They sold all
manner of native foodstuffs, fish from the sea, long rolls of dark-brown
sugar wrapped in leaves, arec-nuts and the betel-leaves and lime that go
with them, recalling the Indian women of the Andes selling cocoa-leaves
and similar ingredients of an analogous mild vice. Though French paper
piastres, fractional silver, and big copper sous are the ordinary
Indo-Chinese medium of exchange, in the markets the masses still use
_sapèques_, as the French call Chinese “cash.”
It was at Quinhon that I saw for the first time in Indo-China, though by
no means the last, prisoners wearing the _cangue_ once so common and now
so rare in China. Instead of the great planks of Manchu—and
Puritan—days, however, these contrivances about offending necks were a
very light frame of wood, as if the French, though unable to do away
entirely with an old Annamese custom left over from the centuries of
Chinese rule, had insisted on softening this form of punishment. Native
justice prescribes leg-irons too, and sentences men to hard labor even
for not paying taxes, but French rule seems to temper Asiatic cruelty by
wrapping bands of cloth about the ankles so that irons shall not chafe
the skin. Most of the convicts also had an iron band about the waist,
and this was connected with the leg-irons by two chains that clanked
constantly with the prisoner’s short steps. Yet the fellows could even
climb cocoanut-trees in these, and they did not seem to have any
difficulty in getting permission from the soldier guards to step into a
shop and buy cigarettes or the makings of the betel-nut cuds with which
the black teeth of both prisoners and guards driveled. The men who thus
dropped behind soon caught up again with their fellows, pushing and
pulling two-wheeled carts of sanitary purposes and drawing loads of
broken stone.
For all its French colony, the people here gaped at a foreigner almost
as much as in China—though perhaps it was merely because I was out in
the sun and on foot at such an hour. They gathered to watch me write
wherever I drew out my note-book and gaped open-mouthed at my antics
with the camera that few of them seemed to recognize, but with more
respect, or fear, than Chinese crowds show under similar circumstances,
remaining quietly at some distance, like well trained children.
Frenchmen, even women and children, began to appear when the sun neared
the horizon, strolling under the trees and along the edges of the blue
bay out on their breeze-cooled sandspit. At the more or less French
hotel where Europeans passing through Quinhon spend the night I was
joined that evening by the only man of my own tongue I met between
Saïgon and Tourane. He was thin and lanky with long tropical living, but
filled with Scotch humor, and announced himself the chief engineer of
the steamer in the harbor. He did not seem to believe my tale that I had
come all the way from Saïgon by land, much less that I hoped to go clear
on into China without taking to the sea, though he had sailed into this
and all the other little ports along the coast of Annam half his life,
during which his chief pleasures were a meal and a “berth” ashore now
and then.
CHAPTER VI
THROUGH ANNAM TO ITS CAPITAL
We were off again by the same conveyance at four next morning. Long
before daylight the road was alive with files of coolies, two loads
bouncing at the ends of each shoulder-pole, the same familiar lines of
jogging carriers as in China, with the difference that here there were
as many women as men, for the bound foot is one advantage of Chinese
civilization that was never adopted in Annam. All up and down the long
slender kingdom of the Eminent South endless miles of coolies of both
sexes come trotting to market to sell to one another. Always they jog in
Indian files, even on the wide modern roads, unable to cast off
centuries of training along the narrow trails of old Annam. All wore
palm-leaf hats; some carried parasols also, even before daylight,
perhaps as a protection against the setting moon. With the first rays of
sun, flung horizontally across the already tepid world, double lines of
pole-bearers stretched ahead and behind, on both sides of the road, as
far as the eye could see, the women carrying with a floating motion,
many of the men not carrying at all. New lines, cut out in fresco
against the brightening horizon, came jogging in along the dikes of the
paddy-fields. As both sexes dressed and carried alike, and the men wore
their long hair in Psyche knots, it was not easy to distinguish man from
woman until we were close upon them, sometimes not even then. Evidently
the Chinese found this annoying, for when they conquered Annam,
centuries ago, they ordered the women to wear short garments with wide
sleeves. China’s power over the kingdom of the south virtually ended
during the Ming dynasty, however, and the Manchus did not succeed in
introducing the queue.
The country was now perhaps a bit less mountainous than the day before,
the strip of plain wider, certainly more densely populated, and all its
products were bound market-ward. Here and there in the files a mother
carried a child at one end of her pole and a small pig at the other. The
hasty glimpse as we dashed past was not enough to decide whether the
youngster or the pig had been brought along as a counterweight. Like
their near relatives in China, the pigs of Annam refuse to walk to
market. Coolies carry them in baskets—“like foreigners in chairs”—or
merely with a band from their jouncing poles about their bellies, which
would seem to the disinterested observer to be more painful than
walking. Who would be so bold, however, as to claim to grasp the point
of view of a pig?
Often that morning the road ahead looked like a flowing river of
coolies, parasol-hats and jogging poles forming a kind of scum on the
surface. We dashed through this endless stream like a steamer through a
narrow waterway, our incessant horn always clearing a passage just soon
enough to escape doing the ceaseless multitude of dodging pedestrians
bodily injury, the chauffeur’s assistant striking a resounding thwack,
with a whip that he seemed to carry for no other purpose, on every
palm-leaf hat he could by any stretching reach. We dashed as
peremptorily through markets squatting along and, so rare is wheeled
traffic, even in the road at the frequent villages, markets noisy with
bartering, gatherings that recalled Haiti in other ways than the
pell-mell with which they scattered as we rode down upon them without so
much as slackening speed. Annamese markets are always a broad vista of
whitish palm-leaf hats, so that they look like an individually roofed
congregation. There were hat factories beside the road where more of
this ubiquitous head-gear was being fashioned, of other materials as
well as palm-leaves, it seemed, for the brass top of one soldier’s hat
came off in my presence and disclosed the filling to be the
apartments-to-let columns of a New York newspaper, yellow with several
years of tropical service. In certain movements and when the wind is
blowing the Annamese must keep his mouth open to hold his hat on, by
tautening the ribbon under his chin. Wanderlust in Annam takes the form
of going to market, especially among the women and girls. They like the
sense of freedom it gives them, the company, the gossip, above all the
bargaining, at which the women of Annam are past mistresses. In the
afternoon we met these same files of women, or at least their exact
counterparts, jogging homeward as heavily laden as they came, for they
often buy as much as they sell.
In this section, all through southern Annam in fact, every one not in
mourning wore black. Compared with those of Cambodia and of some other
parts of Indo-China, the women were almost prudish in their dress. Like
the men they wore thin cotton pantaloons as voluminous as those of the
modern college youth, and a jacket barely disclosing the neck, and more
often than not all this was covered with a flowing cotton coat reaching
almost to the ankles. Rarely was a breast revealed even during the
frequent nursing of children that in many cases should long since have
outgrown that form of nourishment. True, in the hottest hours of the
sea-level day many of the women, especially the older and less
attractive ones, wore in their own villages nothing between hat and
pantaloons except a diamond-shaped breast-protector, tied on with
cross-strings across the back, outdoing from the rear the most extreme
of Western evening-gowns. But on the road and in the market even the
flowing coats seemed almost _de rigueur_.
Among the coolie class these overcoats of both sexes were of thin
cotton. The better-to-do men in the towns and in the autobus wore
jet-black ones, thin as gauze, transparent as mosquito-netting, with
flowered designs of the same hue woven in them, like the pattern in
lace, and fastened together down the side with little gold buttons.
Beneath this the well dressed man wore a white jacket-shirt and very
loose cotton trousers, and thrust bare feet into black slippers or
wooden clogs. A black cloth carelessly wound about the head
distinguished most coolies, but all men above that class wore that most
unique item of the Annamese costume, a black band-turban permanently
arranged in many little folds, rising in stairway fashion up the
forehead and descending in the same manner at the back. This mere
head-band, without top, is worn indoors and out, even, one suspects,
during sleep. In place of the male turban the women wrap black cloth
about the long single thick braid of their generally luxuriant hair, and
wind this about the head. Out in the sun the palm-leaf hat sits on top
of turban or its feminine counterpart. At least along this main route of
French railway and autobus highway both men and women of the well-to-do
class wore gold and other valuable ornaments openly. Long necklaces of
grains of gold of the size of peas are the favorite adornment of the
women who can afford them; there were bracelets, sometimes several on
one arm, earrings usually of gold, and miscellaneous jewelry to suit the
individual taste or purse.
Rice lands stretch for many miles north of Quinhon, some so broad that
they looked like great inundated wheat-fields. In other places the hills
closed in like interested spectators, but still left room for a broad
strip of cultivation. Sunk to the knees in this slime, pantaloons rolled
to the tops of their thighs, men and women clawed about the roots of the
young rice. Here a laborer up to his—or her—middle in mud and water
toiled feverishly to stanch an overflowing pond by slapping hasty
handfuls of oozy black mud on a broken dike. On another such division
between the paddy-fields two Annamese of indeterminate sex were
alternately pulling and letting loose in rhythmic cadence the two ends
of a cord bearing in its middle a pail made of straw, the simplest
Oriental form of lifting water from an overflooded field into a thirsty
one above. Farther on, a coolie condemned to hard labor to earn his
rice, turned with his bare feet a primitive wheel that set in motion an
endless chain of simple buckets. To protect himself from the sun he held
in one hand an open umbrella, and no doubt dreamed himself a mandarin.
Right, left, sometimes everywhere as far as the eye could see, were
rice-fields, mirroring the sun so brightly that the eye quailed before
them. Yet there was little color to make gay this landscape of the
plains; it is green or nothing, except for the bluish tinge of masses of
the Japanese lotus or hyacinth. The Annamese planted this in a few
selected spots to celebrate the victory of the yellow race over the
white at Tsushima; and now, as if to punish them for their seditious
thoughts, it has spread far and wide, invading their ponds and
rice-fields, obstructing their watercourses. To-day the peasants of
Annam spend much of their time laboriously digging out and carrying away
this prolific and troublesome plant, good for nothing, not even as
fertilizer. In so narrow and intensively cultivated a land it is a great
problem even to find space on which to throw the stuff, yet their food
is just so much decreased until they can rid themselves of this
disastrous invasion of flowers.
A few red humped cattle lolled under wayside trees, or grazed on dikes
where they were mirrored in the flooded fields, as were the mountains in
the background and the huts in cocoanut-groves against the more or less
distant foot-hills. Clusters of water-buffaloes on vacation lay immersed
to their nostrils in mud-holes or swung their mammoth horns with an
inhospitable air along the mud ridges between the paddy-fields, or fed
on the edges of the uncultivated hillocks in which the great mountain
range always bulking clearly or hazily to the west gave up its contest
with the sea. A pair of birds stood blithely on the backs of some of the
amphibians; on others a boy, at times even a girl, lay at full length,
head pillowed on rump or withers. Among the trees especially these
ponderous beasts resembled, exactly as to color, that other survivor of
the dinosaurian age, the elephant. Some of them were of that dull creamy
hue of the sacred “white” elephants of Siam and vicinity. For a
semi-albino buffalo is common in Indo-China, its eyes red, a rough red
skin showing through scarce whitish hairs, as if it were half roasted in
the Annamese sun—perhaps it is only because it is not rare enough that
this abnormal beast is not also regarded as sacred.
A whole population was toiling in the rice-fields, or trotting
elastically along the dikes, two pole-balanced loads bouncing from every
shoulder. The rural Annamese are not lazy; on the contrary they are very
hard workers, though they have some of the natural indolence of the
tropics. Agriculture is laborious under the best of conditions, to say
nothing of those of the Orient; with his seldom lacking flock of
voracious children the _nha-qué_, the peasant of Annam, can rarely rest.
Small, but of great endurance, the countrymen of the Eminent South are
forever on the run, like ants in haste to provide themselves against a
drouth or a famine. Both sexes can trot indefinitely under great loads;
even a six-year-old boy can propel a sampan, though he may not yet have
reached the dignity of clothing.
Rice is by far the principal product of Annam, fish or fruit being a
slow second. Thanks to its rice, Annam is rich; all Indo-China is rich,
else why this Western form of “protection”? Low as they seem to us from
the land of exorbitance, prices are high compared to China. There were a
few beggars, now and then one obviously leprous, yet few indeed measured
by the rows of them along any important Chinese route. A visiting French
novelist, angry at the exchange between its real currency and his poor
paper francs, entitled one of his chapters on Annam, “Under the Sign of
the Piastre.” There are so many piastres in Indo-China that the Chinese
and the Chettys, the “usuricultors” who lend to the unforesighted
peasant at highwayman rates of interest, and even French officialdom and
monopolists, cannot take them all; there remain some for the _nha-qué_,
the toiling peasant who earns them all by the sweat of his brown
back—and those of his women-folk.
Since almost all the Annamese are agriculturists, there is no
aristocracy between the emperor and his mandarins and the _nha-qué_,
little exploiting of any other than the agricultural resources of the
country. Whatever wealth it has comes from the soil, almost entirely
from these flooded rice-fields mirroring the ever near-by chain of
mountains that shuts off this laborious people close on the west. For
the real Annam is only this very narrow strip of fertile lowlands on the
eastern slope of the Siamese peninsula. Like the Nile in Egypt, this
main highway, close as it is to the sea, takes in all the narrow
country. The Annamese chain crowds the toiling peasant so close to the
sea in many places that he is often driven into it as a fisherman to
escape starvation. He cultivates only the valleys, both because he knows
little else than rice and because the Moï, the barbarians of various
tribes, make it uncomfortable for him back in the hills. Yet narrow as
their country is, of the eighteen or twenty million people in French
Indo-China two thirds are Annamese. For as if to make up for its
slenderness, that strip of flatland between the mountains and the sea is
incredibly fertile, so fertile that its overcrowded toilers trouble
themselves far less with fertilizing than do the Chinese.
Bamboo of all sizes, palms ranging from mere fans to great masses of
leaves, magnificent trees, some of them bearing the jackfruit on their
trunks, cocoanut-palms hugging the coast-line, banana-plants all but
hiding thatched huts, above all the straight and slender arec-palm up
which climbs the clinging betel-vine, broke the monotony of the
rice-fields. There were miles of hedges gay with what looked like a
small pink rose, and large flowers made up of many tiny ones, care-free,
unconstrained bushes, not the domesticated hedge-rows of England. In
places a shock of colors like an explosion emphasized the landscape.
Then, after so long a stretch of rice-fields that they grew wearisome,
we went high up over a spur from which spread out another great vista,
more than half of it the dense, very green tops of cocoanut-palms.
Beyond came miles of waste-lands, with sand white as snow piled up over
sterile hillocks.
There were hundreds of graves among these barren sands, strewn as
closely together as are the green unmarked grave-mounds that emerge
everywhere from the rice-fields, where agriculture gnaws at them year
after year, century after century, yet never destroys them. Though
January was not yet done, and the lunar New Year was still a week off,
preparations had almost everywhere been completed for that important
date. Here and there a man was still touching up his family graves,
giving them a new top of sand or earth, weeding and clearing them of all
vegetation, before the Annamese New Year should overtake him and bring
reproach from the spirits of his ancestors. But most of this work had
already been done, so that the rounded knolls, such as stretch in
hundreds of millions from northern Korea to southern Annam, were bare
and smooth now, all showing some sign of recent care. Here in the
waste-lands the graves looked like sand-mounds left by playing children;
farther on came queer coffin-shaped ones of cement or baked mud, just as
if a coffin above the ground had merely been plastered over.
The Annamese live and keep shop on a wooden platform a couple of feet
above the earth floor; and generally mere boards laid on two sawhorses,
covered with a thin reed mat, serve them as beds. Rarely has a native
house more comfort than that. As all houses should be redecorated at New
Year’s, there is a great market then for new reed, grass, or fiber mats,
and whole processions of them were coming in from the country districts
on the shoulder-poles of men and wives. Some were plain, some had simple
designs, some had streaks of color running through them, and I saw many
rich with red and purple and lush-green hues that no doubt would grace
the hard couch of the wealthy. To the Annamese the mat is the symbol of
the bed, of the couple, the household; and believing as firmly as the
French that it is not well for man to sleep alone, they always sell
these mats in pairs. If a family buys only one mat at New Year’s
renewing-time, say the wiseacres, some member of it is sure to die
within the year. From the moment that two persons are gathered together
they should buy two mats, and as there is very little single blessedness
in Annam, merchants do not wish at any price to divide a pair and run
the risk of never selling the odd one. Bachelors and old maids, one
gathers, are as badly off at New Year’s time as a one-legged man in a
shoe-store—and it serves them right, any native of early-marrying Annam
would no doubt answer, were his attention called to one of those rare
and unnatural beings.
Every little while during that all-day journey from Quinhon to Tourane
gusts of rain sprang up, between stretches of blazing sunshine, and then
men, women, and children, every one of the outdoor class, slipped on
palm-leaf rain-coats that were shaped like opera-capes, or like barrels
with one stave removed so that the wearers could get into them, and
which they turned in any direction against the slant of the rain. Scores
of boys in these leaf rain-coats sat their water-buffaloes or their red
humped cattle and let it drizzle. A real shower brought out so many
rain-coats that the whole landscape—people and houses, buffaloes and
hillsides—were covered with palm-leaves.
In the slimy pond at the entrance to every village the inhabitants were
washing their rice, their clothing, their water-buffaloes, their
night-buckets, themselves, everything that is dirty, and dipping from
the same spot water for their kettles. They live with their cattle,
their sway-back pigs, their chickens, ducks, and orphaned curs; at
noon-time everybody in the villages, even the yellow mongrels, the black
pigs, the wilt-tailed fowls, slip into the cai-nha, or thatched hut, for
the siesta; and by night there is a similar congregating. Yet they are
not so filthy as the Chinese; all things are relative. It behooves a
more southern people, eager to live out its allotted span, to show less
innocence of the meaning of cleanliness than do the incredible
Celestials.
Once that day we met an elephant. He was being slowly driven along by a
nonchalant coolie dozing astride his neck, grazing as he went. Somehow
an elephant strolling down a modern highway, marked with kilometer-posts
and traveled by autobuses, daintily picking a bit of weed or a tuft of
grass here and there, and attracting no more attention than a cow or a
water-buffalo, was more impressive than one all dolled up in a
circus-parade.
When it was not clambering over a spur of the ever jostling mountain
chain to the west, this road through Annam was always the same—a dike
between two rice-fields, dusty or muddy in the country, filled with
people, pigs, and dogs in the towns and villages. Then suddenly,
frequently, inevitably, another _bac_, an ancient floating contrivance
that leaks and creaks with age, which Annamese push across some river or
inlet of the sea with poles that seem too heavy for their meager arms.
Sometimes the commander of the _bac_ is a woman, strongest of all the
crew, not only in will-power but in muscle. Once in a while we crossed a
woven-bamboo bridge that gave with a groan under our cruel weight and
regained its shape as an invalid knocked down regains his feet. But the
short rivers of narrow Annam are often so wide and so erratic that they
discourage the building of bridges. For the stream rises or falls,
according to the season, disappears, comes back in a towering rage; and
red with anger some morning it carries away not only bridges, where any
exist, but dikes, roads, villages, the very railways, anything that
dares to loiter in its imperious path. Then, too, Indo-China has
terrific typhoons, which tear down her forests, to say nothing of
destroying roads and bridges and the other puny works of the French
usurpers.
The French do their best to keep the highways of Indo-China up to their
own far-famed standard, especially this ancient route through Annam that
is still sometimes known, in memory of the days when Chinese officials
went over it in chairs, as the Mandarin Road—though now it is Route
Coloniale No. 1. A French _ingénieur de routes_ lives in every stretch
of a hundred kilometers or so; there was much road-mending all along
that two-day autobus journey. An army of _congaïes_, the supple young
women of Annam, trotting like black ants along the dikes, carried
stones, mud, and other materials in little baskets at the ends of their
shoulder-poles; at frequent intervals we dashed past long heaps of
broken stone; men and women, boys and girls, the two sexes working and
looking incredibly alike, and showing no sign that they recognized any
difference in sex, toiled to keep the road passable.
[Illustration: An Annamese girl, chaperoned by her small brother, sells
her wares in the market-place of Hué]
[Illustration: When it rains in Annam, as it does on every provocation,
a simple straw raincoat covers either sex among the masses]
[Illustration: Like the southern Chinese the Annamese are expert boatmen
because they learn their calling long before they reach the dignity of
clothing]
[Illustration: Swinging in the village squares is a favorite diversion
of the Annamese populace during the lunar New Year’s season]
The roads of Indo-China, even this principal highway of Annam, are
constructed for one vehicle at a time, as are the _bacs_ and the narrow
cement bridges across the slighter streams that were constantly breaking
through from the mountains on this journey up the eastern coast of the
China Sea. There was little reason for them to be wider, for few
automobiles take advantage of the Frenchman’s expensive road-building,
though there were then more than four thousand motor-cars in Indo-China,
and any one who has recently traveled in continental eastern Asia knows
that means a great many. We passed a private car or two during the day,
the south-bound autobus of our own line, and the rival mail-carrying
government buses, the one bound in our direction constantly racing past
us or being in turn left to swallow our dust or wallow in our mud. A few
big clumsy carts drawn by water-buffaloes brought rice to market;
further than that there were almost no other vehicles, except rickshaws.
No wonder road-filling markets and startled villagers, to say nothing of
pigs, curs, urchins, and chickens, were not prepared for us when we
roared down upon them out of the south and on like an avalanche into the
north. Nearly all the carts of Indo-China are drawn by man-power; even
massive machinery is hauled by human muscle, though there are a few
stout little horses. A hammock slung on two poles, with a woven-reed or
split-bamboo cover over it, were the only survivals of the sedan-chairs
once so numerous along the Mandarin Road. To-day you can scour all
Indo-China, from Bac-Lieu to Laokay, and never meet, at least on a main
road, a single palanquin, nowhere find a chair porter, once so numerous,
but only a thin line of autobuses and automobiles, and many rickshaws.
We met rickshaws everywhere, plying even between towns far apart in the
well inhabited sections of this Shoestring Country. Red rickshaws
rattling with the iron-tired wheels of our buggy of a generation ago,
nearly all carried two passengers, and freight or baggage enough to sink
an ox-cart. Yet the little runner, seldom as large as either passenger,
trotted mile after mile across the country, rarely falling into a walk.
Even in hard-working China two adults are hardly ever seen riding in the
same rickshaw, but in Annam it is so common as to be almost the rule. It
is of course nice and cozy, romantic and unoriental, to see a man riding
along with his wife half in his lap—granting that it always is his wife;
certainly it is some one’s wife, for nothing is so rare in Annam as old
maids. Sometimes there is a half-grown child also, for good measure,
giving the skinny puller the task of dragging three persons and all
their movable belongings along mile after mile of highway, until you
wonder whether even the dull-witted human horses themselves do not
realize that it might have been better for them if the French had never
come to build roads capable of two-wheeled vehicles.
Tourane, where the autobus ended its northward task some time before
sunset on the second day out of Nhatrang, is a “foreign concession.” One
suspects that the “protected” emperor of Annam lost little time in
conceding this much to the French when they expressed a desire for a
_pied à terre_ in Annam, with a status similar to those they hold in
Shanghai and Tientsin. As a matter of fact Tourane, the best harbor in
Annam, was given to the French, along with the islands of Poulo Condore
and Touron off the coast of Cochinchina, in return for their help to
Gia-long in consolidating the claims of the present dynasty at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Tourane bulks larger on the map
than on the spot. It suggests a real-estate boom in some aristocratic
old hamlet that died out long before the “plotting” by its optimistic
sponsors reached its justification. In area it vindicates its
conspicuousness on paper; on the spot it is even more roomy than the
average town of Annam under the French, straining itself to cover as
great a space as possible, like some of our largest American cities,
like a squatter who fears that anything he may not claim will be taken
away from him. Grass-bordered roads rather than streets, broad rural
highways among widely scattered French tropical residences in spacious
yards, each with the atmosphere of a private park, the necessary
official buildings of a French headquarters, shops and market-place
enough to supply the wants of the residents, and the Hôtel Morin, half
grocery and half _pension_, for the accommodation of transient
foreigners, just about complete the inventory. Scattered at the end of a
short wide river where it empties into an excellent blue harbor in which
ocean steamers can anchor close to the town, it is no city at all
compared even with obscure Faifo a few miles south; but as a residence
of foreigners it takes on a false importance.
By the same token it has some of the comforts of home, or at least their
tropical counterparts. The expenditure of two piastres a month brings
daily to those householders capable of appreciating such luxuries two
large bottles of sterilized water from the French government hospital.
Ice, without which the French refuse to live for a day in their
Far-Eastern empire, is brought every morning from Hué, sixty-five miles
away. I was reminded by contrast of the endless individual tasks of
boiling all water that passes the lips of any but the most foolish
foreigners in China, and that four fifths of the foreign residents there
know ice only from homeland memories, while thousands of them never
enjoy the luxury of a really cold drink from the time they leave their
transpacific steamer until they embark for home again. Wherever half a
dozen Frenchmen are gathered together in Indo-China there is an
ice-making machine, or at least some means of getting a daily supply
from some more fortunate group. The most constant cry in any French
hotel dining-room in the colony is “_Nuoc-da!_” Natives who have become
sophisticated in such matters have much sport in startling the Moï and
other wild tribes back of the sea-level strip with the “water-stone”
produced by their French masters. A piece of it passed from palm to palm
until it disappears like a few drops of perspiration produces more
astonishment among the hills than does an automobile or airplane. It is
pure magic to the naïve wearers of the loin-cloth, and by such things
have the people of the West won their prestige among them.
Until I reached Tourane I had not seen a Christian missionary in
Indo-China—that is, not a Protestant missionary; the French do not
admit that their own priests are missionaries in a land over which
their own flag waves. Glad as the traveler always is to meet his own
people in very foreign parts, I had been half conscious of a feeling
of relief at the scarcity of avowed soul-savers, compared to the
swarms of them in China itself. This paucity of workers in the
spiritual vineyard of a race in some ways more Christ-like than we is
not an indication that Protestant missions have wilfully overlooked
Indo-China but that the French do not fervently welcome them there. In
all the colony-protectorate there are only a few proselyters from the
English-speaking world, and they are confined to three or four
stations. In activity as well as in territory they are forced to be
very circumspect, and thereby hangs the sad tale they have to tell the
traveler who will listen.
They came first in 1911, a bit of pollen wafted southward from the great
mission-field of China. At first they were allowed comparative freedom,
or at least were graciously ignored. Then came the World War, and in due
time the discovery that the United States might not after all join the
Allies. Neutrals were rated little better than enemies in this far-flung
slice of the French empire. All American missionaries in the possession
were ordered to leave. The Canadians might remain, since they were
allies; but as they were merely individual workers in what was virtually
an American mission-field, they had little choice but to leave also.
When the war was long enough over for its bitternesses to have become
somewhat diluted, the missionaries were allowed to return, but only to
find their goings and doings more hampered than ever. They were almost
freely admitted to Cochinchina, because it is rated a colony, in which
the laws and customs of France apply in most matters. They were allowed
in Tourane, because it is a “foreign concession.” But the rest of
Indo-China being merely under the “protection” of France, missionary
work there is a different matter. The authorities had discovered that
the treaty of 1877 between the emperor of Annam and the Western world,
by which Christian missionaries were granted the right freely to
propagate their doctrines in the emperor’s realm, applied only to the
Catholics, “because they are the only Christians within the meaning of
the text.” Moreover the startling fact was unearthed that “the emperor
and his ministers are against the teaching of the Protestant doctrines
to their people”—as if the poor little puppet on the throne of Annam
would dare to be against anything unless his French guardians suggested
it. Similar difficulties developed against admitting missionaries to
Tonkin, Cambodia, and Laos, and to-day the saving of souls in the
Protestant fashion is not a flourishing enterprise in that part of the
peninsula east of Siam.
On the other hand the Annamese are converted to Catholicism by whole
villages, particularly after some priestly assistance in the courts, a
communal loan, or some other legitimate Catholic form of propaganda. One
great inducement is that the converts are allowed to retain their
ancestor worship, under a slightly different guise. But then, the
Protestant missionaries permit their rare converts to keep all the wives
of whom they are possessed at conversion, so long as they do not add to
them afterward. “What,” the missionaries quite properly ask, “could be
done with cast-off wives if their converted husbands found Christianity
a means of getting rid of their support?”
In Tourane there was a Protestant church—though the French deny such
false places of worship any other name than _temple_—and a school. But
those great educational and medical institutions so common in China with
its thousands of missionaries of who knows how many sects are not a
feature of the Indo-China landscape. The French have many hospitals, but
they are government- rather than priest-operated. They have found it
uphill work to encourage the Annamese to go to them, and only of very
late years have they attracted any great percentage of the population,
though clinical service is free and even in-patients pay very
little—lying-in cases, for instance, are charged about a piastre a
fortnight, just enough to pay for native food. But when the French
doctors go to call on patients outside the hospitals they ask fees of
five piastres a visit of French and Annamese alike. Naturally an
Annamese earning ten piastres a month cannot call in the doctor often,
so they fall back upon their own medicine-men. “_Mais quoi donc!_” cry
the French; “A doctor must have his pay like any one else, _n’est-ce
pas?_” True enough no doubt, though after two years of associating with
the foreign missionary doctors of China, whose fees amount almost to
nothing—unless the patients are non-missionary foreign residents—one
begins to dream of some more ideal method in matters of health than the
competition of the market-place.
I coaxed one of the few Americans engaged in saving souls in Tourane to
take a needed holiday and visit the “Marble Mountains” with me. These
farthest-south outrunners of the great rock hills that become so
numerous and so fantastically individual in form farther north, dotting
by thousands the Bay of Along and stretching far on down the West River
in the Chinese province of Kwangsi, seem wholly out of place here
protruding from the flat sandy coast-land. It is as if the gods,
carrying these absurd heaps of molten rock from their equatorial
melting-place to their allotted destination, had dropped a few of them
unnoticed on the way. Across the river, by native boat, we walked for
hours along the beach toward them, close as they look to the town. The
sea, stretching away to the eastward like a sheet of molten steel,
rolled great breakers in at our feet. Had they swept over us we should
probably have been less drenched than we were with perspiration from
that endless plodding through the sand.
The incandescent sun stood sheer overhead by the time we reached that
misplaced cluster of savage heaps of rock. Jagged mountain peaks jutting
out of the sand like islands from the sea, the “Marble Mountains” of
Tourane, taking their name from the marble-like rock of which they are
formed, rise in thousands of pinnacles, nearly all of them sharp as
needles, the peaks themselves pointed as the head of a Roman spear.
Nature evidently did not intend man to explore these isolated crags
standing out so sharply against the white sand all about them. For not
only are the myriad rocks themselves needle-pointed, but all the
vegetation that steals its scanty nourishment among them bristles with
thorns. No four-footed animal has ever been known to venture up them;
and only hardy climbers of the two-legged species, with the price of a
new pair of shoes available, are wise to attempt the ascent, slight as
is the elevation. From the summit of the highest, once the climber can
find standing-space for both feet, spreads a brilliant scene of beach
and sea, of rice-green plain backed by the endless Annamese range not
far inland, and, dim in the offing, the hogback island which the
government rents to a syndicate of Cantonese who gather there the
ingredients of bird’s-nest soup.
We fell upon our wilted lunch at a temple cut into the lower slope of
one of the “mountains,” a temple quite like those of China, even to the
languid attitude of the priests. Then we explored grotto after grotto,
deliciously cool after our infernal climb. In the largest of them the
Annamese have set up other Chinese-style temples, for the attracting of
pilgrims. Half-naked families peered forth from little huts nearly
buried in the sand as we skirted the bristling waterless heaps on our
way to the river, down which native boatmen sculled us back to the town.
The mission stands so convenient to the railway station in the outskirts
of the widely scattered concession as to suggest that the workers in
this difficult bit of the Lord’s vineyard wish to be prepared at any
moment to abandon their task at the behest of their powerful rivals. The
train that picks up there the broken end of what in a few years will be
a continuous railroad the whole length of Indo-China strains its way for
more than two hours toward Hué, the Annamese capital. First there is a
desert of brush and sand from mountains to the sea, its blue bays dotted
by so many sails that one’s sympathy is rather with the hunted fish than
with the crowded people who must have them or starve. Huge fish-nets on
poles, pulled from the shore, leave the denizens of the deep little
chance for safety except by taking to the far high seas. Then for twenty
miles the railway crawls along the face of a cliff, not a hundred feet
above chaotic heaps of rocks boiling in the surf of a vast stretch of
blue ocean, burrowing its way through many tunnels. At length both rocks
and sea disappear, some densely jungled hillsides succumb in time to a
plain, now planted with rice, now covered with low brush, single
weather-faded thatched huts or clusters of them scattered across it, and
with the sudden tropical twilight passengers blend into the chaos of
rickshaw-men of the capital of Annam.
CHAPTER VII
MAROONED IN HUÉ
The river at Hué runs parallel to the sea, some twenty miles inland, and
there is a screen of mountains to the south, the direction from which
evil spirits come in Annam—just as the north, the reservoir of bitter
cold and conquering Tartar tribes, is the quarter from which they are to
be guarded against at Peking. There are also two islands near-by, known
respectively as the White Tiger and the Blue Dragon. Hence it is not
strange that the royal geomancers of several generations ago considered
this the proper place to establish a new capital.
It is a very roomy town, like all those of any size and importance in
Annam, probably not so much from Annamese custom as from French
influence. On the foreign side of the river, where the traveler is set
down, are all those things properly pertaining to the French superlords.
From the railway station a wide grass-sided boulevard along the
river-bank passes in its mile or more of existence a rather imposing
school, hospital, barracks, and government buildings, many comfortable
French residences, the _cercle_ where the ruling race gathers of an
otherwise empty evening over its coffee and wine, its dominoes and
cards, and brings the traveler at length to another grocery-hotel named
for the tropically energetic Morin brothers. Just beyond, only across
the street from the French windows of the room assigned me, stands the
palatial residence and offices of the _résident supérieur_, real ruler
of Annam.
The whole machinery of the actual government of the “protected”
kingdom is confined to this side of the river, the south side,
direction of evil influences. Probably the river was kept between the
real and the puppet rulers purposely; the French have as good reason
as the emperor of Annam to keep up the fiction of his sacredness and
unapproachability. Yet space is still so plentiful in this French
section of Hué that almost any official—and there are virtually no
other European residents—has his own garden and greensward among
trees, large enough to be called, with a little stretching of the
southern Gallic imagination, a private park. In any habitable
direction these shade away into thatched huts that may be tailor-shops
and the like as well as native residences. Up a creek tributary of the
river bulks forth on its knoll the tropical-weather-worn old
cathedral, under a nap of fine vegetation, a contrast to the low
insignificant buildings of the missionaries of Tourane. Not the least
conspicuous thing on the French side of the river is the Monument aux
Morts, in Annamese style, the names of the French heroes who went home
from Annam to die in the World War facing the boulevard, where the
passer-by can scarcely overlook them, those of the Annamese who made
the great sacrifice for the “mother-land” around on the side facing
the river. Of course he who takes the trouble to go behind the
monument can read those also; possibly the emperor can even make them
out with a powerful field-glass from the flagpole of his citadel, if
he ever climbs so high; or it may be that the placid river is more in
keeping with their memory than the road with its broken stream of
Oriental and Western traffic.
I found the weather in Hué quite different from that of Saïgon. When
rain falls in Cochinchina it is dry in Annam, and vice versa, thanks to
a high range between them. Ever since I had left Canton the weather had
been bright and equatorial in temperature, but as I came northward the
humidity had steadily increased in density, and now the rainy season
this so plainly augured overtook me in earnest. For the first time since
leaving Hong Kong I was comfortably cool, though white was still my
favorite garb. It did not seem to be so with the French of Hué, however,
perhaps because of some connection between that color and the sacredness
of the emperor. There was an attention to dress worthy of descendants of
Beau Brummel and his spouse, if he had one; but white suits for men were
rather looked down upon, and of course to so much as step out of a
bedroom without a coat on was almost as incredible a breach of
civilization as in Brazil itself. A thick Scotch mist reigned all my
first, and what I had planned to be my only, day in the capital; and
that evening at the very height of the motion-picture tale on the wall
of the outdoor covered sitting-space in the grocery-hotel courtyard
tropical rains began to fall in earnest. Hardly did it let up again as
long as I remained in Hué—except for the all-important day that
justified my stay, during which the weather behaved _à merveille_. It
poured without cessation, confining me to my hotel room, making even a
dash across the courtyard to the other parts of the establishment a
shower-bath with mud foundation, forcing me to put off my visit to the
real Hué across the river, the “citadel” with its palaces, bringing
forth again the cloth suit for which I had so roundly berated myself at
Saïgon, and leaving me none too warm at that. Everything took quickly to
mildewing, and in less than forty-eight hours pocketbooks and the extra
shoes of those who owned them were covered with a delicate vegetation.
Soon stories began to come in of dikes giving way, of thousands of
coolies being rushed to save this or that town, built several meters
below the river, so that a broken embankment would mean disaster.
Nowhere could the rainy season have overtaken me with less cause for
resentment, however, for I had to tarry several days in Hué rain or
shine. I did not know this when I arrived, but found it out next
morning, when I went to present to the “résuper” the letter of
introduction I had won from some other official along the line. The real
ruler of Annam, less telegraphically known as the _résident supérieur_,
received me in his palatial dwelling and bureau a few steps beyond the
grocery-hotel with a perfect Gallic mixture of courtesy and that
something which leaves one no chance to presume upon one’s fancied
importance. Yet the writer of that letter must have been either an
important personage or the “résuper’s” boon companion in school-boy
days, for it certainly could not have been my own virtues that won me
the precious privilege the superior resident of Annam offered.
In the course of our official platitudes he mentioned that the ceremony
of the lunar New Year greeting of his loyal subjects to the emperor of
Annam across the river would take place the following Tuesday morning.
It was then Friday, and by Tuesday I had hoped to be leaving Hanoï for
the Chinese border. But the most important personage of Annam went on to
mention that, while only French officials were ordinarily admitted—which
I found later not to be sternly true—he thereby invited me to remain for
this crowning feature of the Annamese _Têt_. This very special favor, I
gathered from his meticulous deportment, was not so much in my own honor
as to that of the then still gratefully remembered country to which I
belong.
Expert as I was in my academic days at ministering to the gastronomic
demands of my fellow-students, I have never been a good waiter. For some
inexplicable reason the loss of time brings me more bitterness than the
loss of money, though of the first I have habitually far more to spare
than of the second. Certainly I did not care to squander wantonly in Hué
the better part of a week that I had planned to spend in hurrying back
to my family in Canton, with whom communication had been rare and
precarious. Yet I felt it a duty to my curiosity, if not to my country,
to attend one royal levee before the time comes to settle down to a
respectable life of immobility. There are few such ceremonies left in
the world, and still fewer of them are open to Europeans—as the East
insists on considering Americans. I murmured a polite acceptance.
But life is an incessant series of ups and downs in this vale of tears.
The next words of the ruler of Annam turned my satisfaction into
disappointment. When I—or it may have been the “résuper” himself—brought
up the obviously important question of court costume, he remarked, “Of
course you have with you your frock-coat and _chapeau de forme_?”—in
other words the ceremonial head-gear of politicians and other successful
exploiters of the general public. Or if not, it seemed, I could get
along with _le smoking_—which as a Frenchman he of course pronounced
“smocking.” Now _le smoking_ ordinarily means our more modest form of
dinner garb, disrespectfully known as “soup and fish,” and not only that
part of my wardrobe, but the even more absurd long-tailed livery of
night life, I had left at Canton. The motive for this dreadful oversight
had seemed sufficient in the days when it occurred. I did not care to
have the Chinese bandits I was almost sure to meet on my way home have
just cause for wreaking Bolshevik vengeance upon me by catching me in
possession of such unsightly things, or give them the false impression
that I was worth holding for ransom, or, more likely still, endure the
painful experience of seeing one of them bedeck himself in that unseemly
garb. I could of course not weep openly in so official a predicament,
but it looked indeed as if for my carelessness in packing, my failure to
remember the oft-learned lesson that the equatorial regions of the earth
by no means forgo the perspiring amenities of social intercourse, I was
to miss something which very few of my countrymen have seen. True, the
“résuper” murmured something to the effect that some way would be found
to _me tirer d’affaire_, but I took this to be merely a kind way of
softening my unavoidable disappointment, and having received official
permission to visit the palaces across the river under less interesting
circumstances I took my leave.
I had barely broken my first French roll and tasted my wine at the
eleven o’clock _déjeuner_ when one of the black-turbaned “boys” in snowy
white laid before me the card of the “Chef de Sûreté d’Annam.”
Misfortunes certainly come in clusters. The chief of the security of
Annam, police-head extraordinary of the land, suggested trouble, with
emphasis on such persons as spies and unwanted visitors; hence it was
with something akin to trepidation that I hurried out to the grocery
division of the hotel and presented myself before him. Perhaps I had
somewhere neglected to have something done again to my passport, and was
to be ordered out of the country, which would not greatly matter, now
that I had lost the privilege of hobnobbing with the emperor, except
that they might send me back the way I had come, or perhaps from Tourane
as the most convenient port, and spoil my plan of going all the way from
Angkor to Canton by land.
I found the bearer of the dreaded title an upstanding, soldierly, yet
genial fellow, in the act of sampling a newly opened keg of olives. The
_résident supérieur_, he remarked, after the customary words of
greeting, had sent him to see me. So I was in for it, even as I had
feared! But to my astonishment and growing relief the chief of Annam’s
security showed no signs of official wrath. Conversation ran along in a
perfectly neutral manner until my fellow-guests in the dining-room must
have been nearing the sad French substitutes for apple-pie. Then at
length, in a very tactful way—which was fortunate, since I am nothing if
not sensitive—the guardian of the security of Annam introduced the
apparently irrelevant and immaterial theme that he and I were of about
the same build; to which, so long as he did not also charge me with
rivaling him in manly beauty, I acquiesced. In short, he interrupted
himself in the midst of some genial story based on the natural spiritual
affinity between republican France and my own Republican land to say
that he had come at the suggestion of his superior to offer me clothing
for the coming ceremony. He would be glad to assemble the requisite
outfit from his own wardrobe; he had already done as much, some years
before, for another _journaliste_ from my country—what a barbarian and
unprovided nation he must have thought us!
[Illustration: Overlooking, from his flagpole, the palaces of the
emperor of Annam]
[Illustration: China itself cannot outdo the old bronze urns before the
main palace of the Annamese emperor]
[Illustration: The throne-room of the emperor of Annam, on the afternoon
before the New Year’s ceremony]
We began forthwith to take stock. For a moment it seemed that I would
after all need only to wear his trousers, for the conference disclosed
that in Annam _le smoking_ means black pantaloons topped by a white
tuxedo coat giving up its duties abruptly at the waist, what is quite
fittingly known in the dancing circles of the Far East as a “monkey
jacket.” Nay, even a full-length white coat would do, and that I had. I
was even the possessor of black trousers—if ever the baggage I had
checked at Saïgon should catch up with me. But further discussion
brought to light the annoying fact that those straying trousers had a
faint stripe in them, and that would never do; it would be almost
equivalent to _lèse-majesté_. Then that white coat—did it have one
button or two? Two, as far as I recalled. “Sapristi!” The chief of the
security of Annam threw up his arms in a gesture of dismay. A coat with
two buttons would be worse than no coat at all in Annamese court
circles, I gathered from his excited demeanor. Also I should have to
have a vest,—beg pardon, purists of the editorial function, I mean a
w’s’c’t—and that curse in any climate, let alone in the tropics, a stiff
collar. All these things the chief expressed his delight to be able to
furnish, and the day seemed to have been saved—until he glanced down at
my feet. They were incased in brown shoes. Moreover, though I am not
perpetually conscious of that fact, they must be large feet, compared at
least with those even of athletic Frenchmen of my own build, for the
chief not only disclaimed any ability to provide me with shoes of such a
size from his own wardrobe, but doubted the possibility of finding a
pair as large as that in all Hué. Plainly I have overlooked the
opportunity of becoming a great popular comedian and riding in my own
limousine. But surely Buddha would provide, in so small, or even large,
a matter as that, and I planned to settle down in Hué for five days
rather than wend my way homeward bitter with disappointment.
Once I had reconciled myself to losing several days, Hué was by no means
the worst place on earth in which to pass the time. My hotel room was
more home-like than those for which we pay several times as much in our
own beloved land; food, wine, and ice were in keeping with French
standards, and if the evening movies in the hotel courtyard were not
worth going to the Orient to see, the types of French colonials and the
natives they attracted were, not to mention the numerous crosses between
those two races. Then too the rain did now and then slacken, though so
weary did the senses become of hearing it pour on the graveled road
outside that it never seemed to do so. One briefly clear evening I took
a walk in Hué itself, the walled but very much Frenchified imperial
residence across the river from the newer foreign section. The river is
so wide that seven big incongruous steel arches are needed to lift the
modern bridge over it, and the town beyond proved to be extensive,
though from the farther bank it looked merely like a façade of shops
backed by forest. A whole village of queer boats, most of which spend
their lives in bringing produce to the big half-covered market-place on
the northern bank, were anchored about that end of the bridge. At first
there seemed to be no great population. But gradually this impression
gave way, as the town, orderly with wide right-angled streets, stretched
leisurely on and on out various directions, long after one expected it
to succumb to jungle or fields, until I began to wonder if there could
be as much city scattered among the trees here as in the forest of
Angkor-Thom.
Whatever the French have left of shops and native handicrafts is outside
the wall and moat of the imperial residence. Once, they say, these were
labyrinths of narrow dirty streets; now they are neither labyrinthine
nor unclean, and much of the picturesqueness one expects is lacking. In
the wide-open shops that lined the principal extramural streets one saw
Madrasis in little red fezzes, most of them with black-toothed Annamese
wives, and children with the luminous eyes of the Hindu. But there
seemed to be few Chinese merchants. The Annamese themselves evidently
kept shop here more than is normal, perhaps because the capital with its
swarms of loafing functionaries had impressed them with the ease of this
sedentary occupation. Between the river and the mountains that shield
the capital from evil southern influences there are many waterways, and
sampans and humped bridges were frequent. But on the whole the charm of
the Orient had been cleaned and modernized away.
Much of the old atmosphere remained, however, within the _citadelle_
which the native city partly surrounded. In Annam towns of any
importance are encircled by ramparts and are known as citadels. Once,
and in some cases still, the rather roomy residences of native
officials, the citadels of Annam have little in common with the walled
cities of China, teeming with jostling humanity. The crenelated walls of
Hué inclose a space a mile or more square, but it is a newer, lower,
much less imposing wall than the ancient ones surrounding Peking and
most Chinese cities. A moat stagnant with water-lilies and other
broad-leafed vegetation protects the wall, and short stone bridges older
in appearance than they probably are in years give entrance to it in
three or four places through Chinese-style gates. Inside is an
astonishing spaciousness, trees and greensward and shaded boulevard-wide
streets, a veritable park scattered with dwellings, as if nothing were
so plentiful as space. With overcrowded China always in mind, I was
constantly astonished at the roominess of Annamese cities. Within the
citadel, Hué is a city of gardens, less a capital than a great inhabited
park, more an Oriental Versailles than a Paris, not so much a center of
hard official duties as a perpetual summer residence of Eastern
potentates. As those on this side of the river really have very little
to do with governing, the atmosphere is in keeping with the facts, and
the ostensible rulers of Annam can spend their time growing flowers and
parading their singing-birds.
Never, surely, was another walled city so bucolic as this residence of
the sacred emperor of Annam. Quiet and calm reigned everywhere along its
wide roadway under trees that joined together overhead into an almost
concealing forest. Lotus ponds, as covered as the moat with flowers and
big green leaves, lay here and there through the half-forest; many of
the houses—most of them, I was to learn later, the homes of
mandarins—were set in roomy gardens surrounded by low walls with
imposing gateways. With its broad river and its canals, bordered with
water-palms, its flower-decked bungalows, its wide silent roadways, the
chimeric roofs of its palaces, the splendid circle of its forest, its
quiet and cleanliness, Hué was indeed a great contrast to China. One day
when for a little while the weather was clear—no, not that, for the
humidity was thick as cream, but at least the sun was doing its best to
shine through it—I evaded the royal guards and mounted the iron ladder
of the Eiffel Tower of a flagpole, which stands at the front of the
citadel. From it the royal palaces stretched away among the trees one
after another in a straight line, impressive by their colors, perhaps by
their architecture, but never by their height, as if their builders
scorned to take advantage of that cheapest means of exciting admiration.
From this elevation little else than the palaces and the tree-tops are
visible, but down beneath the foliage the stroller will find many humble
huts made of poles and thatch, not only within the citadel but only a
short walk from the palaces of the sacred Annamese emperor. Yet about
some of these simple, but probably on the whole as comfortable, homes of
the ordinary mass of his loyal subjects, there were some fine clipped
hedges, as if these faded-thatch hovels were merely a means of
disguising wealth still naturally modest from centuries of envious
mandarins. Rich and poor have the same little squared garden, the same
dwarf trees growing in pots of baked earth, the same water-jars sweating
in the sun.
He who is privileged to visit the home of a mandarin enters the
principal room directly from the garden, without steps, and finds it
furnished with a big bed of naked wood, with no other bed-furnishings
than a porcelain pillow and a reed mat. Besides that there is a round
table with stools, and the altar of the ancestors. This now sometimes
bears a photograph of the deceased in the place of the ancient
tablet—the one evidence of progress, and an unpleasant one, for it is
far more agreeable to picture a bygone member of the human race from no
other data than his posthumous name in Chinese characters on an upright
stick than to behold him photographically in all the moles and wrinkles
he left behind him in the grave.
All this I did not of course see in one day; the rain was too incessant
for that. Long as I remained I could not have seen it all if I had not
defied the rain, helped thereto by the attitude of the natives toward
it. A rainy day does not keep the Annamese indoors; like the inhabitants
of most southern countries where deluges fall for days at a time, they
make the most of it. I had only to glance out my hotel window to see
scores of both sexes, bare to the knees, even to the loins, all ages
wearing their mushroom hats and the palm-leaf rain-coats that turn so
easily this way or that, according to the slant of the storm. On they
went, carrying their shoulder-pole loads or doing whatever else the
pursuit of their rice required of them, quite as if the sun were
shining. It is so hot when it does that in some ways a rainy day is a
more pleasant time to work; and what is mud when you can wash one foot
with the other at any water-hole? Thus Hué on those wet days was a vista
of broad graveled streets, lined by trees and grass and spaciousness,
and dotted with human figures dressed only in palm-leaves, so far as the
eye could see, like some strange Eden that defied any but the most
practised eye to tell the sexes apart.
As there seemed to be no prospect of the rain halting, I dived into a
rickshaw one afternoon and went to visit the palaces across the river.
It was as well that I had brought along my special permit from the
“résuper,” for soldiers in the now familiar Annamese uniform of khaki
rompers and blouse below a mushroom, brass-topped hat and above bare
feet—here however with imperial yellow rather than the ordinary red
wrap-leggings—expect a permit from Europeans, though coolies of both
sexes were going freely in and out. A fine pretense this that the French
are merely protectors; and incidentally it keeps other Western nations
from finding out too much of what goes on in the privacy of the
emperor’s own department of the governing of Annam. There is nothing
very exciting about his palaces. So low that they are not seen at any
distance, they are few and unimposing compared to the Forbidden City of
Peking. Yet small as they are beside their Chinese counterparts, like
the same thing not too exactly done in miniature, they are in general
artistic and in some ways perhaps superior to their more pretentious
Chinese models. One’s impression of them and of the dynasty they
represent improved with seeing.
Workmen on a bamboo scaffolding were repainting the exterior of the main
audience-chamber, and Saturday afternoon being pay-day, even as in other
lands, a group of mandarins with ladylike hands, on some of which
cat-claw finger-nails still remained, sat at a table keeping books in
French style and paying out French paper piastres to the men and women
as they filed past. Building after building, Chinese wood-and-paper
buildings under top-heavy tile roofs, all of imperial yellow, stretched
lengthwise one behind another, like squads of soldiers with a passageway
through the middle of them, as do those of a Chinese yamen, back to the
main and finally the more private edifices. All these were inclosed
within a walled compound. Under the incessant rain the polished tiles of
the courtyards between them resembled great lakes of uncertain depth, in
which all the surroundings were mirrored as in a broad horizontal
pier-glass. The old bronze lanterns before the palace verandas, exactly
full of rain-water, were as beautiful, as graceful, as any I had seen in
China; and being carefully preserved in this still imperial land, they
showed their fine points to better advantage. They are hardly the
favorite lanterns of his Majesty, however, who is more French than
Chinese in his tastes and thirsts.
The gaudy audience-chamber was on the whole more conspicuous than
lovely. The real throne-room, on the other hand, was a gorgeous place
well worth seeing, in spite of a goodly supply of those chandeliers
which seem to be Europe’s chief contribution to the splendor of Oriental
kings. From a vast expanse of varicolored tiles gleaming as if they were
made of glass, rose a forest of red pillars with imperial yellow
five-clawed dragons climbing them. Decorations of every conceivable
Chinese form and color, but with red in the ascendancy, added to the
rich yet not chaotic ensemble. There were many fine vases, quite
evidently Chinese, though the “guide” who saw to it that I chipped off
no souvenirs and slipped nothing into my pockets called some of them
French and contended that many of the others were made by the Annamese
themselves, in earlier days, before those of his countrymen capable of
such things had all died off. But they looked to me so much like
Kingtehchen ware, the best of Kingtehchen at that, that for once I might
have been tempted into a wager if one had been offered.
Naturally there was the throne, and all the other things that go with
emperors’ throne-rooms, but all those I was to see better during the
ceremony that was keeping me in Hué. Suffice it to say that the
throne-room of Annam was the most gorgeous place I had seen in many a
moon, on the whole artistically pleasing, and—that the rank and file of
Americans may understand just what I am trying to say—worth several
million piastres, or about half as many dollars.
Beyond came more long tile-covered rooms, shed-like in shape, in which
were many spirit-tablets and tables covered with porcelain fruits. There
were even some small baskets of real fruit, perhaps because it was now
New Year time, when the spirits of the departed cannot be deceived with
pretended food, and when their descendants are surest to remember them.
All these things and many more stood in imposing array before the six
shrines of the present dynasty. I fear, however, that with my
incorrigibly plebeian mind and tastes I found most interesting of all
the flocks of ordinary coolies with dusters and brooms, who roamed about
all the buildings among these king’s playthings and slept on mat-covered
boards beside them.
The story of the emperors of Annam, since Gia-long asked through the
bishop of Adran for the assistance of the French against his dynastic
rivals at the end of the eighteenth century, is not an entirely happy
one. Some of them have even lost their jobs entirely for not behaving
themselves, or for disobeying the French. There was Thanh-thai, for
instance, deposed in 1907. He had been cutting up—among other things one
of his concubines, merely to try his hand at surgery. So the French, not
realizing perhaps that such things happen even in Philadelphia, nay, in
Paris itself, sent him into exile and called in a doctor to help pick
out one of his many sons to take his place. The eldest they passed over
as a plain idiot, and chose a boy in prison, who howled because he
thought he was being led forth to have his head lopped off. By the time
they had washed and dressed him in the imperial robes, however, and
seated him on the throne with the jade scepter in his childish hand, he
had reverted to type and was an emperor both in appearance and demeanor,
scorning already the common people among his kowtowing subjects. But in
1916, coincident with a certain busyness of the French at home, an
independence movement broke out under this youthful king, which the
French naturally insist was engineered by the Germans. The scheme was to
have servants poison all the foreigners in the colony some evening, but
some one “squealed.” So Jy-su, born in 1902, was also exiled to Réunion,
a French island off the east coast of Africa, which he still graces with
his surgical father and one favorite wife. There they are both very
happy, according to the French colonials, who regard Réunion as a second
Garden of Eden, and where the ex-Sons of Heaven “have all the women they
want”—a French as well as a Mohammedan notion of paradise.
All this gave the then reigning emperor, Khai-dinh, his chance. This
French-ruled king of Annam, a rather distant relative of the man and boy
he succeeded, came to the throne in 1916, when he was nearly
thirty-five. He must have been troubled with something akin to vertigo
by his accession, for until then, though he had been a kind of prince,
he had enjoyed by no means the income or the importance of a railway
station-master. If I have inadvertently called him king I apologize; his
official title is Koang-de, Son of Heaven, written with the same
characters as those for the Chinese Hoang-ti, son of a similar celestial
realm. In fact the emperors of Annam claim descent from an imperial
family of China, which had descendants to spare. Khai-dinh visited
France in state in 1922, influenced perhaps by an American president,
for that was the first case of an emperor of Annam leaving Annamese
soil. It was even more important for him to go, however, for in the
Indo-Chinese pagoda on the outskirts of the Bois de Vincennes he
performed a ceremony to release from the necessity of wandering
perpetually through eternity the shades of thousands of Annamese who had
fallen in the World War, unsaved either because they had not been able
to comply with the final rites of their religion or because their bodies
had not been recovered. He also placed in a French school his son and
heir—the only one, I believe, for all the wives Khai-dinh maintained.
Khai-dinh was nearing forty when I graced Hué with my impatient
presence, and was already anemic with tuberculosis. The other day he
died, and twelve-year-old Vinh-thuy, the crown prince, ascended the
throne under the name of Bao-dai (Greatness Sustained). But he returned
at once to France to continue his studies, and Frenchmen will tell you
that Annam is now governed by a Conseil de Régence, presided over by the
mandarin Ton-that-tan. For in theory the emperor governs. In
Cochinchina, which is admittedly a colony, a French lieutenant governor
is the supreme functionary, but in the four protectorates the native
sovereigns are still nominally the heads of the governments. Annam and
Tonkin are under the Annamese emperor; Cambodia and a part of Laos still
have kings. The native laws apply, unless a foreigner is involved, when
the Code Napoléon is used. The protectorates maintain almost intact the
laws and administrative machinery of the days when they were independent
of French authority. The native sovereign appoints all officials, but
the French _résident supérieur_ can reject any candidate; the native
rulers dare not ignore his smallest suggestion, and the lesser
_résidents_ keep a sharp eye on native functionaries in the provinces.
New laws may be of either French or native initiative, but both sides
must agree, which of course means that the French have the final word.
All royal ordinances are drawn up, not only the French but the native
texts, in the _Résidences Supérieures_. In Annam the old Chinese system
of choosing officials and mandarins from among those who have shown the
greatest proficiency in scholarship still more or less prevails, rather
than the Irish system of our Western world.
One wonders what the thoughts of Bao-dai will be when he comes back
really to take his father’s place. Educated in French schools, Parisian
during all his formative years, he will suddenly be plunged into this
old-world atmosphere, to the customs, the ideas, the ideals, even the
spirit of which he will surely have become a stranger. Will he regret
the ardent life of the Occident he will have left behind, or will the
old soul of the palace of his ancestors penetrate and possess him, and
insensibly make him an Oriental potentate?
I softened my enforced stay in Hué by also three times visiting the
imperial burial-places some ten miles from the citadel, on the French
side of the river. The low rolling hillocks close about the Annamese
capital are covered with graves of the rank and file by the many
thousands. Nearly all these mere mounds of earth were cleared and
rounded off now for the New Year, the few still covered with grass and
weeds suggesting very unfilial descendants or, more likely still, a line
died out. As many Annamese as possible have themselves buried near the
tombs of their sacred emperors, as the Hindu who can manage it has his
body burned on the bank of the Ganges at Benares. The French are
gradually restricting the grave-lands, but they must move slowly in a
matter so important to an ancestor-worshiping race.
All important Annamese make preparation during their lifetime for their
burial, some building their own tombs, where they often come to sit in
meditation. While he is still on the throne each emperor has a
geomancer, or a consultation of geomancers no doubt, choose the site for
his last resting-place, always in the shelter of a natural screen, a
butte or hillock that will protect the dead from the evil spirits that
are forever flying about through the air. In such a garden several
buildings are constructed, their number and arrangement fixed by ancient
custom, superstition, and rites. There is an inclosure for the material
remains, a pavilion for the memory, a temple for the soul; our miserable
way of putting all these together, so that we cannot commune with the
memory of the deceased without seeming to smell his bones, is not the
Annamese way. Thus things were conceived by the sages who erected beyond
the gates of Peking the mausoleums of the Ming, and the Annamese
sovereigns have since changed nothing of what they got from their
Chinese masters.
The royal tomb is the last residence of the sovereign, and in some ways
the most sumptuous, as befits a palace of eternal repose. He may come
back in spirit at any moment; therefore his loyal people are always
prepared to receive him. Here is his great wooden bed, with its mat and
cushions and porcelain pillow, not only for himself but for his favorite
wife. Here is the tea, the rice, the _nhoc-nam_, or salty sauce in which
the Annamese dip their food on the way to the mouth, cups of _chumchum_,
or rice whisky, the arec-nuts, betel-leaves, and the little pot of lime
that goes with them for his favorite minor vice, even cigarettes,
everything he will need when he arrives. All these provisions are
renewed every morning of the year, generation after generation, so that
he will find nothing stale on the day when he finally comes. He will
find again, arranged under glass, his royal playthings, the trinkets and
gew-gaws, the jade shrubs, the precious crystals, the coffers inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, the weapons he loved, even those great Sèvres
vases which the ambassadors of a more respectful France sent him as New
Year’s presents; more things perhaps than the living emperor has now in
his living palace. Perhaps the worst punishment of Thanh-thai and his
son, deposed in 1907 and 1916, respectively, is that they cannot have
their tombs here among those of their ancestors—unless the French relent
after they are dead, which for politic reasons of influence on imperial
conduct in the future they probably will not do. That Khai-dinh
succeeded in dying on the job was probably the most successful
accomplishment of his life.
Nothing in Indo-China has the charm of these old royal tombs; in them
lives intact the melancholy beauty of old Annam. One can walk or
rickshaw all afternoon about them, and never tire of seeing them.
Perhaps the tomb of Tu-duc is the most striking; another can be reached
only by boat. That of Gia-long, epic sovereign of Annam, founder of this
dynasty and of Annam’s present subordination to the French, is not the
most elaborate. He was so very busy getting back his kingdom that
perhaps he did not have time to prepare properly his last place of
repose, for with the aid of the French he chased out his usurpers and
grouped under the rule of his jade scepter all the land of Annam, being
the first native son to govern as master from the frontiers of China to
the banks of the Mekong. Even the tomb of Tu-duc is unimposing compared
to those of the Ming emperors of China. But they all have a setting in
solitude among unexploited forests, and are kept in a state of
cleanliness and repair rare in the great land to the north.
Weather-blackened structures in a hot, rainy, and often humid climate,
though originally reddish, blue, green, multicolored, some overgrown
with a fine vegetation, these Annamese temples of the dead do not impose
upon the heavens like those of China. They blend themselves harmoniously
into their densely green surroundings, the fleeing lines of their low
walls barely cut out against the sky. As in the palaces of the living,
it is not in the elevation of verticals that their builders looked for
beauty, but in the prolonging of unreflected lines, in the grace of
colonnades, terraces, superimposed roofs nonchalantly stretching to the
horizon. Nothing dominates except two slender grayish pillars lost in
the verdure before each tomb, the symbolic camel’s-hair brushes of the
man of letters. In the large court of honor stone mandarins mount
perpetual guard, in a row on each side of the entranceway, their saddled
horses and their little elephants beside them, all dull and
weather-tarnished and sometimes crumbling away.
But the stone mandarins, the horses, elephants, and mythological
monsters guarding the royal tombs of Annam are only pathetic little
things compared to those of China. Once I stood a living caretaker in
the place of a missing stone one, and only by looking closely at the
picture can one distinguish him from those of stone or plaster, whereas
in China my head hardly reached to the knees of many an imperial
guardian, and the horses, elephants, and camels of the Ming tombs are
fully life-size. Nor are the materials so rich in these tombs. The
dragons that unroll their coils on the roofs of glazed sun-polished
tiles show signs of crumbling away; the bricks tend to disintegrate into
the earth from which they came. Some of the most effective of these
royal Annamese tombs are covered with pictures of scenes and people made
entirely of broken crockery, pieces of porcelain cups, plates, bowls of
Chinese design, and of many colors set in cement, much as the Annamese
inlay their furniture with mother-of-pearl. Even fragments of broken
bottles—nothing is so plentiful as bottles in French-ruled
Indo-China—have been used in this way. These monuments recall the rags
torn up and sewed together into the saffron robe of the Buddhist priest,
because poverty is blessed. Yet even in this decoration the
resting-places of the royal Annamese dead are beautiful.
In the woods, as we were driving homeward from the tombs—my first visit
having been by automobile—we met a boy carrying on his head bananas and
some other fruit, his grandfather kneeling beside him at the edge of the
road and burning incense in a bush. The chief of Annam’s security
stopped his car. He was, I may have neglected to mention, in some ways
an unusual Frenchman. Big and handsome, a soldier at Peking in the Boxer
days, he spoke excellent Annamese and still knew some Chinese, and his
interest in the natives was more than official and perfunctory—so much
so in fact that one got a hint now and then that he sometimes felt the
recent loss of his bachelor privileges, for all his enthusiasm as a new
benedict. He spoke to the pair, and in the tone of an interested friend
rather than of a martinet official. The result was a naïve frankness
instead of a taciturn imitation of stupidity. It seemed that the son of
the one and father of the other had “taken the sickness” while gathering
wood, and they had come to implore the spirits of the forest to pardon
him any harm he may have done them. They had come twice before, and now
the father and son so much better that they were sure their amends had
been accepted, but they were performing the effective rites once more,
in order to be on the safe side.
Though it is getting ahead of my story, such as it is, I came out to the
tombs again on the afternoon of _Têt_ and found every one very busy
about the royal mausoleums. The soldier-like caretakers whose permanent
duties are there had freshly washed the very red coats they wear over
the usual black Annamese garments. Men in these bright red tunics, some
holding imperial yellow umbrellas over the trays covered with red cloth
borne by others, were bringing the dead kings their New Year’s food.
Mandarins, some of them evidently descendants of the emperors, came and
donned transparent deep-blue cloaks over their black gowns, much
decorated with French orders and the ivory plaques that denote the
mandarin’s estate, and kowtowed inside and outside the tombs. Some of
these ceremonies were elaborate, that at the tomb of Thieu-tri, which I
chanced upon at the right moment, including a procession and
incense-burning rites in the courtyard, with yellow and faded white
parasols very much in evidence. Old women in purple, green, and other
conspicuous head-bands and cloaks crowded the interior, where a high
mandarin was master of ceremonies. There seemed to be no great objection
to the presence of a European inside, except during the actual interior
ceremony of greeting to the royal spirits, when the mandarin opposed my
entrance in a resolute manner rare, especially toward the ruling race,
among this easy-going people. Though I was the only foreigner nearer the
tombs than the capital itself, I was no doubt perfectly safe from
physical interference even had I persisted in entering, and perfect
Oriental courtesy was shown me; but once again I sensed the probability
that the Annamese do not love the French, from whom of course few of
them distinguish the rest of us of the white race.
[Illustration: The waterfront of Hué, capital of Annam, offers a
contrast between its native craft and the French bridge]
[Illustration: Once a visitor surreptitiously snapped this glimpse of
the mandarins of Annam kowtowing before their emperor on New Year’s Day]
[Illustration: The scores of homes of mandarins within the “citadel” of
Hué were all richly decorated for the lunar New Year]
[Illustration: Inside the “citadel” and near the sumptuous palaces of
the emperor of Annam are the perhaps more comfortable homes of his
humble subjects]
CHAPTER VIII
AN IMPERIAL HAPPY NEW YEAR
I was called at six on the eventful morning, and as soon afterward as
was consistent with that meticulous personal attention befitting an
imperial audience I was whisked away to the palaces in the automobile of
my sartorial benefactor. Those who have suffered similar experiences
need not be told the feeling of interloper, of usurper, with which I
wore my borrowed plumage, though to the naked uncritical eye I must have
showed little of this, for the bemedaled stiff-necked officials deep in
the seat beside me showed no signs of finding me incongruous. All had
gone easily, except in the matter of disguising my feet. Look as I
would, not only in the merchandising part of the hotel but among all the
native shops, there was not another pair of shoes in Hué that could be
stretched over those extraordinary extremities. In my desperation I had
turned my brown ones over to the head “boy” with orders to blacken them
every half-hour during the intervening days, and nights, orders
emphasized by promises of great reward and by threats of corresponding
punishment. It had not therefore been merely the rain that confined me
to my chamber. When the crucial moment came success seemed to have
crowned my persistence. The shoes were not only black, they had a hint
of luster. If only the false color did not rub off before the show was
over! It did, as a matter of fact, but not so completely, I flatter
myself, as to call widespread attention to the deception.
The ceremony was set for eight sharp. I suppose it might have been at
Peking Manchu hours, and all over before daylight, but for the
bed-loving French. A score of Frenchmen were already herded inside the
door by which we entered the imperial courtyard, a side door, by the
way, a detail not without its significance. Another dozen or two dripped
from other automobiles not long behind us. The French officials had come
in their best uniforms and their most numerous medals; some of the men
in civilian dress wore gold medallions about their necks. All were not
equally resplendent in the requisite court dress. Visitors must be _en
tenue_, but that, it became at once evident, did not mean that one must
strive for the elegance of a Beau Brummel. Some of the costumes had all
too plainly been shaken free of their moth-balls too late to be pressed;
others had arrived in the colony when the Franco-Prussian War was still
a burning question. The group was sternly confined, however, in one
respect: only the reputedly more manly sex was present, in any form,
capacity, race, color, or condition of servitude. No woman, the sponsor
for Annam’s security himself assured me, has ever seen this imperial New
Year’s ceremony. Only persons in good standing, which in Annam does not
include females, may by any hook or crook be admitted. Once two
Frenchwomen had sneaked in by some still mysterious deception, and it
had been the painful duty of the chivalrous chief of the security of
Annam personally to drag them out of their hiding-place and chase them
outside the grounds. Surely, whispered the incorrigibly skeptical spirit
within me, there must be peep-holes known to the more enterprising of
the emperor’s wives; but on second thought I decided that their
superstitions probably accomplish what the sternest husbandly
admonitions might not.
We had been greeted one by one at the side door to the courtyard by two
mandarins in the flowery costumes of old Chinese times, topped by the
same stepping-block head-dress with absurd side-pieces to be seen on
statues at the Ming tombs of China. Inside, scores of other mandarins in
the same garb flocked together. All wore black knee-boots, ancient robes
of varying colors, silks decorated according to rank—but you can see it
all in old Chinese paintings or on the Chinese stage. Like so many
things which last longest where they have been introduced with the most
difficulty, the costumes and manners of Ming days remain officially
correct in Annam centuries after they have been abandoned in China. Not
merely do back-waters show the greatest stagnation, but the Manchus
never conquered Annam, though they now and then got tribute from it. It
was just as well that photography was forbidden; the absence of the
colors in the developed films would have made them too bitterly
disappointing. If there was any color in the spectrum missing in the
gathering, or in the building and its decorations, I do not know its
name. All the prism seemed to have been invited to the ceremony; and as
if to supply any tone that had inadvertently been omitted, and to cause
my gorge to rise with wrath after all the trouble I had taken to live up
to the sartorial rules, who should come slinking in at the last moment,
with the air of a cat returning to the comforts of an old-maid home
after a night of dissipation on the housetops, but a Frenchman—though in
his conspicuousness he looked more like a Swede or a Hollander—wearing
the loudest check suit in the Ghettos of Christendom and carrying a
camera! It is true that this last was promptly taken away from him. The
French exploit their own colonies even in photographic matters, and this
ceremony had been officially filmed some years before. Yet he not only
was admitted to the courtyard but was allowed to sneak under cover of us
respectable members of his race into the palace itself; and so help me
if he didn’t even have on tan shoes! All through the ceremony he stood
forth from our courtly throng of Westerners like a splotch of red ink on
a white suit, though he made every effort except the two obvious ones to
be inconspicuous. Political or social pull are powerful institutions,
and audacity is not confined to American reporters.
The great audience-chamber in which the New Year’s ceremony is usually
held having been covered with a network of bamboo scaffolding for more
than a year, his Majesty awaited us in the somewhat smaller but more
sumptuous throne-room. The little “résuper,” in a uniform worthy of the
admiral of the European fleet, had arrived with some of his staff last
of all, as befitted his standing; and, piloted by the receiving
mandarins, we had filed in by twos behind him and lined up on the right
side of the richly decorated chamber—on the left or heart side of the
emperor, be it noted, which is the place of honor in the Orient. Dazzled
by the forest of pillars climbed by yellow dragons, I was at the very
foot of the throne before I saw that the emperor was already there. He
stood so still, and his garb and the racial and sickly yellow of his
face blended so harmoniously into the ensemble of the imperial
decorations, that even then I was not sure for a moment that I was not
looking at a lay figure in his place. Yet he was not inconspicuously
dressed. Again I plead my incompetence in the matter of inventories, but
some of his garb could not have escaped the most unobservant eye. He
wore an imperial robe of such richness of embroidery and decorations
that even a woman, had her sex permitted her to behold it, nay, were
she, by profession, both a dressmaker and the concocter of social
columns, could not adequately have described it. Whether or not some of
the imperial wives had put in a safety-pin here and there at the last
moment I have no means of knowing, but the wearer himself could not have
adjusted it to such a nicety without expert assistance of one sex or
another. He stood in the embrace of a chair that the lineal descendant
of St. Peter himself might have envied, two golden dogs half hiding his
feet, which were incased in high boots of the Ming period and turned out
at right angles, as if he were in imminent fear of tottering. They were
so exactly such boots as those of his predecessors in a glass case
near-by that they might indeed have been borrowed from it. On his
imperial head sat an indescribably magnificent openwork crown of gold
and precious stones, beneath which, later developments disclosed, he
wore the ordinary black band-turban of the Annamese male. Many jewels
gleamed from various parts of his person; on three fingers of his left
hand he wore clusters of enormous diamonds, and as he constantly held
that hand over the other, these stones drew the eyes like a flash-light
in a darkened theater. In his clasped hands he held before his face an
ivory wand containing a mirror, just such as are to be seen in old
Chinese statues and paintings, and which has something to do with the
holder’s unworthiness to look upon the spirits of his ancestors, if I
have not bungled my theogony. His almost golden-yellow face was somewhat
chinless, his form slight, even under the imperial robes, his general
appearance so effeminate that he suggested Mei Lanfang, China’s most
famous actor, aged by a decade or so and with the slight changes between
Chinese and Annamese features, playing one of his inimitable female
rôles.
Evidently this chief ceremony of the ordinary Annamese year is one of
the rough spots in the kingly career, for everything pointed to the
suspicion that the emperor did not enjoy it. His face remained as
motionless throughout the throne-room service as if it had been made of
wax, but his body shifted nervously on his legs, as though the ancient
boots were too tight for him, or the right angle at which etiquette
required his feet to be set made standing difficult; and his little eyes
roved constantly from side to side, especially toward the Europeans,
until at times he suggested a trick poodle constantly in fear of doing
something that would bring a whipping after the performance from the
trainer who could only stand blandly by while it was going on. Though it
was not unpleasantly warm so early in the morning, he wiped his face
every few seconds with a folded snow-white handkerchief. Two men in
musical-comedy costumes stood at the front corners of the throne and
fanned him throughout the ceremony. It was not the hasty careless
fanning of mere modern mortals; they stood at the strict attention of
the old days when a head was lopped off for a grimace, and one after the
other raised his fan of feathers on a handle taller than himself and
waved it once downward at a dignified speed, continuing to alternate
with such exact time between the strokes that they must have mentally
counted the seconds.
Two princes of the blood, dressed in robes of exactly that color, and
whom I understood from a whisper from the owner of my raiment to be
brothers of the recently exiled emperor, stood each on his mat on
opposite sides of the wide-open front doors, ten yards or more from the
throne. No other Annamese were allowed inside the throne-room so
effectively graced by our broken double row of motley Europeans
festooned about the first line of pillars on his Majesty’s left. All the
nobility of Annam was gathered in the sun-drenched, flagstone-paved
courtyard outside the open doors which the emperor faced, but for the
moment all one’s attention was needed inside. Amid deep silence and
formal attitudes the _résident supérieur_ stepped nearer to the throne
and read in French a greeting in which he referred to his Majesty’s
ascent of the same in 1916, recalling that he himself had been present
on that auspicious occasion, that he was overwhelmed with pleasure and
honor at his recent return to a place so near his Majesty’s sacred
person, and in a capacity now that implied a recognition of his constant
diligence in his Majesty’s service, and so on and so on, to the depths
of French political rodomontade, with many references to the _Nation
Protectrice_ thrown in.
Then a young mandarin stepped up beside the “résuper” and read in the
querulously singsong Annamese language what was evidently a translation
of this masterpiece, written in Roman letters. Thereupon the emperor
dived down into one of his voluminous sleeves, this very first motion he
had voluntarily made since our arrival seeming to bring him a relief
similar to that of a “living statue” at the drop of the curtain, and dug
out a document written in Chinese characters on a long strip of
cardboard folded accordion fashion. This he read in a better voice than
his physique suggested, though not without a nervous break now and then
in his unmelodious native tongue. From behind a dragon-climbed pillar on
the other side of the throne appeared an old mandarin with a straggling
gray beard, looking in his New-Year costume exactly like an ancient
Chinese portrait cut out of its frame, who read, in an almost perfect
pronunciation that seemed strangely incongruous coming forth from such a
figure, a French translation of the emperor’s speech. This fourth act of
the exchange of platitudes over, the emperor bowed low, the “résuper”
bowed a trifle less low, and we Europeans moved grudgingly back, not so
far but that we could still easily hear and see the chief actor in the
ceremony, who now for the first time sat down, with an air which seemed
to say that at least that was that. Every one else, including even the
_résident supérieur_, stood throughout the entire throne-room part of
the ceremony.
Meanwhile in the courtyard outside attention had turned to activity.
Scores of mandarins in the gay and fanciful attire of Ming days began to
fall into ranks. The Annamese troops in blue, with brass-topped mushroom
hats and imperial yellow leggings, but under command of a French
officer, and carrying their long rifles with needle-sharp fixed bayonets
French fashion, high on their shoulders, backed to the edges of the
court and out through the gateways. For some time a great to-do reigned
in the courtyard, but at length restored order disclosed six rows of
mandarins lined up according to rank on as many strips of matting, each
holding before his eyes in clasped hands a somewhat less splendid
wand-with-mirror than that of the emperor. It was typical of human
society East or West that three rows of still lower rank, no doubt the
hard-working old souls on whom the real labor of government fell, were
lined up outside the courtyard, where they could neither see nor be seen
by the emperor, but where they went through the same maneuvers as those
inside. Standing within arm’s length of one another in exact rows some
two paces apart, the assembled nobles of Annam so vividly suggested a
company of soldiers or a gymnasium class about to begin its setting-up
exercises that one might easily have been struck by the absence of
dumb-bells. On the side-lines throngs of flunkies in conspicuous
garments began to make those loud discordant noises that represent music
wherever the Chinese character is written, while others, in simpler
costumes, added a weird vocal dissonance in voices of which fully half
suggested eunuchs.
The gymnasium-class aspect of the situation was not entirely accidental;
the nobility of Annam was about to take its yearly exercise. Loud noises
not unlike the “music” that incessantly assailed the ears rang out in a
series of semi-military commands, at each of which the rows of mandarins
in their flowered robes threw themselves face down, slowly, as if, what
with boots, the wands in their hands, and the insufficiency of annual
practice, they found it no easy task, and touched their noses to the
pavement. Just inside the main doors the two princes of the blood, also
facing the emperor on his throne, were doing the same exercises, their
movements evidently serving as a signal to those outside and keeping the
prostrations in unison. There were several series of these, three at a
time, amid much hullabaloo, the emperor meanwhile sitting motionless on
his uncomfortable throne, except that he now and then mopped his face,
yellow as the ensemble of throne-room decorations with the filtered
tropical sunshine upon them, with the still folded pocket-handkerchief.
Each time there was a dazzling flash of the many diamonds on his left
hand, which he always folded again over the diamondless right.
In theory “ten thousand” mandarins of Annam—_ee wan_ is a number so
easily said in any tongue that reads Chinese—come to prostrate
themselves in the great courtyard of the palace of Hué on the day of
_Têt_, but something less than that number beat their foreheads on its
flagstones that morning. _Lam lie_, the Annamese verb to prostrate one’s
self, means this stretching out at full length on one’s face and is
still descriptive in this great yearly ceremony, though at other times
the Annamese nowadays usually contents himself with bending the bust as
if he were hinged at the waist, and shaking his own hands. As they
finished, the mandarins backed a couple of steps toward the side of the
courtyard, then turned and marched to the side-lines, while others took
their places. All was done in very good unison, though not in perfect
military precision, and everyone seemed to take the matter very
seriously, as if a slip would be as dreadful as during a guard-mount in
our regular army.
Then came retired mandarins, in bright-red trousers under gowns reaching
to the knees, and _no boots_. This, a whisper told me, is the sign of
retirement; “I have taken off my boots,” means to the Annamese mandarin
what cutting off his _coleta_ does to the Spanish matador, what the
writing of his memoirs means to an American pugilist or politician. Each
and every one of these old chaps was in stocking-feet quite plainly made
in France, most, though by no means all, of the same color. They threw
themselves down the same number of times as had those who had preceded
them, some aged faces contorted as if they found the effort quite a
trial. Two ragged rows of poor old fellows of low degree at the rear had
not even been provided with mats, but had to bump their heads on the
bare flagstones.
Between the two front doors almost directly in front of the emperor,
where he could not have taken his eyes off them if he had tried, stood a
hat-rack bearing aloft all the tropical helmets and uniform capes of
those Europeans who did not carry their hats in their hands. A servant
had taken that of the “résuper” himself, but many others had refused to
run the risk of having some royal retainer make off with theirs. It
seemed as if the hat-rack might have been put in some less conspicuous
corner, but perhaps it was an intentional symbol, a constant visible
reminder to his Majesty of who made him emperor, and who could unmake
him again in twenty minutes if he bungled his rôle. I could also make
out through a door at the back of the throne-room the imperial rickshaw.
It seemed to be at least half of gold, with richly yellow cushions; and
the imperial rickshaw-man—who with a few other low-caste hangers-on
peered in now and then, after the custom at all Oriental ceremonies—was
in an incredibly ornate livery, also mainly of imperial yellow. Though
he uses an automobile outside the palace walls, the emperor needs a
rickshaw within, for it is nearly a hundred yards from the throne-room
to his semi-European living-quarters.
When the larger audience-chamber is available at the lunar New Year,
trained elephants are brought from the imperial stables to do homage on
bended knees before the Son of Heaven, but this sight was denied us. The
kowtowing of the retired mandarins ended, his Majesty Khai-dinh stepped
down from his throne, evidently no easy task in his heavy boots, for he
moved on the polished floor like an octogenarian crossing smooth ice. He
shook hands with the _résident supérieur_, then with the purple-robed
old archbishop, and behind these three we all filed out into a
semi-foreign dining-room at one side of the courtyard. There the emperor
once more sat down at the back of the room, facing doors wide open on
the yard, and again flanked by his two fanners, though these were not
working now, possibly because it was after union hours. A young mandarin
interpreter stood against the wall behind him; the superior resident of
Annam took a seat on his left, and the rest of us subsided into the rows
of chairs facing the emperor sidewise that filled the room. Khai-dinh
knew some French, but like many others in the same boat he never
ventured to speak it in public. Sometimes, before the interpreter had
passed on the “résuper’s” remarks, he gave a sign of having understood,
but he never seemed to attempt to reply in French. He now looked more
human, permitted some expression to play over his features, among which
that of relief was the most prominent, even smiled now and then. This
showed that, unlike nearly all the mandarins that now mingled with us,
his teeth were white, but that he probably chewed betel-nut. He smoked a
cigarette as if he were accustomed to devour them but was now on his
good behavior.
The band played the “Marseillaise,” after which the emperor evidently
made a brief speech, though in a voice that could hardly have been heard
by the superior resident himself. The two more manly looking princes of
the blood, both wearing glasses, seemed to speak French fluently and to
be in many respects quite up-to-date, as they went about greeting their
many friends among the Europeans. Evidently there was nothing wrong with
his Majesty’s voice when he wished to be heard, for he went on talking
to his respectful master even after the fire-crackers had been set off,
which feat was as difficult as conversing in a subway express. The
_pétards_ were tied in thick continuous bunches from top to bottom of
bamboo poles terminating in a few leaves that had been set up at the
four corners of the courtyard, and they kept up a deafening bombardment
unbrokenly for at least twenty minutes, until they suggested the
applause for a favorite candidate at a political convention. The yard
was filled with white smoke and the flagstones carpeted with bursted
crackers, and still the bombardment went on. A little earlier the
booming of artillery had come from somewhere within the citadel,
probably an imperial cannon salute, but if this still continued, as was
likely, we could not hear it, so like the firing of thousands of rifles
was the bursting of fire-crackers.
Meanwhile we had all been served iced champagne, in which we drank the
emperor’s health standing; and there were passed around plates of cakes
and sweetmeats so elaborate that no one seemed to dare to touch them,
though the Son of Heaven himself munched a bit. A fat Frenchman beside
me wanted to know in a voice almost loud enough to reach the emperor
whether there was _pas moyen avoir un cigare_, and a moment later these
and cigarettes were passed in jeweled boxes, which contained also the
ingredients of the betel-nut habit for those who preferred that to
smoking. Some of the servants who passed these things had the strained
eyes and high cheek-bones common to eunuchs, and looked on as if the fun
of life meant nothing to them, as if they were still wondering what had
happened to them in boyhood that they could not be like other men, much
as a blind man must wonder what sort of sensation is sight. Or they may
merely have been tubercular.
There was evidently some way by which the initiated could tell when the
bombardment was to cease, for the emperor arose and we all filed out
after him just in time to hear the last fire-cracker explode as we
reached the courtyard. We went on to the door of the throne-room, and
there this queer medley of East and West ended with the Son of Heaven
standing and shaking hands with each of us as we filed past him. I
murmured New Year’s greetings from the United States in his ear, but
either he did not catch my French or he had never heard of so
unimportant a place. His fingers were slighter than those of a
school-girl, and his grasp weak and without cordiality, though this may
have been due to lack of experience with our queer Western form of
greeting. We filed out between ranks of gaily dressed flunkies,
musicians, probable eunuchs, past the troops in the outer courtyard, to
our automobiles and rickshaws and sped away through palace and citadel
gates and across the big seven-arch steel bridge, soldiers at the
gateways saluting as we passed, and the populace looking after us not so
much with envious as with curious faces, as if the thought had never
occurred to them that they might also be admitted to the great imperial
ceremony. The last glimpse I had of his late Majesty Khai-dinh was of a
slight form in ornate Oriental get-up, framed in the doorway of his
throne-room and shaking hands with a fat and pompous French merchant who
wore a golden Annamese decoration about a neck on which a once stiff
collar had wilted beyond recognition.
I returned thus hastily to the grocery-hotel both because I could not
decline the seat reserved for me in the chief’s automobile and because I
wished to restore the borrowed plumage before something fatal happened
to it. Moreover, my shoes were rapidly changing from their false African
to their natural Asiatic hue. But that duty and the eleven-o’clock
_déjeuner_ over, I hastened back across the river. The last few days had
been very busy there, the market and the shops crowded, every one buying
new mats, paper and real flowers, red paper lanterns, red strips of
paper with Chinese characters written on them, and great quantities of
other New Year’s necessities. As in China the people of Annam must have
money for the _Têt_; not only must they pay their debts at the lunar New
Year, but they must have new clothing, redecorate their houses and the
tombs of their ancestors, feed well those departed souls and themselves,
and gird themselves for another Sundayless year of labor or indolence.
Now the market was closed, though more shops kept open than in China,
perhaps because many of the merchants were not real Annamese. On the
other hand theaters were working overtime; temples were crowded with
newly dressed throngs; in sampans, hovels, and houses the ancestral
altars were laden with flowers, fruits, pork, fish, fowl, and boiled
rice. The evening before they had scintillated with gilded and silver
things that gleamed under candle, kerosene, and electric lights.
Everywhere there was a great going and coming, every one making New-Year
calls. A green bamboo pole, with a few feathery leaves still at the top,
had been set up before each house and temple, a woven-bamboo ornament
far up most of them as a kind of roosting-place for the spirits of the
air. The theory is, if I understood an explanation couched in far from
perfect French, that these invisible flying wraiths will accept this
homage to them and do no harm to the inmates of any house before which
such a bamboo stands.
The rickshaw-men had little chance to celebrate; their holiday resembled
that of an Irish donkey on March 17. One of the chief New-Year sports
even of those Annamese who usually walk was for once to ride in
rickshaws, two and even three passengers in each vehicle. The women
especially were in their newest and most resplendent garb—light and dark
green, purple, rich brown, small children in every tone of red. Negro
soldiers from other French possessions, their black faces emphasized
under their white helmets, were hobnobbing with the poorer people in the
outskirts, evidently held in as much honor among them as their white
masters. A number of ordinary-looking young conscripts from France also
mingled freely with the populace, and here and there one met a negro and
a white soldier arm in arm, as one may see them side by side in the same
squad on the drill-grounds of Indo-China.
The Annamese seldom drink to excess, and they are not by nature
quarrelsome or violent, but they dearly love gambling. So serious is
this vice among them that the French now forbid games of chance except
during the week or so of the lunar New Year season. Now one saw them
gambling everywhere, men, women, and children. Women, even boys of six
or seven, had set up gambling-boards in the streets, in the doorways of
their houses, in the courtyards of those homes which had them, in the
main rooms before the family altar. It was a simple game that engrossed
most of them. A board was marked with chalk or paint into several
squares, sometimes with numbers, some with crudely drawn animals in
them. When all those who wish to take a chance have laid their money in
the squares, the proprietor of the board throws out a handful of little
disks from a bowl and counts them off four by four, the remaining number
winning four times the amount of the bets on the lucky square. Besides
this primitive form of fan-tan there were dice in a saucer with a cup
turned down over them. When all the money is laid the cup and saucer are
shaken and the result disclosed. In the public streets wagers ranged all
the way from perforated brass “cash” to paper piastres; inside the
larger houses especially much more serious stakes were the rule. Many
French colonials criticize the government for gathering revenue through
its opium monopoly and forbidding the lesser vice of gambling except
during _Têt_.
Within the citadel much the same ceremony, on a smaller scale, as that
at the palace, took place in each mandarin’s home, with his relatives,
friends, and the lower orders bringing the greetings. Among other New
Year’s decorations there were many flags all about this forest-shaded
town, the tricolor less in evidence than a red and yellow flag that was
evidently the imperial banner. Scores of the homes of the mandarins
within the citadel displayed over their gateways the flags of all the
Allies, that of France double size and in the middle. All the rest of
the day I met mandarins coming out of their low houses in garden groves,
or from those of others of the same rank, or along the roads and streets
on both sides of the river, usually in rickshaws. Some even of high rank
did not scorn to ride double, after the common Annamese custom. They no
longer wore their ancient Ming head-dresses or their knee-high boots,
but still had on the gay garments of festival, such as cerise robes
embroidered with flowers. I met several mandarin servants carrying home
a pair of boots strung over a shoulder, with a cloth-wrapped bundle of
holiday garments in one hand and the strange head-dress left over from
the days of the Ming in the other, as if some of their masters also had
been obliged to borrow _le smoking_ in its Annamese form, before they
could bring their annual greetings to their emperor.
[Illustration: An Annamese mandarin all dressed up for his New Year’s
honors to his emperor; his servant behind]
[Illustration: Servants of the mandarins carry home after the ceremony
the ancient Ming accoutrements of their masters]
[Illustration: Emperor Khai-dinh of Annam on his French-supported
throne]
[Illustration: Some of the most effective of Annamese tombs are covered
with pictures and designs made of broken porcelain dishes set in cement]
One recognizes a mandarin of Annam by the somewhat better material of
his clothing and by a little wooden or ivory baggage-check on his
starboard bowsprit, bearing his title or grade in Chinese characters.
Some of them had been so brave, or have obeyed the French so well, that
they wore on the other side French decorations enough to rival a
staff-officer. Not all the mandarins surrounding the emperor of Annam
are noted for either their physical or—the experienced eye could not but
note—their moral beauty. Many were pitted with smallpox, and more of
them were stoop-shouldered with loafing than were horny-handed with
toil. Like Chinese above the laboring-class, these tax-gatherers from a
hard-working people give no attention to their muscles, scorn indeed to
use them when there is any way out of it, and are flabby and ungainly
accordingly. Yet some of the staid old retired mandarins looked like men
who had led a kindly and a scholarly life. Each generation the grade of
a mandarin drops a notch, so that the privileged class does not remain
perpetually the same, a scheme that might perhaps advantageously be
applied in other centers of the human maelstrom. Titles of nobility are
sometimes given for distinguished services—such, no doubt, as betraying
to the French rulers independence movements among the natives—but these
are no longer hereditary. I met one of the princes of the blood on a
suburban road that New Year’s afternoon, still in his blood-red robes of
ceremony, so out of keeping with his modern nose-pinching spectacles and
the very ordinary rickshaw in which he rode. Here and there a coolie or
a boy took off his palm-leaf hat to him, but that was the only visible
evidence that his rank meant anything much to the populace, or to the
prince himself.
The people of Annam still treat their puppet emperor as the true Son of
Heaven, however, though they cannot but know that he is chosen by the
French. It is as if they considered the French merely an instrument of
fate, as some Christians manage to regard anything that happens as God’s
hand working in strange mysterious ways. Whatever he may have thought of
this attitude of his loyal subjects, Khai-dinh did not by any means
disdain the material conveniences of our upstart Western civilization.
He never went outside his palace grounds except by automobile—a big
imperial-yellow limousine with black top and red wheels, of French make
naturally, and which had its blow-outs and other mishaps now and then
quite like the Fords of the garden variety of mankind. Over on the
French side of the river he had a suburban palace, a rest-house far from
his crowded domestic circle. It is a very showy establishment in
foreign, more exactly in continental European, style, with graveled
driveways, _portes cochères_, plate-glass windows, the walls bright
yellow with the intertwined letters AD on the gates. That afternoon it
was gay with yellow flags, a color forbidden the ordinary people, though
now and then a small child wears it with impunity—or it may be that this
means the emperor once called upon its mother. Even in his palace within
the citadel Khai-dinh had his apartments installed in European style,
they say, though I cannot of course report this on first-hand evidence;
his domestic realm was closed even to his French superior, for after all
Annam is still Oriental. When the spirits moved him to spend an evening
entertaining any cronies he may have had among the French colonials, he
called his yellow limousine and repaired to his transfluvial palace. He
drew and sculptured, not in the traditional Chinese-Annamese fashion,
but after the manner of a not too talented pupil of the Beaux Arts. The
French insist that he also was very happy, and they may be right. His
salary for doing nothing was five thousand piastres a month; he had ten
wives—his predecessor maintained a hundred, but economy is the watchword
in official Annam since the war—and his dancers and all such necessities
were paid for by the government. The “résuper” who really rules Annam
and its emperor gets only fifteen hundred piastres a month and has only
one wife, and as far as is officially known not even one dancing-girl.
On March 19 there was to be an even greater ceremony in Hué—the
emperor’s all-night vigil at the Temple of Heaven. Similar, though by no
means comparable, to the imperial rite that took place yearly in Peking
until the revolution of 1911 turned that Temple of Heaven into a
tourists’ picnic-ground and China into a masquerade-ball republic, this
ceremony has long been given every three years; but the French had
decided that this one was to be the last. Thus do the pageantries of
olden days drop unnoticed one by one under the trampling feet of time.
CHAPTER IX
THE PEOPLE OF THE EMINENT SOUTH
Of the eighteen to twenty million people of French Indo-China two thirds
are Annamese. That does not mean that Annam has so many inhabitants. The
Annamese are the predominant people of all the lowlands of France’s
Far-Eastern empire, not merely of Annam. Their own land, though nearly
eight hundred miles long, is very narrow, containing barely sixty
thousand square miles, on which between seven and eight million people
manage to wrest subsistence almost entirely from a plain twelve to fifty
miles wide between the mountains and the sea. Naturally they have
gradually overrun the other divisions of Indo-China, submerging the
other races there, just as the tricky, the less pleasing, the more
sophisticated always drive out the naïve and the more lovable on this
sad old globe of ours. Their Chinese religion of ancestor-worship,
requiring every man by hook or crook to leave a son behind him, has of
course much to do with this majority.
As far back as history mentions it, what we now call Indo-China was
under the sway of the Cham, then of the Khmer, tribes of a certain Hindu
culture who subjugated the land and drove the aborigines, if such their
predecessors were, into the mountains. Later they in turn were conquered
by what we now know as the Annamese. One guess is that this dour people
originally came from Tibet or the lower mountains about it. They
themselves say that they once inhabited southwestern China—Yünnan,
Kwangsi, Kwangtung, and Tonkin—at least five thousand years ago. Many of
their customs and physical characteristics bear out this statement, but
they are so mixed with the Cham and the other peoples they found in
their new home that they have many traits not typical of the Mongol
race, and one is every now and then surprised to find a nearly Aryan
nose among them.
Whatever their exact origin, they came down from somewhere to the north
and filled, as tightly as a plump leg fills a stocking, this narrow
strip of plain between the coast and the mountains, pushing back,
killing off, and absorbing the tribes that preceded them. Highlanders to
begin with, perhaps, they have now lived in tropical lowlands and rice
marshes for so many centuries that they have gradually taken on tropical
characteristics; hence it is not at all strange that they are the
weakest and the ugliest of all those reputedly of the Mongolian race.
Hardly of medium height, less vigorous than their neighbors, they are
much like the Chinese, yet in many ways quite different from them also.
They have been known to the Celestials for centuries by the name first
given them when the two peoples came in contact with each other—the
Giao-chi, or “Big Toes.” The noticeable spread of the great toe away
from the others, suggesting mountain-climbing ancestors, is still
conspicuous among them even in this day of French shoes. Though the name
no doubt had its origin in that scornfulness of the Chinese for any race
but their own, in due season the Annamese began to call themselves
Giao-chi also, just as they followed the Chinese example in calling
their country Annam, Land of the Eminent South, or words to that effect.
As I may have said before, the white man’s name “Indo-China” is
particularly fitting; France’s Far-Eastern possession is certainly the
half-way station between the Chinese and the Hindus. The Annamese are no
more really Chinese than are many of the Indian races that are called by
that name, yet they are quite unlike the Hindu-cultured Cambodians and
have nothing in common with the people of Laos, beyond the Annamese
chain, who are akin to the Siamese. In mere physical matters they are
not only smaller but darker than the Chinese, tawny, though less so than
the Cambodians, with flat skulls, faces, and noses, protruding
cheek-bones, and large mouths that are made doubly conspicuous by their
permanently blackened teeth and thick lips swollen with what we miscall
betel-nut.
Thus we have come in leisurely sequence to the most conspicuous, the
most despicable perhaps, certainly the most inexplicable point in the
physical appearance of the Annamese. They have never practised
mutilation of their women in the Chinese manner by binding their feet;
infanticide is reputed to be very rare, if known at all; but about
marriage time, which in Annam is early in life, every Annamese, of
either sex, is expected to have his teeth lacquered black by a process
said to be very painful. Recalling what a dentist can do to us in half
an hour, it is not hard to believe that they suffer during a task that
takes day after day. The lacquering loosens the teeth, but the
_nhoc-nam_, or ground-fish sauce with which every Annamese seasons his
food, tightens them again. The men are not so selfish as to force the
women to go through the beautifying process alone, as in so many lands,
but step up and take the same medicine themselves, so that the mouths of
both sexes resemble rat-holes. Perhaps it is this that makes the
Annamese seem more stupid than the Chinese they in so many other ways
resemble—or perhaps it is merely their southern indolence of manner, or
the circumspection of a subject race as compared to freemen.
Every people has its own style of beauty, however, and to the Annamese a
person is handsome only if his teeth are jet-black. “Any dog can have
white teeth,” say the Annamese, looking disparagingly at Europeans. To
them white teeth are not only ugly but immoral! For the _congaïe_, the
Annamese girl, who has not blackened her teeth, is usually, if not
always, some Frenchman’s darling.
The blackened teeth alone would be bad enough, even if the people of
Annam were not also addicted to a custom common to a large part of
oceanic Asia. Almost all of them chew betel-nut, as we persist in
calling it. It is really the nut of the arec-palm and the leaf of the
betel-vine that often climbs this, mixed with lime to bring out the full
strength of the ingredients. The wand-like arec-palms that rise straight
and soldierly, as if they fancied they served some useful purpose and
were proud of it, are the most conspicuous feature of any Annamese or
Tonkinese village. Whenever a child is born one more of these slender
trees is planted, with a betel-vine beside it, so that in time the
infant also may have its “betel-nut.” Large villages are almost hidden
in arec-palm forests. This tree produces nuts of about the size of a
walnut, in green clusters like a bunch of huge grapes, which grow, like
cocoanuts, just below the leaves. These, sold in the markets, the shops,
everywhere along the highways and the narrow trails, are cut up, wrapped
in a betel-leaf—whence the misnomer “betel-nut,” which does not
exist—smeared with lime, and thrust into the repulsive mouth.
A French colonial who had tried betel-nut once told me that he had a
sudden rush of blood to the head and felt warm and excited all day long.
Like opium, however, it was one of those things I prefer to take on
hearsay. It is strange that in China, land of bad habits, this mild vice
is unknown, unless we count the lower half of now Japanese Formosa. A
few old French colonials get the habit, as they become addicted to
opium, _congaïes_, and other customs of the East; but most of the ruling
race have more respect for at least their outward appearance. The
chemical action of the lime on the other ingredients produces a
blood-red cud, so that betel-nut chewers look as if their disgusting
mouths of apparently decayed teeth were full of blood, as if they were
in the throes of a hemorrhage—and didn’t know it. Some Annamese girls
would be good looking but for this blood-dripping mouth, repulsive even
when closed, for the constant use of betel-nut not only destroys the
gums but leaves the lips permanently swollen. On the other hand the
lacquering of the teeth and the chewing of betel-nut somehow manage to
save the Annamese from toothache, they say, though some of us might
prefer to suffer the pain ourselves rather than pass it on to the
beholder. The chemical action of lacquer and betel-juice in combination
seems to kill the microbes that lead to the dentist’s chair in other
lands, and no wonder; for surely no self-respecting microbe would take
up its habitat in an Annamese mouth.
In Hué and the two capitals alternately graced by the French
governor-general the younger people of the better class show evidence of
beginning to think of leaving off the enameling of their teeth, and even
of abandoning the chewing of betel-nut. But both customs are almost
universal among masses and classes alike wherever Annamese is spoken,
and many, like our rural tobacco-chewers, are proud of the distance they
can project the red saliva. This seems to be a favorite indoor as well
as outdoor sport, for they spit the stuff everywhere, not only
splotching with red every road and street in the land that is not
already red by nature, but even the whitewashed walls of the homes of
mandarins. In hiring an Annamese nurse-maid or cook one must insist that
no betel-nut be used in the house, and even then one’s best things are
likely to become gradually speckled with red.
Though the race as a whole is not noted for its manly beauty, the women
of Annam have a more pleasing appearance to Western eyes than do those
of China—except when they smile. Their expression is more _piquante_, if
you know what I mean. Those who become temporary wives of the French,
and do not blacken the teeth, sometimes do not even chew betel-nut, are
often pleasant to look upon during their younger years. To be sure these
are hand-picked; but almost without exception, irrespective of age, the
women of Annam are slender, sinuous, and graceful, with a sort of
gliding walk, the countrywomen especially very erect, their arms
swinging far behind them, as if they were constantly performing the feat
of balancing their big palm-leaf hats. Many have beautiful hands, small,
thin, and tapering, even though they do the hardest work of carrying and
grubbing in the rice-fields. To Annamese taste the chief points of
female beauty are black teeth, red heels—on bare feet, that is, not on
shoes, as in the case of foot-bound China—and oval faces, in contrast to
the round ones called for by Chinese standards of beauty. Great numbers
of the women of the Eminent South have the longest hair that I—nay, even
my wife—had ever seen, in certain cases reaching well below the knees.
There are those, however, who consider inwardness more important than
outwardness, and for them let us begin by saying that in disposition the
Annamese are less gay, have little of the sense of humor so highly
developed among the Chinese—unless it be that they put on a mask before
the white man. This they do, of course, like any subjugated people, but
one seldom catches them laughing even when they have no suspicion of
being observed—seldom, that is, in comparison with that reservoir of
laughter, the Chinese. A Frenchman tells us that of all the people on
earth the Annamese have the greatest plasticity, are the most sly,
cunning, utilitarian, and the most assimilative—though often
superficially so. They show outward respect to parents and superiors,
but seem to be insincere and incapable of deep devotion—not unnaturally,
one would say, seeing that the race has been subjected for most of the
past two thousand years. Never showing his real thoughts on the surface,
conserving his own personality under all circumstances, the son of Annam
adapts himself, passively resists, triumphs when he seems to be
defeated. Those who know him well credit him with a great love of his
native land, especially of the village where he was born. The French
insist that the Annamese are great thieves, which, with all their
faults, can hardly be said of the Chinese.
During all the centuries that China held Annam enslaved, “like a kept
mistress,” it became Chinese. It took from China its art, its morals,
its writing, its costumes, its customs, its gods; it is so Chinese that
there are still celebrated in the temples of Annam festivals and
formalities that have not taken place in the Celestial Empire for
hundreds of years. Now it is France that rules, and the Annamese have
become French. If Russia had conquered them, asserts a Frenchman, they
would have icons in their homes and sleep on unlighted porcelain stoves.
Either they are naturally copiers or they have found copying the easiest
way in a hot climate; long dominated, they seem to have lost through
evaporation the “pep” of their probably highland ancestors. No doubt
this explains why, although of old it was literary, artistic, responsive
to the most subtle plays of the spirit, Annam never produced a single,
great personal work, a great poet, an original architect, a powerful
moralist, a painter or a sculptor of genius. “The foreign model shines
through everything admirable between the Mekong and the Gulf of Tonkin.”
The Annamese can work at the task in hand with infinite taste and
patience; what he lacks in originality he makes up to a degree in
ingeniousness; but the creative spark seems never to have flashed forth
in him.
I suppose it is this copy-cat characteristic that makes him show no
surprise at the inventions of the West. You cannot startle this ancient
Oriental world with the mechanical marvels of the new. It accepts them,
but it is not astonished. Give the yellow race the telegraph, and they
send telegrams; the phonograph, and they listen; the railroad, and they
buy their tickets and take their seats—granted that there are any left;
the automobile, and a self-confident young man pours in gasoline and
steps on the starter, knowing only that for some reason this makes the
thing go. The force of this people lies in its shrewd plasticity; the
Annamese do not resist, they adapt themselves; they espouse on the
instant the practices and customs of the conqueror. Endowed with an
immeasurable pride, they strive, not to do their best in their own line,
but to imitate their masters, to outdo them in their own field. It is
not because they admire them, one suspects; it is merely to prove that
they are as smart as any one else. Thus Annamese students, with
centuries of memorizing Chinese characters behind them, often outdo in
French even the French youths in their classes.
Though they take so readily to Western inventions, no Annamese will use
a mechanical contrivance if he can do without it. With all the
corkscrews and can-openers in the world within reach of his hand, your
_bep_, or Annamese cook, invariably draws corks and opens cans with his
teeth. In putting fuel on his fire he prefers his hands to a shovel. You
may show him better methods, but he continues to make sure of the
condition of an egg by whirling it on its side; if it is fresh it will
not whirl, according to the _bep_; the older it is the more it will
gyrate, he insists. Try it on your own “strictly fresh” eggs some
winter, ye slaves of the land of cold-storage—and if he is right they
may be whirling still when spring comes.
Though they sometimes eat sharks, the Annamese worship what they call a
whale, really the dolphin or porpoise. According to legend, one of these
acrobats of the sea once got under an emperor’s boat and kept it from
sinking until it could reach shore. Even students in French _lycées_
still believe this yarn, and if one of these “whales” dies and is washed
ashore, it is given honorable burial with much ceremony. The Annamese
worship trees, especially if they are huge, or very old, or of strange
shape; and to propitiate the demons or to win the favors of the good
spirits that inhabit them they put under them little vases of the lime
used with the betel-nut that even spirits are reputed to enjoy. Scores
of these tiny jars may sometimes be seen at the foot of a single tree.
No Annamese will cut down those trees, such as the banyan, that are
especially sacred. The French sometimes have to chop down with their own
fair hands trees that are in the way of civic improvements. At Tourane
two Annamese converts to Christianity were given good wages and all the
wood in a huge tree that was hindering progress, and earned fifty
piastres for two days’ work, fifty times their normal income. Being
Christians, they did not of course care how many trees were cut down.
There are other lands where so effective a superstition would be well
worth entertaining.
The religions of Annam are in the main those of China. Not only “whales”
and trees, but big or queerly shaped rocks, the rat, the silkworm, the
elephant, above all the tiger, which they never mention except by the
honorable title “Ong Kop,” have their worshipers. But the most general
cult is that of their ancestors and of the village genii. The local god
may be some mandarin who ruled the village centuries ago, some native
son who became a great scholar, some former mistress of an emperor who
aided her native town in some crisis; or it may merely be a beggar or an
executed robber, some great calamity after his death having proved that
his spirit must be propitiated, perhaps a new temple built to enthrone
it. In return for all this adoration the village genius is expected to
protect the village from drouth, epidemic, and similar catastrophe.
One can scarcely travel, however rapidly, through Annam without seeing
one of these fêtes to the genius of some village or other. Parades
riotous with color make their way along the narrow dikes, across the
rice-fields, the fantastic costumes mirrored in the flooded sloughs. Not
only do women take no part in the cult of village genii, any more than
they can effectively worship an ancestor, but neither do any of the men
except those village notables who are not in mourning and in whose
family full peace and harmony prevails. I gather that if a wife has
recently run off with a lover or wilfully blackened an eye of her
notable spouse, or if a daughter has eloped during the year with a
Frenchman but without benefit of clergy—though this is perhaps no such
serious matter—the husband or father involved would not be available or
eligible for the rites in honor of the village genius, but would pass
the day in seclusion. An incentive surely to domestic harmony! The
plebes of course have merely the honor of paying the bill, as in any
other part of the globe.
There are many temples in Annam, but the largest of them are small
compared with those of China, and in many details they are distinctly
different. Elephants appear among the decorations; dragons are not so
numerous. The roofs tilt with a longer, almost coquettish, curve; the
tropical climate has given them a more luxurious brown; there is rather
an air of equatorial languor about them. Most of them are better kept
too, as if either the worshipers were more devout or there were better
supervision over the caretakers. But this is perhaps merely another
example of the superiority in cleanliness and order of Annam over China.
Possibly it is due to the presence of the French, who have ruled over
them during the life of almost all those now living, that the Annamese
have a little more conception of the line between filth and its
antithesis than is given to Celestial understanding. Or it may be that
on the whole the people of Annam are less noisome in their personal
habits than their northern neighbors because they are less
poverty-stricken, and because total indifference in sanitary matters is
more swiftly and visibly punished in so tropical a land. At any rate
there is no such slovenliness, no such stench, in the cities of Annam as
beyond the northern border; for one thing they are mostly on the coast,
with water plentiful, and they are small, none of those enormous
conglomerations of humanity to be found in hundreds of places throughout
China.
Gaudily painted little temples, weather-blackened shrines, generally
among trees, pass in constant procession as one hurries through the land
of the Eminent South. Now and again another procession enlivens the
landscape—a long file of people in their gayest robes, most of them
carrying high above their heads the parasols that are usually forbidden
to any but mandarins and foreigners, wending its way along the dikes.
They are on their way to a temple, or taking part in a wedding, perhaps
a funeral, in which latter case they carry with them gay paper
imitations of everything the deceased will need in the after-world, from
automobiles to concubines. Temple festivals are theatrical and musical
entertainments as well as religious ceremonies, even as in our churches.
Probably the mass of the people distinguish no difference. The charming
oasis of the _pagode_, as the French call it, may suddenly have taken on
life in the midst of the rice-fields. The dikes about it are covered
with files of people moving toward it; where there was once a road or
some other open space beside it there is nothing but streets of
makeshift shops that have sprung up overnight. There are improvised
restaurants, women roasting cakes; sellers of rice and _chumchum_, of
sugar-cane and oranges, of arec-nuts and betel-leaves, squat on their
heels near their round flat baskets—a whole village of fortune will have
sprung forth from the soil. The swarming crowd rumbles and clamors and
shrieks with full mouths, for this is the time when they are all
gourmands and when the whole region becomes one great family. Narrow
wooden benches bear rows of customers seated monkey-fashion on their
heels, stuffing themselves with swiftly moving chop-sticks. Every one is
dressed in his best, the villagers with floating black tunics, the
band-turban tight about the forehead, on which it leaves a whitish
streak untouched by the sunshine.
The temple itself, usually deserted, is full of natives, chewing,
spitting, shouting, their wooden sandals clacking. An air of gentle yet
barbaric splendor radiates through the place; religious furniture,
sumptuously carved and painted with lacquer or gold, gleams forth;
parasols, silk banners embroidered with mottoes and attributes and
moralities scintillate in the distilled sunshine. Everywhere, even in
the most distant corners, candles and joss-sticks burn; blue clouds of
incense cover with an impalpable veil the golden faces of the idols; the
altars are loaded with offerings; pasteboard horses, richly caparisoned,
spread their stiff legs. About the ritual vases, the big iron urns in
which incense and paper prayers by the myriad are burned, sacred swans
stand erect on bronze tortoises; every now and again the flame leaps
high in an urn, devouring a package of bars of gold or silver, made of
rice-paper painted white or yellow. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, two
generals pop forth from the wings, their backs a quiver of waving flags,
their lungs roaring forth challenges in a false key. With uplifted
sabers they march upon each other and indulge in what is meant to be a
terrifying pantomime, but nothing more serious comes of it than of most
Chinese battles. Frightful noises resound from their armies following
close behind them—two howling troops of ragged coolies shaking spears
and standards. The stage becomes a whirling chaos of gleaming flags and
shrieking soldiery, in which all visible likeness to a religious
ceremony fades away into pure theatricalism.
I was constantly running across religious celebrations. Sometimes gay
paper boats, their sails all set, were started off down a river to
appease the spirits of the stream. Or it might be at one of those
neglected little temples without door or roof which the slightest
village maintains for its local gods. First the worshipers _lam lie_,
kowtow to the stone or mud tiger at the entrance, a tiger with great
bulging eyes, usually sculptured in deep relief on a stone screen. Then
they go to lay their offerings on the altar—horses made of red paper,
pasteboard gourds containing sticks of incense, rice-paper ingots of
gold and silver. Fire-crackers explode, what the Chinese consider music
howls and shrieks, crowds swarm, the temple flares with decorations in
colored paper. In the front chamber there usually sat a shaven-headed
bonze wearing a golden paper crown and dressed in red, singsonging
Buddhist prayers from a ragged tissue-paper book. Beside and behind him
men were beating drums, large and small, or pieces of bell-metal, of
resonant hardwood, sometimes adding falsetto voices to the uproar.
Countrymen in not too clean garments crowded close on either side, until
men with sticks drove them back, again and again, sometimes by throwing
lighted bunches of fire-crackers into the massed throng. Old women with
sickening black mouths, contrasting unpleasantly with the gay
decorations, seemed to be the chief worshipers. The mandarin in a gauzy
black cloak who kept order knew enough French to tell me that they were
praying for peace, but not enough to specify just what they meant by it.
Another time, elsewhere, strange sounds drew me to a house where men of
professional countenance were playing on flutes, cymbals, tambourines,
or their Oriental equivalents, while the people were lamenting in
discordant voices. A family and its neighbors were praying about the bed
of a sick woman whose body would not cease swelling for all the
medicine-man’s mud plasters. That concert of uproar had lasted since the
night before; it was merely a question of who would tire out first, the
music, the sickness, or the invalid. Before I left, fire-crackers were
thrown about to scare off the evil spirits that were wilfully causing
the illness, and if that did not drive them away the master of
ceremonies was prepared to toss about handfuls of tissue-paper piastres,
in the hope that the covetous devils would leave the body of the sick
woman to fight for the money. If even this should not succeed, the
funeral procession starts with a band, followed by banner-bearers, then
by other ragamuffins carrying in a little paper temple the spirit-tablet
of the deceased, portable tables laden with roast pig and other
delicacies, and finally the gaudy bier, surrounded by howling mourners
trying to call the soul back to earth, perhaps against its wishes.
As there is really no Annamese religion, so there is no Annamese
literature, except the Chinese. Even their spoken tongue seems to be an
ancient Chinese dialect. It is a monosyllabic language, depending on
tones to give different meanings to the same words; and it is so
difficult that those Annamese who know French prefer to converse in that
tongue. A queer language indeed, explosive in pronunciation, so that the
friendliest little chat sounds like a violent quarrel, and until one
gets accustomed to it every conversation seems about to develop into a
fist-fight—or at least its Far-Eastern counterpart, clawing and
scratching. In writing, Chinese characters are used, therefore Annamese,
Japanese, Koreans, Formosans, Chinese of the north or south, can all
converse readily enough on paper; though as they do not pronounce the
characters at all alike the spoken word is of no use among them. Half a
century ago the French Jesuits gave the Annamese a romanized script, and
now thousands read their newspapers in it. In fact the government has
made this alphabetical writing obligatory in the schools, and it is far
more widely spread than a similar effort in China. But it is no such
simple matter as the uninitiated imagine to represent tones by an
extension of accent-marks. With the reform goes the ability to talk to
their neighbors on paper too, and the old classics are being lost to the
younger generation, even as in Korea and Formosa under the Japanese.
Polygamy is still legal in Annam, though for economic reasons it is no
longer usual. It remains a not uncommon practice for the wife who has
tried in vain for eight or ten years to bear her husband a son to put on
an old woman’s bonnet and go out and buy him a second wife. Not a bad
plan, surely an improvement on the extramarital secrecy of the West; it
no doubt makes for a more congenial companionship and incidentally
solves the servant problem, if ever there was one in Annam. Yet the
Annamese wife has a better social position than in most of the Orient.
Speaking of wives, in Annam kissing—except in the not few cases in which
Frenchmen have taught a different style—consists in approaching the nose
to the face of the loved one and sniffing, much as if one were smelling
a flower. The harder one sniffs the more it proves one’s love—which is
sometimes a real test!
Naturally a ditch has dug itself between the younger and the older
generation in Annam. Other customs, other manners, other points of view
have grown up since the rule of despotic emperors changed to the rule of
protective Frenchmen. When the old ancestral altar is replaced by a
chest of drawers topped by a mirror it is not merely a question of
furniture; something has changed in the heart, in the essence of things.
The fathers wish to remain true to the spirit of old Annam; the sons
wish to be “même chose Français.” Observing the two generations side by
side, one has an impression of two different classes, almost two
different races. The dissimilarity shows itself in the slightest matters
of every-day life. Take, for instance, the well-to-do Annamese families
the traveler finds dining in the more or less French hotels along the
main routes of travel. The young people, often dressed entirely in
European garb, their black hair cut in our fashion and glossy with
brilliantine, eat their _tête de veau_ and _poulet rôti_ with ease,
talking and laughing freely, while their constrained, embarrassed, yet
always dignified parents, in their long gowns and the Annamese
head-dress, handle knife and fork in one hand at one time, as if they
were chop-sticks, and hardly succeed in swallowing a mouthful.
Especially in the ports and the larger cities young Annam is growing up
vastly different from his fathers. Far from reading the old classics, he
knows only the _quoc-ngu_, the Annamese language transcribed in our
alphabet, which he even beats out on a typewriter. At Saïgon or Hanoï he
is resplendent with modernism, agitating, scheming, getting rich; but at
Hué he seems to have taken refuge in the legendary past, in tradition,
in the memory of his ancestors. How long even this spacious town on the
banks of the River of Perfumes will remain what it still is, the natural
place of refuge of the exalted spirits of the great princes of other
times, seeking throughout the “protected” kingdom for a place to which
our Western civilization cannot track them, is not hard to guess: just
about the time necessary to finish the railway that is to unite the
Annamese capital with Hanoï on the north and with Saïgon to the south;
the time needed to replace the little hotel-grocery, celebrated among
all the colonials of Indo-China, with the tourists’ palace already
planned; the time it will take to build a few factories in which
fishermen will be the workmen and princes and mandarins the bosses.
Ah, well, the world changes. Not every visitor to Annam can see the
prostrations of the “ten thousand” mandarins at Hué, and soon that
ceremony too may be gone forever. The legendary Annam, the traditional
Asia, is passing away. Roads, the automobile, the telegraph have upset
all the old customs. Old-timers cannot tell a story of the olden days—of
late in the nineteenth century—without sighing, “Ah, in my time ... but
we shall never see that again.” We shall not, of course; yet there is no
just cause to weep at our misfortune in arriving too late in a world
grown too old. There are compensations. Western customs, introduced into
Indo-China, have not destroyed the picturesque; they have merely
transformed it. In the place of the adventurers turned administrators
who, living like little kings far from control, inspired respect in the
natives by tricks akin to sleight-of-hand, surrounded themselves with
_congaïe_ like Oriental sultans in their harems, and dispensed justice
in the shade of a banyan-tree, like some tropical Saint Louis, there is
the Parisian boulevardier, far from his element, watched over by a wife
who will see to it that _congaïe_ become nothing more romantic than
seamstresses and cooks’ assistants. After all, the sedan-chairs that
once crawled along the Mandarin Road by which Chinese officials went and
came among their posts in Annam were no more worth coming to see than
are autobuses, jammed so full of natives that their feet stick out from
both sides of it, _congaïe_ wearing French shoes, an old Annamese
dowager with a modern umbrella under her arm, “boys” with a golden tooth
or two among their black-lacquered ones, bicycles among the baskets on
the roof of the terror-spreading vehicle, an autobus so crowded that it
looks as if the passengers were transporting it, like ants dragging a
dead fly. Come to think of it, there is nothing more amusing about the
myriad old temples of a mummified Far East than about a Buddhist priest
in his saffron robe carrying a fountain-pen and riding a bicycle in his
bare feet. The old _nha-qué_ bound to market with a string of “cash”
over one shoulder may be gone, but in his place there are Annamese
youths, still wearing black band-turbans above their misfit French
clothing, counting out paper piastres behind the bars of the Banque de
l’Indo-China.
CHAPTER X
HURRYING ON TO THE NORTHERN CAPITAL
I was up at four the morning after the imperial ceremony, in
sufficiently good mood to refrain from kicking the “boy” who had called
me according to orders, and off in a heavy rain by a rickshaw assured
the evening before by a combination of heavy subsidy and threatened
penalty. The train from Hué to Dongha, completing the central stretch of
the railways of Indo-China that begins at Tourane, ran close outside the
moat of Hué citadel, the walled imperial city stretching from river to
river. Beyond, a rich plain was almost completely covered with rice, a
wet green plain backed by the mountain ranges, bulking against the
western sky, that were never far distant on the left. The scantiness of
the country, the paucity of its arable land, seemed to be emphasized
here; for Annam gets very narrow indeed north of Hué, so narrow that it
all but breaks in two. Yet it was surprising how many people were
crowded into this slender strip of earth, how many things of interest to
the hurried traveler too, for that matter.
At length, hardly an hour beyond Hué, we rode out from under the clouds
as from under a roof. For the climate runs in streaks up and down this
narrow country. The weather again became, and, what was more to the
point, remained, splendid, so that almost the only time I did not have
brilliant sunshine during my two months in Indo-China was during that
enforced delay at Hué. Another hour and we ran out of track, and were
set off at 7:30 at a mere station, where I stepped into an autobus in
which I rode until 8:30 that night.
There were plenty of Annamese in the back four fifths of the vehicle,
though it was not packed as the autobuses of Annam often are. For at
this New Year’s season most people were either already at their
ancestral homes or had no intention of coming. Just how the driver and
his unfailing assistant were induced to work at such a time was a
mystery, but that perhaps is one of the advantages of French rule. These
autobuses run as regularly as the trains with which they connect,
whether there are passengers or not, for at least there are the mails.
In fact on the whole they run a little faster than the trains, which is
perhaps one reason their fares are higher. My Scotch blood evidently
having surged to the surface during my delay, I had taken before leaving
Hué a second-class ticket, partly too, I fancy, in order to prove that
the company would have to sell me one, in spite of my complexion. There
had been no argument, though white men cannot ride among the natives in
fourth class on the trains. But the Annamese agent at Dongha, as if he
could not bear to see the race that ruled over his land mingling with
his fellow-countrymen, insisted that I ride first class, that is, in the
front seat, behind the driver this time. Or there may have been another
reason; for when my recovered baggage was placed in the closed box at
the rear of the car—also a first-class privilege, since freight and
express, the parcel-post and the baggage of native passengers, was all
piled up on the railed roof of the vehicle or tied along the
running-boards—he mentioned casually that of course it weighed
considerably more than the fifteen kilograms even a first-class
passenger was allowed as free luggage; and as the rate for anything
above that amount is nearly as high as for human flesh, I felt it only
fair to slip a couple of paper piastres into his limp palm, at which he
not only did not protest but even thanked me in imperfect French.
This time I had a fellow-passenger of my own color. A Frenchman of
sturdy frame and studious face, a khaki patch held in place over one eye
by a cord that had left a thin white line free from sunburn diagonally
across his intelligent features, had also stepped off the train. As the
custom in England and its newer American counterpart of strict
incommunicativeness between strangers unexpectedly meeting on the road
does not apply among the hospitable French colonials of Indo-China, I
soon discovered that my companion, though ostensibly in the customs
service, was a novelist whose latest romance against an Annamese
background I had finished reading the evening before. I might have been
embarrassed at being discovered by so important a personage, an official
to boot, occupying “European accommodations” at the price of a native
ticket, had I not quickly learned that the novelist had not even paid
second-class fare for his first-class seat, but was traveling on a
government _réquisition_, which cost him nothing more than the asking.
He had been in the customs service of Indo-China since early manhood,
but chancing to be on furlough in his native land when the World War
broke out, he had joined his regiment at once, fighting unscathed all
through the war, until, three days before the Armistice, he had lost an
eye. But the government had been kind. It had kept him on the pay-roll
as a customs officer, but let him run about the country at government
expense, to such things as the ceremony we had just seen at the court of
Hué, in order that he might gather material for more writing. For your
Frenchman realizes that even an honest novel, true as to local color, is
useful propaganda; and Indo-China has a longing to be known, in France
as well as in the world at large. Hawthorne and Whitman, I recalled, had
not been paid their government salaries in order that they might go on
producing what was perhaps even better literature than that of my new
traveling companion. Nor could I remember having heard of any of our
crippled war veterans receiving government aid in the production of art
or letters.
We made the constant good speed of a limited express, along a road
raised a foot or two above the rice-fields, here dry but green, still
flooded back toward the foot-hills. I could in fact have ridden a little
less swiftly with more pleasure. For there being rarely any turn in the
road, and no other vehicles, gasoline-driven or otherwise—luckily, since
the roads of Indo-China are for one car at a time—we went over the many
short bridges just wide enough for so ponderous a conveyance as ours
with the roller-coaster feeling of a day at Coney Island. It was a
gravel road in which grew grass that seemed to have sprung up during the
last few days of rain; and there was never a fence or other protection
from it even at the villages through which we roared so madly. Striking
peaks stood out among those rows of ranges perpetually following us on
the west; at the mouths of the several short rivers that looked like
seas in the raging wind we were ferried across in the usual decrepit old
_bacs_.
At Donghoï or Quang-binh we were the first guests in a brand-new hotel,
subsidized by the government in order that the few French travelers who
go up and down the _Route Mandarine_ may have all the advantages of home
during the _déjeuner_ and siesta that break the journey there. During
that Parisian ceremony we picked up a French colonial burned a reddish
bronze by half a lifetime at a country post beneath the equatorial sun.
He went on with us for a few hours to his bungalow at the place where
another _bac_ came across the sea to us at the call of a water-buffalo
horn in the hands of a ferryman. Before it had fought its way to the
southern shore there was ample time to enjoy the coolness of an interior
in marked contrast to the facial and temperamental heat of its chief
occupant, who, apologizing for the absence of his _congaïe_ to do the
honors, had his “boys” serve us drinks cooled with the ice that was
thrown off to him each forenoon from the south-bound bus. Without this
daily necessity he could of course no more have endured life in his
isolated station than without his respectful servants and his female
companion. Most of the conversation ran on the selfishness of a few of
his younger colleagues in expecting their own countrywomen to accompany
them to such posts of “exile in the wilderness.”
Every house or hovel of the natives had standing before it the tufted
bamboo of the New-Year season, that signal to the spirits of the air
that the people who live beneath it are pious and not to be
molested—something akin to the hobo signs of our own land. In many of
the villages the populace was childishly enjoying itself in swings made,
supports and all, not too securely of bamboos crudely lashed together.
Toward the middle of the afternoon we found ourselves making toward a
great wall of mountains at right angles to the main ranges. It looked as
if this ponderous autobus could not possibly pass such a barrier, at
least without the united assistance of the passengers, and I recalled
with some misgiving the ancient story of second-class travelers being
obliged to get off and push, while those in first class had merely to
walk. For the day was still uninviting to physical exertion, and my
special front-seat privileges might not be honored in such an emergency
without the two-piastre agent at Dongha to protect me. But the road
found a way up and around and over the steep spur, twisting itself into
hair-pin curves to climb a slope up which an old-style Chinese road went
straight and unswerving, with the hardiness of the pioneer, to the
remnants of a gate at the lowest point, not far from where our less
virile modern route surmounted it.
To all intents and purposes we had come to the end of Annam. What the
Chinese named the Eminent South Country was usually reckoned as
beginning on the north at the Gate of Annam, as this pass has been
called for centuries. This was the old Annam-Tonkin boundary; there is
still the vestige of an ancient wall built along the summit by the
Annamese to protect themselves from invasion, and many great battles
have been waged there. To-day the official boundary is much farther
north, and does not signify anyway, for there is a fiction that Tonkin,
the northern knob of the Indo-China dumb-bell, is now a part of Annam,
ruled over by Koang-de, the Son of Heaven at Hué.
The climb had opened out a great amphitheater of a valley,
checkerboarded with rice-fields, a stretch of the sea with a curving
beach that flashed in the afternoon sunshine, several other spurs that
almost hindered our progress, and more rows of ranges, with densely
green forests in the hollows high up on some of the ridges. On the
southern side of the Gate there had been no forest, only a light brush;
but it looked as if the northern slopes, blue-black now in the slanting
sunshine, were all thickly wooded. Long pasturelands, rolling and bushy,
dotted with red herds, almost completely crowded out cultivation for
some distance. There were few inhabitants, but many tiger temples, all
set in clusters of bamboos or trees, as if the wilderness that had
driven out the rice-fields brought the dreaded beast that much nearer.
The mountains had pushed us so close to the sea that for some time
beaches and even islands seemed but a stone’s throw away.
A slightly different human type appeared beyond the Gate of Annam,
stockier, the women perhaps a bit better looking, or more nearly good
looking—so long as they kept their repulsive mouths shut. In fact
purists among the French anthropologists of Indo-China insist that the
real Annamese are not in the handle of the dumb-bell at all, but in
Tonkin, because south of the Gate so many tribes have been Annamited, so
to speak, mingled in blood and culture with the conquerors from the
north. Unlike their relatives south of the Gate, the Tonkinese were
dressed in a cinnamon or tobacco-juice color that suddenly became as
universal as black had been farther south, as denim blue is among the
masses of China. The countrywomen, then their men, and finally all the
hand-laboring class, took to wearing long cotton cloaks of this reddish
brown hue. I found later that this is colored with _cunao_, the
vegetable dye in which the masses north of the old boundary dip their
clothing, so that all Tonkin wears the same conspicuous livery. More
exactly it is inconspicuous, in much of Tonkin; one might fancy it had
been adopted as a protective coloring, not only so that betel saliva
would not show on it, but because so much of the soil of the Tonkinese
plains is reddish that everything, earth, water, people, their clothing
and their cattle, anything that comes in contact with the earth, took on
this _cunao_ color. Centuries of toiling in flooded rice-fields
reflecting a tropical sun had indeed given even their faces a similar
tint.
There were fewer male Psyche knots here than farther south, hair-cuts
for men being now popular. The women had suddenly taken to skirts, in
place of the voluminous thin-cotton trousers of Annam proper, and
dressed their hair differently, wrapping the braid once about the head
and letting the rest hang down like the tail of a Hindu turban. But the
most conspicuous change was that the palm-leaf hat of toadstool shape,
which I had grown to associate forever with the country people of Annam,
had given way, among the women only, to a most astonishing head-shade.
Of grindstone shape and size, being easily two and a half if not three
feet in diameter and perfectly flat on top, with a brim six or more
inches wide forming a perpendicular circle about them, these astounding
hats made also of leaves, perhaps of the banana, looked like a tub set
upside down on the head. More exactly they sat on a little round support
tied to the top of the head, and were so unwieldy on this slight fulcrum
that whenever the wind was blowing or the wearer under motion the
struggle to retain her head-gear seemed to be much more difficult than
the carrying of her shoulder-pole burden. The men continued to wear the
smaller cone-shaped mushroom hats that had roofed the rural population
all the way from Cochinchina, as if they realized how foolish they would
have looked in these immense grindstones, or knew the futility of trying
to compete with their women in ornamental matters.
The graves were now well weeded knobs on top of large raised circles of
earth; the towns, almost as compact as those of China, were surrounded
by high walls of growing bamboos. The more straggling towns south of the
Gate of Annam had been encircled, if at all, by hedges of cactus or wild
pineapple, concealing nothing; here every village was completely hidden,
with an opening here and there through its bamboo wall like that to the
lair of a jungle beast, so that with Tonkinese villagers going home
consists in crawling away into the jungle like the tiger they so dread
and honor. This lofty bamboo hedge is a vestige of pirate days, and of
battles between towns and clans. Near the coast cocoanut-trees did their
part toward the concealing, and of course the soldierly arec-palm with
its clinging betel-vine was everywhere. Once or twice we passed fields
of mulberry-trees, for Tonkin also produces silk. Women in the
grindstone hat stood on little platforms and screened rice by pouring it
out in the wind, rice to be hulled later by these same women stepping
with their bare feet incessantly on the end of a heavy beam that drops
its hammer-head into a stone or wooden mortar.
It was well after dark when we came to a last _bac_, across an arm of
the sea that seemed in the black night as wide as the British Channel,
and were gradually poled and pulled and sculled by sleepy coolies toward
the lights of Ben-thuy, where the railway picks up again. Another three
years and trains will be running between Dongha and Ben-thuy; we had
seen the half finished embankment now and then along the way. Within
twice that time the traveler should be able to go entirely by rail the
whole length of Indo-China, clear on to the Yang-tze perhaps, possibly
even to Angkor, connecting with the lines of Siam, which already run to
Singapore.
There were no accommodations for foreigners at Ben-thuy, merely the
river-mouth port of the city of Vinh, where we were soon housed in the
almost French hotel of a Spanish—er—lady of fortune. Vinh is a large
town, for Indo-China. Three hundred and ten houses, a whole section not
far from the hotel, had been burned that day as an unintentional
addition to the New Year’s celebration, and the night air was still
strongly scented with the conflagration; but this catastrophe had left
only an unimportant vacancy in the civic area. The French showed little
sign of interest in these popular misfortunes, so long as their own
spacious part of the town, with its uncrowded dwellings on broad half
forested lawns, remained undisturbed. Is it because they no longer hold
in honor their own labyrinthine old cities that the French have given
such an atmosphere of bourgeois order to the towns of their Far-Eastern
empire by making them checker-boards of straight, right-angled streets,
just as the Japanese have done in Formosa and Korea?
Another “boy” risked his life by calling me at four again, though the
train on which I wandered northward all that day long did not leave
until two hours later, from a station a few blocks away. That journey
from Vinh to Hanoï began as rather a stupid ride, but it turned out
better than the morning promised. The little train, with its single
three-class coach at the end of a string of modified cattle-cars for the
populace, sat lower to the ground and was in some ways less comfortable
than the autobus. A stone embankment from two to six feet above the
rice-fields formed the basis for railroad and highway, which flowed
together every little while into the same narrow bridges, with a coolie
at either end to sound a warning. The plain, of more or less width
according to how curious the mountains were to come down and look at the
sea, was one vast paddy-field. Birds were numerous for a tropical land.
Herons lay in wait for careless frogs at the edges of the rice-fields;
the _crabier_, a brown bird showing a patch of white, like a flag of
truce, when flying, plied its customary quest for edible crabs; a little
reddish bird that seemed to have copied the garb of its human neighbors
flitted here and there across the leisurely moving foreground.
Water-buffaloes, almost one in three of them of the albino type, were
plowing belly-deep in the slime of the paddy-fields or loafing along the
dikes; whole Oriental families of them lay immersed in mud-holes,
completely covered except for the ends of their snouts and their
sagacious little eyes, recalling those tales of Annamese pirates hiding
themselves indefinitely under water by breathing through two reeds
thrust in their nostrils. Now and then one of these ponderous pachyderms
presented his massive head threateningly toward our train, as if about
to attack this new type of animal, but always decided at the last moment
not to risk it and loped off into the flooded paddy-field on either side
with a splash of wet mud.
[Illustration: With each new year the Annamese clear of vegetation the
graves of their ancestors, back to remote generations]
[Illustration: I asked a living caretaker to fill the place of one of
these of stone which guard the entrance to a royal tomb of Annam]
[Illustration: In the heart of Hanoï, northern capital of French
Indo-China, stands a delightfully picturesque lake of goodly dimensions]
[Illustration: Annamese girls hold Sunday morning flower-market at this
corner of the city-girdled lake of Hanoï]
In places the land was so flooded from the recent rains that only
graves, dikes, and the tops of the half-grown rice appeared above the
broad expanse of water—except of course the villages and temples in
their clusters of trees, standing wherever possible on a knoll too rocky
to be cultivated to advantage. Villages close to the road were frequent,
graves still more so, the dead and the living inhabitants both too
numerous. The plain, flat as a billiard-table, the water and the exact
rows of flooded rice shimmering like silk, was dotted with red cattle,
some also plowing, and with redder people of all ages and both sexes, in
various forms of undress, all toiling for their rice in the inundated
fields. More exactly it was all one vast field, divided into all manner
of queer shapes by narrow green ridges six inches above the general
level. Brown men in faded tobacco-brown clothing—still more often women,
who seem to do most of the work—groped about up to their thighs and
biceps in the slime. Some were immersed to the waist; some paddled about
in sampans; others stood in pairs on the dikes and tossed water from one
field to another in a basket of woven bamboo splints hung in the middle
of a long rope, or toiled alone shoveling water from one level to
another with a huge wooden spoon mounted on a framework.
The reddish-brown garments that had begun at the Gate of Annam were
universal in the rural parts of this region. Some of the men in the
fields were naked except for a shirt tied up about the armpits, but the
women were more or less covered, though they are more careless than
those of China about exposing the person. Trousers for women had for the
time being entirely disappeared, though they were to appear again about
Hanoï; a sign, I suppose, of the fast life of cities. Along the road
close beside us women under shoulder-pole loads of anything, everything,
trotting in constant files, like trains of leaf-bearing ants in the
jungle, often left their long, sun-faded, red-brown cloaks swinging
open, and not concealing all that the once white diamond-shaped
breast-cover beneath leaves visible. Some frankly wore only that and the
knee-high skirt, as if this season of hard labor was no time to be
prudish in small matters. Almost all wore those great basket-like hats,
some faded and frayed, some fresh from the markets to and from which
endless streams of them forever jogged. A picturesque figure is the
Tonkinese woman of the people, with her flat umbrella-hat, her loose,
cinnamon-colored, knee-length jacket, her short skirt or very loose thin
black trousers, her clacking wooden sandals in town or her noiseless
straw ones in the country, her black-lacquered teeth bloody with the
betel-juice driveling from the corners of her hideous mouth. Invariably
she has a well built back, a pretty brown in tint, and suggesting to our
society leaders how they too might have perfect forms—merely by carrying
a hundred pounds or so across their shoulders to market several times a
week.
There were stretches where the land was almost bare, the fields
yellow-green, with brownish graves, the foot-hills terraced, some of
them cut up by bush fences but apparently uncultivated now. The
forerunners of the mountain range were without vegetation, except for
clumps of trees, among which the palm was the most common. In other
places, where the demands of husbandry had not killed them, were whole
forests of trees white with blossoms, bamboos that were like smoke
spirals of blond gold, great kapok-trees, without a leaf on their
whitened branches, but bearing immense bunches of flowers that turned
orange by translucence against the blue of the sky. Finally the
mountains came down so close to the sea that there were heaped-up hills
cultivated in patches, though here, unlike China, the ratio between soil
and inhabitants has never been such that anything more than the level
land must necessarily be cultivated.
Here and there on the muddy mat of the fields stood slender triangular
rafts anchored or mired in the slime, raising in the air, with strange
immobile gestures, disjointed arms, like gigantic field-spiders. Most of
them bore on this base a rudimentary house, a roof of woven palm-leaves
closed at the back with an old paddy-winnowing basket, a bundle of straw
inside taking the place of a sleeping-mat. They were the shelters of the
fishermen who come here whenever there is water enough to make it worth
while to plunge into it the big square dip-net at the end of the
balanced pole suspended at the front of the raft. Some were without the
nets now, the bare bamboos on which these are fastened seeming to claw
the air in their eagerness to be of use again. In places there were
scores of these fishing devices, each with its little hut, its net
balanced with stones and raised and lowered by a rope inside the hut, so
that the fisherman does not need to expose his already bronzed hide to
either rain or shine.
Some time in mid-morning, masses of jagged rock, similar to the “Marble
Mountains” of Tourane, began to rise from the plain, growing ever more
numerous. They were identical, I was to find later, with those fantastic
rock isles that dot by thousands the northwestern corner of the Gulf of
Tonkin. This region has indeed been called the terrestrial Bay of Along,
which is no misnomer, for these rocks also once stood out of the sea,
before the earth came to fill in between them the flat plain that flows
as level as the ocean all about them. Some of these gigantic formations,
which were to follow me far down the West River into the Chinese
province of Kwangsi, had patches of hardy vegetation on them; some were
as bare as the forbidding mounds of stacked bayonets they suggested.
They were of most curious shapes, forms as tormented as if the mountains
had been tortured in their youth, some like rocks torn jagged by
uncounted centuries of dashing waves. Now they grew up among the
rice-fields, and continued for hours, fantastic, of every possible
formation, attitude, posture, striking peaks and ridges with
perpendicular, horizontal, diagonal strata, covered with thorny scrub
vegetation wherever it could get a foothold. Some of those queer rock
hills, half covered with plant life, looked like velour fedora hats
carelessly tossed out on the plain; others resembled the slack heaps of
a region of pulsating industry.
All the rest of the day we rode among those mountainous heaps of rock,
those phantoms of stone. Sometimes that afternoon the whole western
horizon was cut off by a capriciously peaked range so hazy as to seem a
gauze curtain, at other times so close that it appeared to hang
threateningly over us. But always there was this vanguard of isolated
rock heaps standing sentinel along the plain. I made the journey between
Vinh and Hanoï three times before I finally left Indo-China, and I never
tired of those eccentric nonchalant piles of stone, on land and sea, of
which the “Marble Mountains” of Tourane are the southernmost
outcroppings and the bandit-riddled cliffs along the Si-kiang near
Nanning the most northern.
The arable land was still more intensively cultivated and inhabited
north of Thanh-hoa, a hot “citadel” of well built structures along
orderly streets, which there is time to go and see if you will miss the
midday meal at the station presided over by an Annamese woman with
unlacquered teeth whose French is suspiciously fluent. Thanh-hoa station
well outside the town is the luncheon-place of all foreign travelers
between Vinh and Hanoï, whether by train or by automobile, and track and
road run so close together much of the distance that acquaintances made
there can be renewed from time to time during the journey. Those in the
motor-cars now and then sped past us within handshaking reach, tossing
over their shoulders gibes at our slowness, though we were not so slow
at that. The towns grew larger, with some more or less European houses,
an old church sometimes bulking above the trees. The mountains gradually
retired to infinity; French appeared in the platform crowds, the Chinese
merchants in our car increased as Jews do in trains nearing our own
metropolis. Crowds were returning from holiday jaunts on this last day
of the official _Têt_ season. French boys, and girls too for that
matter, with nascent mustaches and bare knees, who had never been in
France, were on their way back to school; French and half-caste hunters
filled our car with dogs and guns, with dead rabbits, wild chickens and
ducks, bagfuls and bunches of still less commonplace game. Though we
took on more cars as they were needed, our coach was so overrun with
standees that the mind was unwillingly carried back to the subways of
another continent, while the fourth-class cars were almost as packed and
jammed and chaotic as the soldier-abused trains of China.
Passengers were piled three deep from engine to back platform by the
time we reached Hanoï at six, and I found the city so busy that I had my
first and only ride in a _pousse-choléra_, as the French quite fittingly
call the iron-tired buggy-wheeled rickshaws usually patronized only by
the natives. Certainly I should have had something akin to cholera if
the journey to the post-office for my first mail in a long time and back
to the Hôtel de la Gare had lasted much longer.
CHAPTER XI
HANOÏ AND THE TONKIN
Hanoï, northern capital of French Indo-China, is somewhat larger and
less obviously tropical than its southern rival, Saïgon. It is quite a
city, with expensive modern buildings, electric street-cars—found
nowhere else in the colony—railways in four directions, many
automobiles, both of the taxicab and private limousine variety, several
excellent hotels; in short, it is a little Paris of the tropics, with
some advantages that even Paris does not have. Those hotels were a
constant surprise, though I had seen almost their equal in other parts
of the colony. Not only were they all you could expect of the French
themselves, but their rates were surprisingly reasonable for these
exorbitant times. Though I am getting ahead of my story again, we had
later on two large rooms with bath, electric fan thrown in, excellent
French food and plenty of ice, for three adults and two small children
at 250 piastres a month. True, there were cobwebs visible in the corners
of the high ceiling, bright little lizards paraded the walls, and the
plumbing might have been more strictly up-to-date, but he is an
inexperienced traveler who expects perfection anywhere.
In the very heart of Hanoï, with the principal foreign streets on some
sides of it and the native city on the other, is a large lake,
delightfully blue and restful, bordered by a stone-faced embankment
spaced with huge old trees. Out in it rise two little islands, one
reached by a causeway, the other needing a boat, bearing respectively a
famous old temple and a kind of pagoda. The beautiful, lazily tropical
view across this broad deep lake in the heart of a city is one of the
sights of the Far East, and gives Hanoï quite a distinctive atmosphere.
In a well shaded corner on its shores there is, especially on Sunday
mornings, a flower-market very similar to the one near the Madeleine in
Paris, except that this one lasts the whole year round, and in place of
the _bouquetières_ of Paris boulevards the sellers are black-toothed
_congaïe_ in long cinnamon-brown coats, their swollen lips reddened with
betel-nut, yet quite as commercially skillful and in their Oriental way
just as coquettish as their Parisian counterparts.
Rue Paul Bert, named for a former French commander, is to Hanoï what the
Rue Catinat is to Saïgon. Along it are some very up-to-date government
and private buildings, well stocked stores, and cafés overrunning the
sidewalks. The tram-cars across this lead along the lake and through the
native town to even larger government structures in a great park of the
outskirts, now admittedly the headquarters of the governor-general,
though even he hardly dares openly admit this down in Saïgon. There are
other parks, one with a big stone water-tower that looks like a medieval
dungeon, many streets of good foreign houses, most of them gay in
Buddhist-yellow stucco, a big museum left over from a former exposition,
and all the other adjuncts of French civilization. As in Saïgon, there
is an imposing municipal opera-house, where a company subsidized by the
government, at the cost of the natives, comes to sing each “winter” for
the French residents, not to be outdone by that other Paris on the
opposite side of the earth in any of the cultural things of life just
because their lot happens to be cast so far afield. Most of the year the
municipal theater stands idle, however, with a welcoming air toward
anything that promises to be a relief from the monotony of the
silvered-screen nonsense offered in another part of town. On my second
visit to Hanoï its pretentious façade was adorned with the paper of an
“Oriental Magician,” whose performance was as worthy of the solemn
throng in full dress that filled the house as would have been those of
his rivals elsewhere. The very atrociousness with which he massacred the
bit of French needed to accompany his tricks had about it a tang of the
occult East unable to express itself in our crude Western medium—which
was strange in an Italian who called Newton, Massachusetts, home, and
whose ultra-Oriental wife and chief stage assistant admitted in
unofficial moments that she was born in Kansas.
The rush and swirl of street life in Hanoï was even more nearly
incessant than that of hotter Saïgon. Hawkers, improvised restaurants,
hundreds of rickshaws, most of them thumping their wooden wheels on the
ill-fitting axle, queer carriages, wheelbarrows again for the first time
since leaving China, man-drawn freight-carts, automobiles bellowing
their demanding way through flocks and shoals of pedestrians, all bore
testimony to the importance of the northern capital. Superficially
everything was French, down to the tiny bottles containing those
_pierres à briquet_ required for the gasoline-driven cigarette-lighters
of France, which one saw in the display-windows of native as well as
French shops. The big department-store across the street from our hotel
opened at dawn and closed from eleven until two, like almost everything
else, so that its reassembling force was constantly breaking short both
our night’s sleep and our afternoon siesta. But the red tape of buying
there was as entangling as in France, with the added difficulty that
prices quoted in francs and paid in piastres had to be figured according
to the daily rate of exchange—often to our decided advantage. There
seemed to be a general taste for French bread, and bottles by the
coolie-load were so cheap and plentiful, in contrast to China, that
every possible thing was made out of whole or broken ones—walls, garden
borders, sidewalk edges, playhouses. But there did not seem to be much
Frenchifying of native life except in these external details, and even
with those the millions of the masses have little to do.
Late January in Hanoï was cloudless, almost as hot as in Saïgon, more
than ten degrees farther south, so that even in white again I was none
too comfortably cool. By night it was often too hot to sleep well even
stark naked under a languid electric fan, and one’s dozing was made all
the more fitful by the rattling hubs of the _pousses-choléra_, those
iron-tired, almost springless rickshaws of the masses, and of the larger
coolie-pulled baggage and vegetable carts, that made a hubbub beneath
our windows all night long like the passing of a regiment of
lumber-wagons. Sometimes there might be a lull from about two until four
in the morning, corresponding somewhat to the daytime siesta, but even
then the streets were by no means so nearly deserted as they were around
noonday. Plenty of good rickshaws, with wire wheels on large pneumatic
tires and ample springs, as noiseless and comfortable conveyances as
those of Peking and far better than the ones to be found in Canton and
southern China in general, plied the streets of Hanoï. But they were
used almost exclusively by foreigners, one European each, while the
bone-breakers in which even mandarins were glad to save an Indo-China
nickel served the natives.
The rickshaw-men of Indo-China are so hungry for work that they always
know, whether they understand him or not, where a possible client wishes
to go. A score of times I had the same experience; all foreigners in
Indo-China have had it: a mob of rickshaw pullers, seeing me come out of
a hotel, a shop, a government office, the home of the lone Protestant
missionary couple in Hanoï or of the customs officer turned novelist,
rose up like a battling mob along the sidewalk, each vociferously
offering his little seat on wheels, those behind thumping the others
with their shafts, so common a trick that none of them show anger at it,
as if it were all a part of the day’s work, of the eternal struggle for
rice for their thin bodies and the many dependent upon them. “Rue de la
Soie!” I cry to the uproar. All begin to shriek, to howl in chorus: “Moï
connaître! Moï connaître!” I step into one of the vehicles at random.
The others give a little smirk as of amusement to cover their chagrin,
to save face by pretending that they were not keen for the job after
all, while the lucky fellow speeds away straight before him, as if he
knew the way perfectly. But he goes too straight ahead; the way to an
Asiatic goal cannot be so direct as that, even in this less labyrinthine
part of the Orient. I begin to grow suspicious; at the end of several
full-speed minutes I stop him with “Mais, ce n’est pas—this is not the
way to the Rue de la Soie, is it?” He has no idea what I am saying,
longer experience will show me; all he understands is that I have said
something. So he turns around and flees as rapidly in the direction from
which we have come. I call out again, and though he still does not
understand, he pretends to, and feeling that he must do something to
satisfy me he forks off at random, to the right, to the left, no matter
which, and continues to trot, now and then turning his head to look at
me more or less surreptitiously, like a clever old horse, as if to
gather from my expression some notion of where I wish to go.
All very well for the old resident, who knows his way about town and is
well aware that the two-legged horse between his shafts does not know a
word of the French he so glibly pretends to understand. But it is hard
on the new-comer, who has neither of these advantages, who does not know
one street from another until he can read the signs on their corners,
who speaks no Annamese, particularly so on the naïve American accustomed
to put his faith in the truthfulness of the human kind. After he is lost
completely he appeals perhaps to a native policeman, only to find that
the officer knows even less French, and so, he discovers one by one, do
the natives round about, even those in full European tropical dress. So
that unless he happens to run across a French official or resident,
which is unlikely in many parts of town or anywhere at certain hours, he
is in for it. Perhaps, if he is lucky, he can make his more or less
human horse understand that he wishes to be taken back to the place from
which he started, or to a police station, where at least he can
telephone for assistance, if central happens to have a smattering of
French. Besides, it is no pleasure to drive these poor fellows far, with
their thin chests heaving and their bare brown backs gleaming with
sweat. Yet it is perspiring work to walk; the trams go only along a
fixed route, and automobiles are expensive.
The very next day I would find the same coolie, or one looking exactly
like him, shrieking with the same effrontery, “Moï connaître!” if I
asked him to take me to the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street;
and at the end of the run, wherever that might be, he would stand
holding out both hands cup-fashion in that engaging Annamese manner, as
if he expected a fortune for the job. It is only a poor ruse to earn a
few cents, for these _pousse-pousses_ are the most miserable and the
least astute of the Annamese who serve the French and such few white
foreigners as come to Indo-China. The “boys” who work for us are much
brighter and know far smarter tricks. Certainly they are ingenious, if
somewhat less so than their Chinese counterparts, capable of serving a
ten-course dinner without cook-stove, dishes, or cutlery; but they are
so artful, so cunning and sly for all their outward servility, that even
he who tries to be continually on his guard is sure to be periodically
duped.
Though the streets in their own section of Hanoï bear the names of
French heroes and politicians, the rulers from the West have not
forgotten that it is after all a Tonkinese city. In the native town on
the farther side of the lake—which is nothing like a native town in the
Chinese sense of the word—the streets are also named in French, but not
for the French. Instead, they have preserved as much of the old
atmosphere as is compatible with sanitary requirements, including the
ancient street names. The blue and white metal placards on each corner
bear literal translations of the old Chinese-Tonkinese names for the
trades once, and in many cases still, practised in them—for after the
fashion of the East, those craftsmen or merchants carrying on the same
work gathered in a single street or piece of street, instead of
scattering to various parts of town.
Thus the traveler can wander for interesting hours through the
indigenous quarter intersected by the trolley, into the sweetish-scented
Rue des Sucres, through the Rue des Cercueils, lined with heavy wooden
coffins in the Chinese style—for the wealthy, massive sarcophagi richly
carved, lacquered, gilded, or painted, each bearing the Chinese
character for longevity; for the poor, thin bare boxes. The Rue des
Médicaments is full of the ancient type of medicine-shops, its air
pungent with the odors of dried barks, herbs, deer-horns, roots, plants,
magic powders, tiger bones, talismans, all the somber and mysterious
pharmacopœia of China, everything with which to combat the evil spirits,
influences, fatal breaths of the Black Kingdom. In Furniture Street the
tools of long ago are still in use; crude planes fly; saws sing; a
chisel cuts its way through brass; a center-bit, still run by a string
wound about it, creaks; files set the teeth on edge; chips and shavings
dance madly about among unfinished pieces of furniture on the bare
floors of open booths from which escapes a dry odor of varnish. Here and
beyond are the shops of the inlaid mother-of-pearl things, from tables
to jewel-boxes, for which the Annamese are famous—things to which
steam-heat is so fatal, as the gatherer of souvenirs discovers soon
after arriving home, though they stand the steaming heat of the tropics
well enough. The people of Annam and Tonkin are good carvers and
designers in the old models, but they are plainly not originators; there
is more than a suggestion of the Chinese in all their work. Silk
merchants carry on in the Rue de la Soie as they did centuries ago;
Copper Street, a block long, is strident with workers in copper and
brass; the Street of the Forgers—in the honorable sense of the
word—teems with workers in heavy metals; there is the Street of Rice, of
Veils, of Iron, of Flax, of the Cantonese, a street with shop after shop
full of the gay paper things used in funerals, a street of workers in
lacquer—for the Annamese lacquer other things besides their teeth—and so
on, as long as the hardiest wanderer would care to stroll in such a
climate.
The trolley goes on, through the Rue du Grand Buddha, past the temple of
a great statue that is small compared to similar figures in China,
Mongolia, and Tibet, on along a shore of the big lake, as distinguished
from the _petit lac_ in the heart of the city, to the Village du Papier,
where native paper is made of bamboo shavings or of bark. The brown
outside of the bamboo gives second-grade paper, the white inside
first-quality, and most of it is turned into false money to be burned at
funerals and graves. The raw product is cooked to a pulp and then
pounded in a granite mortar with a stone pestle. Women, standing before
the vats in which the pulp floats, swirl the water and lift out on
bamboo slats the film that form on top, then lay each sheet on a soggy
pile that would seem to defy taking apart after stacks of them have been
pressed to squeeze out the water.
On one side Hanoï is bounded by a wide boulevard on a high dike along
the Red River, which comes down out of China and spreads its fertility
in a long straight streak diagonally clear across Tonkin, a dike not
high enough, however, for sometimes it lets the river into the city.
Here one may muse upon the contrast between East and West while gazing
at the telescopic perspective of the longest bridge in the Orient—as the
French, if not the Tonkinese themselves, will proudly tell you—a bridge
which in one sense is very ugly and in another almost beautiful. Eight
hundred and ten meters from end to end, it carries across the Red River
all the railway trains leaving the city except the daily one to and from
Vinh to the southward; and just then it was being widened to carry
automobiles also, so that no longer would motorists be forced to go down
a steep and often slimy bank to a miserable _bac_.
One train across the bridge follows the Red River northwestward to
Laokay and goes on two days farther into China by a line marvelously
engineered through magnificent mountains, to Yünnanfu, whence the French
have now and then had hopes of pushing their trains clear to the upper
Yang-tze. Across it, too, goes the branch-line to Langson and the “South
Gate” of China, by which I left Tonkin on my way back down the West
River of Kwangsi to Canton, up which the defeated Tai fled centuries ago
before the conquering Chinese. We were soon in uncultivated jungle, as
north of Saïgon, though the undergrowth was much thinner here, with
brown fields and slopes of wild hay now and then, and stations that
consisted of a sign-board and a woodpile. But every little while there
were a few huts and some cultivation. Then came mountains covered with
trees and underbrush, more and more abrupt rocky mountains, and the sun,
so long imperious, suddenly disappeared for good and all the seventeen
days back to Canton. Though the altitude was not great, within an hour
it grew so cold, in contrast to the month behind me, that I changed to
my heaviest clothing, thereby reducing my baggage by half. At the end of
the train a special car carried a lone general, with whom, though I did
not then suspect it, I was to lunch at the _Résidence_ at Langson. As I
alone graced the first-class division of the three-part car, one might
have thought that a simple way of cutting down expenses and paying
French debts would have been to let the general share the compartment
with me, particularly if we were to sit down to the same _déjeuner_. But
the French cannot treat their great men in that simple fashion.
[Illustration: The ladies of Annam lose any claim they have to beauty
when they open their mouths on black-enameled teeth]
[Illustration: Thi-ba, who did her best as guardian of our children, was
equally set against bobbed hair and skirts]
[Illustration: For days one may steam in and out among the fantastic
rock islands of the Bay of Along]
[Illustration: Tropical vegetation sometimes commandeers sustenance on
the rock peaks]
The world had become little more than low mountains punctuated with
forts on rocky eminences when I reached the place from where the little
Peugeot of the _résident_ was to carry me over the border into suddenly
and totally un-Tonkinese scenes. The Foreign Legion serves in these
picturesque strongholds along the Chinese frontier, a picturesque crew
themselves, whom the French find it safer to confine to such isolated
posts than to turn loose on Hanoï and other cities. Though no German
travelers were allowed to land in the colony, there was a whole company
of Germans among these guardians of the frontier, as well as many
Russians and sprinklings of at least a dozen other nationalities,
adventurers, down-and-outers, fugitives from justice—for there is no
extradition from the Foreign Legion—above all men who do not care a
tinker’s damn so long as life remains interesting and as free as
possible from dangerless monotony.
The usual route for those from the outside world who visit Hanoï is by
rail or automobile from Haïphong, or rather, vice versa, also across the
great bridge. There were always the same scenes on these journeys
through Tonkin, but one never seemed to tire of them—broad endless
stretches of rice-fields, women in long copper-colored coats and
grindstone-shaped hats skimming along good roads under shoulder-pole
loads, boys and sometimes girls loafing on the backs of water-buffaloes
grazing among flocks of white ducks, others of these ponderous animals
plowing belly-deep in slime, still others in their glory, with only eyes
and nostrils protruding, beautiful gates into low temples, banyan-trees
of four or five trunks, with little vases of lime and often a few tombs
under them, villages of huts among the feathery bamboo groves, a tomb
with a flat-topped tree over it, a boat with a sail moving through a
rice-field, though no waterway is visible, two women watering a field by
means of a basket between them in the middle of a long rope, graves of
different shapes dotting the dead-level country near-by, cactus hedges,
almost naked countrymen washing their legs beside the track, a girl
toiling with a hoe almost as big as she, a man who owns no buffalo
plowing in deep water with his cow, a little hut thatched with straw
surrounded by a grove of very green trees, still larger groves in the
distance with white buildings peeping out of them, a beautiful tree
spread like an open umbrella, its branches almost touching the ground,
roofs coyly curling up their corners, still another apparatus, like a
huge corn-popper hung on three poles, for lifting water from one field
to another, sometimes a big wooden spoon manipulated by one man, still
more likely by one woman, two pagoda-shaped pillars at the entrance to a
tomb, implying that the deceased was a scholar if not a gentleman, a
coolie laboriously making his way through the rice-fields by a dike-top
path not wide enough for the rickshaw he is dragging behind him, other
such vehicles with two, even three people in them, scampering across the
flat country behind small runners, dim mountains forever in the
distance—and there ahead lies Haïphong, an important city and port now,
the first houses of which sprang up about the barracks of the French
cantonment in the days when France and China disagreed as to the
“protection” of Tonkin.
I had heard so much of the Bay of Along among the French colonials,
confirmed by what I had seen of the terrestrial part of it from Tourane
to Nanning, that I realized the foolishness of leaving Indo-China
without spending a few days cruising about it. That would have been
impossible, there being no regular service and I still unable, for all
my more than a quarter century of toil, to buy a yacht or even charter a
steamer, if the French authorities had not been so proud of their famous
bay that they would not hear of my turning my back on the Far East until
I had given them my unbiased opinion of it. So they lent us the _Tuyen
Quang_, a comfortable floating chalet in the customs service, with a
picturesque Corsican captain whose French outdid our own in foreign
accent. I say “us,” for this time I took along not only the family I had
brought from Canton but Thi-ba, lacquer-toothed Tonkinese nurse-maid of
our children.
We steamed away one sunny morning before the heat and humidity became
unbearable, down the river by which steamers from China and the rest of
the outside world come to Haïphong, and within two or three hours found
ourselves in the midst of the justly famed, or rather, the most unjustly
little known, fairy-land of Along. It was like roaming among
mountain-tops at sea. The rock formations were unlimited, fantastic,
incredible—round rocks springing sheer out of the bluest sea on earth,
rocks like mushrooms, the waves having worn them away about the base
until they seemed to stand on stems, rocks that looked as if they were
floating, or were upheld by pedestals incredibly small for such massive
things, rock islands of the most fantastic shapes to which islands can
aspire, some with holes washed clear through them, some looking
supernatural where gashes of white rock met the black shadows thrown by
them, cliffs, precipices, palisades, with vertical, horizontal,
diagonal, zigzag strata—the sheerness was so remarkable that we could
scrape the sides of them with our large steamer and be in so little
danger of striking the bottom that the sailors were not even told to
heave the sounding-lead.
How many thousands of these rocky islands there are floating on the blue
waters of the Bay of Along only the architect of the universe knows; the
human mind could not count them. Yet never were there two of the same
shape. With every hundred yards forward we found ourselves looking
through another narrow vista upon row after row of pointed rocks, always
varying in size and form, in distance and color, new ones with every new
opening, though one would have thought Nature had already rung all the
changes possible, used all the models and molds in her factory. Each was
of some unique configuration we had never seen before, as if they were
all parties to a masked ball every member of which had succeeded in
getting himself up in some novel way to surprise and delight the
beholder. Morning, noonday, or evening, when the sun rose or when it
set, great vistas of them stretched as far as the most piercing eye
could see in any direction we chose to look. Calcareous rocks washed
down during the centuries to the hard basis of which they were made,
broken by weather, water, and time, with windows, arches, doorways, now
a tree standing forth in silhouette in one of these, here an island
depicting a whole cock, from comb to tail, another looking like a group
of black monkeys made of stone, some veritable mountains of stone slabs
laid together like huge bricks, some with tiny crescent beaches, whole
horizons of fantastic peaks, monuments of every possible form—and
beyond, more vistas of heaped-up rock through every narrow opening.
Magnificent as they were, they seemed at times rather pathetic too,
standing, floating, here for so many centuries in their unrivaled
beauty, yet unknown to almost all the world that prizes so highly many a
vastly inferior scene, unknown even to most of that European nation to
whom they “belong.” An endless wilderness of rocks so poignantly
beautiful in their stillness, their solemn isolation, their majesty....
The far famed Inland Sea of Japan hardly seems worthy of a place on the
same hemisphere.
Many of those steeple-pointed islands are as bare as the sea itself, but
vegetation covers them wherever it can grow, so that some are green as a
spring meadow. On the larger and less impressive ones there was
sometimes a complete cover of bush, with plenty of small game, the
captain said, where they are not too sheer. But ordinary trees cannot
get foothold on most of those gigantic needles; only some contorted
cypresses, intertwisted lianas, represent the forest, wild pineapple
here and there humping its wicked backs. On one of them is a little
cemetery of Frenchmen who died of fever or dysentery far from their
native land.
There are grottoes and tunnels in many of these floating mountain-tops.
We took a life-boat one afternoon nearly two miles through one of them.
It was dark as a Paris sewer, the bottom, clearly seen beneath a
flickering torch, covered with millions of oysters half an inch thick
that recalled the sand-dollars on the coast of Maine. The grottoes, too,
were reached by small boat, then by climbing steep stairways of stones
roughly piled up or carved in the rock. The greatest of these led first
into a sort of reception-hall, beyond which opened a narrow tortuous
corridor, its walls perpetually sweating. Though two solemn Annamese
sailors with sizzling torches of waste or rags in an iron cage at the
end of a pole, on which they occasionally poured thick oil, preceded us,
we advanced by feeling with our fingers, the smoke pricking our eyes and
suffocating us, our elbows tight against our sides. Then suddenly at a
turn came the sight that gives this cave its name of Grotte de la
Surprise. A vast amphitheater of tumbled rocks, into which streaks of
daylight fell as sheer as at the bottom of a crater, yawned at our feet.
The light of the torches wavered capriciously on rock walls striped with
green, with purple, with violet, a setting and lighting as fantastic as
that of any Broadway musical review. Stalactites flowed down from the
great vaulted roof like a cataract of stone, nay, of pure marble,
stalagmites large as century-old tree-trunks climbing to meet them, some
already forming great pillars that gave the place the aspect of a mighty
cathedral. Misty shafts of light played on pulpits carved by nature, on
pillars almost as symmetrical as man could have fashioned, on great
shimmering heaps of stone with the same semi-glossy sheen one sees on
pure-camphor piles in Formosa. Certain columns seemed to be formed of
millions of shells piled up as if by some prehuman, pigmy bricklayers;
others were like the trunks of massive trees, their stone roots twisting
themselves into the stone soil like those searching for nourishment
among the ruins of Angkor. Here hung a colossal stone beard, there a
marble veil with a gleaming white fringe; in places the cold water
dripping forever down through the centuries had made stone things that
looked like mammoth frogs, a monkey, a turtle with a scaly back; in
certain vistas the grotto suggested the interior of a vast tobacco-barn
in the drying-season. Maidenhair ferns had crept in as far as they
dared; now and then, doubled, quadrupled, by the echo, sounded the
piercing cry of a bird of which we saw nothing, except the gigantic
shadow of its wings.
This endless forest of floating stone islands is a fisherman’s paradise.
Each evening and sometimes oftener my wife and I dived into the
incredibly blue sea—though the Corsican captain, to say nothing of the
Annamese crew, evidently thought us mad—and saw between us and the
bottom, hundreds of feet down yet seeming so near that we felt in danger
of striking our heads, fish of every kind and color, pinkish fish of the
tint of the albino water-buffalo, red, purple, green, white fish.
Natives in henna brown peered forth from some of the smaller grottoes;
more of them were at home in their fishing-boats, square golden-brown
sails of which often broke the deep blue surface. Whole clans of
fisher-folk spawn, live, and die among these calcareous rocks, satisfied
to leave this, their native land, only now and then to sell their fish
and buy the few things they need that cannot be found here among these
clustered sea-bound spires. Our steamer now and then called in, by three
short blasts of the whistle, all the sampans and sailing-craft within
hearing, and examined their papers. Finding these in order, and neither
opium nor girls in their holds, we bought fish and sea-monsters of them
for the next Parisian dinner and parted, outwardly at least, friends. It
seems that with its thousands of hiding-places for malefactors, the Bay
of Along has been notorious for two crimes: the smuggling in of Chinese
opium, and the smuggling out of Annamese girls. Old women still lure
girls away and deliver them somewhere in the bay to Chinese junks, which
sell them in the open market farther east. Enticed, drugged, kidnapped,
hidden among the islands and in the grottoes, these girls have supplied
a trade between wicked Annamese and Chinese men of the pirate family
that has flourished for centuries, and even the French have not yet been
able to do away with it entirely. When pursuit grows too warm the
miscreants slit open the bellies of the girls so that they will sink
quickly, and by the time the pursuers overhaul them all traces of blood
may have disappeared in the blue waters.
Three heavenly days we cruised about the Bay of Along in our private
yacht, and we might have gone on for thirty and found something new
every hour among the floating rocks of every shape stretching clear to
the Kwangtung coast of China. The French authorities, and certainly the
Corsican captain, did not seem to care how long we stayed. But all
things must have an end. We turned back much against our will, and by
noonday there was steaming hot Haïphong in the offing again.
CHAPTER XII
THE FRENCH IN INDO-CHINA
Much as we all hate to be fed plain knowledge, preferring our learning
disguised with the sauce of entertainment, like castor-oil in
orange-juice, I fear we must taste a few of the bitter spots in the
history of Indo-China before we can properly savor the present position
of France in her greatest Far Eastern possession.
All the land from Tonkin to Cochinchina was conquered and colonized by
the Chinese more than two centuries before the beginning of the
so-called Christian era. From that time China ruled the region off and
on; it was in fact five times a Chinese colony. Once, shortly before
Christ, a woman of Annam governed for three years, but after another
brief hiatus or two China held unbroken sway from the third to the tenth
century, until the revolution of 968 A.D. During that millennium Annam
took on a complete Chinese culture, and has kept most of it down to this
day. Then there were various native dynasties until 1407, when, under
the Ming, China again ruled until 1428. Even after that, though there
was no interference from Peking, and the Manchus held Tonkin only in
name, the people of the Eminent South, like Siam, Burma, and other
former dependencies, paid a modest tribute to the northern emperor, as
the easiest way out of risking more fighting. Koang-de, the Annamese Son
of Heaven, was still considered a vassal of the emperor of China—the
occupants of the throne at Hué are in fact still proud to claim descent
from the Chinese imperial family of before the days of the pigtailed
Manchus. Toward the end of Chinese domination the Annamese could
function even in China proper as mandarins, generals, and still higher
officials, so that the line between the two peoples was almost
obliterated.
In the mess that followed the Manchu conquest of China, a Tonkinese
fisherman founded a new dynasty, which ruled at Hanoï until the end of
the eighteenth century. Then, the country having naturally broken in two
in the middle, a rebellion overthrew the ruling Nguyen family of the
south and the Tai might have taken the country in hand, had there not
arisen that epic hero among the Annamese, Nguyen-anh, who in 1802 took
the name of Gia-long. This founder of the present dynasty united under
one rule what are to-day three of the five divisions of
Indo-China—Annam, Tonkin, and Cochinchina—establishing his capital at
Hué, being the first to group under the jade scepter everything from the
frontiers of China to the banks of the Mekong.
But his victory was not so complete or so simply won as this may sound,
and strictly speaking he did not rule as master, for he had to pay for
calling in outside help. As usual it was a squabble between native
factions that gave the less naïve Europeans their chance. Though they
had already begun to visit these shores in the way of commerce during
the sixteenth century, the French first had official contact with Annam
in 1787, when the future Gia-long was fighting to recover the position
of his family. Finding himself, in his war with the Tai and three
brother usurpers, in imminent danger of being driven out of his native
land, he ill-advisedly followed the suggestion of the French bishop of
Adran and sent an embassy to France asking for protection. He got it,
with a vengeance. Also the wise bishop, who thought this a fine chance
to counterbalance the growing political power of England in India, got a
splendid tomb and a lot of Indo-Chinese streets named after him. Fearing
perhaps that the embassy would not put things strongly enough, the
bishop went to France in person and got promise of help from Louis XVI,
or whoever ruled in his name. Before the assistance was delivered,
however, Gia-long-to-be had to make a treaty with Louis promising to
cede to France the islands of Touron and Poulo Condore off the coast of
Cochinchina and give the French a concession at Tourane. Then the French
sent troops from Pondicherry and helped Nguyen-anh to overthrow his
enemies and to acquire by 1801 sway over all the present Indo-China
except Cambodia and the Laos, in short to become Gia-long the Great.
Though Gia-long died in 1820 without perhaps suspecting the truth, this
opening wedge eventually led to the establishment of French authority
over all Indo-China. But the successors of Gia-long showed themselves
“very ungrateful” to the French. His immediate successor, his natural
son Minh-mang, broke off with Europe in order to get the support of
China, and after considerable rough work, including the massacring of
many native Christians, died by falling off a horse, a failing he seemed
to have in common with some modern princes, leaving behind him
seventy-one children, of whom forty-nine were sons—not a bad record for
a man who died young. The choice among these must have been difficult,
and it does not seem to have been particularly successful, for the son
who followed him under the name of Thieu-tri left no great fame behind
him. But then came Tu-duc, who massacred many more native Christians and
their European missionaries. Though they probably wanted to be martyrs
anyway, the killing of the ecclesiastics was made the pretext for the
declaring of war. A Franco-Spanish squadron took Touron and finally
Saïgon; Tourane was seized by the French; Tu-duc, besieged in his own
capital at Hué, gave up all Saïgon Province; and by 1867 all lower
Cochinchina had passed into the possession of France and became the
French colony it has remained ever since.
Cambodia was already considered a protectorate of France; for Norodom,
father of the present octogenarian king, Sisowath, had for better or for
worse placed his country under the protection of the French in 1863. The
French gradually crowded upon the Chinese in upper Tonkin, to make up
for the British advance in Burma, and there was long and sometimes
severe fighting, with “some splendid feats at arms,” according to French
historians. There was an opposition or anti-imperialistic party in
France, but as usual this minor opinion was crowded into the background.
This time the French intrenched themselves in the citadel of Hué and put
on the throne a new emperor, the old one fleeing among the Moï after
massacring several thousand more native Christians. The war for the
possession of Tonkin lasted a long time. In 1873 Dupuis and a hundred
French soldiers captured Hanoï, though it was the Portuguese and Dutch
who had long had “factories” in the rich delta of the Red River; and
China, which had given her Tonkinese vassals no more assistance than she
did the Burmese against the British, was at length forced to acknowledge
all Tonkin to be under the “protection” of France. Thus by 1885 the
whole of present-day Indo-China, from end to end and from Siam to the
China Sea, a country about the size of Texas, therefore larger than
France, was consolidated under French rule; except that the Angkor
region was added later. Plainly speaking, though the French talk of
“treaties” as if an equal sovereign people had requested them to take
over the task of governing, not only Cochinchina but all Indo-China was
stolen bit by bit as a result of the simplicity of Gia-long and the
killing of those French missionaries in 1858. Bright little pupils will
recall that the French had similar schemes afoot in Mexico at the very
time they were fighting for Saïgon, and in Asia one realizes that the
Monroe Doctrine has certainly changed the face of America from what it
might have been.
The French conquest of Indo-China, some of it by trickery and some of
it, notably the Tonkin, by real warfare, is merely a part of Western
covetousness in the Orient, not the individual sin of an individual
nation. We can condemn that Western aggression without losing the right
to give full praise to the French soldiers who did the dirty work, just
as we can condemn modern industrial exploitation without charging
present conditions in Indo-China particularly to France. Once we grant
the righteousness of “imperialism,” of the conquering “for their own
good” of colored races by the white, once we accept that trite tricky
phrase of imperialists, “the white man’s burden,” any possible charge
against the French is quashed. It is the old question: Is it good or is
it bad for white nations to take over weaker peoples who cannot govern
themselves well in our sense of the word—and who are so well worth
exploiting? Is it better to be chaotic, “backward,” but independent, or
modern and exploited? Is it better for a country even as civilized as
France to take hold of these poorly governed races, these inefficient
countries, and make them settle down to business and behave themselves,
even if the “protector” does pay himself well for the trouble? Great
minds set in cement will tell you, but I cannot; I find my judgment
depending on the color of the day, the way I have slept, my breakfast,
the mail I have received; it is a perpetual struggle between my
reflected and my indignant self. And of course each individual will
condemn or praise this modern way of acquiring colonies that are not
called colonies, of subjecting people who are not admittedly subjected,
according to his background, his environment, his wealth, and the job he
holds, perhaps also to the breakfast he has eaten.
At any rate exploitation is visibly the _raison d’être_ of the French in
Indo-China, though the Indo-Chinese are no more exploited than are the
great mass of our own people at home by those few who have the
strangle-hold in industrial matters, and by no means so much as are the
people of “independent” China by their own legal and bandit rulers. One
of the trump-cards in this modern game of colonial exploitation is a
tariff. There are swarms of customs officials whose duty it is to see
that nothing gets into or out of Indo-China—or even through it, for that
matter—without paying heavy charges, swarms of Frenchmen with native
assistants who examine every spool of thread that comes in from anywhere
except France, so that it takes all day to get a few dollars’ worth of
“foreign” goods through the customs. Things from France pay no duties,
submit to no formalities, any more than the French need passports or
lose time in landing. But all others, whether persons or things, are put
to trouble and expense. A box of cigars selling for three dollars in
China costs seven dollars in Indo-China, though its Philippine place of
origin is as near one country as the other. Every kind of French drink
is available, but no others; even British whisky can be had only if it
is smuggled in. Every box unloaded from the average ship comes from
France; everything not of local origin in the average shop is French,
even those things which France produces much more poorly and much more
expensively than other lands. A Ford coming direct to Indo-China pays 45
per cent duty—125 per cent if it comes indirectly—and sells for about
eighteen hundred piastres, or more than nine hundred dollars gold. The
little cars for which the French are noted cost from thirteen to fifteen
thousand francs, so that it depends on the exchange of the day which car
you can afford. There are not only import but export duties on
everything, even paddy, or unhulled rice, nay, a duty even on the
gunny-sacks it goes out in. More than that; everything merely passing
through Indo-China, as the shortest or most convenient route between two
parts of China, is opened, carefully examined, and assessed, though in
this case the charges are called “transit dues.” Indeed, the more
toothsome things from foreign lands are not infrequently consumed by the
examiners and the empty cans sent on to the consignees.
Does all this money, paid in the end by the inhabitants thereof, go to
the “protected” country? You have three guesses, if so many are needed.
_La Métropole_, that is, France, gets real returns from its Far-Eastern
possession; it is no altruistic “white man’s burden” the French are
carrying there. Every year Indo-China sends France a check for about
twenty million piastres. That nice little filial Christmas present of
ten million dollars comes mainly from the _douane_ and _régie_, that is,
the customs and the tobacco, opium, and other government monopolies.
Besides this the “protected” people pay the cost of military occupation,
not to mention many millions more in official salaries and the like.
But what France officially gets out of Indo-China is a mere drop in the
bucket compared to what Frenchmen get by individual exploitation of a
land where they have special privilege. French commerce has a virtual
monopoly in almost anything except rice and betel-nut. There is plenty
of iron, innumerable other natural resources, but the French encourage
no modern industries in the colony, because they prefer to import from
France the products of their own factories, so that after all it is the
French capitalists and workmen at home who are “protected.” Take sugar,
for instance; they export the crude at low and import the refined at
high prices rather than help the natives to have their own refineries.
Perhaps the best example of modern industrial exploitation of a
“protected” people is the coal-mines in the northeastern corner of the
Tonkin, which we visited on the second of those never-to-be-forgotten
days in the Bay of Along.
The mines of Campha or Hongay, on the northern shore of that great
wilderness of floating rocks, are open cuts, like those of the Japanese
at Fushun near Mukden, or the iron-mines of Daiquirí in the mountains of
eastern Cuba. There is no flaunting of the dreaded earth-dragon by
digging down into the earth. Black terraces, mammoth stairways, are
piled up the reddish hillsides, great amphitheaters cut in the hills,
their walls so smooth and so sheer that one might think the coal was cut
in huge slices, as from a gigantic cake. This precious region was
discovered by a French forest-ranger wandering the woods along this
coast no longer ago than 1905 and 1907. To-day the cuts are so large
that the natives pickaxing on the slopes look like ants on gigantic
black stadiums scaling the heavens. The roads through them lead from one
grade to another, on and on, cutting through the villages, following the
edge of the bay that is sprinkled much farther than the eye can see with
those fantastic protruding rocky mountain peaks.
When we visited Campha, the black quarries swarmed with workmen, clothed
in once reddish-brown cloth, now so dirty that they blended into the
background against which they toiled. According to the mine officials
and foremen these Annamese coolies are very lazy miners; certainly they
seemed unwilling, after the manner of slaves, as if they were asking
themselves who is benefiting by all this hard labor to get out of the
hillsides the black stuff that is of no use to them. In fact the
atmosphere of Annam in general is unwillingness, when working for
Europeans, in antithesis to that of China. These beings dressed in sooty
rags, these men wielding pickaxes with thin arms, have little to gain by
their grueling labor under an imperious sun. There were women on the
slopes also, their mouths bleeding with the sustaining and comforting
betel-juice, and behind the coal-wagons _nhos_ ten years old, their worn
faces under the coal-dust seeming forty, bent double their gaunt little
bodies, half covered with black rags and tatters, their bare feet
covered with a hard sole of the dust in which they forever trot for ten
or fifteen cents a day.
We were carried in chairs and on horses up the slopes from where the
cars of coal are loaded into barges with little houses at the stem, a
kind of Paris green scattered over the top of the coal to keep the
workmen from stealing a little of it to sell. We went so high that we
could look down not only upon all the town below, but across a great
stretch of the blue rock-strewn sea. There was not a temple or pagoda in
the native town, not a flower, not a single bamboo hedge before the
native houses, no more slim straight arec-trees topped by a parasol of
leaves, no smoking incense, but belching chimneys, and pickaxes. Instead
of the pastoral quiet of other Tonkinese villages there was a great
roaring as of a waterfall, as of some great battle—the noise of the
sifters. In contrast to this super-civilization there are wild animals
in the surrounding bush; tigers come now and then to eat a coolie, when
old age makes them more cunning than swift and strong, for they do not
need much strength to carry off a mere human being.
But soon the 10.30 whistle blew, halting the work until two in the
afternoon, and we came down for the _apéritif_ in one of the houses
where the French live in the comfort they will not be denied even in the
wilderness—and where even the women could not understand why my wife and
mother, why our not yet four-year-old son for that matter, would not
join them in a cocktail.
The hardest job at the mines is to get workmen, to bribe coolies to work
here in the bush, and to keep them from running away again. Everything
has been tried, and nothing works. As soon as the Tonkinese has a few
piastres in his substitute for a purse he leaves the mines and returns
to his rice-fields—and who can blame him? At the time of _Têt_, which
also is nearing the time of harvest, all wish to escape to their
ancestral villages again, and then especially they run away by the
thousands. Every ruse and stratagem is tried, for the massed overseers
and guards do not suffice. For instance, wages are paid only for the
last fortnight of the preceding month, so that the workmen must either
remain or lose many days of toil by running away. In order that they
shall not starve, however, and out of pure philanthropy as it were, the
company gives those who have worked well a piastre every ten days, which
they call “making an advance.” Another scheme to hold them is to build a
big covered market, a movie booth. Not long ago one bright administrator
discovered a still better plan. Missionaries installed at the mines
would keep there at least the Catholics, he thought. So an Annamese
father of the Spanish missions was imported and a little church
constructed for him, and the new parish already has some seven hundred
coolies whom the confessional and a fear of future damnation keep from
running away.
Sometimes, on the other hand, when floods carry away the dikes of the
Red River, devastating the rice-fields so that famine settles down upon
the delta, the _nha-qués_ flock to the coal-fields by whole villages, to
find the rice they cannot get at home, and then there are as many as
twenty thousand coolies dotting the great black stadiums, and a good
year for the mine syndicate. As each new mine opens, at every new
terrace begun, a Chinese man comes to set up his four planks and lay out
his bowls of rice and provisions, often before a single shovel-stroke
has been struck, as if he smelled profits from afar as the vulture
smells carrion. He will be rich, this fat, physically flabby fellow with
his freshly shaven head and his smooth, imperturbably smiling face, from
the profits garnered from their wages, while the new coolies are still
only poor ragged and dirty miners, longing to run away.
The coolies of Campha and Hongay are of no importance to the court at
Hué, and not only is there no mandarin to rule over them, but not even a
French functionary, except a gendarme who pompously decorates himself
with the title of commissary. The real master is the mine; the mere
people are nothing; as in all this modern world of industry property is
everything, human life a mere pawn. The syndicate owns everything for
many miles round about: the fields, the woods, the houses, the roads,
the railways that carry the coal down to their jetties, the barges, the
whole port, even the church with the sharp steeple, everything from the
bowels of the earth to the slightest sprig of grass that may force its
way through the coal-dust. If a village stands in the way of a new mine,
so much the worse for it; down it comes; and when the syndicate
constructs a new one farther on each native is made to pay part of the
cost of his new house, so that he will be bound to the soil like a serf.
The company is self-sufficient too; it produces everything it needs,
from its tools to the rice for its coolies; and it is rich enough to be
beyond the dreams of avarice, were there any such locality. The
sixty-four thousand shares of stock offered at sixteen million francs a
few years ago are to-day worth more than half a billion. The net profits
the year before my visit were more than the total capitalization, not
counting a twenty-million-piastre reserve.
One might conclude that at least this kingdom of coal brings its tribute
to Indo-China, to debt-ridden France. Not at all; it does not even
furnish the colony the coal it needs. Almost all of it goes to Japan,
which pays well. Saïgon and Hanoï demand coal in vain; such factories as
there are have to send their orders to Cardiff, and the railroads fire
with wood, devastating the forests. After the fashion of modern
industrialism, that present-day descendant of feudal tyranny, unknown
stockholders suck the marrow from the country, dividing the profits
among themselves, and leave nothing either for the colony or for France.
As in France, the rich run away with the money that should be paid in
taxes and leave “nothing but the hatred of thousands of coolies.”
As in these coal-fields, so it is with most rich enterprises in
Indo-China; many a scandalous fortune has been created there since 1914,
yet the public treasury takes no account of them. Not only is there no
tax on war profits but not even an income tax. For the laws of France do
not apply, and the law of the colony is to exploit it and the people
thereof, not the Frenchmen who make their fortunes there. Nowhere in the
world perhaps are war-profiteers more favored than in this rich French
protectorate, for they can keep everything for themselves, down to the
last piastre. “They are as miserly with their gold as they were with
their blood when the war was on,” a French traveler bitterly puts it,
adding that all those enthusiastic young men who conquered Tonkin gained
for their country were the swollen profits accruing to the holders of
stock in such things as the mines of Hongay. It is a misfortune that the
people liberated by France from the tyranny of their mandarins, he goes
on, fall now into the power of these new tyrants; bad, because little
grains of misery make a mighty ocean of revolt, and just over the
frontier of China there are something like half a billion yellow men who
are gradually waking up. “For the true mandarins of to-day are no longer
those lordlings in yellow robes and silk tunics, so proud of their long
overdue finger-nails, whom we saw bumping their heads on the palace
pavements at Hué, but negotiators and financiers, adventurers who now
carry no rifles on their shoulders but operate far from the jungle, by
thrusts of the stock exchange.”
As we have already descended to statistics, let me go on to say that
Indo-China is now credited with about 20,000,000 inhabitants, of whom
two thirds are Annamese, 1,300,000 Cambodians, more than 1,000,000
Laosians, and half a million aborigines of various races. To be still
more statistical, the latest census, now some years old, gave the total
population as 18,983,203, of whom 16,256 were French and 1191
“foreigners.” Most of the French and nearly all the “foreigners”—that
is, non-French Caucasians—are in Cochinchina and Tonkin, more
specifically in Saïgon and Hanoï. To-day there are some 30,000 Chinese
and other alien Asiatics not included in the round figures above; and
for the 18,000 Europeans, more than 90 per cent of them French, there
are fully 40,000 Eurasians!
Many French colonials think it would be better to abolish the pretense
of “protectorates” and really rule the whole country in name as well as
in fact, make it all a colony, like Cochinchina, in order to do away
with the sleek practices of the native mandarins and other
functionaries, particularly in Annam. Either, they say, let us have a
direct and undisguised French administration or return to a real
protectorate, with kings and emperors who would not feel themselves
annihilated, who would have the impression of being guided, counseled,
even directed, but never dominated. On the other hand the French way of
ruling through native chiefs pushed along by Europeans is a good system,
and it is hard to see how native go-betweens of some sort could be done
away with entirely.
For the French officials, particularly those higher up, being French as
well as officials, rarely know any other language than their own; and
therein lies perhaps their gravest fault. For they and those they rule
over are at the mercy of any scamp who poses as an interpreter. Some
French functionaries get official credit for knowing one of the native
languages, but they seldom speak enough of it to get along in court, for
example, without calling in the _interprète_. Just as there is a
pidgin-English along the China coast, there is in Indo-China a
pidgin-French, using only the infinitive of verbs and always the _toi_
form, so that “Toi connaître?” takes the place of “Savez-vous?” and so
on, irrespective of tense or gender. It is an amusing tongue, which
“boys” probably find as queer and as hard to learn as we do their
quarrelsome Annamese. As in the case of foreigners who become so fluent
in the bastard English of Chinese treaty-ports, it would require little
more effort to acquire a speaking knowledge of the native tongue.
Individually the French officials of Indo-China are agreeable gentlemen,
at least on a par with their counterparts in other white man’s colonies.
But the government atmosphere is much like that of old Spain: no one
seems to come out for his health or primarily for the benefit of the
natives. While there is not the “squeeze” of China or the graft of
Tammany, still there are ways of turning a politician’s honest penny. It
is less dishonesty, however, that constitutes the official flaw than
lack of ardent personal interest in the task in hand. “The soul of the
missionary and the educator is what the ‘protectors’ of such a people
should bring to their task,” a French _publiciste_ asserts. “But few
officials will accept the sacrifice of wasting any more time and energy
than necessary in a place reputed inadequate to their merits. The only
thought of the average French colonial official seems to be to ‘make a
hit’ with his superiors, for his own benefit and advancement, and get
back to the fleshpots of Paris as soon as possible. He has no ardor, no
initiative; the ethnic and social milieu being closed to him, his
business becomes mere routine; he does everything with only one thought
in mind—his career.”
The French have of course done much good for Indo-China. They have
improved the cities, planted parks, opened ports, built roads such as
the Far East had never seen before; and some one would certainly exploit
the people if the French did not; their position is decidedly preferable
to the anarchy over the Chinese border. But the guardians pay themselves
well for their services. The government departments are greatly
over-staffed; even the hurried traveler gets the impression that the
colony is a refuge for deserving wards of the government who cannot be
accommodated at home. The Council meets once a year in Hanoï and once in
Saïgon, which among other things gives a change of scene, a “winter” and
a “summer” capital, with lots of travel pay for mileage between them.
The higher officials in particular are shifted often from one division
of the country to another, whereas there should be two quite distinct
sets of rulers, dividing the colony on ethnographic lines; for Cambodia
is as different from Tonkin as Morocco is from Réunion.
The majority of the French officials in Indo-China are from the Midi,
like most of her colonials. The speech of many of them sounds almost
Italian, to say nothing of that of the Corsican river-captains and the
like, who speak with a genuine foreign accent. This is natural, the Midi
being nearer the sea and having few industries to absorb its ambitious
sons. Yet they do not love the tropics. Most of them are frankly bored
with life in this distant possession and, outside their routine tasks,
are interested mainly in café pleasures and the joys of feminine
society. There are some exceptions, of course, some who do their
gymnastics every morning and some who become mighty hunters before the
Moï. Now and then a scholarly fellow takes advantage of his ethnographic
opportunities. But on the whole there is little unnecessary mingling
with the natives, little outdoor life, except under café awnings, few
excursions, fewer _piqueniques_ than one would expect in a land of good
roads to delightful places and automobiles in which to reach them. Lest
I be accused of pessimism, let us listen to a critic of their own
nationality:
The Frenchman imports into the Orient the immortal principles of
absinthe and café gatherings, as the German does his beer and the
Englishman his sports. Individualists, rarely knowing any modern
language except our own, we have therefore a national selfsufficiency
and a suggestion of provincialism, which betray themselves the moment
we escape from the superficial cosmopolitanism of Paris—of a part of
Paris and a certain stratum of Paris at that. Café habits and the
customs of the politician, narrow-mindedness and prejudice,
disparagement, the faults of individualism, give our colonial
officials an incapacity for agreement and of organized collaboration,
a tendency to ignore realities, and to pay themselves with words. All
the colonial official’s thoughts seem to be turned toward his past,
toward the _Métropole_; the society he has left behind still obsesses
him. He learns nothing, and he can teach nothing. The discouraging
reality that surrounds him quenches his eagerness to know. How often
that has been impressed upon me when I wished to document myself on
Indo-Chinese conditions! To most Frenchmen the delightful landscapes
of Annam, the artistic tombs of Hué, the noble adaptation of a temple
to its site, all that remains dead-letter. Most of them are as
disdainful of the ancient people they have come to rule over as was
the famous governor, Maurice Long, who did not know a word of the
language, of the history of the country he ruled, and forged for
himself the most erroneous, even the most pernicious impressions of
its future destiny.
An old British captain, sailing the Far East for the past forty years,
and familiar with most British colonies, insisted that, unlike his own
people, the French do not coddle the natives of their possessions.
England, he asserted, caters to the natives, gives them education and
too much self-rule, and is all the more despised for it. Asiatics do not
understand kindness and sympathy; therefore the French are respected.
You must not mix sentiment with the ruling of inferior races, or for
that matter of any other subject races, he went on; “for instance, you
do not seem to be having an entirely happy time in the Philippines.” The
French themselves assert that there is more liberty under their form of
colonial rule than under that of the British. I rather doubt it. Though
the outward French attitude of equality irrespective of race or color
may sometimes give that impression, in the end liberty in French and
British colonies probably sums up to about the same total.
It is true that the color-line is less tangible in Indo-China than in
American or British colonies. French boys are deferential and even
obedient to half-breeds, even to well dressed natives, such as an
American or English boy brought up in a colony would scorn to glance at.
Native and Eurasian boys of Indo-China act toward white boys as if they
quite expected to be accepted as their equals, though that attitude does
not exactly hold among adults. This freedom of intercourse has its good
points—and certainly its bad. Yet the Frenchman is at heart no democrat;
the line of cleavage is social rather than racial. There is every
stratum of French society in Hanoï, from the haughty governor-general to
the conscripts from manure-heap villages in rural France, and the common
soldier is closer to the native rank and file than he is to the high
officials of his own race, the governor-general socially more allied to
high-class natives than to his own clerks and troopers. Yet on the whole
it is better to be white. At the _guignol_ near the tiger-cage in the
big park about the palaces of the governor-general the Annamese
policeman raps on the head native children who do not behave, but is
very deferential to the white children who sit elbow to elbow with them.
On the other hand the sweat-dripping French soldiers who come out of
their cloth-inclosed cages between the acts of these popular outdoor
Punch-and-Judy shows and smoke a cigarette before going back to their
stifling duties as showmen again are regarded by the upper-class
Annamese more as servants than as lords. There are not only French
children with their amas in the front seats, and half-breed ones already
posing as French, as they will through life, but purely native children
as well; and not far away the adults sit or saunter and listen to the
good band concert, or cluster before the monkey-house and other cages,
without any outward evidence of that racial dissonance emphasized in our
own or British colonies. The best hotels in the colony make no
distinction between French and Annamese, or any combination of the two
races; the Annamese wife of a Frenchman “will be admitted to any circle
in France to which the social position of her husband corresponds.” Yet
Indo-China is almost the only place left where one still sees white men,
and women, slap and otherwise manhandle their servants, and some
Frenchmen speak to native railway men and the like in a way that in any
other country would bring them the quite proper request to betake
themselves forthwith to where it is reputed to be warmer than in the
earthly tropics.
A French novelist whose background is Indo-China rates its “scourges”
(_fléaux_) as—in the order of their appearance to the newly arrived
colonial perhaps—sun, “boy,” _congaïe_, alcohol, gambling, opium, and
madness. Most of these are self-explanatory. The “boy” alone is
sometimes enough to drive the exile to drink, if not to madness, and it
is not infrequently he who more or less surreptitiously brings in the
_congaïe_, perhaps his own sister, sometimes even his own wife. The
_congaïe_—normally a perfectly respectable Annamese word for girl—is in
colonial vernacular what in France is known as _petite femme_, and by
many other names, some of them far less complimentary, in every land. As
our own pretty but stupid girls go into the movies or the “Follies,”
those of Annam become the temporary wives of the French. There is a lot
of romance about the _congaïe_, from those of the “Madame Butterfly”
temperament, until one finds that she is sometimes hired by the week,
like a _bonne à tout faire_, and is often passed on to a successor with
the furniture. Nor is she the Oriental doll she is painted by romantic
Latin novelists, though during her first few terms of service she may
have youthful charm and perhaps be pretty. Many Annamese mothers do not
blacken the teeth of their daughters because they wish them to live with
Frenchmen, especially if they are the daughters of other Frenchmen,
which is said to make an ardent combination much sought after among
colonial Lotharios. But the _congaïe_ must love her François indeed if
she eschews betel-nut for his sake; she is more likely to teach him the
habit. There is little visible public opinion against these temporary
matings, though it is said that the best class of Annamese look down
upon the practice at least as much as do the most nearly prudish of the
French. As in France, marriage is very difficult and its unofficial
rival very easy; one may even take the _congaïe_ back to France as a
servant.
One sees half-breed children now and then even in thatched hamlets far
from the centers, while there are plenty of both children and adults of
mixed blood in any city. Wherever there is a Catholic community cynical
French males suspect any one in the slightest degree off color as having
French blood contributed by the “missionaries.” The opposite
combination, with the male Annamese the “protector,” may sometimes be
seen—a Frenchwoman in Annamese trousers in some wayside village or
peering forth from some native den in the cities. There were several
instances in Hanoï of Frenchwomen legally married to Annamese, most of
them imported after the war. The wife of a furrier who won a gold medal
and his French bride at the Marseilles exposition of a decade ago never
went out, but stood looking through her _grille_ like a captive animal.
The Parisian wife of a barber in Haïphong lived in the not too large
room of the barber-shop, with a bed off in one corner behind a bamboo
screen that did not even conceal from observant clients that she was
soon to contribute to the Eurasian population. The government is now
refusing licenses for such marriages, but that naturally does not do
away with similar unions as long as Frenchwomen are ignorant of the
color-line or indifferent to it.
The French think that they cannot live in the tropics without a pith
helmet, a cholera belt, wine, and a woman. One might add ice in the
place of song. They have a curious belief amounting almost to a
superstition that to take off _la casque_ in the sun, even the reflected
sun, be it only for the instant needed to mop the brow and sweat-band,
will almost surely be fatal, so that every little while the thoughtless
“foreigner” is startled by raucous shouts of warning, and assailed with
screams of dismay if he so much as thrusts his head out a window without
his helmet on. Yet they constantly see the natives bareheaded, and
either I must conclude that this, like the cholera belts with which even
the women seem to torture themselves, is an unnecessary burden or that
my own head is more _dure_ than those of the notoriously hardheaded
French.
Of the eighteen to twenty million inhabitants of French Indo-China only
the males over twenty years of age among the perhaps seventeen thousand
French residents can vote—for the deputy from Cochinchina to the French
Chamber of Deputies and for a delegate without a vote from the
“protectorates.” Naturally those elected are Frenchmen. The number of
French in Indo-China might have greatly increased of late, contends one
party among this slight electorate, were it not for more or less
official opposition. “For many of the rulers, the free Frenchman, the
Frenchman who is not a member of the administration, is regarded as a
troublesome intruder, an unknown incumbrance, a suspected person, a
constant addition to the problem. This anti-French politics arose from
the spirit of autocracy of those Cæsars with clay feet, Long and
Baudoin, with their avowed hatred of every French civilian in the
posture of a man.” This party insists that there should be a “white
proletariat,” that many a young Frenchman, released from the army there,
for instance, could live well in some part of the colony with his
“companion,” and even contribute a large progeny, to the advantage not
only of himself but of France and Indo-China. If only the government
would find some means of helping him to raise and educate his children,
they insist, he would be far happier than at home and gradually help to
bridge over that gulf between the French and the natives. The point of
view of this group is that of Brazil: that there is nothing wrong in
mixing racial strains, legitimately or otherwise, that on the contrary
this mixture of races should help to cement together more closely the
different elements and perhaps breed a stock that would better endure
the climate than does the pure white. In other words, they would emulate
in human form the success of breeding hardy, tick-impervious, but runty
tropical cattle with India bulls.
Offhand the impartial observer would say that there should be a “white
proletariat,” that not merely French capitalists and officials should
have the advantages France’s “protection” of this part of the world
offers. But the governing class insists that there shall be none, or no
more of one than is unavoidable, and for that reason does not now allow
conscripts to be discharged in the colony when their time is up, even
though, unlike those of higher social standing, they may be willing to
marry their _congaïe_, produce legitimate offspring, and agree to remain
in the colony for life. Nor do those in power encourage the coming of
colonists from France. Yet, contend the self-appointed spokesmen of the
“white proletariat” who are so bitter against what they call the
“anti-French” policy of the officials, it was precisely because of the
sacrifice of these “_petits blancs_” that France lost many of her other
colonies.
Some of the complaints of the Annamese against the French are so well
put in one of the novels of my companion from Hué to Hanoï that I cannot
do better than to quote him:
You have seized Annamese in the streets of the large cities, with all
possible vexations, for the sum of two piastres owing to the
government, yet you subsidize each year a theater troupe at the cost
of 80,000 francs [written when exchange was much higher than now]
merely to amuse a handful of French during the three winter months.
You have inaugurated the régime of the _corvée_ for the building of
roads, or of buying out of it at a high price, promising the
population that for this it would be exempt from payment in kind, yet
by roundabout means you continue to requisition the inhabitants of the
villages for nothing more than that you may be able comfortably to
roll along in your automobiles.
In other words road-building in Indo-China is quite as it was under us
in Haiti, by _corvée_, or payment of road taxes in labor. For three
piastres a man could buy off from the ten days a year required of him,
but the _coolies voluntaires_, who had even to bring their own food,
were often taken far from home and sometimes kept for months. When food
gave out they renounced their nominal wages, glad to get home at so
slight a sacrifice. As in Haiti, the explanation of the officials is
that subordinates in the field did things contrary to the orders of
those higher up, but this must be entered in the column of dubious
excuses.
But to go on with the plaints of the Annamese against their
“protectors,” as interpreted by one whose history and temperament have
made him as nearly sympathetic as the average Frenchman ever becomes:
The money you so cruelly cause to be sucked from the population you
spend almost entirely on your own luxuries and pleasures, your own
well-being; you spend next to nothing for the good of the natives, to
help them to profit by the procedures which modern science puts within
the reach of industrious, laborious people. The poor people everywhere
say that the government deceives them by using tortuous schemes to
increase imposts that are already heavy. They say that your protection
is not what it seems to be on the surface, that while a European can
go anywhere, except sometimes among the wildest tribes of the far
mountains, there is still almost as much robbing, kidnapping, virtual
banditry as ever among the natives when no Frenchman is looking on.
You let the people be ruled by native mandarins, pure bandits whose
immorality is no longer doubted by anyone—former “boys,” liberated
criminals, head gardeners who have known how to please by combining
pretty parterres and by offering flowers to the women of your
officials, intriguers and unscrupulous adventurers, beardless youths
who have won the favor of your ladies, sons of mandarins with the most
corrupted habits—whereas under the old régime this important mission
as father and mother of the people was confided only to men of forty
or more whose worth was proved. The greater part of the mandarins to
whom you have accorded your confidence are rascals who exploit the
people in the most shameless manner. We call them patented pirates,
differing from real pirates only by the brevet given them by the
administration, with the aid of which they can legally pillage more
easily and with less loss of honor than real pirates and smugglers.
You do next to nothing for the higher education of the Annamese, for
fear, you say, of making outcasts [_déclassés_] of them, as if
advanced instruction could make a degenerate of a man. It is said
everywhere that you wish to keep the native at an intellectual level
low enough to be able more easily to make him your slave. Thus you are
false to the mission you gave yourselves to civilize the people. You
cannot understand what attachments you would create between yourselves
and the Annamese if you set yourselves resolutely to teaching them
everything you know, without _arrière-pensée_. You have an example in
the Chinese, who, though they treated us more severely, had nothing to
regret for having inculcated in us all their civilization, all their
knowledge, to such an extent that Annam became a China in miniature.
You have too much pride; you disdain the natives too much; you believe
yourself to be of a divine essence compared to us whom you keep at a
distance, as if it were a question of a vile, abject race, worthy at
most of being your servant. You are jealous of our slightest
qualities; you cry out against our slightest faults, which for the
most part you have noticed among the scum of our race that surrounds
you, and which you attribute to all of us in general, without knowing
that the true honest Annamese takes care not to approach you, not
being able to support your arrogance, your conceit, your insults.
Yet though the Annamese, particularly of the Tonkin, fought long and
valiantly to keep from being “protected” by the French, and there have
been some revolts since what is considered the final conquest of all the
Indo-Chinese empire, notably that abortive scheme to poison all
Caucasians one evening in 1916, on the whole they now seem contented, or
at least reconciled, and fairly friendly. Do they perhaps see the
advantages of French rule, and recognize that some one would exploit
them if these aliens from the West did not; or is it merely the fatalism
and the infinite patience of the East that gives them the outward
appearance of comparative contentment?
CHAPTER XIII
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.
CHAPTER XIV
EN PANNE!
With the influence of the lieutenant I managed at last to get under way
again, not without hope that we might reach somewhere before nightfall,
since the sun was still almost directly overhead. At Muongsen there
begins one of the greatest automobile climbs I have ever seen, up and up
and forever up through the jungled ranges of the great Annamese chain,
an ascension unforgettable both for its magnificence and its danger. We
climbed abruptly to an elevation of fifteen hundred meters, a full mile
above sea-level, without moving forward a mile on the map. The road,
forever clawing itself a place in the flank of the mountain, constantly
making great detours, looking always for an opening, a gap to slip
through, writhed like a tortured snake, struggled fiercely upward, grew
dizzy with effort, took breath again, and climbed valiantly onward. On
the left, or, worse still, on the right, the abyss always yawned. Our
wheels touched the edge of space and flung stones off down sheer wooded
slopes into _le vide_—emptiness; in many places there were curves so
sharp that we had just room between the jagged mountain wall and the
bottomless pit to make the turn by backing and filling where the
slightest miscalculation might have meant destruction. Even then we
barely got by without striking a lamp on the recently blasted
mountain-side or dropping a hind wheel over the edge. I began to
understand why a man, particularly an aging half-caste, whose lot in
life required him to drive even now and then up or down this fly-footed
route, might easily become too nervous ever to speed again and might
grow to have the downcast view of life in general of this crawling
imitation of a chauffeur.
Between the trees of every size there were glimpses here and there for
an instant of the great Annamese chain we were struggling to surmount.
The narrow little boats fighting their way up the rapids of the river we
had crossed again at the beginning of the climb had long since
disappeared; the river itself was gone. Giant ferns, valleys full of
banana-plants, perfect tenement clothes-line mazes of jungle vines,
range after blue range of the densest forest-jungle sank beneath us, and
still the climbing continued, steadily, inexorably, forever. It was like
duplicating by automobile my wild journey through the jungles of the
upper Malay Peninsula, now two decades ago. Sometimes, when the road was
completely exhausted, it went a little way on the level, but only long
enough to catch its breath, as quickly as do the barrel-chested Indians
of the Andes, before digging its toes into the mountain-side again. The
air became fresher; the humid scent of the tropics disappeared; with
every wheel-turn it was more pleasure to breathe. Behind and below us
lay an ocean of branches, a vegetation so compact that it filled the
vast ravine of the visible world to its very edges, like an overflowing
bowl of greens, an immense panorama of verdure dotted with densely black
patches of shade that looked like the mouths of caves.
There were many long thatch-roofed bridges, some of them curved, some
with sharp angles, bridges of timbers and rough-hewn planks evidently
cut on the spot, some covered with woven bamboo splints, bridges
supported only by the upright trunks of trees along the sides of them,
so that even the least nervous of travelers could not but have wondered
whether they would always hold the weight our heavy car suddenly put
upon them. Many similar bridges had been abandoned and left to
disintegrate into the jungle again, because the road had been cut
farther back into the hillsides. When this new road gets officially
opened and there are cars in both directions—many cars, the French hope
and believe—there should be magnificent possibilities of accident, for
rarely indeed can one see five yards ahead, and often fog half or fully
fills and conceals mighty ravines into which a false twist of the
chauffeur’s wrist would have sent us crashing among the jungle tree-tops
hundreds of feet below. I looked anxiously askance at the graying fellow
at my side on whom my life depended, and was startled suddenly to
discover that after all he was a mere savage in loin-cloth and bare
feet, however much his half-French features and his wholly French garb
might strive to conceal it.
It was an expensive luxury for the one or two automobiles a week that
traveled over it, this road up the face of the mountains, costing seven
hundred piastres a kilometer, about seven hundred dollars a mile, even
in this continent of low wages. The workmen were paid only thirty-five
piastre-cents a day, and must furnish their own food; hence one could
scarcely blame them if they did not hurt themselves with work. Piles of
stone, broken or to be broken, lay in long carefully slope-sided heaps
at frequent intervals along the way, recalling France and its
_cantonniers_; but the road was built rather in “American style,”
according to a French engineer I met later, especially on the curves,
because the famous old highways of France were not designed for speeding
automobiles. We passed scores of Annamese men, nearly all of them gaunt
and sickly looking, thin, lemon-yellow, feverish pictures of misery,
squatting in miserable grass huts that had been thrown up for the
road-building, or dawdling along the way. Always with the air of being
half scared to death at sight of a white man, they were pitifully
obsequious, all snatching off their hats and most of them even the rag
they wore about the head under it, at the same time backing against the
mountain wall or to the extreme edge of the precipice and bowing low
with the palms of the hands together. I have seldom seen human beings as
sad looking as these Annamese road-builders. There was no gaiety, no
life at all compared with the harder working and more miserably living
Chinese, though one was still constantly puzzled to know whether this
related race was merely suppressed, depressed by French treatment, or
naturally gifted with solemnity. At any rate we rode frequently through
bowing ranks of bareheaded coolies in rusty clothes and with
fever-stricken faces, who could not have greeted me more obsequiously
had I been the governor-general himself. In fact more deference was
shown me on this trip into Laos than is received by most European
sovereigns of to-day.
It astonishes us from the temperate zone of the West that the Annamese
or Tonkinese prefer the malarial and overcrowded rice-lands of their
coastal plains to the rich upper regions of their country. But the most
wretched of them have a horror of the hills, even though their ancestors
seem to have been highland men; so that it is always a difficult job,
often requiring actual governmental force, to get even a few hundred
coolies from the plains, where they are often half starved, to come up
and help build these roads; and the few French exploiters of highland
plantations look almost in vain for workmen. Criminals sentenced to hard
labor are sometimes used in such enterprises, and often the _corvée_,
calling for forced contributions of labor on the roads, has had to be
invoked. In the cities it is no uncommon sight to meet a column of these
miserable fellows, wretched already, though perhaps only the recruits of
a labor agency, marching to a train under command of a half-breed, like
a file of condemned exiles. When moving from one camp to another almost
all these downcast fellows carried a cloth-tied bundle in their hands or
at the end of a bamboo over one shoulder, so that they resembled a
tropical imitation of a procession of American hobos “hitting the ties.”
There seemed to be no women in these road-building camps, which perhaps
accounted for half the appearance of misery, the great susceptibility of
these plain-dwelling descendants of hardy highlanders to disease in the
hills furnishing the rest of it. But it seems to be psychological more
than physical, according to the French; ancient superstitions make the
mere thought of living in the mountains sickening to them.
Higher up there were two or three villages that seemed to have
inhabitants of both sexes and all ages, some of whom we now and then met
making their way along the winding, perpetually climbing road. The sound
of our horn drove them mad. The more fearful tried their best to climb
the sheer earth or rock wall of the blasted mountain-side; the others,
as if imploring us to be merciful and realize that they would run away
if they could, snatched themselves bareheaded and, placing their hats
against their stomachs, tried to break their spines in kowtowing to me
as they might to a long dead emperor suddenly returned to earth. A few,
less obsequious, or less quick-witted, watched us pass with open mouths
and stupefied expressions, bawling children scurrying in and out between
their legs. Near the top of the climb there suddenly appeared horses and
other pack-animals, and the panic we created among these unusual
carriers in Indo-China could not easily be described. We passed not a
few traveling pigs along the way too, for wherever there is Chinese
culture there must also be pork. Though they are credited with infinite
patience, the Chinese will not drive pigs to market. But the Annamese,
more afraid of work perhaps, rather than more patient, usually try to,
with a cord tied to each porker’s leg. This may possibly be easier than
the Chinese way of bodily carrying them, two on a one-man shoulder-pole
or one between two men, so that carrier and carried, bound to market in
this undignified manner, seem fellows in misery. In Hanoï and the larger
towns of Annam this more certain form of transportation may also now and
then be seen. But the Annamese pig is ordinarily driven, which is hard
on motorists. For most of the pigs we met were too strong for the
holder, and yet not quite strong enough to get away entirely and dash
themselves over the mountain-side. Therefore, as they seemed bent on
suicide in any form—and who could blame them?—the car always had to wait
while the would-be pig-driver and several of his fellows united in one
mighty tug of war that dragged the squealing animal out from under our
wheels. For the most foolhardy of Annamese chauffeurs, however
disdainful of the pig-driving populace, would scarcely have risked
running over one of these porcine obstructions on this pathway along the
bottomless pit.
It was in many ways a delightful trip, doubly so because one knew even
without being told that very few travelers had ever made it. But good
things often come to a violent end, though to tell the truth I had felt
it in my bones that trouble lay in wait for us. I claim no prizes as an
automobile driver, but I certainly could have given that mixture of
races in French garb several pointers on how not to drive up a high
mountain. Again it was overcaution rather than recklessness that worked
his undoing. Never would he let the car get a reasonable start, with the
result that it had to pump its heart out to make a snail’s pace. I
carried no driver’s license for Indo-China, and should not have
considered it courteous to my host ahead to practise with his new
Italian-minded car on such a road if I had; hence I was totally at the
mercy of this mingled son of caution. A dozen times we snorted to a halt
before the maltreated engine quit entirely, fairly near the top. The
chauffeur’s mental reaction to this emergency seemed to be to sit where
he sat until the Goddess of Mercy or some one else came to help him out,
with the probability about a week off of another car passing. When at
last I prevailed upon him to get out and look at his engine, at least
out of curiosity, all he knew was to lift the hood, when he fell into
contemplation before the motor, mute with stupor, as if he had
discovered this strange machine for the first time, until I expected him
to bow down and kowtow in the dust before it. He seemed to know as much
about the workings of automobile engines as of the gods in his temples,
and to have the same dread of looking into the secrets of their power.
But then, when I came to think of it, even I, effete product of a garage
and repair-shop on every corner, knew no more about it than he did, so
that after all he had been right, and there was really nothing to be
done except what he had started to do—calmly to sit and wait for help.
That was no easy task for a man whose hair is habitually ragged of edge
because he cannot endure to hold the penitents’ seat in a barber-shop,
and when we had been broken down long enough to prove that neither of us
could do anything useful about it, I walked on. Gusts of rain had fallen
during our climb, pedestrians each lopping off a banana-leaf as an
umbrella and dropping it where the shower ceased. But the second-hand
one I picked up at the next emergency proved that as an umbrella a
banana-leaf is waterproof, at least to the tropically inexperienced,
only when one sits down under it. Luckily the showers were short and not
very intense, and within an hour or so I was striding over the summit
and down upon a few simple buildings. It was a military post named
Nong-het, which turned out to be the station of the Bavarian-born
lieutenant and his mixed lady-love, who had indeed invited me to stay
with them on my return, should it happen that the rains made impossible
the itinerary I had planned. Much good that did me now, with the
hospitable pair still down at Muongsen.
The Annamese sergeant in charge massacred a few words of French, beating
them out between his black teeth in a clogged stream from his betel-nut
bloody lips, and there was no great difficulty in getting enough of his
confidence to seat myself in the faded cloth easy-chair under the thatch
roof of the lieutenant’s earth-floored porch. In fact it was not long
before I could have coaxed his cook to cook me something, if we had been
able to find anything to cook. Obviously I could not broach any stores
there might have been inside the lieutenant’s thatched house, though it
was locked with a piece of jungle twine, even had I been sure that the
sergeant would permit it. In the long thatched barracks across the
smooth earth parade-ground there were different kitchens and “beds” for
the Annamese and the Laosian soldiers who made up the garrison, the
former sleeping on wooden platforms, Chinese style, and the Laosians on
soft springs of woven bamboo; and there were similar differences in
cuisine and other customs. But that made it all the more difficult to
convince the sergeant that surely there must be something native that
could be made edible for “ung Flançais,” as he persisted in calling me.
Plainly the lieutenant or his protective companion had taught the
sergeant the solemnity with which the rites of the table should be
treated, and the sacrilege of mixing culinary breeds.
Finally, thanks to my well known persistence and persuasiveness, there
appeared some rice and the toughest chicken for its tender age that I
have ever met in all my travels, nay, on Broadway itself. This trial
over, and a path worn in the parade-ground while we discussed beneath a
sardonically grinning moon the propriety of my continued presence in the
post, the sergeant at last consented to have collected for me in an
outhouse a bundle of straw and a ragged blanket which I was just as well
pleased not to have seen by day—or even by torch-light; and just as I
was dozing off there came the choral shrieks, growing slowly louder, of
a great gang of coolies whom the chauffeur had requisitioned to push the
car over the summit to Nong-het. The suspicions of the sergeant and his
post having been allayed by the chauffeur’s acknowledging me, I found
somewhat better quarters, now that my cot had come, out in the
half-finished stone garages into which the Fiat had been coolie-handled.
The chauffeur being hopeful, for some reason, of making the wop
contrivance go on again in the morning by gasoline rather than by
coolie-power, we turned in, he, somewhat less downhearted, curled up on
the back seat of the car. Perhaps he thought whatever injuries the car
had suffered would heal during the night.
He actually did get the thing under way again, long after sunrise, on
three or five or seven of its four, six, or eight cylinders, as the case
may be, and we covered twenty-seven kilometers along a now merely hilly
road. Early during that feat we met and paused to chat with a French
lieutenant driving back to Muongsen the Citroen _chenille_ that had
carried the general-in-chief to Xieng Khuang, the same in fact that had
crossed the Sahara the year before; and but for that fatal optimism of
motorists so long as their wheels are turning we might easily have had
him repair whatever damage had been done us. Apparently neither of us
thought even to mention our difficulties of a few miles back, yet almost
as soon as the “caterpillar” was out of sight my substitute for a
chauffeur halted before another cluster of huts, called Sala Nam-lien,
and refused even to try to go farther, saying that something disastrous
would happen to us if we attempted to proceed. As nearly as I could make
out from his ignorance of his father-tongue, the car was certain to
explode and strew itself and us all over the Annamese chain if he
annoyed it any longer. Possibly Italian cars do succumb to such fits of
Latin temperament; at any rate I was in no position effectively to argue
the matter, and assassination is regarded as more or less reprehensible
even thus far from the haunts of civilization.
Though I only suspected it then, I was destined to know Nam-lien better
than I know my own birthplace, nay, than Paris or Rio de Janeiro. It
consisted of a dozen thatched huts with earth floor and wattled walls on
either side of the wide space that served as road, one of them the
_sala_ or rest-house for French travelers. Two bare woven-bamboo cots
and a rough wooden table comprised the furnishings of this, unless one
also counted the soft layer of dust on the earth floor as a rug. A few
things such as eggs were purchasable about the village—though I should
have been in hard luck indeed if I had not taken official advice and
brought a few canned supplies with me—and a native was available to boil
water and do the simplest form of cooking.
There I spent the rest of the day, sitting in the automobile, the only
really comfortable place in the vicinity, reading, with a walk for
exercise’ sake thrown in. During that time I had much intercourse, in so
far as that is possible without a common speech, with one of the
principal tribes of the region. I had known the Miao, or, as the French
call them, the Méo, in southwestern China, though there my acquaintance
had been mainly with the “Flowery Miao” in their extravagantly colorful
dress. These were “Black Miao,” a much more independent tribe, and with
almost no color in their black or dark-blue garments, sometimes set off
by a dull red or purplish wine-colored scarf about the waist. Both men
and women, often riding on horses, were a wilder tawnier type than their
flowery relatives, their sturdy independence as plainly to be seen as
their bare feet; for none of them, of either sex, had ever tortured
their feet with shoes. Their sunburned hair and eyes were more nearly
brown than black, and both sexes wore the hair long. Most of the men had
carelessly wound turbans of dark cloth, a few of them wore Chinese
skullcaps and dressed their hair Chinese fashion, old Chinese fashion,
more exactly, for the majority still had queues, often hanging unbraided
loosely about their shoulders. Another custom among these sturdy
mountaineers is the wearing about their necks of heavy silver rings of
all shapes. These are evidently concerned with their tribal
superstitions as well as being their idea of combining adornment with
safe banking. All silver money that falls into their hands is turned
into rings; men, women, even the children, all wear them, large and
small, from mere twisted silver wire to veritable horse-collars, some
with open ends, some fastened with silver padlocks. Sometimes there are
as many as half a dozen on a single neck, even of men on their way to
work in the jungle. The richest of them clanked like perambulating
pawnshops whenever they moved.
A critical observer might have wondered why they do not spend for
shirting some of the silver dollars they turn into neck-rings. For the
men wear a shirt or jacket that covers everything except what a shirt is
most expected to cover, leaving bare a foot or more of the waist, with
the navel as its central point of departure. But to every race its own
ideas. The girls are not prudish, yet not at all forward. For their
jackets, open almost to the navel and giving frequent half-glimpses of
the breasts, were plainly designed for comfort rather than coquetry, as
were their plaid skirts reaching hardly to their bare knees. The women
walk with a powerful yet not ungraceful swing of the hips and a saucy
flirting of their short pleated skirts, of which they are perhaps quite
unconscious. Some of the men wear the tattooed blue panties ending in
ruffles just below the knees that are common in Laos and the Shan
States, but this is evidently due to extratribal influence, just as are
the flowered silk gowns a few of the well-to-do among them wear after
the fashion of the Chinese. The men, and sometimes the women, carry
crude daggers in home-made sheaths; some had a long slender rifle, a few
of them crossbows of a simple form, and most of them smoked or carried
in their sashes pipes of sometimes elaborately tortured shapes. They use
pack-oxen as well as little horses, but most of them, of both sexes,
carry in a basket on their backs, though Chinese influence perhaps has
led some to fasten two baskets at the ends of a short, stiff whole
bamboo over a shoulder, thereby losing all the advantage of the long and
supple shoulder-pole of China and Annam.
Some consider the Miao merely Chinese who in centuries gone by drifted
down from the north, with a history similar to the Hakkas, but it is
probably a better guess that they are of a more nearly aboriginal tribe
than the Celestials. Sturdy enough in their natural habitat, they must
live at least three thousand feet above sea-level to be either happy or
healthy, just as the Annamese must stick to their miasmic rice-plains;
and they never descend below that altitude if there is any way out of
it. Of all the races of Indo-China the Miao are probably the most
self-sufficient. In common with some other mountain tribes of Laos they
burn off steep hillsides, normally every nine years, for their
cultivation. When they need new fields to plant, they fell the biggest
trees and set afire great patches of the jungle-forest, destroying wood
and lumber enough to supply a large city for years to come. This burning
is partly to drive off the blackleg fever and partly to give room for
grass for their cattle; and as cinders make good fertilizer for a few
years, their crops are abundant until it comes time to burn off another
mountain-side. As this burning by patches has probably been going on for
centuries, much of Laos is not so forested as one expected it to be, but
often covered with those half-grown forests which the French call
_brousse_. Yet with all the uneven growth there are many magnificent
panoramas of densely forested ranges.
I spent that night in the _sala_, and when, late next morning, it was
still evident that the substitute for a chauffeur did not propose to do
anything about it except to settle down there in the vain hope that some
day some one might come along who might do something to help us out, I
set out to walk. It was still about fifty miles to Xieng Khuang, but
certainly there was more prospect of reaching there on foot than of
having help turn up within the same length of time. Moreover my supplies
were distinctly limited, even if the loss of time could be made up by
abandoning the best part of the trip and returning as I had come.
Besides, I am far better at walking than at waiting, and nothing after
all is more delightful than walking, especially on so splendid a route
for it—high enough not to be too warm, the great jungle-forest opening
new vistas, springing new surprises at every turn, at every rise of
ground, so few of the tiresome human race as hardly to bother at all,
and at every corner the chance of an adventure. So I swung off almost
light-heartedly, even if to the mingled worry and disgruntlement of the
worthless chauffeur, who evidently lost face with the village by this
flaunting of his services and protection.
I had walked about ten alluring miles, or perhaps merely kilometers,
when to my vast astonishment a big automobile came suddenly down out of
the west upon me. In the capacious back seat, the top stowed away behind
them, rode the general-in-chief of the French forces in Indo-China and a
colonel aide. Having waited in vain for the conveyance that was to have
brought me to Xieng Khuang in time for them to return by it, they had
been forced to drain the province of its last thing on wheels, the
Berliet—one car of each make seemed to be the rule here; once the road
was officially opened they should know which performed best—of the
_vice-commissaire_. Never have I been more pleasantly treated by a
chance passer-by on the road. If the general’s importance weighed
heavily upon him he was an expert at concealing his burdens. To be sure,
the fact that he also had been the guest of the ruler of Xieng Khuang
whose hospitality I had been—enjoying? no, let us say suffering—since
stepping into the Fiat of distressing memory, and that, having expected
me two nights before, they had about come to the conclusion that I had
been eaten by a tiger, may have had something to do with his geniality.
For it seemed that the donkey masquerading as a chauffeur who had been
sent for me had not disclosed to the harassed head of the province an
inkling as to our plight, though one can telegraph in Indo-China from
almost any tree-top.
The general was strongly of the impression that I should come along with
them rather than continue my walk until the returning car overtook me,
and the semi-guest of a government does not flout the opinions of its
chief military officer. In fact the general had an insistent way about
him, though it had on the surface none of that big-stick gruffness of
too many of our own army officers. The change from walking to riding
left me somewhat chilly; the general insisted that I put on his coat,
which had been lying in the seat beside him. I protested that the
insignia of such high rank did not become me, that he himself might need
the garment. His reply was typical of an old campaigner in many lands,
of one who had served France in almost all of her colonies:
“_Je n’ai jamais froid, jamais soif, jamais faim, jamais chaud._ When
any of these things threaten me, _je fume une pipe_, and they disappear
in a puff of smoke”—and suiting the action to the word he lighted up
again.
We were soon back at the _sala_, where there remained enough of my
meager supplies so that I could do my share toward providing a luncheon.
While we ate, the fellow who had been sent to fetch me told the general
some badly pronounced tale of why it was dangerous to try to go on,
lifting the hood to prove it. Again it seemed to be something to the
effect that he could make the car go all right, but that if he did so
the engine might blow up at any moment. He seemed to convince the
general, who was probably no automobile expert, and naturally the
colonel always agreed with a superior of such high rank; hence there was
nothing left but for me to agree also. I might have stayed on at Sala
Nam-lien and, if the Berliet and its Annamese driver had the luck that
had been denied the Fiat under the inexpert ministrations of the son of
caution, have been picked up by it sometime next day on the way back
from turning the general over to other transportation in Muongsen. But
the general insisted that I give them the pleasure of my company as long
as possible, and on second thoughts it was better not to trust myself to
spend another night within reach of that mixed-breed chauffeur.
[Illustration: The chief sport of the mountain-dwelling Miao of Laos is
the making of assorted neck-rings of silver dollars that might better be
spent for shirting]
[Illustration: The Miao women of Laos take no back seat for their men]
[Illustration: A Kha woman of the semi-wild tribe that is said to be the
aboriginal race of mountainous Laos]
Besides, it was a pleasure to travel over that great mountain-side road
once more, even though I might be less successful in climbing back to
the plateau, and although the platform-bed in the rest-house of Muongsen
was several times harder than the cot I had left over the mountains. The
lieutenant of the Citroen “caterpillar” had the Guadeloupe-driven car
ready for action again, and in spite of all the decorating Muongsen had
done for him the general insisted on continuing eastward toward
nightfall, leaving me alone in the riverside _sala_ like the janitor of
a ball-room amid the embellishments of an abandoned banquet.
I set out once more next morning before daylight upon that great climb
from Muongsen to the plateau of Laos. This time fogs all but hid the
world about us and made the road-gangs along the way seem more miserable
than ever. But this Annamese chauffeur knew his trade and his car much
better than did his predecessor in my affections, and while a man not so
disgusted with a continual run of bad luck as to be willing to take some
risk for a change might have complained at the speed he made on the
brinks of bottomless precipices, we were soon at Nong-het over the
summit again, then back at Sala Nam-lien, still adorned with the stalled
Fiat, in time for a skimpy lunch. From there on, the Annamese let no
grass grow under his wheels. In fact I wonder if any ever grew again in
some of the spots they touched in our semi-aërial dash across the
eastern half of Tran-ninh. It was startling to be able to race what
seemed hundreds of miles along an excellent, even though grassy,
automobile road through so primeval a region.
There was some more climbing, though it was by no means so strenuous as
the ascent up the face of the Annamese chain, and at length, beyond a
waterfall that came down the mountain side within hand-shake of the road
in a beautiful cascade of many strands of silver among jungle and forest
choked rocks and, dashing under the highway, dropped far down below to
form a reunited stream, we came out of the great forest that had
surrounded me ever since the first afternoon out of Vinh. Here, a
hundred kilometers from the border of Annam, amid a plateau growth of
scattered oak-like scrubs, there was much open country, of reddish
rich-looking soil, though few inhabitants. In fact all Laos, largest of
the five divisions of Indo-China, being about the size of Italy and not
unlike it in shape, has, if the recent census was accurate, only 818,755
people, of whom 280 are French and eight—count them, eight!—are
“foreigners.” About us lay vast rolling meadows of great beauty, as
virgin as a world in which animal life had not yet been created. The
general-in-chief, who had seen most of them, thought this great plateau
of Xieng Khuang the finest region in the French colonies. There were
some cactus-trees of striking forms; then the mountains closed in again
on a narrow valley that seemed once to have been broken up into
rice-fields, though this may have been an illusion. Small villages
appeared once more, this time of the real Laosians, villages of thatched
houses raised on poles well above snakes and possible floods, with a bit
of cultivation about them. Each house had rounded gable walls at either
end, one a kind of family veranda all but covered with a curving roof of
thatch, where visitors are received and the family does its gossiping,
the other a granary and store-room, where the cooking also seemed to be
done. The walls of the houses, everything possible, in fact, were made
of strips of narrow palm-leaves folded over a stick, forming panels
overlapped like shingles. Many small but stout horses dotted the
landscape here and there. I had not seen a grave for days; the Laosians
dispose of their dead like real Buddhists; the Miao pile heaps of stone
over their corpses.
This time fortune showed me unusual favor and we made the whole trip
from Muongsen, including the stop at Sala Nam-lien, in a single day, as
we might have done three days before but for the overcautious chauffeur.
In fact we turned up at Xieng Khuang toward the end of the daily siesta,
and I spent the rest of the afternoon in French formalities with the
colonial officials of that distant but little known Garden of Eden.
CHAPTER XV
DOWN-STREAM TO LUANG PRABANG
Having ended on Saturday instead of Wednesday afternoon the first stage
of a journey that at best had seemed in the beginning hardly possible in
the time available, I made a tight fit even tighter by spending Easter
Sunday in Xieng Khuang. For the _commissaire_, so long absent from the
world at large that time had come to be a mere academic expression to
him, had done so much to make my stay agreeable that to have hurried
away again next morning would have been to increase a common French
impression that to Americans personal convenience is more important than
courtesy. Visitors do not come often to Xieng Khuang; besides, there are
things of interest there, and whatever is worth doing, be it only a
journey, is worth doing well.
There was the _commissaire’s_ zoo, for instance, a score of pets ranging
from some distant member of the leopard family to monkeys that looked
like puffballs, fittingly domiciled in his garden, with or without
chains to assure their allegiance to a master from whose hand the
fiercest of them ate with murmurs of pleasure. There are said to be more
species of animals in the forests and on the plains of Tran-ninh than in
almost any other space of similar size on earth—tigers, panthers, bears,
gaur, gibbons, monkeys, deer, pythons, boa-constrictors, and a host of
lesser serpents; a cobra was chased out of the yard of one of the French
residents that very day; and the museum maintained this quarter-century
past by a tropic-emaciated Frenchman was easily proof that the province
is an unspoiled paradise of the ornithologist and the collector of
butterflies and insects.
I spent the morning in a hot walk about the scattered thatched town,
climbing to jungle-guarded half-ruined old stupas on the rounded hills
behind it. Priests of the yellow robe had again appeared, dawdling about
their simple monasteries with the leisureliness of men who know that to
step on an insect means to be set back that far on the long and
difficult road to Nirvana. Speaking of insects, the people of Tran-ninh
boast that they are never troubled by mosquitos, because, all their
domestic animals being at home under their pole-legged houses, these
pests are so busy down there that they never trouble to rise to human
height. The custom of living over unconfined stables is further
exonerated by the warmth the animals are reputed to give the
householders above—for so thin-blooded a race needs its central
heating-plant also, during the short tropical “winters.”
It was market day, and well fed, almost haughty women, with many
brilliant reds and yellows in their dress, were squatted in the shade
over their semi-tropical vegetables, and pottering homeward again in
long broken files. They had almost nothing in common with the Annamese
women, except their sex and the protection of the French. Their lustrous
hair piled in great black glossy heaps on the top of the head in an
intricate fashion, usually with a saffron, rose-yellow, or red cloth
about it, and most of them with stomachers of similar gay colors, they
were striking examples of the unrestricted portion of the human race. In
complexion they were much like ourselves plus many layers of tan, but
were noticeable for bad teeth. The Laosians do not enamel their teeth,
but most of them chew betel-nut; and the women seem less unequal
socially to the men than their Muong, even their Annamese and Chinese
sisters.
In Xieng Khuang there stands a monument to six Frenchmen, five of them
killed in France during the war, and one, like the dozen native soldiers
whose names also appear on it, _tué par les Méos rebelles_. It seems
there was a great Miao uprising in the Laos during the winter of
1918–19, the bloodiest battle of which took place at Nong-het, between
the “rebels” and the French, more exactly the native soldiers of the
French. It was no surprise to be told that German agents and money had
fomented the rebellion, though saner French residents admit that the
Miao had long wished to be ruled by their own rather than by Laosian
chieftains. That was no unnatural demand, and by the terms of the peace
now reigning between them and the French it has been granted. Nor does
this change seem to put any great burden upon Miao justice, for in cases
involving more than five piastres the contestants may appeal to the
French authorities, whom they evidently trust more than they do their
own chieftains. The end of the rebellion was typical of these
stiff-necked mountaineers. The French issued an ultimatum that the Méo
must submit by 9 P.M. on a certain day; and at 8:59 exactly, while the
French commanders sat with their watches in their hands, the Miao
chieftain strode in and capitulated. The puzzle still remains how a race
without clocks managed to time themselves so dramatically. Now they seem
quite friendly, though it is not they who put their palms together above
their heads and come to the squat when a white man goes by.
It would never do to quote to our own prudish-tongued land all the
conversation that passed between perfectly respectable members of the
little French colony of Xieng Khuang over the _apéritifs_ and the
Parisian repasts in the _commissaire’s_ big living-room. For it turned
largely on matters of sex, even when, perhaps even more so when, any or
all of the three or four French wives of the little official group were
present; and those who have lived with them know that the French can
bring a blush to the cheek of a New England spinster without having the
least notion that they are skirting the precipitous edge of frankness.
One wife, I recall, was vehement in her denunciation of the Germans
because they have so many children to the family, implying that as the
French are unable to compete in that line with their enemies over the
Rhine, her beloved native land was sure to be the loser in the end. Yet
she and her husband, an officer in the colonial gendarmerie, had been
married nearly fifteen years and showed every outward evidence of being
able to add to the decreasing population against which she fulminated.
But I did not ask the obvious question. It was amusing, when it was not
pathetic, to observe how all these groups of French colonials seem to
consider it axiomatic that they should not be expected to produce
children. Their very manner voiced their conviction that in consenting
to “exile” to the colony which they helped to rule they had done enough
for _la patrie_; and those who contributed a child or two in addition
were rather pitied, and pitied themselves, as the victims of an unkind
fate or a deplorable accident. In this community of Xieng Khuang, for
instance, the ten or more French residents, most of them married, had
one child—that is, legitimate white child—a baby girl.
The huge _commissaire_, now half invalid but still a great force in his
province, and beloved apparently by all classes of its residents, was a
survival of the earlier colonial days, when a man in his present
position was virtually king of all he surveyed. His half-dozen
pure-blooded dogs all wore stout canvas pants to assure their offspring
against mixture with the local mongrel breed. But some officials had not
taken the same precautions with themselves, and had several
brown-complexioned children at school in Hanoï, though they were
bachelors. I am sure they would not look upon mention of this as unkind
criticism, any more than it is meant as such. It is all in the point of
view. Neither they nor any of the French wives and husbands composing
the official community of Xieng Khuang saw anything wrong in this
situation. Had some prudish member of the English-speaking races opened
a discussion on the subject with them, he would not have got beyond
being assured that it would have been inhumane of the _commissaire_ to
expect a French wife to share with him the hardships of his productive
years, when Tran-ninh was a houseless and an iceless wilderness, and
that he was therefore compelled to vent his affections upon the native
women.
The _commissaire_ could still, with assistance, hoist himself into the
back seat of a topless automobile, and that afternoon we drove out to
see the archæological puzzle of Xieng Khuang Plain. It did not need the
assurance of my immense companion, or of his antithesis, the
Midi-tongued vice-commissary, whose Berliet was still the only available
vehicle in Tran-ninh, to see that this great plateau should have a great
future, in the modern Western sense of the word. Its climate is as
delightful as its soil is fertile. One French colonist had already
covered a bit of it with splendid fields of wheat and corn, while his
pineapples were almost worthy of Hawaii. Yet somehow I caught myself
hoping that it would never serve the exploiting portion of the human
race as anything more than the excellent airplane landing it was
already. Its present pristine glory was too infinitely removed from the
horrible picture that sprang up in my mind as I listened half-heartedly
to the enthusiasm of the two _commissaires_, of such plains in my own
land debauched into cheese-box cities by real-estate “developers.”
Humanity is scarcely so precious that it must be fed or housed at the
loss of such glorious spaces as this one across which we rolled toward
_les jarres_.
Far out on the great plain, some miles from Xieng Khuang, are scores of
immense stone jars, the mystery of which no man has yet solved. They are
made of what the French call _grès_, a natural composite not unlike
sandstone, yet quite hard; and they are so large that those I climbed
into reached to my armpits and gave me almost room to squat. Many have
fallen, some only partly, but the majority are still upright, for all
the centuries that have rolled over them. Stone covers, some of them
broken, lie on the ground among the jars, many of which are decorated
with little clay Buddhas set up on them by the pious modern inhabitants.
There are five hundred or more of these jars, in two groups a few miles
apart; and the French, after their manner, though there is no money to
be made out of them, have built what they call an “automobilable” road
to both clusters. But even they have not been able to solve either the
origin or the purpose of the jars. Made by some race lost in the
prehistoric mists—for recorded history found them already here, much as
they are to-day—they are the more puzzling in a region where there is no
natural stone of this kind whatever. Amateur archæologists of Tran-ninh
contend that they must have been brought on rafts across the lake that
probably existed then where the plain is now, and set up on little
islands that have become the knolls on which they still stand a bit
above the general level. Were they used for storing food, as
hiding-places of bootleg liquor, or were they places of burial? So far
as appearances go they might have been either coffins or granaries.
There are no signs of bones in them, however, no broken bottles or
food-remnants either. But then, even bones would have had time
completely to disintegrate during the unknown centuries since the stone
age in which the jars may have been made, as they certainly were long
before the pyramids, and probably before the monuments of Stonehenge.
There remains the further mystery of how that prehistoric people, of
which there are still found stone hammers, knives, and what seem to have
been arrow-heads, fashioned these great hard-stone receptables.
Notwithstanding the time I had lost I decided to go on with the trip as
planned, trusting to my own speed and my ability to induce speed in
others to bring me through in the time available. So I was off once more
before daylight, the _vice-commissaire_ doing me the honor not only to
lend me his Berliet and his Annamese chauffeur again, but rising to
accompany me in person across the plateau and on into magnificent
pine-forests. The road, planned to be continued some day across the next
province to the borders of Siam, died out about seven in the morning at
a hut or two called Muongsuoi. Within an hour the alleged horses that
had been sent there days before to wait for me were ready, and I was off
on the next stage of the journey. Two Laosian men chosen by the
_commissaire_ himself did their utmost to accompany me, as I hurried on
all day by a trail through abrupt mountains covered with mighty forests
along which it would have been a delight to saunter for weeks. Now and
again a tropical rain did its best to delay me—first, as a warning, some
isolated drops, astonishingly large and heavy, then suddenly a general
tambourining on the leaves, quickly followed by torrents of water
beating down in mad fury, the light lowering until it seemed to be
growing dusk at midday. But I could not afford to be delayed merely to
save myself and the men behind me a drenching, and except for the
briefest noonday halt for cold fare washed down with red wine I raced
incessantly on, into the evening, darkness, the blackest of nights. The
little horses had long since lost all ability to carry me at anything
like the pace I could make on foot, even had it been possible to ride
them in the stumble-footed tunnel beneath the forest where it was
impossible to see an obstacle even at the moment of sprawling over it.
The last hour or more was down what felt like a great trough in the
earth, set at a sharp angle, and in this I slid down to the Nam-khan
River at 9:30, establishing a new record; for never before or since,
many a French colonial and native ruler has assured me, has any human
being gone from Xieng Khuang to Muongyu in a single day. I admit it
sadly rather than boastfully, however, for though fate seems always
driving me on at top speed, the record I would prefer through such
scenery and bucolic delights as lay behind me would be that of the sloth
family.
Out in the far outskirts of the earth one who at home is but a mere
human insect among our wealthy and political great, our nobility of
prize-fighters, football and movie stars, had been mistaken for a real
personage, and the king of Luang Prabang himself had sent his own
son-in-law to bring me to his capital. He was to be the fourth or fifth
king I had ever seen, the second or third with whom I had spoken or
exchanged the hand-clasp of greeting, and the only one, perhaps forever,
who was so glad to make my acquaintance that he had sent to fetch me.
The kindly reader, I am sure, will pardon my emotion. For I suspect that
even he would boast of such extraordinary honors, equal in their
Oriental way to being commanded to present one’s self at court in
Windsor—with a foot-note as to Queen Mary’s sartorial requirements!
The plain facts of the case were that _Chao_ Duong Chan—the “Chao”
meaning prince in the language of this region—seemed to look upon me,
even in the incredibly mud-bespattered state in which I burst forth from
the jungle night, as his social superior. At first, evidently, he
refused to believe I was I, not because of the bedraggled rags to which
the day had reduced what no longer ago than that morning had been a
costume fit to be seen at a _commissaire’s_ table, but because a
telegram had apprised him of my departure, and every one in Laos knew
that I could not reach Muongyu that same evening, whatever the evidence
of the five senses. But in time the impossible was admitted
accomplished, and the rest-house to which I had retired became a place
of pilgrimage. We were down in the realm of woven bamboo splints again,
and they were used for everything—walls, floors, rafters, granaries,
fences, beds—though not for boats, as in Annam. The building to which I
had climbed well above the damp and snaky ground was therefore so soft
underfoot that there was really no need to open my cot, though nothing
in the form of furnishings was to be seen. Gradually a murmur in the
night became the sound of muffled voices; torches flashed here and there
in the darkness, and at length there crept silently up the very slanting
ladder masquerading as a stairway one barefooted smiling Laosian man
after another, each bringing me a bouquet of heavy jungle-flowers in a
banana-leaf cone, the traditional greeting to honored visitors to the
kingdom, as the flower necklace is in Hawaii. Behind these village
authorities, after a fitting lapse of time, came the prince himself,
manfully erect, who presented a document from the government of Luang
Prabang setting forth his rank and explaining the errand on which he had
been sent. He was a slender young man of aristocratic features, this
_gendre du roi_—son-in-law of the king, to translate one of the two
languages on the paper he had laid before me—a prince in his own right
many generations before he had married one of the royal daughters. He
wore a reddish _sampot_, the adult diaper of Siam, Laos, and Cambodia,
and a white jacket of French military cut, starched and spotless, as did
also the chief local authority. He spoke excellent French; had in fact,
unless my memory fails me, been at school in France, and all in all was
a man whom any one might have thanked a king for offering as a companion
on such a journey as lay before me.
We were off down the small river about seven next morning. To have
started earlier, with a heavy fog filling the whole valley of a stream
bristling with rocks and rapids, would have been dangerous. The king’s
son-in-law and I each had a boat, though I should have liked better to
have had him with me, for the sake of information as well as
companionship. The craft were what the French call _pirogues_, long and
narrow, as slim and long in proportion as a lead-pencil, sharpened at
both ends, and just about as easily turned over. They were frailly made
of boards barely an inch thick, tied together with vines, with a
prairie-schooner top of banana-leaves held in shape by a network of
bamboo splints, and movable back and forth as sun, wind, rain, or lack
thereof suggested; and mine had a raised platform with a mat in honor of
my super-princely rank. It was of about the size, and the comfort, or
its antithesis, of the mule-litter of northern China, which it strangely
resembled in its jerky overbalanced gait, teetering so incessantly that
I could not even write rough notes in it. I had four boatmen, two at
each of the slightly raised, distant, pencil-like ends of the craft, all
wearing tattooed breeches but not much else. Sitting cross-legged and
half pretending to paddle, these typical _piroguiers_ of Luang Prabang
seemed the personification of laziness, until one saw them in the
rapids, the rock gorges, the genuine waterfalls they dare to shoot.
The prince in another pirogue always followed me as a sign of my high
rank, not, I am sure, because he wished me to risk the countless rapids
first. Each time I was certain the frail craft, writhing beneath me like
a living being, would be dashed to pieces on the rocks that bristled
everywhere and on which it scraped its bottom ominously at every drop. I
was astonished, astounded as often as we emerged safely from another of
these racing foaming perils. Yet though they worked like demons in the
rapids, these boatmen of the Nam-khan, compared with the Chinese, with
the Indians of the Amazon when they shovel water, were lazy after all,
dabbing their narrow paddles into the stream and pulling them out again
like playing children, and most of the time resting completely from that
exertion. Again I disclaim any desire to criticize; had theirs been my
lot in life I should certainly have worked as they did, rather than at
the beast-like pace of labor that prevails in China. It was natural,
since they can always pole their way up-stream, that they had never
learned to toil like their South American prototypes, except in short
spurts in the rapids.
Now and again the prince and I got out and walked ahead, while the
boatmen stopped to study a maze of rocks that we were quite satisfied to
let them try alone. Every few hours a cluster of jungle houses stood out
in a tiny half-clearing on the high bank of the river, and most of these
we visited. At each village the chief and the other men of importance,
usually including several yellow-robed priests, came to pay their
respects. Instead of snatching off hats or head-cloths, and performing
an antic between a courtesy and an exaggerated bow, the form of salute
in Luang Prabang is to come to a complete squat. Obsequious as this
looked, it was evidently merely a gesture of politeness, for even the
men of highest rank who had any intercourse with the prince,
representative of the king in person, dropped to their haunches, and
rose to human stature again only when the interview ended. In making any
request of him, or in receiving anything from him, even the boatmen
squatted, holding both hands, palms together, above the head. The
village notables wore _sampots_ of many colors—purple, pink,
grass-green—topped by khaki coats of uniform cut, which they evidently
donned in our honor. Always they brought us leaf-wrapped cones of
flowers, usually on banana-leaf platters. A supply of these bouquets of
greeting, one concluded, must be kept on hand for emergencies.
The women were usually the first to see us, for they were constantly
bathing themselves and their naked urchins in the stream; and they were
clever at getting into or out of their barrel-like single garment
without unduly exposing themselves. I saw more bathing on that journey
down the Nam-khan than during my two years in China, and less
uncleanliness in all Laos than in the smallest Chinese village. The
women of Luang Prabang, especially along the rivers, are no burden to
their fathers and husbands so far as clothing is concerned. In every
village we visited they were naked to the waist, and did not know it; at
least they did not seem to be conscious that in other, often less modest
lands, such a costume might be frowned upon. They wore a single piece of
cloth, spun from cotton grown on the spot, and woven on hand-looms under
their long-legged houses. Colored in the thread with dyes made from nuts
and vegetable growths of the region, this strip is simply wrapped about
the waist. Or, in the case of a few of the youngest, which in that
backward land still means the more modest women, the unmarried perhaps,
or at least those who had not yet borne a child, it is wrapped about the
lower two thirds of the breasts, with correspondingly more of the legs
showing. Thus one recognized the girls of flapper age by their shapely
brown legs and the matrons by their resemblance in costume to the Venus
of Milo. Once a child has arrived, the exposure incident to suckling it
seems to overcome virginal modesty; or in the absence of offspring pride
no doubt soon joins carelessness in casting out the habits of
maidenhood, so that there were displayed the scrawny pendent udders of
the sterile as well as the withered rags of old age. The sight of a
white man appeared to move some of the women to cover their breasts, a
mere matter of deftly raising the garment. Whether this gesture was a
recognition of the susceptibility of the French—who surely could not
have issued non-exposure decrees!—or a mere matter of politeness, like
the male squat, there was no means of knowing.
Though they did not thrust themselves forward, the women of this region
were not so retiring as those of most of the Orient. Some of them were
distinctly good-looking, well formed, their skin of an almost golden
color, enhanced by the frequent bathing of most tropical peoples; and at
least one of these village maidens would not have looked at all out of
place in a famous Broadway review—except that she was far too modest
both in dress and demeanor for such company. With the conversation at
Muongsen still in mind, I took care not to touch these fair damsels in
getting photographs of them, though with difficulty, since it has become
almost second nature during two decades of wandering among camera-shy
peoples to arrange by hand my subjects to the camera’s liking. It would
have been a sad ending to so officially attested a trip to have been
charged with one of the most serious crimes in the Laosian code!
The people of Laos struck me as the most pleasing unspoiled race with
which I came in contact in all my Far-Eastern wanderings, though I might
have formed a less favorable opinion if I had tried to make my way among
them without being sponsored by king and princes. We brought up at the
end of the first day at Sop June—at least so it sounded—in time to
photograph most of the inhabitants before concocting a dinner from our
supplies over a beach fire. There was barely room in my narrow boat at
the foot of the village bank to set up my cot, but with China and its
crowded, filthy, noisy waterfronts in mind this was a haven of rest
indeed. Next morning two big fat otter came out to gaze upon us from the
foot of the often precipitous shore, looking in their wet coats, shining
in the slanting rays of the rising sun, as large as seals. To my
satisfaction, since I have none of the hunter in my soul, they
disappeared in the water again before my royal companion could get his
rifle ready, much less aimed. Something convinced me that he, too, was
just as well pleased, that the Buddhist within him really condemned this
aping of ruthless Western ways, with the added Oriental risk of losing
face if he had shot without bringing down the quarry. Birds in
comic-opera costumes flitted singly and in groups across the faces of
the inclosing forest walls, a flock of parrakeets, screeching like a
dismissed chorus, sometimes flying clear across the river. Big fish now
and then jumped well out of the water, as if to take a look at us or at
the scenery. Or they may have been reconnoitering, for curious
wigwam-shaped fish-traps, held down by heaps of stones on a platform
part way up them, are placed at the heads of rapids on the Nam-khan.
Then there were weirs, draining into jug-shaped baskets with small
entrances which forked prongs made almost impossible as exits, with a
single opening in them just wide enough for the narrow pirogues to slip
through; and even these were made impassable to the fish by a row of
bamboos, one end of each held down in the river and the upper floating
one pointing down-stream.
The villages were as much alike, once one had seen a few of them, as our
own stereotyped cities: from half a dozen to a score of
woven-bamboo-and-leaf shacks, light as big baskets, raised on posts, in
a little clearing overrun with children, curs, pigs, and chickens—four
forms of life all but universal the world over—and little else except
the surrounding jungle. Chickens of both sexes, perhaps I should have
specified, for in this one matter the people seemed to believe in
monogamy and to have as many roosters as hens. It was in one of these
villages of the Upper Nam-khan that I saw the first of still another
race, the Kha, which some consider the real aborigines of these forested
mountains of the ancient kingdom, as they are indubitably the oldest
remaining inhabitants. They were wild but harmless-looking men, wearing
earrings, their women adorned with still larger ones. A Kha woman down
from the mountains—for like the Miao they are a highland people—had
tattooed arms and, at least while the prince and I were there, was
completely clothed from neck to calves, in derided contrast to the
river-village women. In another village several dirty Chinese peddlers,
plainly not much liked by the natives, sat almost insolently on the soft
bamboo-splint floor of the clean _sala_ maintained for more cleanly
visitors. It was in this same village that our boatmen knelt before the
assembled authorities and asked that new boats, or new boatmen, be
provided, as they were tired or homesick or something. To any one
accustomed to seeing the boatmen of China toil many times harder, often
day after day for weeks at a time, than these tropical fellows had for
little more than a day, there was something childish about them. The
petition was promptly refused, and in due time we took our leave and
went on down the ever wider and gradually less swift rapid-bristling
river.
Finally, in the middle of the second day, we were forced to grant the
boatmen’s request, for there came a rapid so Niagara-like that no boats
can navigate it. All our baggage and supplies were turned over to
coolies, behind whom we walked in blazing noonday sunshine and deep sand
around the falls to another pair of pirogues, waiting for us ever since
the prince had passed here on the slow up-stream trip to meet me, and
were off again down an increasing river until well after dark. The new
crew were twin brothers of the old, and the change of boats had made
little change in the endless series of rapids, for rarely was there not
at least one roaring in our ears—until, toward evening, they came
farther and farther apart as the river spread out into a wide and almost
placid stream. Palisades and precipices had marked the place of changing
boats; farther down there were rock cliffs again, the ever larger river
cutting circles among them, mighty rocks that seemed to have tumbled
down from them jutting forth from the edge of the stream. The current
was still swift, yet after a long afternoon of racing down-stream there
was the same jagged heap of mountains just behind us, turning reddish
lilac and purple from the setting sun ahead. Bamboo rafts, with little
houses on them, made their way more slowly down the stream, so placid
now that it mirrored the ever-lower hills densely covered with
jungle-forest, networks of lianas, some trees completely shrouded in
vines, whole hillsides of huge banana-plumes, flashes of birds across
them. Women wearing nothing but skirts were getting water from the
river; others, especially at sundown, were bathing themselves and their
naked children. Bonzes in dirty yellow robes, loafing, or horse-playing
to use up the energy their calling does not permit them to waste in work
or domestic happiness, showed themselves here and there along the way.
The people seemed darker, burned to an almost Madrasi color.
We landed well after dark, climbing a long flight of steps cut steeply
in the earth bank, to find ourselves in a considerable town, as towns go
in Laos, with a big, almost a palatial rest-house for distinguished
travelers, and a military commander in khaki to greet us. To my
astonishment—and to that of many others, it transpired—I found that my
boat trip was ended. From just over there in the woods, it seemed, an
“automobilable” road ran to the royal capital, and a Ford would come for
us in the morning. Royally done indeed! Usually it takes nearly a week
for this journey down the Nam-khan, but the high waters of spring had
favored us beyond all precedent.
Next morning we strolled a couple of kilometers through splendid
forests, to ride twenty-seven more in America’s most plebeian conveyance
along a fair dirt road that the jungle had already covered with grass in
places, through incessant forest. Kapok falling from huge
vegetable-cotton trees whitened the ground in large patches. Some of the
tribes of Indo-China weave it into cloth. There were trees so covered
with white flowers that they looked incongruously like those of our
northern clime shrouded with the wet snow of spring.
I reached Luang Prabang town before the sun was high, being delivered at
the door of another hospitable _commissaire_, this time still young and
energetic and with a French wife equally devoted to her official duties
and to their two small children. All the little French colony was still
breathless with the news the telegraph had brought them the evening
before, that I had accomplished the journey from Xieng Khuang to their
very doors, as it were, in three days. There were hints that they
credited this partly to American black magic. For in this wilderness
land of perfect telegraphic service I had not only exchanged greetings
with my family in Hanoï every evening except the one on the river, but
the authorities at Xieng Khuang, Luang Prabang, Vientiane, even Hanoï,
Paris itself for all I know, had been instantly advised of every step of
my journey.
CHAPTER XVI
KNIGHTED IN THE KINGDOM OF THE DIVINE BUDDHA
Luang Prabang, venerable capital of the ancient kingdom of the same
name, is a spacious town of a few wide French streets, softly paved, if
at all, with narrow Laosian streets like lovers’ lanes between them. It
is well wooded, with roomy yards usually whispering with palm-trees. In
other words it is not a city at all, in the crowded, noisy, Western
sense, but a leisurely congregation of separate dwellings of simple
lines, each in its ample garden-park, or at least with sufficient ground
so that its opinions or doings need not interfere with its neighbors. In
short Luang Prabang town is in many ways what idealists picture the
cities of Utopia to be, whatever insurance companies may think of the
fire-risks involved in more thatch than tile roofs. It sits on a bank of
the upper Mekong, more exactly the Me Nam Khong, that snaky
dividing-line between Siam and at least half of Indo-China, which in
time becomes one of the most important rivers of the Far East. Just here
it happens that it is not the dividing-line, for a large chunk of Luang
Prabang kingdom lies on the Siamese side of the river. Tiresome persons
of statistical temperament tell us that the capital stands 340 meters,
about 1135 feet, above sea-level; but one would hardly know it from the
number of overcoats required. In fact, though it was still April, my
host the _commissaire_ knew the futility of expecting a guest from the
temperate zone to sleep until he had been cooled off with a jaunt by
Ford through the tepid after-dinner night.
There were two Fords in Luang Prabang, that which had come for me at
Don-mo and one belonging to the king. It would of course have been bad
manners for the _commissaire_ openly to emphasize his real bosshood by
sporting the better car; besides, the garage mechanics of the capital
are as inexperienced as filling-stations are rare; hence the
transportation that had been placed at my disposal lacked something of
the regality of its rival, particularly in the matter of diligent
polishing. There were also some horses, a few elephants, several
victorias, even three or four rickshaws, though these, except perhaps
that of the king inside the palace grounds, might as well not have been
imported, for there were no men in this languid Eden both able and
willing to pull them. Nearly every one walks in Luang Prabang,
barefooted and silent, unless he travels by boat. For the most important
conveyances are the long narrow pirogues, some of them surprisingly
large, hollowed out of single tree-trunks, which ply the Mekong and the
Nam-khan that flows into it above the town. On the bow of each boat
there is almost sure to be a bouquet of flowers, a pretty custom, even
if it is probably based on a superstition, and one in keeping with this
gentle people of a land so kindly treated by nature. Huge fish are
caught in the Mekong, weighing a hundred and fifty, two hundred,
sometimes even two hundred and fifty—not pounds, but kilograms, fish so
big that it takes ten men to carry one of them and one man to carry a
severed head. It is easy to understand what the flap of such a fish-tail
sometimes means to the fishermen in their frail vine-tied canoes. But it
is just the fishing for such a people in such a climate; for every time
they catch a fish they can—and usually do—rest for a week without going
hungry. Racing pirogues as much as twenty paces long lie bottom up on
bamboo-horses under little thatch roofs here and there upon the high
weed-grown river-bank at the edge of the capital, being used only in
November during the annual regattas. For rowing—more exactly paddling—is
the athletic sport of Luang Prabang.
The main street of the capital, dying out at either end in semi-jungle,
is lined by a long market, facing the entrance to the king’s palace. But
for that matter there is a market just outside the royal palace in
Madrid, too, and many beggars also, which here seem to be unknown,
unless we count the yellow-clad priests sauntering along with their
begging-bowls in the early morning. Even such an Eden as this is not
without its serpents, however; and rattling chains on the legs of
prisoners working about the town make strange contrast both to its quiet
gentle atmosphere and to the regality of its king. The gay garments,
especially of the female branch of the population, make doubly
picturesque the market and the long lanes of greenery that represent
streets. The women of Luang Prabang capital, unlike their country
sisters in the rest of the kingdom, usually wear a thin silk or cotton
scarf of bright color over their bare breasts, half covering them, and
slipping coquettishly off when they wish to make an impression on one of
the opposite sex. The Laosian women of the bush think no more of their
uncovered breasts than they do of their bare feet; these sophisticated
girls of the silken scarf in the capital recognize them as an asset.
There was something about their every gesture that recalled our own
flappers—with betel-nut taking the place of gum and of lip-stick. Yet
their coquetry may be largely innocent, for the French assured me, in
some cases rather regretfully, I thought, that in Laos there are few of
the _congaïe_ facilities so common in Annam.
The king’s wives, and the girls of the royal family and of the wealthier
class, wear a kind of swimming-vest, usually white, in addition to the
brilliant scarf. Perhaps his Majesty does not wish charms meant for his
own eyes alone to become even visually common property. Yet the royal
wives themselves on the way to market had about them a hint of coquetry,
even toward a foreigner, which seemed to be totally lacking among their
sisters of the bush. Many of the girls of Luang Prabang wear enormous
silver or pewter anklets, some of them weighing twenty piastres or more.
Others wore chains of ten-cent pieces. So many French silver piastres
have been turned into these anklets, bracelets, the metal collars of the
Miao, and other forms of adornment that it is little wonder Indo-China
now uses almost exclusively paper money.
Luang Prabang means Kingdom of the Divine Buddha. What more natural then
than that there should be many Buddhist temples, shrines, and
monasteries in its capital? Indeed there are so many on both sides of
the river that the town might easily be mistaken for a holy city,
devoted to priests and pilgrims. Some of the temple compounds are bare
ground scattered with yellow-roofed buildings of Siamese or Burmese
character, with big stupas made of mud bricks and more or less overgrown
with vegetation, with mere cells raised on piles, in which languid
bonzes meditate. Others are covered with groves of trees, shaded by
masses of palm and banana leaves; but in them all great calm and quiet
reigns. Just behind the main and market street fronting the royal palace
is a rocky ridge called Pagoda Hill, two hundred feet above the plain
and half encircled by the Nam-khan by which travelers unworthy of Fords
come to the capital from the east or south. It is worth climbing if only
for the view it offers of the idyllic city and its surrounding
semi-jungle; and along it ramble queer old religious structures,
including one built over a gigantic “footprint of Buddha” in the native
rock. What feet that far-famed son of India had, and what seven-league
boots, to have scattered, so long before the coming of railways and
Fords, his bare footprints so far and wide over the Orient!
Some of the old priests of Luang Prabang are honored as demigods by the
people of the kingdom. They step forth from their holy dwellings only
with a ceremonial parasol held over them, by one of the surrounding
group of youngster attendants in the same bright yellow; and the French
_commissaire_ himself was almost servile in the respectful politeness
with which he treated the most holy of them all, whose attitude
sometimes suggested that it was he who had the upper hand. These bonzes
may not even kill a flea, though the provocation must often be almost
too strong to be borne; but they may eat beef and the flesh of other
animals killed by some one else. Even the cynical French residents say
they are real celibates, that they would be expelled from the order if
they were caught breaking this particular vow. It might be harder to
keep were not all young men expected to be priests for a year or two, as
those of European lands become soldiers, only the ones to whom the
monastic life appeals retaining the yellow robe, which the great
majority soon discard for marriage. Little less sacred than the priests
are the dogs that all but overrun the capital, eating the food laid out
for gods and bonzes, much as the sacred oxen of India take their toll
from pious shopkeepers. Held in a kind of Buddhist reverence by the
people and more or less protected by the priests, these mongrels are not
even subjected to muzzle or license, though the French would like to
improve their rules of sanitation to the extent of exterminating the
harmless but self-confident curs.
But the French do not insist on imposing their religious beliefs on
their wards and colonies. In Luang Prabang they go so far as to provide
for the up-keep of the temples and monasteries in the annual
governmental budget. In a way this is a means of supporting the
educational system, for the priests act as schoolmasters to their
novices. In great contrast to China, there is not a single Christian
missionary in all the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha, not even a Catholic
priest. There was almost a sense of relief in finally getting completely
beyond the reach of missions, however good an opinion one may form of
mission work in some of its phases. For in certain moods one feels a
species of boastfulness in our insistence that so alien a race give up
its own beliefs in favor of our more or less generally accepted guess as
to the after-world and how to reach it, in our Western efforts to impose
our philosophy of life upon a people that has a not unworthy one of its
own, and one that seems to make them much happier than we are.
I had come to Luang Prabang, however, on the special invitation of its
king, and my chief duty and pleasure was to pay him my respects.
Ignorance is ever embarrassing, so the natural prelude to such an honor
as a royal audience was to find out something concerning the king and
his kingdom, as one skims through the chapter-headings of an author one
is about to meet. That ancient land is hardly known even to our
encyclopedias, to say nothing of our school-books, but a few basic facts
were available in the jungle-framed French offices of the capital,
offices strangely similar in their atmosphere of _paperasses_ and
official dignity to those French staff headquarters I had served in
during the war. Languid as it is, Luang Prabang’s history is not without
its exciting moments. For its origin one must go back to that great
Nan-chao kingdom, with its capital at Tali-fu in the southwestern corner
of China, founded in 629 A.D. and destroyed six centuries later (1234),
not by the Chinese but by their Mongol ruler, Kublai Khan. The Kingdom
of the Divine Buddha is one of the remnant kingdoms of the great Tai
race which, once holding a part of what is now China, was gradually
driven west and south, losing or attaining culture until it varied from
the high civilization of the Khmer to almost illiterate tribes,
according to where its new lot was cast. Best known to the outside world
by the Siamese word for man (_lao_), or as _shan_, from a Chinese word
used in Burma, this people still prefers to be called Tai.
Laos has eight divisions, of which Luang Prabang is the largest and the
only one still boasting a king of its own. A century ago most of it
belonged to ethnologically related Siam. I have already mentioned that
this greatest division of French Indo-China, about as large and of much
the same shape as Italy, has fewer inhabitants than Detroit. This is
largely because it was so often sacked, and its people killed by the
Chinese, who wanted the land, or carried off by the Siamese to populate
her sparsely settled regions along the Menam. A traveler who visited
Luang Prabang in 1872 found it the most compactly built city of Siam,
with the single exception of Bangkok, which it in some respects
resembled. But of several disasters the greatest seems to have been in
1887, when the Black Flags of Taiping days in China burned and almost
completely destroyed and depopulated it, so that perhaps it is not by
choice of its up-and-coming citizens that it is so roomy, pastoral, and
ideal a city to-day.
The same altruism and love of their fellow-man that has given the French
the arduous task of protecting the rest of Indo-China led to their
present position in the affairs of Laos. About the time the Chinese from
Yünnan were pillaging Luang Prabang kingdom a Frenchman named Pavie was
sent there on a mission. The father of the present king, born _Tiao_
Kham Souk, who lived from 1837 until 1904 and reigned under the name of
Ritthithamaronjsac—though he was more popularly known as King Zacharine,
and probably not entirely on account of his sweet disposition—was an
absolute despot, descended from a long direct line of similar rulers.
For the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha has been a kingdom as far back as
the memory of its people goes. Zacharine became a great friend of Pavie,
at least according to such data as was available in the French
government offices of Luang Prabang, and when the Siamese failed to
protect him, as they had promised, against the Chinese, he went to Siam
under Pavie’s wing; and later, in a quarrel with the Siamese, who had
burned and looted and carried off most of the people of Vientiane and
Xieng Khuang, he made the mistake, like his royal neighbors of Annam and
Cambodia, of calling in the French. By 1893 Siam had been compelled to
give up all claim to this ancient kingdom and to the magnificent
highlands of Tran-ninh, and all Laos became a European dependency under
the protection of France.
My host the _commissaire_ chose a victoria for our descent upon his
royal ward, no doubt feeling that to have used his Ford would be to call
unnecessary attention to himself as the only possessor, besides his
Majesty, of so regal a conveyance. Besides, the leisurely open carriage
was far more in keeping with the calm and woodsy atmosphere of the
metropolis of Laos. The king’s palace is a building mainly in French
style, more like a hotel with a steeple-cupola than the abode of an
Oriental potentate. It stands in a fairly spacious yard, not quite large
enough to be worthy the name of park, on the eastern bank of the Mekong,
at the foot of the hill graced by Buddha’s footprint; and it was
somewhat in disorder. Chairs were kicking about the foreign-style
dining-room, and there were other suggestions of a late party and
oversleeping servants. The building was quite new, it seemed; there were
few decorations on the walls yet, though a man had come all the way from
Paris to cover them with paintings. Evidently he had found the climate
not conducive to constant work, particularly work paid for by the day by
a protected people; for surely he could not have discovered a means of
squandering his time in the social amenities of the king’s harem, and
there was no other means of accounting for his Oriental leisureliness of
execution.
Royal servants went to announce us, though word of our coming had been
sent ahead, and while we waited I mentally reviewed the information I
had gleaned from the Oriental Almanach de Gotha it had been my privilege
to consult at French headquarters on the eve of my royal reception. I
make no claim as to its exactness, and still less to that of my memory;
but there is a probability that both of them are approximately correct.
_Tiao_ Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah, present king of Luang Prabang and a
direct descendant of an endless line of its kings, was born in 1885, on
July 14—no wonder he is a favorite of the French—and succeeded his
father Zacharine in 1904. His mother was not his mother, so to speak.
For _Tiao_ Thong Di, first wife of Zacharine, still known as the Queen
Mother, and real ruler of the royal household, bossing even the king
himself in domestic matters, according to reliable verbal information
from a French and feminine source, had no male children. The second-rank
wife, _Tiao_ Thong Si, daughter of a high mandarin related to the royal
family, gave birth to the present monarch; but in Laos as in China every
child is officially the offspring of the first wife. His father
Zacharine seems to have been a temperate person, considering his
advantages, for the king has only three half-brothers and six
half-sisters; though it is possible that Zacharine died with certain
secrets buried in his bosom, Occidental fashion. Half-sisters and
half-brothers may marry in Luang Prabang, by the way, which is not
without its effect on the reigning house. Also _Tiao_ Sisavang Vong
Somdet Prah has at least this much in common with his English colleague,
that he had an older brother who died, leaving him unexpectedly heir to
the throne.
The latest calculations were that the present king had fifteen wives and
about forty children; on this second point he did not seem to be very
exact himself, no doubt finding it difficult to keep strictly up to date
in domestic events within his household. Yet he did not look either worn
or dissipated, when presently he came in to shake hands and sit down
with us, perhaps because the Queen Mother takes so many of the palace
cares off his shoulders. Seven of his sons were studying at the _Lycée_
in Hanoï; and the crown prince, Savang Vathama, then sixteen, was
nearing his bachelor degree in a similar institution at Montpellier in
France, with the avowed intention of studying law afterward. The king
himself had a purely Laosian education under Buddhist priests until King
Zacharine sent him to a French _collège_ at Saïgon. Later he went to the
Ecole Coloniale in the Rue de l’Observatoire in Paris, where French
youths prepare for a career in the colonies. He came home once when his
father was ill, but upon his recovery was sent back to France to get
together a printing establishment with Laosian characters and to learn
how to run it, which makes him more or less related to the late kaiser,
bookbinder.
The king was plump and pleasant, handsome for his race, by no means
betraying his all but forty years. It was easy to imagine the girls of
Luang Prabang, if not indeed of France, “just crazy” about him, quite
aside from his royal rank. He had a frail Oriental mustache and that
beautiful bronze-brown complexion of his race. Unlike most European
monarchs he is purely of the blood of those he reigns over. But his
Majesty indulges in the chief minor vice of his people, and the only
blot on his manly beauty, and not even that of course to the fair ones
of his own land, was that his teeth, though they were not enameled, were
discolored and his lips somewhat bloody with betel-juice. Even now he
seemed to be nursing a quid, though with a regal finesse that it would
have done our secret chewers of tobacco good to see.
[Illustration: Wind-sieved rice is the principal food of the rural
inhabitants of Luang Prabang]
[Illustration: With a silk scarf worn loosely over a shoulder the women
of Luang Prabang capital are more coquettish than their waistless
sisters of the country districts]
[Illustration: The palace of the king of Luang Prabang sits placidly on
the bank of the upper Mekong]
[Illustration: The king turned out his chief dancing-girls and masked
male entertainers for my approval]
He wore a white cork helmet, a black bow-tie about a standing white
collar on a stiff white shirt with the round cuffs of a decade or more
ago, and a snow-white three-button coat which, in so far as my meager
knowledge in sartorial matters is trustworthy, was of the latest model.
The fact that the middle buttonhole was attached to the upper button may
have meant either a dreadful ignorance of Western ways or merely
unseemly haste in leaving his harem; or it may have had no significance
whatever. His feet were quite properly incased in low black shoes of
faultless last and luster, but—let the spinster reader blushingly turn
the page here—he wore no trousers! His rank and calling, it seems,
forbade him these final touches to an otherwise perfectly European
costume. Instead, his thighs were inclosed in the _pha_ or _sampot_,
such as is worn by both sexes in Siam and adjoining countries under
Siamese influence. It was a kind of short skirt, evidently of silk and
of colors verging on the gaudy, drawn between the legs and tucked into
the belt at the back, reaching to just below the knees in front and
“rather less than ‘arf o’ that be’ind.” Naturally a full-fledged king
could not leave the hiatus uncovered and keep his self-respect.
Therefore between _sampot_ and shoes the royal legs were clad in silk
stockings of which the most regal young lady of our own land might have
been proud—except that in her case they would no doubt have been of a
color to deceive the uninformed observer into thinking she wore no
stockings whatever, whereas in backward barbarian Luang Prabang this
would have been bad form. These were jet-black and reached so far up the
back as to suggest that they were held by a band about the waist.
Indeed, it was immediately evident that the king had missed a splendid
chance for extra decoration by not wearing a pair of red garters just
below the knees.
A goodly proportion of the royal income must be spent on stockings. For
I was assured, not merely by common rumor but by all the Frenchwomen in
Luang Prabang—of whom there are three or four—that his Majesty will
under no circumstances wear anything but silk about his shapely legs,
and that a stocking with the slightest hole in it is immediately
discarded. It would be easy to imagine his wives, of whom he fortunately
has fifteen, scrambling for these discards of the royal wardrobe, and
racing for their darning needles, were it not that in Laos even the
wives of kings do not wear stockings.
But do not for a moment gather from all this that _Tiao_ Sisavang Vong
Somdet Prah had the slightest hint of the barbarian in his appearance.
Except for the sacred _sampot_ in place of trousers, and the proof of a
king’s income between that and the shoes, his Majesty would have
attracted no attention whatever in a Palm Beach crowd, unless it were by
his athletic build and his agreeable undissipated smile, and, at close
range, the light touch as of fresh blood on his lips beneath the thin
well clipped mustache. In fact of all the kings with whom I have
hobnobbed he was the most pleasing to look upon, and to all outward
appearances a gentleman not even given to bullying his wives. His lapel
was adorned with the little red button of a French decoration—the Legion
of Honor, I fancy, though I confess to a deplorable ignorance of these
important matters—and a gold watch-chain hanging from this drew
attention to what was evidently not the thinnest of watches in the
outside breast-pocket. A signet-ring not unlike those of our West Point
and Annapolis graduates encircled his wedding finger, and he wore a cord
of what looked like ordinary string about each wrist.
This cord decoration is something peculiar to Luang Prabang. The
_commissaire_ wore them also, as did his baby son; possibly his charming
lady did too, though I am not sure that mere women are worthy of them.
Cords are put about the wrists amid elaborate ceremonies and must be
worn for at least seven days if they are to be effective in preserving
the wearer from evil. The king himself had come to tie those about the
wrists of the _commissaire’s_ newly born son and heir and thereby assure
it constant good luck through all the menaces to health among European
infants living in the tropics. The French are good colonists partly
because of their wisdom in keeping up and even taking part in such
simple and harmless native customs, which the average American and
British colonial official would probably scorn as “poppycock,” if he did
not actually try to uproot them. “Poppycock” it is, to be sure, but the
effect which a little sympathy in such matters has on native populations
is not.
The king spoke a fair but throaty French, but was not exactly talkative
in that tongue, whatever he may be in his own and in the intimacies of
his harem. In fact, contrary as it may be to our movie and popular-novel
conception of royalty, he was rather bashful, with a school-boy dread of
making a mistake in the foreign tongue he was using, and at the same
time evidently fearful of doing or saying anything that might displease
the French. His demeanor was a curious mixture of regal old-family
pride, a pride reaching so far back that we mere moderns from a
barbarian world were not worthy of knowing the secrets of life behind
it, and of the anxiety of the star in a royal movie being filmed under
the eye of the manager of the great Jewish corporation that is “putting
him across.” All of which did not remove the first impression that
_Tiao_ Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah would be a fine fellow to take along
for a tramp or a swim, and that it would not be long before one could
begin calling him “Prah Old Top.”
All hands seemed a little ill at ease. Having exchanged the usual
platitudes, we stood about doing nothing much, paused with admiring mien
before a new bronze bust of the king, covered with medals and
decorations, and a good likeness, though of no better color than his
actual complexion, but showing neither the betel-red lips nor the
cigarette that drips almost incessantly from them. His Majesty handed
out atrocious French tobacco-monopoly cigars worthy of a Chinese
_tuchun_, but wisely stuck to cigarettes himself, smoking one after
another in rapid succession. We chatted a little on general subjects,
the impression growing that the king’s French was good enough if only he
could have thrown off the feeling that it would be an intolerable
disgrace for a king to make an error in speech. Can it be this that
makes modern monarchs and presidents so taciturn? Among the thoughts
that passed between us I gathered that he wished to visit the emperor of
Annam when Khai-dinh celebrated his birthday the following year. I have
never heard whether he was able to do so, but if he and his
fellow-protégé, whom he so far had never met, were allowed to get
together out of hearing of the French they must have had a great
chat—provided of course that they had a language in common.
At a mere suggestion from my companion, and as if it were a relief from
a tense situation, his Majesty graciously stepped to the main doorway of
the palace, an excellent jet-black background for a blazing tropical
sunshine that outdid anything Hollywood can devise in lighting-effects,
and posed for his photograph. Another merest hint from the _commissaire_
and _Tiao_ Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah went off at once like a small boy
to dress up for his picture, and came back in a surprisingly short time
in his most regal robes, a radiant royal costume quite beyond my power
to describe. All the medals on the breast of bronze near-by were now in
place on the living model; he was again in women’s silk stockings, quite
evidently brand new, and this time held up by round-the-leg garters of
brilliant hue. A green and saffron flowered-silk _sampot_—but how
foolish for a man who cannot even describe a ball-dress well enough to
give his wife any conception of it to attempt so impossible a job as
this!
Never have I found a king more docile in meeting my every suggestion.
Barely a whisper from me and he ordered his throne-room decked out in
its coronation best, had his royal attendants summoned. Cringing
flunkies brought in swords of state, big golden bowls, a marvelous hat
of half cowboy half women-of-the-plume-days style, studded with jewels,
and with a Burmese-pagoda top. Ascending his throne, the king assumed
his most regal aspect, his white gloves flashing like those of a traffic
policeman during a Catholic procession. The master of ceremonies of the
palace himself brought tables and other regal paraphernalia to offset my
lack of a tripod; two men in green, each holding a great sword, knelt
fearfully at the foot of the throne, and—and I muffed the picture. No
doubt the nervous tension of photographing kings on their thrones in
their coronation-robes would be enough to cause an even calmer and more
experienced photographer to misjudge tropical light conditions; at any
rate I so under-exposed that strip of film that only those with keen
eyesight can make out more than the general lay-out of the throne, and
the king’s white-gloved hands on his richly sampotted knees.
Lesser catastrophes have left broken hearts, but it did not so much
matter about that throne-room picture after all, for, again at the
merest suggestion of the _commissaire_ and as promptly as a circus seal
obeys its trainer, the king once more stepped to the spotlighted doorway
of the palace, hat, robes, medals, and all, to give my camera another
trial, finally posing with his French boss at his side. The
_commissaire_ was also in all his glory. Three great medals that proved
he had done this, that, or some other brave deed—for he was not a man to
have successfully bootlicked this, that, or the other high
authority—blazed over his heart. His white uniform coat and black
trousers had fancy neck, waist, wrist, and trouser-seam bands; he wore a
sword, with rich belt-tassels, and carried white gloves, though the
white _casque_ on his head and the black shoes on the blistering
pavement had nothing unusual about them. In short his dress was as out
of keeping with his plebeian name of Mill—were names translated—as it
was with the simple backwoods life about us. Finally his Majesty, of his
own volition unless my eyes were momentarily off their guard, was
graciously moved to insist that I also stand beside him in the doorway
spotlight and let the camera again do its worst. In vain did I plead my
unworthiness to be thus immortalized, like one of the boon companions of
his Majesty, particularly in my vagabondish incongruities of rumpled
semi-whites, once-tan shoes still half decided to be black, a necktie
that insisted on the right to be temperamental in a tropical climate, a
pocket bulging full of—how should I know what? The king, I long
afterward noticed, wore quite a different face in these pictures in true
royal garb than that of the genial boulevardier he presented in mufti,
something like his own elder brother, with all the cares of state upon
his shoulders.
But all this was only the beginning of the honors that were heaped upon
me before that epoch-making day was done! Immediately after the signal
distinction of being photographed by the resplendent _commissaire_ at
the side of the even more luminiferous king I was knocked breathless—or
at least I might have been if the _commissaire_ had not that morning
whispered to me the possibility of what was to happen next, probably
before the king himself had thought of it; in fact there had been subtle
hints to that effect as far back as Xieng Khuang, if not in Hanoï
itself—by the announcement that his Majesty was about to confer upon me
his most regal decoration, the most prominent of the many medals on the
breasts of the _commissaire_ and of the king himself, both in bronze and
in the flesh, the highest honor of which this protected Oriental
potentate is capable, something corresponding in Luang Prabang to the
order of the Rising Sun in Japan, to wit: the order of the Million
Elephants and the White Parasol! For you must know that Luang Prabang is
not only the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha but even more officially the
Kingdom of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol, just as King
Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah’s real title is Master of Heaven and of Life.
I do not know whether it is actually claimed that there are so many
pachyderms in the kingdom at the same time, but a little exaggeration is
always admissible in the tropics; or it may be that the souls of
departed elephants are also included in the reckoning.
The king announced his magnificent intention by a little speech in
French, with a manner strangely like that of a school-boy sentenced to
make the class presentation speech to a favorite teacher, and from it I
gathered that I was to be decorated because I was the only American—and
the word he used made it mean of either North or South America—who had
ever done his humble capital the honor of visiting it. The only one of
whom there is any official record, no doubt he meant, if indeed he was
not indulging in a bit of royal spoofing; for it is known by many, if
not by the king himself, that at least one Protestant missionary once
came through the kingdom on a scouting expedition, and the chances are
that he was American. But naturally he had not announced himself to the
constituted authorities of a country that does not allow Christian
mission work, and it may be that he did not enter the capital.
I had hitherto always been under the delusion that the bestowal of an
order meant the pinning on of the corresponding medal by the bestower’s
own fair or sunburned hands, and with war days in France in mind I knew
not what moment I might get a betel-juicy royal kiss on either cheek.
But this dreadful misgiving was but another evidence of my appalling
ignorance. On the contrary, to be decorated evidently meant merely being
given permission to decorate myself. It is true that there was handed me
later in the day an engraved diploma, in Siamese and French, bearing
here and there three elephant-heads surmounted by a white parasol, and
with my name written on the dotted line by a master penman who certainly
had not learned his calling in a Buddhist-monk school. It was neatly
rolled inside a section of bamboo to protect it from the rainy season
that was almost certain to break upon me before I reached modern forms
of transportation again. In fact I am not sure that the king did not
personally bring me this diploma, though I do know that it was prepared
in the French-staff-like government offices far from the royal palace.
But the medal itself, the visible public proof that I have been honored
beyond any of my fellow-countrymen, any of my fellow-hemispherites for
that matter, I should have to spend many francs for in a
department-store at Hanoï, if ever I reached there again. Being as
Scotch of disposition as I am abhorrent of the red tape incident to
making a purchase in a French department-store, I should certainly never
have squandered that hard-earned money, even with the franc at one of
its lowest ebbs, had not the family tyrant absolutely insisted, refusing
even to discuss the matter. She won of course, and the gaudy
elephantine-parasol trinket and the ribbon in Spanish colors that goes
with it has been tucked away somewhere among my rarely-unpacked
belongings ever since. Ah, those happy bachelor days when a man could do
exactly as his whims or his conscience prompted!
I might wear that medal now, or at least the modest lapel-ribbon that
stands for it, if I did not realize the injustice that would be to those
of my veteran friends who, having risked their eyesight and digestion at
Paris and Chaumont over maps of the western front, are entitled to
display similar adornments to an envious, disappointed world, or if I
were not fearful of being mistaken for a visiting Elk or Moose or some
other fraternal wild animal and dragged into the gilded cages provided
for those creatures. My resentment at being forced after all to decorate
myself, by way of the pocketbook, has subsided, for it seems the same
rule is true of Phi Beta Kappa pins and class numerals; but I shall
never entirely forgive Luang Prabang for bringing me as near as I ever
expect to come to the divorce courts. For when everything was over, and
I had broken the great news to my son at Hanoï in the telegrams we
exchanged on that most auspicious occasion, which chanced also to be his
fourth birthday, I discovered to my domestic dismay and perpetual regret
that the order of the Million Elephants and the White Parasol is also
conferred upon women—at least of France and allied countries—and that if
the king had suspected that I had a wife—queer I did not show it after
nearly five years of married life!—he would have—but what is the use of
bewailing what is past and done with and irreparable?
The decoration speech over, the king ordered out his dancing-girls,
deathly pale with hastily floured faces, and his male entertainers, in
masks meant to be terrifying, the gaudy colors of their festive garments
contrasting with the scarcity of soap discernible through the crevices
of their costumes. They posed rather fearfully. Some of the girls were
as young as ten, I am sure, and certainly none of them were over twenty,
for the king has a Broadway taste in these matters. Dancing-girls and
masked male figures alike wore an elaborate head-dress in the form of a
pagoda—the Rangoon style of pagoda, not those of China—which suggested a
close cultural relationship between Luang Prabang and Cambodia. As to
the welter of colors that flashed forth from them in the blazing
tropical sunshine I shall not even attempt to say anything; just let the
bootlegged imagination run riot, so long as you do not forget the
reddish teeth and the swollen lips driveling with betel-nut that gave
them the look of ghouls that had just eaten a warm corpse, or of
harmless childish-faced trolls that had been caught in the act of
gorging themselves with currant jelly in the royal jam closet.
Neither the dancers nor their king gave any sign that I had outstayed my
welcome; nor was I expected to back away from his Majesty when at last I
voluntarily took my leave. But I have a suspicion that there was more
frankness in the attitude of the baby elephant that was cavorting about
the royal lawn in the wake of its chained and mahout-ridden mother. For
when I tried to coax it into a proper filial position for a photograph
the little beast set out after me in a manner entirely out of keeping
with its status as the property of a tame king. So graphically could I
still describe this experience when I reached Hanoï again that to this
day my son regards the time when the elephant “switched its trunk” about
me as the height of my intrepid career.
The king of Luang Prabang keeps a number of royal elephants; and he is
no nonentity as a business man either, by the way. Supplementing his
salary, if the word suits a monarch, of forty-six thousand piastres a
year, and thereby offsetting his consumption of silk stockings, he has
much private property, including great forests and sawmills, in which
many of his elephants work for him. For a time some of the royal
elephants were assigned the task of dragging rollers used in the making
of roads about the capital; but they are a tender beast, for all their
size and reputed longevity, and even with only four or five hours of
labor a day, at their two-mile-an-hour gait, with the privilege of
resting every third day, two of them died from this unwonted exertion.
The king, evidently no figurehead in his capacity as business manager of
his personal estates and property, protested, and from four to six
water-buffaloes to each roller now take the place of an elephant.
In theory the many wild elephants in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha
also belong to the king. When new recruits are needed in the royal
stables, some of the wild beasts are caught by digging pits. Then a tame
and a wild one are chained together, leaving the wild elephant to tug
furiously at a collar with sharp iron points in it. The most bellicose
are fastened to a tree by a lasso about a hind leg until they are worn
out with struggle and hunger, when the two largest _éléphants de chasse_
available take the captive between them and shake and roll him until he
decides, like the man who foresees the lawyer fees involved in an action
for divorce, that after all he will be happier in the domestic state.
Most of those captured do not wait for this third degree, but, suddenly
resigned to their new fate, give in to the barbed collar and stroll
homeward with their false brother, pulling up tufts of good grass as
they go and calmly tapping each mouthful on a front foot to shake the
earth off the roots before transferring it to their dainty mouths.
Whatever the baby elephant may have meant by accelerating my exit from
the palace grounds, the king himself evidently had no intention of
dismissing me so cavalierly. For within an hour of our arrival home,
that is, at the rambling one-story soft-brick house of the
_commissaire_, with its crowing roosters—if I could rule a king I should
at least banish roosters from the back yard on which the windows of my
honored guests opened—his Majesty came alone in his Ford to return my
call and stay to lunch. He had changed back into civilian garb—not the
same garments of course in which he had first received me—perfectly
European again except for another gay silk _sampot_ and black silk
stockings out of a newly opened box. Were kings relieved of the task of
dressing and undressing, what duties would there be left for most of
them anyway? He was received like any other invited luncheon guest,
though he was always addressed as _Majesté_ by the _commissaire_ and his
well chosen wife, and the half-dozen French functionaries they had been
able to scrape together in the kingdom. In lieu of a box of chocolates
his Majesty had sent ahead some Laosian food that is served as dessert
at the royal table. One dish was a kind of custard cooked in small
cocoanuts, the base of the husk cut down to resemble the shank of a
goblet, and preserving the cocoanut taste. Another was a kind of
vermicelli covered with nut dust, not unlike a similar dish in China.
The ordinary people do not indulge in such delicacies, which are
reserved for the royal palace. Even there, according to my hostess,
there are few changes of menu. The king was well versed in Western table
manners, though he did not take a very active part in the conversation,
which of course was in French. He showed up best as a sympathetic
listener, and was easily amused. In so far as my own almost unknown
country was concerned, he seemed to be particularly interested in the
Mormons and in what the French call the _régime sec_. He laughed for
some time in his merry yet kingly way when told that Brigham Young had
forty wives and a corresponding number of children, apparently without
seeing any connection between this and his own fifteen and forty
respectively. Or it may be that he was laughing at the plight of Brigham
from the vantage-point of his own experience. The _régime sec_, in other
words, prohibition, he plainly did not understand at all, any more than
does the average Frenchman, and there was nothing to be gained in trying
to make clear the American point of view on the subject. He would of
course have been horrified to learn that there are persons in that
benighted wineless land from which I came who have never heard of his
ancient kingdom; nor did I feel it quite safe to pad out the
conversation by bringing up the question of silk stockings in its
relation to our national economic problem, for one can never be sure
just how sensitive kings may be on these very personal matters.
It became more and more evident, however, that _Tiao_ Sisavang Vong
Somdet Prah was not born anybody’s fool, even if circumstances and the
foolishness of his father Zacharine had left him and his kingdom in an
embarrassing position. There was something behind his Oriental-Gallic
courtesy and his almost perpetual smile. Nor did he seem to take himself
or his regality or his white elephants or any of the rest of his royal
trappings too seriously. On this subject of white elephants, by the way,
he mentioned that one was now supposed to be on its way to him, some
Laosian merchants among his loyal subjects having captured or purchased
such an animal that had been seen in a distant part of his kingdom. He
thought Bangkok used to have one but that his Siamese peer was now
forced to do without this adornment to their respective kinghoods. They
were not white anyway, he went on, but rather a pinkish light-gray, like
the albino water-buffalo; and his manner implied that whatever his royal
cousin of Siam might think about it, a white elephant to him would be
merely an interesting addition to his menagerie. “May you live as long
as an elephant!” is a common form of greeting in some parts of the East;
but quite aside from the doubtful kindness involved, it is based on one
of those many mistaken beliefs of mankind, according to the king,
corroborated by all the French present, who asserted that no elephant
ever lives longer than have many men and women. As monarch of what may
be the most elephant-infested corner of the globe he should be a
credible witness on the subject.
All through the luncheon the punka over our heads had moved in fitful
spurts, for the coolie squatting on the cool _dalles_ of the veranda
outside fell asleep even in the presence of royalty. His Majesty was as
hard to get rid of as an awkward country cousin, and the hostess grew
visibly fidgety before he finally remounted his Ford, for her other
guests included the doctor who should long since have been back at the
government hospital, and other functionaries eager to take up their
protective duties again, yet who could not of course show any desire to
leave so long as their monarch and master remained. One somehow had the
feeling that a king would wish to get back to his affairs of state, or
at least to his harem, as soon as possible, but this one gave evidence
of so greatly enjoying his luncheon party that he seemed capable of
sitting there forever listening and smiling.
There are really four kings in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha, or were
until one of them recently died. None of them are to be replaced,
however, as they pass on toward Nirvana, except this real one with the
title of _Majesté_. The others are merely _Excellences_. Twice a year
all the chiefs of Luang Prabang, which is a province of Laos as well as
a kingdom, come to the capital for a conference under the French
_commissaire_. It is a leisurely conference, one fancies, for the people
of Luang Prabang, high or low, do not include the word “hurry” in their
active vocabulary. Not long before, the king had gone to Hanoï, whether
for praise or a scolding no one but the governor-general seemed to know.
Nine of his suite missed the return train to Vinh, and one old mandarin
wept like a child because he could not believe that anything,
six-o’clock trains particularly, started at the very moment these
strange white people said it would. He had been barely half an hour
late, yet the conveyance had left without him! From Vinh, by the way,
all but the most important members of the party had to walk home with
the coolies, while the king proceeded by automobile over the route by
which I had come. Even the prince who had been sent to meet me at
Muongyu had made this long tramp. Evidently the position of prince has
its drawbacks in an ostensibly absolute Oriental monarchy—for that Luang
Prabang still purports to be, with the French merely advisers to the
hereditary despot. You may marry a king’s daughter, but that does not
mean that you may ride in the king’s Ford. But the travelers by
automobile gained nothing in time, for the whole outfit had to wait a
couple of weeks at Xieng Khuang until the baggage caught up with it,
while the undressed monarch remained officially incognito until his
trunks arrived. On another occasion a French aviator took him to his
forest-girdled capital in a single day.
There are ceremonial occasions when the king comes to the home of the
_commissaire_, not by Ford but on an elephant, and is carried up the
steps seated on his throne, white parasols over him and a great retinue
about him. The French residents condoled with me particularly because I
had not reached Luang Prabang _quinze jours_—a fortnight—earlier. For in
the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha New Year’s had fallen on April 12 that
year, and with it comes the ceremony of the _petit serment_, as
distinguished from the _grand serment_ in November; that is, the
swearing of fealty to the French and to the king—please note the order.
Then the king rides on several elephants, I gathered, though probably
only one at a time, and is carried through the town on his throne,
followed by long processions of notables and mandarins in white jackets
and _sampots_ of every color of the rainbow, if not indeed several which
it lacks. The common people, all the inhabitants of the capital except
the Annamese and the French, kneel and bow their heads to the earth, for
then they must not look upon their king, though it is said a few of the
least reverent sometimes do get a glimpse _à la dérobée_. To judge by
the pictures French residents had taken of the recent ceremony it was a
sight worth coming two weeks earlier to see. In them all the inevitable
cigarette was dangling from the king’s lips; no ceremony is so solemn,
no place so sacred, that _Tiao_ Sisavang Vong Somdet Prah will go
without his smoke. As many a photograph of the few remaining European
monarchs and their possible successors shows, he has good precedent for
thus openly indulging. Perhaps it is a sign of increasing democracy; or
such informal and plebeian habits may always have been shared by kings,
though our expurgated histories do not mention them. Cigarette or Ford,
however, the people of Luang Prabang take their king very seriously,
more seriously than he does himself. The native doctor at the government
hospital, educated in Hanoï and outwardly entirely French except in
complexion, kneels and touches his forehead to the floor before he gives
medicine to one of the king’s sons in the palace nursery.
[Illustration: Knighted in the Kingdom of the Divine Buddha]
[Illustration: Two royal elephants saw me off from the palace, the
youngster showing a desire to make me depart on the run]
[Illustration: A Miao woman on her travels carries bed and food]
CHAPTER XVII
SPEEDING SOUTHWARD
From the capital of Luang Prabang I again broke all existing records by
making the trip overland to Vientiane, the French capital of Laos, in
five days. Normally this takes twelve, or at the very least ten, and
every articulate person in the metropolis of the upper Mekong insisted
that it would, or at any rate should, be quite impossible to accomplish
this journey within the time I chanced to have at my disposal.
Fortunately my ideal host of Luang Prabang, and a few others who had
also seen our army in France, though neither he nor they had ever been
in the Western Hemisphere, admitted that perhaps an American could do
it, especially an American who had made the trip from Xieng Khuang to
Luang Prabang capital in three days and a couple of hours. At any rate
the _commissaire_ and the king he served offered to do all they could to
help in what they considered a very dubious undertaking.
Once again I loudly disclaim any desire to hurry; there is nothing I
dislike more. Yet as between the misery of rushing and that of missing
some important part of a country through which I am permitted to pass
once in an existence I prefer to hurry. If only I had been born
believing in the delightful doctrine of the transmigration of souls,
with the assurance that there would be plenty of other lives after this
one in which to roam through every corner of this interesting if often
disillusioning old footstool of ours, no doubt I could be as phlegmatic
and time-impervious as any Oriental backwoodsman.
This time I had to hurry because the fortnightly steamer from Vientiane
was to leave on the following Thursday morning, the first day of May,
and it was already midnight on Friday when I finished my packing, got my
bamboo-protected diploma of decoration safely tucked away and a few
supplies bought, and turned from a final social evening with the
_commissaire_ family into the last soft wide bed in some days to come.
It was doubly too bad that I had not arrived _quinze jours plus tôt_—a
fortnight earlier, for then I should not only have seen the ceremony of
the _petit serment_ but I might have avoided the hardships both of
hurrying and of the overland trip. Perhaps I am getting lazy in my old
age, or it may have been the climate, and the recent exertions of swift
travel and royal excitement; at any rate I should have preferred to go
down the Mekong with a floating village that had been prepared for a
party of Frenchmen, and women, who had left just before I arrived. But
for the automobile disaster on the way to Xieng Khuang I might have
joined them; though I might not have reached Vientiane in time for the
steamer, for with the water as low as it was then those floating
villages sometimes take two weeks for the trip.
More exactly they are floating furnished houses, a combination of raft
and boats surmounted by three or four rooms and servant quarters, two
small windows on each side of the superstructure, and all those
refinements one expects among such a comfort-loving people as the
French. At high water these house-rafts can go down the Mekong in fewer
days than are required for the overland trip through the jungle, though
by no means so fast as I proposed to make it; and at all times this way
of leaving Luang Prabang is so usual that rarely does a Frenchman in the
colonial service go by land. In fact most of those bound for the capital
come up the river also, though that is a hard and tedious job—for the
native boatmen. An official salary continues unabated irrespective of
speed. Upon due reflection, no doubt, an income forever dragging at the
heels of my personal exertions has much more to do with my weakness for
hurrying than have any impressions on the transmigration of souls. This
trip down the river is not only comfortable, but interesting and
sometimes exciting, if not dangerous. The _piroguiers_ say prayers and
throw food into the air, or place it, as well as flowers, on the bow of
the boat before passing bad rapids, that the unseen spirits may be
propitiated. But on board, all the amenities of French civilization
prevail, from whist to the three-cornered drama, and romance has
culminated and domestic disaster befallen during these long and too
restful journeys.
By trail Luang Prabang is 347 kilometers from Vientiane, nearly 225
miles, which was quite a distance to be divided among five days, even
with a slope of several hundred meters in my favor. Luckily those
twenty-seven kilometers of “automobilable” road at the Luang Prabang end
would again be useful, and there were about a hundred, with a growing
tendency, stretching northward from Vientiane, leaving me something like
a hundred miles of mountainous trail to cover on foot and horseback. To
make matters worse it rained most of that Friday night, so that when I
set off before the crack of dawn in the _commissaire’s_ Ford, the
Annamese chauffeur did not promise to make record speed. This soft dirt
road gets very slimy on the least provocation, and there were slopes
enough during that mildly up-and-down ride through the forest to provide
many a skidding place. By seven, however, we were back at the village of
Don-mo, and if the local Frenchman had not been so slow in breaking away
from his _congaïe_-shared breakfast in his thatched hut I should have
been off again at once instead of half an hour later. Here I found three
good horses, the _commissaire’s_ own mounts, with comfortable French
cavalry-saddles. One was bestridden by a Laosian sergeant who had won
two decorations in France, and one by another prince, _Chao_ Thong Souk.
Related to the king and to my former emissary, _Chao_ Duong Chan, he was
an equally delightful and helpful companion, a bit younger and, I
gathered, unmarried, a youth of most pleasant manners and disposition,
speaking excellent French. He had left the capital the morning before,
with the horses, the sergeant, and half a dozen coolies carrying some
supplies and all but the nightly indispensable portion of my modest
baggage; now he and the coolies sped on ahead, leaving the sergeant with
me as guide and body-guard, while I passed the unavoidable courtesies
with the Frenchman in native garb.
That over, we were off by a trail that had been cut more or less
directly through the jungle-choked forest, first across the flat, then
up a hill so steep that sweat ran even on horseback. Up this we had
quite a job coaxing along the Laosian, or Pwun, coolies, who wished to
stop and eat even before we overtook the prince and the others. When we
did join them, it carried me back to my old care-free vagabond days to
hear again the cry of “Kin kow!”—the Siamese equivalent to the “Come and
get it!” of our army cooks—like the voice of a friend of long ago and
far away. For the language of Luang Prabang is almost that of Siam, the
writing quite the same. We ate and drank and pushed on again; one secret
of breaking cross-country records is to give less than French attention
to the delights of the table. It looked strange to see men wearing only
a loin-cloth, and a dagger in a scabbard woven like a basket and held by
a fiber band across the chest, putting up telegraph-poles; but the
French insist on being able to talk to one another anywhere in
Indo-China, and government ownership of telegraph lines has at least one
advantage over the high-cost private system of the United States and
China.
No wonder the Chinese drove out the Tai! Two Laosian carriers bore
between them about half the load of one Chinese coolie; they made much
less speed, not to mention their many complaints along the way, and at
that they had to be relieved every few hours, or at least at the end of
a day. For a load I had often seen one Chinese jog along under day after
day of from ninety to a hundred _li_ we had eight men; the cot or the
valise that a Chinese coolie would carry at one end of his
shoulder-pole, with as much at the other, and any odds and ends on top,
these tropical fellows put in the middle of two long bamboos between two
men.
Do not misunderstand me as blaming them; as between the two I should act
like the Laosians. But the difference indicated how great is the
adaptability of the human frame, for these men were if anything larger,
sturdier, certainly more visibly muscular than Chinese carriers. They
were like those muscle marvels one sees in gymnasiums and in physical
culture magazines, no good at all beside the wiry little shrimp when it
comes to real sustained hardships. Unless hunger or the white man drives
them, the Laosians do little work; they are so happy-go-lucky in their
tropical fairy-land that their rulers even have trouble making them keep
their communal granaries filled against possible famines. For that
matter, neither do the Chinese work unless driven, of course; but they
have been incessantly just one jump ahead of starvation for so many
centuries that they do not remember, cannot imagine, anything else,
until their frames have grown to endure, on far less food, what would
kill a plump muscular Laosian.
Up and down we went, through cool forests and over red-hot mountain
ridges where too much good shade had been cut away for the telegraph
line, with one hard river to cross. In this I lost the precious army
canteen that had served me all through China, the sergeant having tied
it to my saddle with a piece of vine. I might have known that there was
no real string in such a land and been less careless about seeing my
orders carried out. It was the most serious mishap of the trip, for
without water always within reach even riding becomes a hardship in
tropical jungle where streams are often hours apart.
While prince, sergeant, and I looked in vain for the rushing stream to
cast up the canteen, the coolies went bathing. They were all of the
“black paunch” tribe, as distinguished from the “white paunch,” or
untattooed ones, though it is not really the paunch that is decorated.
The man of this branch of the Laosian or Tai race is never without his
pants, even when he is stark naked. Nearly all of them are solidly
tattooed in blue—invisible alas to the ordinary camera—from the waist to
the knees, a wide tattooed belt with lacy ends about the floating ribs
and a lacy effect like ruffles just below the bend of the knees. The
design of this hip and thigh covering is always “lions” within squares
with rounded corners, all touching one another, either as a protection
against or to give the wearer the bravery of the lion. With the figures
are mingled sacred texts, said to be Pali in Laosian or Siamese script.
The priests especially are covered with these sacred writings, it is
said, but one can never really know what is under the yellow robe. Women
seldom if ever wear these tattooed substitutes for the Scotchman’s kilt,
say those who should know, perhaps because they are in no danger from
evil spirits, or cannot be saved anyway. Some of the men also had red
tattooing on the upper part of the body, red squares on the chest, all
sorts of things on the back, though none of them obscene nor as crude as
the tattooing on some of our sailors. One of my men was overrun with red
lizards; some were whole picture-books or comic supplements or intricate
signs of the zodiac. There was one fellow whose whole back was covered
with a lesson in arithmetic or geometry, even trigonometry for all I
know, as if a small brother or a schoolmaster had used him as a slate.
Others had only one leg tattooed, generally the left, or both of them
only on the buttocks, or simply the fronts of the thighs, or merely
spots here and there, all according to personal caprice, taste, swank,
or an attack of cowardliness before the job was finished. Unlike most
tribal decorations of the sort this tattooing may be put on at any age,
whenever courage is ripe.
I thought several times that afternoon that the men were going to give
up entirely. They lay down in the road as if completely exhausted,
something I had never seen a Chinese carrier do in all my two years of
wandering in China; but finally we coaxed them at dark into a scattered
little thatched town in the jungle on the edge of the clear rushing
river that had made off with my canteen. The place was named Ban-long,
with a waterfall to lull me to sleep in the basket-weave _sala_ where I
soon stretched out on my cot, for we had to start very early again.
There was difficulty in getting men in time, and without the prince I
should not have been able to get them at all. But he, working most of
the night through the obsequious village head-man, collected twelve
substitutes for our eight lazy Pwun or Nuong carriers, and we were off
in the soft, black tropical night between two and three in the morning.
Two of the new men had gathered some sections of dried bamboo six or
eight feet long to be used as torches, which made it to some extent
harder than ever to see the way through the steep gullies cut deeply
into the soil of the densest possible jungle and forest. Particularly
was it hard going after the torches had gone out, much worse than if we
had never had them, and for more than an hour we struggled in utter
darkness over a devilish trail. It was one of those damnable trails that
are always wading a stream, always the same stream at that, like a
chatterer who can think of nothing original to say, and now and again
climbing steeply up and down the bank of it. Daylight showed the dense
vegetation deeply green, a land as far from China as if we were on
another continent, and disclosed our dozen carriers to be Kha wild from
the mountains, picturesque figures even in a land as out of the ordinary
as Laos.
Instead of tattooed pants or cloth _sampots_ these primitive fellows
wore short cloth breeches like running-pants, and some of them had more
or less of an upper garment also. They showed no tattooing, or at least
very little, but rattled with bracelets of glass and other cheap
materials, and had large earrings of all shapes, preferably not mates
and if possible utterly unlike on the two sides of the same head. The
few who did not have earrings put flowers or vine strings or leaves in
the holes in their ears to keep them ready for more prosperous times.
They had the eyes and the ways of the real wild man; yet, being former
slaves, they were more docile than the Laosians or Pwun.
Of the aboriginal tribes driven into the mountains by the Tai invasion
of nearly two thousand years ago, it is estimated that there are still a
hundred thousand of these Kha and other more or less indigenous stock.
Thus there is a great mixture of races under King Sisavang Vong Somdet
Prah, besides the “black paunch” and “white paunch” Laosians of his own
race. At Muongsing, chief town of the military territory, administered
by Luang Prabang, in a far corner of Laos, a French official counted
thirty-two races, each in its own costumes and with its own customs, at
the weekly market day. The Kha are a hill people who made complete
submission to the former rulers of Luang Prabang, admitting themselves
slaves, and now they accept the present monarch as king and are loyal to
him, lending help of this kind upon royal demand, though one could not
hire them as carriers in the ordinary way. These fellows carried a slim
ration of glutinous rice in little round baskets with a telescope cover,
and some uncooked rice in a cloth at the back of the waist, just as do
some South American Indians. At their sides hung a kind of machete, in a
sheath made of half a bamboo with wooden strips across it, much the sort
of thing a Boy Scout turned loose in the woods might contrive. They were
as small as upper grammar-school boys, and though they looked hardier
than almost any tame people, they were really even less useful as
carriers than the Pwun. They prefer to carry by a band across the
forehead, but as my baggage was not arranged for that method most of
them were forced to endure one end of the stiff whole-bamboo that takes
the place of the wiser springy split-bamboo or hickory carrying-poles of
the Chinese—because one of them alone cannot carry a real load. Yet on
the whole the long file of silent, rather anemic fellows made better
time, thanks perhaps to their lighter loads, than those of the day
before.
Unlike the talkative Laosians and in great contrast to the chattering
Chinese these aboriginal mountaineers made hardly a sound as they
plodded along. The language of Laos or Luang Prabang is less noisy than
the guttural up-and-down Annamese. The men of the first day had spoken
with an almost English intonation; Kha speech seemed a bit more Chinese,
with much rolling of the _r_. Some of them spoke Laosian, but with what
my prince called a “malabar” accent.
In the mountains of Luang Prabang kingdom, high over several of which I
passed on my overland trip, especially on this Sunday, one of the
longest days of my life, the Kha live in as primitive conditions as in
the days of Alexander the Great. The Kha villages I saw were the lowest
type of human dwelling; filth and stupidity seemed to be the prevailing
characteristics. All our romantic yarns about the simple life of savages
leave us with the false impression that they are hardier than civilized
people, and the writers rarely mention the dirty, the truly animal
conditions in which they live. The Kha are as innocent of any idea of
cleanliness as the lowest class of Chinese, in great contrast to the Tai
about them, and it is not strange that they have more smallpox than the
rest of the population. Some were so timid that I had to drive them out
of their reed and grass huts into the light necessary for photography,
just as one might drive some wild animal out of its warm but dirty lair,
so timid that I had to manhandle a group of both sexes that came along
the trail one day, before they gave up their temptation to run away
without posing for my dreaded camera. In most of the huts grandmother
and even skinnier grandfather were tending the third generation while
the intermediate one was out in the hills in quest of a livelihood. Some
of the villages had their basket-like thatched-top huts raised above the
ground, like those of the other people of Laos; the commoner custom was
to squat on the ground itself in a thatch structure like a flat wigwam.
The women, and for that matter the men, were all naked to the waist, a
disgusting custom in the case of the old women, whose breasts were as
shrunken as if they were about to dry up and drop off. They gave one an
unhappy reminder of how brief is the span of human existence. Old men
and women alike had holes in their ears large enough to hold a cigar.
All day we climbed over great hills, one veritable mountain range. Most
of these were densely wooded; yet in places there was little real
forest, but mainly _brousse_, especially the swift-growing bamboo,
because they had so often been burned off. Here and there patches of
hillsides, even of mountain-sides, were being or had recently been
cleared in this primitive way and were now more or less velvety-brown
and strewn with fallen charred trees. For like the Miao the Kha still
burn a new strip of forest whenever they wish to plant, cutting down
mammoth trees just to clear the way, and leaving them to rot. What the
coffin-makers of China would not have given for some of them! But I saw
nothing planted, perhaps because the end of April is too early in these
highlands, as in the grass-grown rice-fields we came upon lower down.
Every now and then a tiny hut as bright as if it had been made of new
straw stood forth in the middle of a recent clearing, the sleeping-place
evidently of a pioneer husbandman too far from home to commute. Upland
rice, needing no flooding, and other jungle products are grown by the
Kha and the other hill people, and sometimes carried to Luang Prabang
itself, though most of them merely grow enough to feed themselves.
The little clusters of very simple huts of the Kha were not near even
this rarely traveled trail, but in places half inaccessible—and for many
people wholly so—beyond valleys or great gullies across which they can
look and see in miniature the very thin trickle of traffic and consider
themselves in the world but not of it. One fancied they would not enjoy
an apartment at the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street. These
hardly accessible places were often so far apart that it would take
hours of climbing to call on the nearest neighbor. No wonder, when the
cluster of huts of the nearest girl is across three chasms and two
ridges, that the swain knocks her on the head and brings her home
without further formality, to save himself the labor of courting under
such onerous conditions.
In contrast to China, the only visible evidences of religious belief in
these wilder parts of Luang Prabang kingdom are bamboo arrows and bits
of woven wicker squares and the like, beside the trail here and there.
These, the prince told me, were warnings, either that a trap of arrows
had been set for wild animals somewhere on the path leading off into the
_brousse_, or that a Kha village was engaged in formalities to which
strangers were not invited. Docile as they are, the Kha have been known
to kill even Frenchmen who have overlooked or persisted in disobeying
these warnings. Hence little is known of the religion of this primitive
tribe, except that it acknowledges innumerable genii, good and bad, and
that there are many things the visitor must not do, many things taboo
not only for the Kha themselves but for any one who enters their
villages, because to do them would be to stir up the evil spirits to
wreak vengeance on the villagers themselves.
Now and again there was a mighty granite mountain with the sheer sides
of the sky-scrapers it dwarfed in size, clothed with as much vegetation
as can get foothold, vegetation made wilder and more hardy by the
struggles of its ancestors in such places. But for long distances there
were no signs of man, except the twelve carriers snaking along through
the tall grass, touches of red in their old and often ragged and always
weather-faded garments contrasting with their brown bodies and their
black heads bobbing above the vegetation. We went for hours along a
mountain ridge in a path all but obliterated by a wild grass often
horseman high, with many splendid tiger-lairs. Great bamboos or trees
had here and there fallen across it, so that there was sometimes just
room for a horse to pass without its rider. These ridges opened out
great green vistas of scrub and forest on either hand, and of the
striking peaks of the long range over which we climbed most of that
arduous Sunday, to end in rain and slippery going through ever hotter
jungle. For at the end we went down miles of trail steeper than any
stairway, into shaded jungle lanes, with rivers to cross incessantly,
the raging rivers of another watershed. Down, down, down to what in
season would again be flat rice-fields with earth borders set like trays
one above the other. On the swift slope we passed an old man and a boy
with a crossbow and some pencil-like arrows, who were evidently stalking
birds, for all the rain. One of the pleasant things about simple “wild”
people is the companionship between old men and boys—and, I suppose,
between old women and girls when they are off by themselves—so much
closer and more congenial than among civilized people, where the old
have usually been educated entirely out of the naïve childhood point of
view and cannot forget how much more they fancy they know than the child
knows.
Unlike the Chinese the Kha coolies were not afraid of the rain—or at
least they were less afraid of it than of the prince. They slashed down
banana-leaves as umbrellas and kept right on going. Yet a little rain
makes a jungle journey quite different. The slopes become toboggans, the
trails impetuous streams or quagmires, rivers rise until they cannot be
forded, all vegetation wets whom and whatever it touches, leeches sally
forth to seek whom they may devour—so that we were glad indeed when the
rain let up a little and insects began again to chirp and birds to
whistle rather than sing their gladness.
We came down at length into the valley of Ban-napha, with a splendid
sky-line of mountains behind it, and finally brought up, rather weary,
at a _sala_, just long enough before dark so that we could hope to make
preparations for another early start in the morning. Village chiefs bent
low before the emissary of the king, putting their hands on their knees,
for evidently this prince was not close enough to royalty to be worthy
of the complete squat; or the people here may have been more
independent. In turn the head-man of a village is a real boss—provided
he has a very commanding way. This one of Ban-namon, otherwise known as
Muong Kassy—_ban_ seems to mean town, and a _muong_ is a division
something like the commune of France—did not have much head-man
personality, or he had less respect or fear for princely orders than his
attitude suggested; so that when I went for my daily conversation with
my family I had also to wire back to the _commissaire_ and insist on
fresh horses, for none had been provided, the strict orders of the king
and the French notwithstanding. I did not wish to abuse the stout
animals of my good host of Luang Prabang, and two days over such trails
was a good week’s work for any horse, though I walked as much as I rode.
But the threat to go on with them served excellently as a lever to move
the prince to force the head-man to have other horses available in the
morning. We knew they could be had, for we had seen not a few well fed
ones in the fat wet fields of the little valley, along with
water-buffaloes taking their ease in their beloved mud-holes.
I found my way back from the telegraph hut through the densely dark and
humid night to a two-room _sala_ with the usual springy floor of
woven-bamboo splints, set in a wide grassy yard beside the trail. The
sergeant, for whom this forced march was hard work, since he seemed to
have brought back tuberculosis as well as a decoration or two from his
war days in France, was worn out; and even the prince admitted that he
was tired, though at his age one never really is. The Kha should have
been most weary of us all, but they crawled obsequiously in on their
hands and knees to bring me water in a section of bamboo or to hand me
anything I asked or the prince sent them for. They ate jungle food that
had very little in common with ours, out on the soft floor of the raised
porch on which they slept. Somehow I was sorry to lose these simple
picturesque fellows when we left Ban-namon.
We were off again at daylight, with poor native horses, as if the
head-man had picked, or had imposed upon him, the leanest in town, and
with somewhat less “wild” coolies. We had marched in the rain for barely
two hours when the cavalcade all halted at another town, with an humble
_sala_, for a lunch all around and to change coolies again, though those
from Ban-namon had hardly gone five miles. Probably that was all the
weak head-man could get them to agree to do; or it may be that certain
towns are definitely stations on this overland trail. The prince had
only to order the village chief, or the inhabitants themselves, to
furnish new carriers, however, and they were soon there, though from
then on we changed as often as we came to a village, sometimes two or
three times a day. The coolies still seemed to be Kha, but they were men
who had come into more contact with the outside world than those who had
been with me all that strenuous Sunday, and they had lost some of the
ornaments, simplicity, and politeness. Perhaps they were not Kha at all,
for they had all sorts of tattooing, and some of them had raised welts,
like the bush negroes of Dutch Guiana. Each man according to his fancy
wore a kind of kilt that was really a mere strip of cloth wound about
him from waist to knees. Now and then we passed a woman on a journey, in
a costume in which she would not have been unnoticed on Broadway,
wearing earrings, neck-rings, two bracelets on each arm, and a
barrel-shaped strip of cloth from nipples to knees, and carrying her bed
and belongings, consisting of a sack hanging down from her forehead and
on her back a rolled-up grass or reed mat on which to spend her virtuous
nights.
By this time I had fourteen coolies for what one Chinese would have, and
often had, carried—except that the prince and the sergeant had a few
things. With every change we seemed to get more carriers, as if they
were bent on dividing the task until no one had anything much to carry;
and at that they dawdled along, using every possible excuse to halt.
Fancy me traveling with three horses and fourteen men, and most of my
things in Hanoï at that! It was almost like a _safari_ in central
Africa, such as my wealthy fellow-wanderers can afford. Certainly the
passive resistance of which we have been hearing so much of late is no
new doctrine in the East; your Oriental carriers or servants were past
masters at it long before Gandhi was born.
[Illustration: A Kha home in the mountains of Luang Prabang]
[Illustration: Grandfather and grandmother of the primitive Khas tend
the children while the intermediate generation seeks the family
livelihood in the hills]
[Illustration: Wherever his habitat, the water-buffalo is happiest when
immersed to the nostrils in a mud-hole]
[Illustration: One group of the many Laosian carriers who bore my few
belongings across Luang Prabang]
Or perhaps the fellows were spreading out my baggage as much as possible
in order to give me more honor; for in Laos the importance of a traveler
depends upon the amount of baggage he carries, the amount of trouble he
puts the country to in getting him through it, even as in many other
lands. The king never travels without an enormous retinue and tons of
baggage, whether he needs it or not; and if he gets separated from it he
withdraws into incognito. One reason the coolies of Laos cannot carry
more is that each of them has a _musette_ containing his personal
belongings and food, a knife in a wooden scabbard, and increasing odds
and ends, until by this time they had nearly as much baggage as we, in
sharp contrast to the Chinese, who, in a land of strong and constant
competition, carry almost nothing of their own. On this third afternoon
two men carried nothing but the loads of the others, and they seemed to
be getting weaker as their own loads grew ever bigger. If this kept up I
should have to have two men for every one who was actually carrying for
me and my escort.
Rocky mountain scenery increased, with great sheer cliffs, filtered
sunshine on wet vegetation and brown. Here banana blossoms were a
beautiful pink instead of the usual beautiful purple; there were giant
ferns in great clusters, one leaf easily twenty feet long, a tree so
covered with vines that it looked like an old ruined pagoda, cathedral
aisles of damp and deeply shaded path. We crossed many streams; and—who
says “wild” men do not know enough to invent speedy measures?—found on
either side of them several of the two or three section pieces of bamboo
which the people of this region use as water-pails. The men caught them
up on one side of the stream, scooped them full of water as they
crossed, drank as they walked, and threw them away again, to be picked
up once more by the next comer from the opposite direction. All that
third afternoon we went down with a small river through a narrow
corridor of magnificent cliffs, everywhere wooded except on the sheerest
faces—spires, turrets, pinnacles, stalactites and stalagmites, whole
Milan cathedrals of jagged rocky peaks, scenery which, were it within
two hundred miles of New York, would have a hundred thousand visitors
every Sunday; yet here no one but a rare roving foreigner ever gives it
a passing glance. Lost in the _brousse_ and unnoticed, it was like many
an unknown thing, deed, person, in the self-styled civilized world—far
greater than others many times better known because they happen to have
won publicity.
This region is noted for its leeches, especially during the rainy season
that was now descending upon us. On that rainy Sunday afternoon the feet
of my Kha were all bleeding, and were covered with the scars of what
were evidently old leech-bites. These pests snatch upon the passer-by
from the bushes overhanging the narrow trails, particularly after a
shower; they get in somehow, even though one is not barefooted, soak the
traveler’s legs and socks in blood before he knows they are there, and
he may be all day or all night in getting the flow stopped. In the
middle of this third afternoon, chancing to pass a hand over an ankle, I
felt a disgustingly soft lump under one of my high socks. Suddenly
feeling the other leg with misgiving, I found it had two such unwelcome
guests. Not far beyond we halted at a lonely little rest-house in the
bush, and while the men rested and washed their feet, some of them put
lumps of tobacco, such as they used in their long slim pipes, and other
jungle leaves, on the three wounds; but at least one of them did not
entirely stop bleeding until the next day. In the shade of the
rest-house sat an aged priest in trail-worn yellow robe, who was making
his way slowly northward, though he was old enough to be done with
earthly traveling, at least in his present body. If that lasted, he
hoped—or perhaps we should say expected, for he looked like too true a
disciple of Gautama to be still burdened with the earthy desire we call
hope—to reach Luang Prabang toward the end of the next month.
The last half of that day was bright with sunshine, through ever lower
jungle between mountain ridges, until we put up on the broad springy
floor of a _bonzerie_ in a place called Ban-phatang. The sergeant and
his helpers from among the carrier coolies did our cooking out on the
covered porch, some of the village round about languidly looking on; but
the priests who occupied with us the building and porch showed little
curiosity indeed. I had time for a shave, to the surprise of the
beardless natives, then for a bath in the clear little river that raced
past the town. Down this shot now and then a man with only a loin-cloth
over his tattooed thighs, riding a little green bamboo raft, the only
part of the craft above water being a raised place for a bundle of a few
clothes and other belongings, and a jackfruit for possible hunger.
Simple travel indeed! It made one long to be a care-free youth on the
road again. Women were bathing children and themselves here also,
especially now toward sunset, but no one came to stare at me, though in
China there would have been a regular circus audience. Nor was this for
lack of energy, for on the whole these were a well built, muscular, and
very healthy-looking people, with few if any signs of a social disease
so common in Annam and China and with almost none of the filth diseases.
Though the women all showed their breasts and thought nothing of it, one
never saw even a bathing man completely naked. So-called barbarian
peoples, though they commonly wear only a loin-cloth or its feminine
equivalent, are usually as exacting about having that in place as we are
with our own clothing.
The uncrowded, simple, but commodious houses of these Laosian villages
are always set well apart and high above the ground, back among
palm-trees, banana-plants, and the like. They do not have to crowd
together and save all the arable land for rice to feed too numerous
mouths, for here a gentle Buddhism takes the place of an
ancestor-worship so ardent that offspring must be had at any effort and
cost. Most families have round or square granaries like huge covered
baskets made of wide woven splints and covered by a big thatch roof, all
raised off the ground out of reach of rats. The simple houses themselves
were of similar materials, a ladder of half a dozen bamboo or pole rungs
leading up to the big porch at one end, and close to the floor, a tiny
window or two that can be pushed open to one side. Such a village is a
thousand per cent more pleasant than a Chinese town, even when there is
no public stopping-place except in the same room with slightly
supercilious priests who sometimes break sound sleep with their
devotions. There is an incredible amount of bathing and great quiet
compared to densely packed Chinese existence. Such a village is like a
country home in its atmosphere, while those of China resemble
tenement-living on the worst of East Sides.
The half-naked women had little objection to posing for their pictures,
though they were fully as modest as their sisters anywhere else. Some of
them would not have commanded princessly salaries in a New York
extravaganza, unless they could have worn masks; others were distinctly
attractive even in features. Yet all this South Sea talk about the ease
of life in such tropical Edens is largely nonsense. They take life more
tranquilly, it is true, but they have a lot of hard work to do for all
that, much more hard work than do the citified people of our own land
who rave about this idyllic life on the sweat-band of Mother Earth, many
things which they would in fact be quite unable to do; and there seems
to be just as much force of public opinion, the same politicians and
similar nuisances to make life miserable. If there are no coal strikes
or gasoline despots, on the other hand there are leeches in a more
literal form; though there are no trolley or motor cars, in compensation
spring chickens sell at a nickel and really fresh eggs at two or three
cents a dozen. A gentle unspoiled people, too obsequious by our
standards, on the whole they lead a visibly happier life than do our own
serious and hurried people of the West.
These Laosian villagers grow their own cotton, and the women spin this
and the kapok of their great tropical trees on a crude wheel without a
felly, then weave it on hand-looms into the garment they wear as skirt
or wrapper. Beneath many a house, or under the projecting porch roof at
the end of it, may be seen the lady of the family, in the usual
comfortable and economical upper garment of nothing at all, leisurely
engaged at her household tasks, while others, some of them far from
ugly, sit in the shade beneath their pile-raised dwellings weaving their
simple wardrobes, in rather striking patterns and of excellent wearing
qualities, on the crudest of looms, with a stick shuttle that is thrown
back and forth by hand. They hull their rice as it is needed, by
stepping on the end of a long pole ending in a big wooden pestle, which
falls monotonously into a wooden mortar, a hollowed section of large
tree-trunk. These seem to be the chief occupations, but there are many
others, as the traveler with time to watch their goings and comings
during a few evenings will discover. As in southern China, the
pan-basket in which rice is screened and prepared for cooking is made of
bamboo splints, but they use clean water rather than any filth in which
to wash it. The most hurried Laosian journey is a great relief from the
putrescence, the crowding curiosity, the debauching superstitions of
China. I thought I liked the Chinese, but I was less sure of it after
this trip among the Laosians of gentle Buddhist faith.
The smallest village has a few Buddhist priests, the support of whom by
giving them food seems to be almost the only religious practice of the
lay inhabitants. The younger bonzes make the rounds each morning with
their begging-bowls before the sun is high, and now and then a man or
woman kneels on the ground as a priest pauses to perform for a moment or
two some hocus-pocus in reward for the charity, and then turns abruptly
away, as if to imply that the giver has had his money’s worth. Begging
is not looked upon as in the West, but as something perfectly natural,
so that neither giver nor receiver seems to feel he is doing anything
out of the ordinary. If I may judge by my two princely companions, all
Laosian Buddhists say their prayers before going to bed as religiously
as any Christian, nay, as any true Mohammedan. But they were more like
people thanking a kindly benefactor with unforced gratitude than like
men praying out of dread of a punishing God, and the true Laosians at
least showed little if any of the fear of demonology rampant among the
super-superstitious Chinese. No doubt nature is so gentle with them that
the religion of fear, the dread and consequent attempts at propitiation
of innumerable evil forces always waiting to do them harm, does not grow
up within them.
On the other hand these naïve jungle-dwellers do not lack physical fear.
They crouched at the trail-side raising palmed hands to me; in the more
settled districts farther south long rows of them crowded against the
wall of the mountain road, even turning their faces away, as if fearing
a blow, which seemed to speak badly for their rulers, whether the old
ones or the present French—or were they merely dazzled by my
magnificence? When our pace grew too slow to be borne, I could always
drive the coolies on by galloping after them shouting, whereupon they
actually ran. But soon they settled down to an almost lazy stroll again,
covering hardly half the ground of the incessant dog-trot of the
indefatigable Chinese; nor were there by any means as many smiles and
childish pleasantries as among those far harder workers and sufferers of
many times greater hardships.
There were good horses at Ban-phatang, and no difficulty, at least so
far as I was concerned, in getting three excellent ones for another
daylight start. We rode on down a fertile but narrow valley, closely
walled on either side by high mountain ridges that gave us the sensation
of descending a corridor of mountains all that fourth day. But as in
China there was no place purposely provided for a road; we were
constantly climbing rice-field dikes and making our way haphazard across
what would soon again be flooded trays of pale-green paddy. There was
one very striking wooded precipice—which would have been still more
striking if some of the myriad rocks that seemed ready to fall at any
moment had done so just as we were passing beneath them. Little huts on
stilts everywhere awaited the coming of laborers to the fields, lying
fallow in grass now, but planted in July and harvested in November.
There is no water for flooding at other times, because it does not rain
enough, though with the industry and ingenuity of the Chinese they could
easily harness the rivers that run away toil-less to the distant sea.
But there is no need to do so, because there is no such crowding and
consequent hunger as in China and its slender little offspring, Annam.
In many parts of those ardently ancestor-worshiping lands, particularly
in Annam, there are three harvests a year, as there might be here if
this people went in as strongly for children.
On that fourth day I was riding well ahead of my party when I passed
near a great jungle fire far up on a high hillside, probably set to dear
off ground for new planting. Great masses of red flames, and brown,
almost reddish swirls and columns of smoke, licked at the sky, and there
was a great roaring miles off. At a mile it was like a battle on the
Western Front, a constant irregular musketry that was evidently the
bursting of the chambers of the bamboo and louder cannon-shots that were
probably great trees falling.
Had it been in China or South America, this important trail between the
two principal capitals of Laos would be impassable, in spots at least,
which is the same thing so far as an overland trip is concerned, during
the rainy season that was now upon us. Thanks to the few French
overlords, however, mile after mile was welded together by many
woven-bamboo bridges that sagged like bed-springs under our weight.
Birds sang; a gentle air and people made the trip a constant delight in
spite of the perpetual necessity of forever hurrying on. The French hope
to colonize the Laos, but I hope that they fail; it would be a pity not
to have any such virgin lands and simple peoples left for our children
and our children’s children to see.
Then the country grew tamer, the people more independent, perhaps
because we were now outside Luang Prabang kingdom, where the prince,
having only French backing to his commands, was recognized as the
servant of an alien king. We lunched at Vang-vieng, where a lone
Frenchman in jungle-torn sun-scorched garb, who was doing some sort of
work there with a band of coolies, probably in connection with the
telegraph lines, insisted on loading me down with a bottle of wine. The
little I had brought had given out, and he was sure I could never
complete my hurried journey alive without that prime necessity. We
changed coolies there, and again, with more trouble and a longer wait
than we had ever had before, at another village well outside the old
kingdom, and brought up by sunset at a jungle _sala_ in the wilderness,
kept by a family sent there for that purpose by the French rulers.
CHAPTER XVIII
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]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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● 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}).
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