[Illustration: MOUNTAINS OF KORAT FROM PATAWI.]
"At the sight of this unexpected panorama a cry of admiration burst simultaneously from all mouths. Even my poor companions, generally insensible to the beauties of nature, experienced a moment of ecstasy at the sublimity of the scene. 'Oh! _di, di!_' (beautiful) cried my young Laotian guide; and when I asked Küe what he thought of it, 'Oh! master,' he replied, in his mixed jargon of Latin, English, and Siamese, 'the Siamese see Buddha on a stone, and do not see God in these grand things. I am pleased to have been to Patawi.'
"On the opposite side, viz., the south, the picture is different. Here is a vast plain, which extends from the base of Patawi and the other mountains beyond Ayuthia, whose high towers are visible in the distance, 120 miles off. At the first glance one distinguishes what was formerly the bed of the sea, this great plain having taken the place of an ancient gulf: proof of which is afforded by numerous marine shells, many of which I collected in a perfect state of preservation, while the rocks, with their footprints and fossil shells, are indicative of some great change at a still earlier period.
"Every evening some of the good Laotian mountaineers came to see the 'farang.' These Laotians differ slightly from the Siamese: they are more slender, have the cheek-bones more prominent, and have also darker complexions. They wear their hair long, while the Siamese shave half of the head, leaving the hair to grow only on the top. They deserve praise for their intrepidity as hunters, if they have not that of warriors. Armed with a cutlass or bow, with which latter weapon they adroitly launch, to a distance of one hundred feet, balls of clay hardened in the sun, they wander about their vast forests, undismayed by the jaguars and tigers infesting them. The chase is their principal amusement, and, when they can procure a gun and a little Chinese powder, they track the wild boar, or, lying in wait for the tiger or the deer, perch themselves on a tree or in a little hut raised on bamboo stakes.
"Their poverty borders on misery, but it mainly results from excessive indolence, for they will cultivate just sufficient rice for their support; this done, they pass the rest of their time in sleep, lounging about the woods, or making excursions from one village to another, paying visits to their friends on the way.