Indo-China is a great bay-window bulging from the southeastern corner of Asia, its casements opening on the China Sea and on the Gulf of Siam. Of all the countries of the Farther East it is the most mysterious; of them all it is the least known. Larger than the State of Texas, it is a land of vast forests and unexplored jungles in which roam the elephant, the tiger and the buffalo; a land of palaces and pagodas and gilded temples; of sun-bronzed pioneers and priests in yellow robes and bejeweled dancing girls. Lured by the tales I had heard of curious places and strange peoples to be seen in the interior of the peninsula, I refused to content myself with skirting its edges on a steamer. Instead, I determined to cross it from coast to coast.
I had looked forward to covering the first stage of this journey, the four hundred-odd miles of jungle which separate Bangkok, in Siam, from Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on an elephant. Everyone with whom I had discussed the matter in Singapore had assured me that this was perfectly feasible. And as a means of transportation it appealed to me. It seemed to fit into the picture, as a wheel-chair accords[247] with the spirit of Atlantic City, as a caléche is congruous to Quebec. To my friends at home I had planned to send pictures of myself reclining in a howdah, rajah-like, as my ponderous mount rocked and rolled along the jungle trails. To me the idea sounded fine. But it was not to be. For, in shaping my plans, I had been ignorant of the fact that during the dry season, which was then at hand, Asiatic elephants are seldom worked—that they become morose and irritable and are usually kept in idleness until their docility returns with the rains. I was greatly disappointed.
The overland route thus proving impracticable, so far as the first part of the journey was concerned, the sea road alone remained. Of vessels plying between Bangkok and the ports of French Indo-China there were but two—the Bonite, a French packet slightly larger than a Hudson River tugboat, which twice monthly makes the round trip between the Siamese capital and Saigon; and a Danish tramp; the Chutututch, an unkempt vagrant of the seas which wanders at will along the Gulf Coast, touching at those obscure ports where cargo or passengers are likely to be found. The Bonite swung at her moorings in the Menam, opposite my hotel windows, so, made cautious by previous experiences on other coastwise vessels, I went out in a sampan to make a preliminary survey. But I did not go aboard. The odors which assailed me as I drew near caused me to decide abruptly that I wished to make no voyage on her. The Chutututch, I reasoned, [248]must be better; it certainly could not be worse. And when I approached her owners they offered no objections to earning a few-score extra ticals by extending her itinerary so as to drop me at the tiny Cambodian port of Kep. The next day, then, saw me on the bridge of the Chutututch, smoking for politeness' sake one of the genial captain's villainous cigars, as we steamed slowly between the palm-fringed, temple-dotted banks of the Menam toward the Gulf.
On many kinds of vessels I have voyaged the Seven Seas. I once spent Christmas on a Russian steamer, jammed to her guards with lousy pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, in a tempest off the Syrian coast. On another memorable occasion I skirted the shores of Crete on a Greek schooner which was engaged in conveying from Canea to Candia a detachment of British recruits much the worse for rum. But that voyage on the Chutututch will linger longest in my memory. From stem to stern she was packed with yellow, half-naked, perspiring humanity—Siamese, Laos, Burmans, Annamites, Cambodians, Malays, Chinese—journeying, God knows why, to ports whose very names I had never before heard. They lay so thick beneath the awnings that the sailors literally had to walk upon them in order to perform their work. From the glassy surface of the Gulf the heat rose in waves—blasts from an opened furnace door. The flaming ball of molten brass that was the sun beat down upon the crowded decks until they were as hot to the touch as a railway station stove at white heat. The odors of crude, [249]sugar, copra, tobacco, engine oil, perspiration and fish frying in the galley mingled in a stench that rose to heaven. In the sweat-box which had been allotted to me, called by courtesy a cabin, a large gray ship's rat gnawed industriously at my suit-case in an endeavor to ascertain what it contained; insects that shall be nameless disported themselves upon the dubious-looking blanket which formed the only covering of the bed; cockroaches of incredible size used the wash-basin as a public swimming-pool.
The other cabin passengers were all three Anglo-Saxons—a young Englishman and an American missionary and his wife. These last, I found, were convoying a flock of noisy Siamese youngsters, pupils at an American school in Bangkok, to a small bathing resort at the mouth of the Menam, where, it was alleged, the mercury had been known to drop as low as 90 on cold days. Because of its invigorating climate it is a favorite hot weather resort for the well-to-do Siamese. Here, in a bungalow that had been placed at their disposal by the King, the missionary and his charges proposed to spend a glorious fortnight away from the city's heat. Now do not draw a mental picture of a sanctimonious person with a Prince Albert coat, a white bow tie and a prominent Adam's apple. He was not that sort of a missionary at all. On the contrary, he was a very human, high-spirited, likeable fellow of the type that at home would be a Scout Master or in France would have made good as a welfare worker with the A. E. F. Once, when a [250]particularly obstreperous youngster drew an over-draft on his stock of patience, he endorsed his disapproval with an extremely vigorous "Damn!" I took to him from that moment.
When, their energy temporarily exhausted, his charges had fallen asleep upon the deck and pandemonium had given place to peace, he told me something of his story. For four years he had labored in the Vineyard of the Lord in Chile, but, feeling that he "was having too good a time," as he expressed it, he applied to the Board of Missions for transfer to a more strenuous post. He obtained what he asked for, with something over for good measure, for he was ordered to a post in the northeastern corner of Siam, on the Annam frontier. If there is a more remote or inaccessible spot on the map it would be hard to find it. Here he and his wife spent ten years preaching the Word to the "black bellied Laos," as the tattooed savages of that region are known. Then he was transferred to Bangkok. There are no roads in Siam, so he and his wife and their five small children made the long journey by river, in a native dugout of less than two feet beam, in which they traveled and ate and slept for upwards of two weeks.
I asked him if he wasn't becoming weaned of Bangkok, which, as a place of residence, leaves much to be desired.
"Yes, I've had about enough of it," he admitted. "I'm anxious to get away."
[251]"Back to the Big Town?" I suggested. "To God's Country?"
"Oh, no; not back to the States," he hastened to assure me. "I haven't finished my job out here. I want to get back to my people in the interior again."
Whether you approve of foreign missions or not, it is impossible to withhold your respect and admiration from such men as that. Though at home they are too often the butts of ignorant criticisms and cheap witticisms, they are carrying civilization, no less than Christianity, into the world's dark places. They are the real pioneers. You might remember this the next time an appeal is made in your church for foreign missions.
The young Englishman was likewise an outpost of progress, though in a different fashion. For seven years he had worn the uniform of an officer in the Royal Navy. At the close of the war, seeing small prospect of promotion, he had entered the employ of a British company which held a vast timber concession in the teak forests of northern Siam, far up, near the Chinese border. He was, he explained, a "girdler," which meant that his duties consisted in riding through the forest area allotted to him, selecting and girdling those trees which, three years later, would be cut down. To girdle a tree, as everyone knows, is to kill it, which is what is wanted, there being no market for green teak, which warps. He remained in the forest for four weeks at a stretch, he told me, without seeing a white man's face, his only companions his [252]coolies and his Chinese cook. His domain comprised a thousand square miles of forest through which he moved constantly on horseback, followed by elephants bearing his camp equipage and supplies. Once each month he spent three days in the village where the company maintains its field headquarters. Here he played tennis and bridge with other girdlers—young Englishmen like himself who had come in from their respective districts to make their monthly reports—and in gleaning from the eight-weeks-old newspapers the news of that great outside world from which he was a voluntary exile. One would have supposed that, after seven years spent in the jovial atmosphere of a warship's wardroom, his solitary life in the great forests would quickly have become intolerable, and I expressed myself to this effect. But he said no, that he was neither lonely nor unhappy in his new life, and that his fellow foresters, all of whom had seen service in the Army, the Navy or the Royal Air Force, were equally contented with their lot. I could understand, though. The wilderness holds no terrors for anyone who went through the hell of the Great War.
We dropped anchor at midnight off Chantaboun, where a launch was waiting to take him ashore. He was going up-country, he told me, to inspect a timber concession recently acquired by the company that employed him. Yes, he would be the only white man, but he would not be lonely. Besides, he would only be in the interior a couple of months, he said. He followed the coolies bearing his luggage down the gangway and [253]dropped lightly into the tossing launch, then looked up to wave me a farewell.
"Good luck," he called cheerily.
"Good luck to you!" said I.
That is the worst of this gadding up and down the earth—it is always—"How d'ye do?" and "Good-by."
Three days out of Bangkok the anchor of the Chutututch rumbled down off Kep, on the coast of Cambodia. Kep consists of a ramshackle wooden pier that reaches seaward like a lean brown finger, an equally decrepit custom house, a tin-roofed bungalow which the French Government maintains for the use of those fever-stricken officials who need the tonic of sea air, a cluster of bamboo huts thatched with nipa—nothing more. You will not find the place on any map; it is too small.
It is in the neighborhood of three hundred kilometers from Kep to Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and for nearly the entire distance the highway has been hewn through the most savage jungle you can imagine. There was only one motor car in Kep and this I hired for the journey. I say hired, but bought would be nearer the truth. It was an aged and decrepit Renault, held together with string and wire, and suffering so badly from asthma and rheumatism that more than once I feared it would die on my hands before I reached my destination. It had as nurses two Annamites, who took unwarranted liberties with the truth by describing themselves as mechaniciens. [254]Accompanying them were two sullen-faced Chinese. All four of them, I found, proposed to accompany me to Pnom-Penh. At this I protested vigorously, on the ground that, as the lessee of the machine, I had the right to choose my traveling companions, but my objections were overruled by the Chef des Douanes, the only French functionary in Kep, who assured me that if the car went the quartette must go, too. One of the Annamites, he explained, was the chauffeur, the other was the cranker, for in Indo-China automobiles are not equipped with self-starters and the chauffeurs firmly refuse to crank their own cars. They thus "save their face," which is a very important consideration in the estimation of Orientals, and they also provide easy and pleasant jobs for their friends. It is an idea which some of the labor unions in America might adopt to advantage. I make no charge for the suggestion. The two Chinese, it appeared, were the joint owners of the machine, and both insisted on going along because neither would trust the other with the hire-money. Thus it will be seen, we made quite a cozy little party.
The road to Pnom-Penh, as I have already remarked, leads through a peculiarly lonely and savage region. And it is very narrow, bordered on either side by walls of almost impenetrable jungle. A place better adapted for a hold-up could hardly be devised. And of the reputations or antecedents of my four self-imposed companions, I knew nothing. Nor was there anything in their faces to lend me confidence in the [255]honesty of their intentions. As we were about to start a native gendarme beckoned me to one side.
"Beaucoup des pirats sur la route, M'sieu," he warned me in execrable French.
"Brigands, you mean?" I asked him.
"Oui, M'sieu."
That was reassuring.
"How about these men?" I inquired, indicating the motley crew who were to accompany me. "Are they to be trusted?"
He shrugged his shoulders non-commitally. It was evident that he did not hold of them a high opinion.
Producing my .45 caliber service automatic, I slipped a clip into the magazine and ostentatiously laid it beside me on the seat. It is the most formidable weapon carried by any civilized people. True, the German Lüger is larger....
"Tell them," I said to the policeman, "that this gun will shoot through twenty millimeters of pine. Tell them that they had better dispose of their property and burn a few joss-sticks before they start to argue with it. And tell them that, no matter what happens, the car is to keep going."
But I was by no means as confident as I sounded, for the road was notoriously unsafe, nor did I put much trust in my companions. I confess that I felt much happier when that portion of my journey was over.
As the road to Pnom-Penh is quite uninteresting—just a narrow yellow highway chopped through a [256]dense tangle of tropic vegetation—suppose I take advantage of the opportunity to tell you something of this little-known land in which we find ourselves.
French Indo-China occupies perhaps two-thirds of that great bay-window-shaped peninsula which protrudes from the southeastern corner of Asia. In area it is, as I have already remarked, somewhat larger than Texas; its population is about equal to that of New York and Pennsylvania combined. It consists of five states: the colony of Cochin-China, the protectorates of Cambodia, Annam and Tongking, and the unorganized territory of Laos, to which might be added the narrow strip of borderland, known as Kwang Chau Wan, leased from China. In 1902 the capital of French Indo-China was transferred from Saigon, in Cochin-China, to Hanoi, in Tongking.
By far the most interesting of these political divisions is Cambodia, which, for centuries an independent kingdom, was forced in 1862 to accept the protection of France. An apple-shaped country, about the size of England, with a few score miles of seacoast and without railway or regular sea communications, it lies tucked away in the heart of the peninsula, its southern borders marching with those of Cochin-China, its frontier on the north co-terminous with that of Siam. Though the octogenarian King Sisowath maintains a gorgeous court, a stable of elephants, upwards of two-hundred dancing-girls, and one of the most ornate palaces in Asia, he is permitted only a shadow of power, the real ruler of Cambodia being the French [257]Resident-Superior, who governs the country from the great white Residency on the banks of the Mekong.
I know of no region of like size and so comparatively easy of access (the great liners of the Messageries Maritimes touch at Saigon, whence the Cambodian capital can be reached by river-steamer in two days) which offers so many attractions to the hunter of big game. Unlike British East Africa, where, as a result of the commercialization of sport, the cost of going on safari has steadily mounted until now it is a form of recreation to be afforded only by war profiteers, Cambodia remains unexploited and unspoiled. It is in many respects the richest, as it is almost the last, of the world's great hunting-grounds. It is, indeed, a vast zoological garden, where such formalities as hunting licenses are still unknown. In its jungles roam elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, leopards, panthers, bear, deer, and the savage jungle buffalo, known in Malaya as the seladang and in Indo-China as the gaur—considered by many hunters the most dangerous of all big game.
Nailed to the wall of the Government rest-house at Kep was the skin of a leopard which had been shot from the veranda the day before my arrival, while raiding the pig-pen. The day that I left Kampot an elephant herd, estimated by the native trackers at one hundred and twenty head, was reported within seven miles of the town. Twice during the journey to Pnom-Penh I saw tracks of elephant herds on the road—it looked as though a fleet of whippet tanks had passed.
[258]Nevertheless, I should have put mental question-marks after some of the big game stories I heard while I was in Indo-China had I not been convinced of the credibility of those who told them. Only a few days before our arrival at Saigon, for example, an American engaged in business in ............