A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan StatesHallett, Holt S. (Holt Samuel)
History
A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States
Hallett, Holt S. (Holt Samuel)
Laos -- Description and travel; Thailand -- Description and travel
We left Muang Ngow just as it was getting light, on April 11th, and
crossed the plain to Ban Hoo-art, a village situated on the Meh Hoo-art,
an affluent of the Meh Ngow. We then skirted the stream for five miles,
and halted for breakfast on its bank, under a shady grove of trees. Many
teak-logs had been dragged from the forest into the bed of the stream
for floating to Bangkok during the rainy season. One of the teak-trees
in the forest measured 16 feet in girth 6 feet from the ground. During
our morning’s march we passed two large villages, a party of Burmese
Shans returning to Kiang Tung from Maulmain with their purchases, and a
caravan of fifty laden cattle.
In the afternoon we journeyed through a teak-forest, and after crossing
two low spurs, halted for the night on the bank of the Meh Lah. Our camp
was 81½ miles from Zimmé, and we had risen 614 feet since leaving Muang
Ngow.
A mile to the east of our crossing, the Meh Lah, which enters the Meh
Ngow near the site of the ancient city of Muang Teep, is joined by the
Meh Lah Noi, a tributary from the south, which drains a valley six and a
half miles long, formed by a long low spur, which is connected at the
head of the valley with the plateau on the west. This valley has the
appearance of having been cut lengthways out of the former flat slope of
the plateau, the spur seeming to be the lower continuation of the
original slope. On ascending the plateau on the morrow, I noticed that
in the space between the spur and the north end of the range of hills
lying to the east, which commences some ten miles to the south-east, the
only hill visible was a short precipitous mass of mural limestone,
standing up several hundred feet in height, with its top looking like a
great coronet.
It thus became apparent that a similar freak of nature to that already
described in the water-parting between the Meh Ing and the Meh Ngow was
present in that between the Meh Ngow and the Meh Wung. The ranges
between the basins of the rivers are not continuous, and a railway can
be constructed from Bangkok _viâ_ Lakon, to Kiang Hung, which lies at
the foot of the Yunnan plateau, through a series of great plains, which
are only separated from each other by slightly undulating country.
Leaving the Meh Lah early the next morning, we ascended the slope of the
plateau for two and a half miles by a good broad road, passing through a
teak-forest to the Pah Took (Stone Tent), a pillar of limestone with a
small cave in its western face. For the greater part of the way the
ascent lay along a natural terrace 300 and 400 feet wide, bordered on
the east by the slope of the plateau, and on the west by cliffs of mural
limestone. In this neighbourhood a pitched battle is said to have been
fought between a Zimmé army and one of Burmese Shans, but I could get no
further particulars of the event.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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