We halted for the night at Ban Meh Soon, a village situated near two _Viang Hau_, and in a good-sized rice-plain. The _Viang Hau_ to the south of the village was the smallest that I had seen, being only 300 feet square. It is surrounded by a ditch 30 feet broad and 15 feet deep. A hundred cattle, laden with tobacco and pepper for Zimmé, were encamped near the house we put up in. We had been travelling all day through a fine plain many miles broad. Our camp was 76½ miles from Zimmé. After we had settled ourselves in the empty house, a villager came to inform us that the house belonged to the chief of Muang Fang, and that anybody who slept in it would have his head cut off. As rain was threatening, we determined to risk the penalty; and we were soon glad we had done so, as the rain poured down in torrents. On the head-man of the village coming to pay his respects, he told us that the Meh Fang flooded its banks on both sides between Ban Meh Soon and Ban Meh Mou, but that the inundation only lasts a day and a half. A similar flood happens between the city of Muang Fang and the Meh Khoke. Every basket of rice sown in his fields yielded at least a hundred-fold. He said the country was full of ancient cities whose names had been generally lost. Viang Ma-nee-ka was situated about 12 miles to the north-east of Muang Fang. The legend attached to Viang Ma-nee-ka relates that a governor of Muang Fang had a daughter who would have been lovely if she had not been so unfortunate as to be born with a hare-lip. When she grew up, the thought of her deformity so preyed upon her mind that she left the city and made her home on the banks of the Meh Ai (the river of Shame), and founded the city of Ma-nee-ka (Hare-lip). There is a superstition that joints of bamboo cut for drinking the water of the Meh Ai should be cut straight across; if cut diagonally, the drinker will incur a hare-lip. In connection with the new house we were in, I asked the head-man how long it would take in building. In answer, he said it took one man five days to make the thatch for a house 25 feet square; and three men five days to make the mat and bamboo floor and walling, cut the bamboos and posts, and build the house, including a verandah 10 feet square. More men could complete the house in less time. In walking about not far from the village, Mr Martin came across the lair of a tiger in the high grass, and Dr M‘Gilvary found the tracks of wild hog.