We halted for a few minutes at the village of Nong Sang, or Nong Chang, “the elephant’s lake,” to inspect the tile works. The men were puddling the clay on a buffalo’s hide by pounding it with their feet. The roofing-tiles are a quarter of an inch thick, nine inches long, and four and a half inches broad, and are turned up at one end for three-quarters of an inch to enable them to hang on to the battens of the roof. They are moulded separately on a bench, across which the man sits astride. After sanding the mould, he plunges the clay into it, and cuts off the superfluous material with a string fastened to a fiddle-bow. The upper face of the tile is then smoothed with a three-sided stick, which has been previously cleansed by rubbing it against two cylindrical brushes made of cocoa-nut fibre, which lie in a little trough, raised on posts, and full of water. The front of the mould is movable. The tiles are taken out and dried under a thatched shed, and afterwards are placed on their side-edge in a kiln and burned. The tiles are used for roofing the temples and better class of Shan and Chinese houses. Two miles farther we passed another village of tile-makers, and at the 220th mile came to Ban Hsope Long, above which is a series of long, cultivated islands. Both banks of the river as well as the islands are embanked to save the cultivation from being swamped in flood-time. Above Hsope Long, which extends for about two miles, we passed through the village of Ta Kwai, “the buffalo’s ford,” and halted for breakfast. From here the banks of the river to some miles above the city of Zimmé are nearly continuously fringed with villages. The houses, temples, and monasteries are imbedded in, and often hidden by, beautiful orchards, containing palms, cocoa-nut, mango, tamarind, citron, orange, pummelo, and many other fruit and flowering trees, and the whole scene on land and water is one of bustling life. In an hour we were off again, and after passing the temple and monastery of Koon Kong, came to a large _hong_ belonging to some Chinese merchants of Raheng. A mile farther the Meh Kha entered from the west, and just above its mouth is the village of Pak Muang.