“Were I an expert at the pencil, I might send you some time a landscape of river, plain and mountain superior to many that are esteemed by the true artist as gems of the beautiful and picturesque. It is our privilege to look upon this landscape of varied beauty every day. For a week or more we were shut in, native style, at every point of the compass by a luxuriant growth of tamarind, bamboo, and garden shrubbery. It is thus that the native houses, which generally stand back a distance from the river-pathway, are sometimes entirely concealed by the dark-green foliage of the gardens. In front of our premises a number of tamarind trees stand in all the carelessness of the primeval forest. Some of them clutch the bank with their great roots, a part of which have been washed bare by the stream when at its height. Their widespread branches intercepted our view of the river and mountain and kept out the cooling breeze. But the axe, by lopping and pruning, soon gave scope to the eye and ingress to the healing wind.” This principal mission-station is on the right bank of the river. On the left bank, near the bridge, is Dr. Cheek’s compound, on the city side――the gift of the chief of Cheung Mai to the missionary-physician, who is consulted by the royal family in sickness. Through the gate that leads from the public road to Dr. Cheek’s dispensary a steady stream of Laos men, women and children, rich and poor, passes to and fro. “His name is a synonym,” says a traveler[3] who recently visited Cheung Mai, “of all that is good and kind throughout the district, he having relieved the sufferings and saved the lives of hundreds of natives, and thereby earned their warm gratitude. Adjoining his house he has erected a long bamboo shed, subdivided into a number of small apartments, which serve as the wards of a hospital. Here he has performed hundreds of operations with such skill and such success that even the superstitious Laotians come from long distances to be cured by him when suffering from painful diseases or severe wounds. The chiefs and princes often send for him when their reliance upon the superstitious rites of the native ‘faculty’ begins to fail them, though, in such cases, his advice has often been only asked when the patients have been _in extremis_. Two or three years ago he saved the life of the chief’s wife when all the drugs and incantations of several native medicos had been called into requisition in vain. “Dr. Cheek has also established a boat-building yard, where he gives employment to a large number of men, and where he has introduced improved models of boats and better modes of construction. American tools have been introduced, and are gradually superseding the primitive adzes and saws of the natives.”