It was at Garnier’s suggestion that the great French commission of exploration was sent up this river through Laos and Yunnan to Thibet, 1866-68. Garnier being considered too young, the chief command was entrusted to Captain Doudart Lagrée. De Carné (the brilliant journalist of the _Deux Mondes_) formed a third, and an armed escort accompanied them. The pluck and resolute endurance of this gallant band of Frenchmen, who during two years of exposure and hardships toiled over some five thousand miles of a country almost unknown to Europeans, command our admiration. Garnier took nearly all the observations, and shortly after the death of Lagrée assumed command and conducted the expedition safely to its close. De Carné describes the Mekong as “an impassable river, broken at least thrice by furious cataracts, and having a current against which nothing can navigate.” M. Mouhot, the pioneer of European explorers in this valley, says that his boatmen sometimes sought fire at night where they had cooked their rice in the morning. He went as far as Looang Prabang, the north-eastern Laos province tributary to Siam, where he died. Here the channel is very wide and lake-like in its windings through a sort of circular upland valley some nine miles in diameter and shut in by mountains north and south, reminding one of the beautiful lake-scenery of Como and Geneva. “If it were not for the blaze of a tropical sun, or if the noonday heat were even tempered by a breeze, this Laos town would be a little paradise,” is one of the latest entries in Mouhot’s journal. If there is almost an excess of grandeur in the upper courses of the Mekong, the general aspect of the scenery as it reaches the comparatively low level of Siam and Cambodia is sombre rather than gay, though there is something imposing in the rapidity of so large a volume of water. Few boats are to be seen, and the banks are almost barren on account of the undermining of the forests, trees constantly falling with a crash into the stream. For some two hundred miles from its mouth the river is nearly three miles wide, and is studded with islands, several of which are eight or nine miles long and more than a mile broad. The discovery of the impracticability of the Mekong for inland communication with Laos and China has robbed the French delta of much of its supposed value. [Illustration: Cambodia. Anam. Laos. TYPES OF WOMEN OF FARTHER INDIA.]