Our preparations for the journey were soon completed. Perhaps the most important articles in our outfit were medicines. With our letter we need not have taken money in our purses, but no script from any earthly potentate can give such security against malaria as a few grains of quinine, and no person is safe in this country during the rainy season without it. Besides medicines and money to pay our way, we took a small supply of canned provisions――only enough, however, for use in case of sickness, as our food was to be procured on the way. It was necessary to take as little baggage as possible. A tent, blankets and a few extra articles of clothing, books, cooking utensils, guns and ammunition, about completed our outfit. We had four elephants, two of which were reserved for baggage. We had also an escort of six natives, besides those who accompanied the elephants――fourteen in all. After commending ourselves and those we left to the care of God, we set out at noon, April 15th, on our journey. Elephant-traveling is slow, scarcely averaging two miles per hour. Our course for the first hundred miles lay toward the north-east. The level country over which we first passed is occupied by a rural population. Our road, for the first ten or twelve miles, was through rice-fields. Here and there we could see small hamlets, whose sites were marked by graceful palm trees. Narrow strips of forest, extending in irregular curves, joined the different villages and formed the near boundary of our horizon. They marked the course of small streams and irrigating canals. After six hours’ travel we left the plain for the mountain-country, but two hours before doing so we had entered the forest. Thenceforth, till we reached Muang-Pau, a small village eight days’ journey distant, we saw no houses, save in a small hamlet of thirty or forty inhabitants at “Boiling Springs.” Our route, a main road traveled over betwixt Cheung Mai, Cheung Rai and Cheung Toong, was merely an elephant-path through a dense forest. On Sabbath, while encamped near a small stream in this forest, we met Saan-yawee-Chai, the native Christian whose home is in Muang-Pau. He was on his way to Lampoon. It was our intention to visit him at his home, but Providence directed his steps to us. He excused himself for traveling on Sunday by saying that he was not well instructed in the duties and observances of the Christian religion, and that also he was in company with those who would not stop. [Illustration: CAMPING IN A LAOS FOREST.]