FOOTNOTES: [7] A metre is equivalent to 3 feet 3-1/3 inches. CHAPTER XIII. MOUHOT IN THE HILL-COUNTRY OF CHANTABOUN. "Here I am," continues Mouhot, in his narrative, "once more installed in the house of a good old Chinese, a pepper planter, whose hospitality I enjoyed on my first visit to the place, two months ago. His name is Ihié-How, but in Siamese he is called Apait, which means _uncle_. He is a widower, with two sons, the eldest eighteen, a good young man, lively, hard-working, brave, and persevering. He is already much attached to me, and is desirous of accompanying me to Cambodia. Born amid the mountains, and naturally intelligent, there are none of the quadrupeds and few of the feathered tribes found in the district with whose habits he is not familiar. He fears neither tiger nor elephant. All this, added to his amiable disposition, made Phrai (that is his name) a real treasure to me. "Apait has also two brothers who have become Catholics, and have settled at Chantaboun in order to be near a Christian place of worship. He himself has never had any desire to change his religion, because he says if he did he must forget his deceased parents, for whom he frequently offers sacrifices. He is badly off, having incurred a debt of fifty ticals, for which he has to pay ten as yearly interest, the rate in Siam being always twenty or thirty per cent. Besides this he has various taxes to pay--twelve ticals for his two sons, four for his house, one for his furnace, one for his pig. The tax on the pepper-field is eight ticals, one on his areca-trees, one on the betel cultivated by him, and two _sellungs_ for a cocoa-tree; altogether thirty-nine ticals. His land brings him in forty after all expenses are paid; what can he do with the one remaining tical? The unlucky agriculturists of this kind, and they are many, live on vegetables, and on the rice which they obtain from the Siamese in exchange for areca. "On my return from the islands, I had been detained nearly ten days at Chantaboun, unable to walk; I had cut my heel in climbing the rocks on the shore at Ko-Man, and, as I was constantly barefooted in the salt water, the wound soon closed. But afterward I began to suffer from it; my foot swelled, and I was obliged to reopen the wound to extract a piece of shell which had remained in it. As soon as I could leave Chantaboun I hired a carriage and two buffaloes to take me to the mountain. I experienced much gratification in finding myself again among these quiet scenes, at once so lovely and so full of grandeur. Here are valleys intersected by streams of pure and limpid water; there, small plains, over which are scattered the modest dwellings of the laborious Chinese; while a little in the distance rises the mountain, with its imposing rocks, its grand trees, its torrents, and waterfalls.