"About ten miles from Pechaburi I found several villages inhabited by Laotians, who have been settled there for two or three generations. Their costumes consist of a long shirt and black pantaloons, like those of the Cochin-Chinese, and they have the Siamese tuft of hair. The women wear the same head-dress as the Cambodians. Their songs, and their way of drinking through bamboo pipes, from large jars, a fermented liquor made from rice and herbs, recalled to my mind what I had seen among the savage Stiêns. I also found among them the same baskets and instruments used by those tribes. "The young girls are fair compared to the Siamese, and their features are pretty; but they soon grow coarse and lose all their charms. Isolated in their villages, these Laotians have preserved their language and customs, and they never mingle with the Siamese." To any one who has had experience of the Siamese mosquitoes, it is delightful to find such thorough appreciation of them as Mouhot exhibits. In number and in ferocity they are unsurpassed. A prolonged and varied observation of the habits of this insect, in New Jersey and elsewhere, enables this editor to say that the mosquitoes of Siam are easily chief among their kind. The memory of one night at Paknam is still vivid and dreadful. So multitudinous, so irresistible, so intolerable were the swarms of these sanguinary enemies that not only comfort, but health and even life itself seemed jeopardized, as the irritation was fast bringing on a state of fever. There seemed no way but to flee. Orders were given to get up steam in the little steamer which had brought us from Bangkok, and we made all possible haste out of reach of the shore and anchored miles distant in the safe waters of the gulf till morning. Mouhot remained for four months among the mountains of Pechaburi, "known by the names of Makaon Khao, Panam Knot, Khao Tamoune, and Khao Samroun, the last two of which are 1,700 and 1,900 feet above the level of the sea." He needed the repose after the fatigue of his long journey, and by way of preparation for his new and arduous explorations of the Laos country, from which, as the result proved, he was never to come back. He returned to Bangkok, and after a brief season of preparation and farewell, he started for the interior. CHAPTER XV. THE TRIBES OF NORTHERN SIAM