Mgr. Cuénot, in _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, xiii. (1841) p. 143; H. Mouhot, _Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China_ (London, 1864), ii. 35; A. Bastian, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Gebirgsstämme in Kambodia,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, i. (1866) p. 37; J. Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_ (Paris, 1883), i. 432-436; E. Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” in _Cochinchine Française: Excursions et reconnaissances_, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), pp. 172 _sq._; _id._, _Notes sur le Laos_ (Saigon, 1885), p. 60; Le Capitaine Cupet, “Chez les populations sauvages du Sud de l’Annam,” _Tour du monde_, No. 1682, April 1, 1893, pp. 193-204; _id._, in _Mission Pavie, Indo-Chine 1879-1895, Géographie et voyages_, iii. (Paris, 1900) pp. 297-318; Tournier, _Notice sur le Laos Français_ (Hanoi, 1900), pp. 111 _sq._; A. Lavallée, “Notes ethnographiques sur diverses tribus du Sud-Est de l’Inde-Chine,” _Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient_, i. (Hanoi, 1901) pp. 303 _sq._ Mgr. Cuénot mentions only the King of Fire. Bastian speaks as if the King of Fire was also the King of Water. Both writers report at second hand. CHAPTER IX THE WORSHIP OF TREES § 1. Tree-spirits [Sidenote: Great forests of ancient Europe.] In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primaeval forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of green. Down to the first century before our era the Hercynian forest stretched eastward from the Rhine for a distance at once vast and unknown; Germans whom Caesar questioned had travelled for two months through it without reaching the end.[5] Four centuries later it was visited by the Emperor Julian, and the solitude, the gloom, the silence of the forest appear to have made a deep impression on his sensitive nature. He declared that he knew nothing like it in the Roman empire.[6] In our own country the wealds of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex are remnants of the great forest of Anderida, which once clothed the whole of the south-eastern portion of the island. Westward it seems to have stretched till it joined another forest that extended from Hampshire to Devon. In the reign of Henry II. the citizens of London still hunted the wild bull and the boar in the woods of Hampstead. Even under the later Plantagenets the royal forests were sixty-eight in number. In the forest of Arden it was said that down to modern times a squirrel might leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole length of Warwickshire.[7] The excavation of ancient pile-villages in the valley of the Po has shewn that long before the rise and probably