Scarcely had we appeared when we were saluted by a discharge of musketry. We replied as well as we could; and while these sounds were reverberating among the echoes of the forests, poor Father Guilloux, his legs covered with bad wounds, which had confined him for above six months to his mattrass, and which he had received on the journeys undertaken through the promptings of his pious zeal, advanced with frail steps to meet me along the tree-trunks thrown as a bridge across the swamp. All honour to thee, noble son of our dear and beautiful country!--thou who bravest poverty, privations, fatigue, suffering, and even death, to bring to these savages the blessings of religion and civilization! May God recompense thee for thy painful and self-denying labours, for men would be powerless to do so; thy reward is not of this world. Besides, in these troublous and warlike times, the virtues of the soldier are more appreciated than thine. But continue thy divine work; intelligent eyes and hearts watch from afar; and if, in our day, the military career is more honoured and better recompensed than any other, there are still, be sure, Christian hearts which feel it a duty to make known to the world thy virtue and thy sufferings, thy privations, and the benefits thou conferrest on these unfortunates. CHAPTER X. SOJOURN OF THREE MONTHS AMONG THE SAVAGE STIÊNS--MANNERS OF THIS TRIBE--PRODUCTS OF THE COUNTRY--FAUNA--MANNERS OF THE ANNAMITES. THE SAVAGE STIENS. I resided nearly three months among the savage Stiêns. Is this too short a period to enable me to form an opinion of them? One would think so, on hearing Father Guilloux repeat often that, although he has lived here two years, he is yet far from knowing all their superstitions and _devilries_. We are surrounded by forests, which are infested with elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceros, tigers, and wild boars, and the ground all about the pools is covered with their footprints. We live almost as in a besieged place, every moment dreading some attack of the enemy, and keeping our guns constantly loaded. Sometimes they come close to our quarters, and we cannot go even a few steps into the woods without hearing them. As a general rule, however, they fly from the approach of man, and in order to get a shot it is necessary to lie in wait either amongst the branches of a tree or hidden amid the brushwood near the spots where they come to drink.