Scorpions, centipedes, and, above all, serpents, were the enemies we most dreaded, and against which precautions were chiefly requisite; but the mosquitoes and the leeches, though less dangerous, were the most troublesome and most inveterate plagues. During the rainy season you cannot be too much on your guard; going to bed or getting up, you are ever in peril of putting hand or foot on some venomous snake. I have killed more than one in my house with a gun or a hatchet. As I write, I am obliged to be continually on the watch, fearing to see one reappear on which I trod this evening, but which made his exit without hurting me. From time to time, also, I stop to listen to the roaring of a tiger, who is wandering round our dwelling and looking longingly at the pigs through their fence of planks and bamboos. Again, I hear a rhinoceros breaking down the bamboos which oppose his progress towards the brambles encircling our garden, on which he intends to banquet. The savage Stiêns who inhabit this region have probably the same origin as those who people the mountains and the table-land which separate the kingdoms of Siam and Cambodia from that of Annam, and which extend along the great river from 11° north lat. and between 106° and 108° east long. They form as many separate communities as there are villages, and seem to be a race distinct from all the people who surround them. I am myself inclined to believe them to be the aborigines of the country, and to suppose that they have been driven back from the sea and the rivers to the districts now occupied by them by the successive invasions of the Thibetans, who have spread themselves over Laos, Siam, and Cambodia, and nothing that I can discover leads to any other supposition.[21] [21] The drawings of M. Mouhot at first sight recall those of the Polynesians of the North, and more especially of the Carolinas, as they are depicted in the works of Gutke, of Duperoy, and of Dumont d’Urville. [Illustration: Drawn by M. Bocourt, from a Sketch by M. Mouhot. SAVAGE STIEN.]