The first day our conveyances upset, and I feared that we should be unable to proceed; there were continually dreadful bogs, quagmires, and marshes, in which the carts sank up to the axletrees and the buffaloes to their bellies. Fortunately on the following day the road improved, but for three weeks all that was visible was a few scattered rice-fields round the villages, and we had to make our way through a marshy plain, covered with thick and dark woods, which reminded one of the enchanted forest of Tasso, and it is easy to understand that the imagination of a pagan race peoples these gloomy solitudes with evil spirits. Twenty times in an hour the men who accompanied us were obliged to raise the large branches and cut down the trunks which obstructed our passage, and sometimes we had to make a new path for ourselves. The Cambodians were all much surprised at seeing us journeying towards the Stiêns at the worst time of the year, for in that country the rainy season had commenced, and even those who live nearest dare not venture there; and had I not brought with me from Siam my two young servants, I could not for any money have found a single individual to accompany me. Even they felt great repugnance to proceed--for in Siam, Cambodia bears a terrible reputation for unhealthiness, and unhappily both for them and for myself they were attacked with fever in the forests, since which, instead of receiving any help from them, I have had two patients to nurse. Passing through a village peopled by a barbarous race of Annamites, I ran great risk of being taken prisoner by them, and being sent to finish my researches in a dungeon. Last year the carriages belonging to a French missionary were completely rifled, and the men sent with ropes round their necks to Cochin China. I loaded all my guns, and gave one to each of my men: our firm appearance, no doubt, frightened them, for we were not attacked. In spite of the heat, the fatigue, and privations inseparable from such a journey, I arrived among the Stiêns in perfectly good health as far as I was concerned, and here I found a settlement of Catholic missionaries from Cochin China. It would have been impossible to go further, for I could neither find means of transport nor provisions, for at this time of the year the poor savages have consumed all their rice, and have nothing to live upon but herbs, a little maize, and what they can catch in the chase. I therefore accepted the hospitality offered to me with much kindness by a good priest. In a few weeks the rainy season will be over, the nights will become cold, and for several months insects will be found, and after that will come the turn of the birds, with which I shall exclusively occupy myself.