My departure from here will depend upon circumstances; perhaps I shall myself be the bearer of this letter to Pinhalú, perhaps I may be detained here some months by the bad state of the roads and the impossibility of procuring vehicles during the rice-harvest. If you ask who are this strange people, living retired on the table-lands and mountains of Cambodia, which they appear never to have quitted, and differing entirely in manners, language, and features from the Annamites, Cambodians, and Laotians, my answer is that I believe them to be the aborigines of the country, and that they have been driven into these districts by the repeated inroads of the Thibetians, from whom they evidently descend, as is proved by the resemblance of features, religion, and character. The whole country from the eastern side of the mountains of Cochin China as far as 103° long., and from 11° lat. to Laos, is inhabited by savage tribes, all known under one name, which signifies “inhabitants of the heights.” They have no attachment to the soil, and frequently change their abode; most of the villages are in a state of continual hostility with each other, but they do not attack in troops, but seek to surprise each other, and the prisoners are sold as slaves to the Laotians. Their only weapon is the cross-bow, which they use with extraordinary skill, but rarely at a distance of more than twenty paces. Poisoned arrows are used only for hunting the larger animals, such as elephants, rhinoceros, buffaloes, and wild oxen, and with these the smallest scratch causes death, if the poison is fresh: the strongest animal does not go more than fifty paces before it falls; they then cut out the wounded part, half roast it without skinning or cutting it up, after which they summon the whole village by sound of trumpet to partake of it. The most perfect equality and fraternity reign in these little communities, and the Communists would here find their theories reduced to practice and producing nothing but misery. The strongest European would find it difficult to bend the bow which the Stiên, weak and frail as he appears, bends without effort, doubtless by long practice.