The day after my first audience I had another from the second king, who wished also for a present. I sought among my stock, which anywhere else would cause me to be taken for a dealer in old stores, and found a magnifying glass and a pair of old-fashioned spectacles with round glasses, which make him look like a gorilla without hair, a little cake of soap (he had great need of it), a bottle of eau-de-cologne, and a bottle of brandy. This last was opened on the spot and duly appreciated. You see all this is expensive, but I am obliged to pay these good people, and the king has been kind to me, and is going to carry my letters for me. It is lucky that he does not understand French; for if at Bangkok the same system of postal curiosity was carried on as was established in Europe by the great king who betrayed La Vallière, I should be hung from the highest tree they could find, without even a warning. I afterwards distributed among the princes some engravings which I had bought at Bangkok--fine Cossack cavalry, lance in rest; some Napoleons (the First), for which I gave a penny; and some battles of Magenta, portraits of Victor Emmanuel and of Garibaldi, very white, blue, and red, and some Zouaves; also some brass-headed nails and some brandy; and it was quite pleasing to see how delighted they were, regretting only that I should go away before I had given them my whole stock. TO SAMUEL STEVENS, ESQ. [To be communicated to the Royal Geographical Society.] Louang Prabang, 1st August, 1861. Lat. 20° 50′, long. 102° 35′ 3″, merid. Greenwich. DEAR MR. STEVENS, Being entirely cut off from all communication with Bangkok, from which I am nearly 700 miles distant, is the only reason why you have not heard from me for so long a time. In January last I quitted the Siamese province of Saraburi, where during four months I had been making active exertions in order to enable me to penetrate into Western Laos, and to explore the basin of the Mekon. Unluckily in March I was forced, after having at great expense proceeded 350 miles, to return to Bangkok, in order to claim more assistance and protection than had hitherto been accorded to me, and a passport to counteract the difficulties continually thrown in my way by the mandarins, a class not less jealous and greedy here than in China. A letter of recommendation which had been voluntarily given to me (on my departure in October, 1860) by the Khrôme Louang Wougsâ, who is considered to be the prince best disposed towards Europeans in all Siam, and who has the superintendence of all the country which I intended to visit, turned out after all to be only a kind of letter of Bellerophon’s. In spite of all my entreaties and valuable presents I obtained nothing better; still I set off again.