Want of means for the easy and advantageous removal of merchandise, causes Korat to be the central market for all the eastern part of the country. There they bring all the silk of Laos, langoutis, skins, horns, ivory, peacocks’ tails, &c., which the active Chinese merchants sell again at a good profit at Bangkok, notwithstanding all the taxes they have to pay, having brought from thence cotton and other useful articles of Chinese and European manufacture for the use of the natives. Thus there passes daily through the forest of Dong Phya Phia, on the average, a caravan of from 100 to 150 oxen. With protective instead of restrictive laws, and an enlightened and civilized government, this commerce would increase threefold in a very short time. Notwithstanding the small population of Korat, it is the chief town of a province, or rather an extensive state, containing eleven towns or boroughs, chief towns of districts, and a great number of villages, more or less populated. Fifteen days’ journey brings you from Korat to Bassac on the banks of the Mekon, and in the same latitude. My intention was to proceed northwards, only stopping in the province of Louang Prabang, and then to descend the river as far as Cambodia. I hired elephants, and five days after, having passed through several villages inhabited by the descendants of ancient Siamese colonists who had taken refuge there in time of war, passing continually through forests of resin trees thinly scattered, I arrived at Ban Prang, a village where I discovered a ruined tower, and also the remains of an ancient temple. The next place I arrived at was Chaiapoune, the principal Laotian town in the north, and the chief town of the district. Here also I found ruins; but they were inconsiderable, and seemed more like a Laotian imitation than the work of Khmer Dôme. The inscriptions on the other temples in the province of Korat resemble those of Ongcor: here I found upon a block of broken slate-stone an inscription in Laotian characters, but which is unintelligible even to the inhabitants of the country. These, with some remains of idols and towers at the foot of a mountain in the district, were the only vestiges of that ancient civilization which I discovered in the north. Everything leads me to suppose that here also were the limits which separated the kingdom of Cambodia from that of Vieng Thiane, destroyed during the last war which the Siamese raised against the Western Laotians or _white-bellies_. It was in this district that I was stopped in my travels by the authorities of the country, who treated me with great rudeness, and who forbade the people to let me have any means of transport, even after seeing my passport. I was therefore obliged to retrace my steps, deploring the expense and loss of time in the best part of the year, and which will cause me serious inconvenience. LETTERS ADDRESSED TO M. MOUHOT.[10] [10] Several of these letters were never received by M. Mouhot.