Speaking to me of his journey to Korat, Dr. House, the most enterprising of the American missionaries at Bangkok, and the only white man who has penetrated so far for many years, told me that he found everything disappointing. I could have said the same, if, like him, I had started with any illusions; but I had a good idea of the forest, which I had already passed at several points, as at Phrabat, Khao Khoc, and Kenne Khoé, and amidst whose deleterious shades I had already spent one night. Nor did I expect to find towns amidst its thick and almost impenetrable masses of foliage, through which one can distinguish nothing beyond a distance of a few feet. JOURNEY THROUGH THE FOREST. I have lately again passed ten successive nights in this forest. During our journey through it, all the Chinese in the caravan, happy to find themselves still among the living, at every halting-place hastened to draw from their baskets an abundance of provisions wherewith to make a comfortable repast: then choosing, for want of an altar, some large tree, they laid out their dishes, lighted their matches, burned a quantity of gilt paper, and, kneeling down, murmured their prayers. Both on entering and leaving the forest they erected a shed of leaves and sticks interwoven, and raised upon four bamboo stakes, intended as a sort of chapel, in which they placed a number of offerings, in order, as they said, to drive away demons and save them from death. As for the Laotians, I have found them, although superstitious, very courageous, especially those who traverse this forest eight or ten times a year. Some of them even venture to awake the “King of Fire” by bringing down game or shooting at robbers: yet death, even in the best season, carries off one or two out of every ten who travel here. I think the number of those who fall victims to this terrible journey must be considerable in the rainy season, when every torrent overflows its bounds; the whole soil is soaked, the pathways nothing but bogs, and the rice-grounds covered with several feet of water. After five or six days’ walking through all this, with feet in the mud, the body in a profuse perspiration, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, hot as a stove and reeking with putrid miasma, what wonder that many sink and die? ARRIVAL AT KORAT. Two Chinese in our caravan arrived at Korat in a frightful state of fever. One I was able to save by administering quinine in good time, but the other, who appeared the strongest, was dead almost as soon as I heard of his being ill. We halted at five o’clock in the evening and encamped on a little hill, where, in the absence of grass, our poor oxen could only appease their hunger with leaves from the shrubs. The river, which flows down from these hills, is the same which runs near Korat, and on the opposite bank was encamped another caravan with more than 200 oxen. TRIBE OF KARIANS.