Every day we met one or two caravans of from eighty to a hundred oxen, laden with stag and panther skins, raw silk from Laos, _langoutis_ of cotton and silk, peacocks’ tails, ivory, elephants’ bones, and sugar; but this latter article is scarce. The country presented much the same kind of aspect for four days after leaving the forest. We passed through several considerable villages, in one of which, Sikiéou, are kept six hundred oxen belonging to the king. The journey from Keng-Koë to Korat occupied ten days. The Chinese quarter of this latter town contains sixty or seventy houses, built with bricks dried in the sun, and surrounded by palisades nine feet high, and as strong as those of a rampart. TOWN OF KORAT. These precautions are very necessary, for Korat is a nest of robbers and assassins, the resort of all the scum of the Laotian and Siamese races. Bandits and vagrants, escaped from slavery or from prison, gather here like the vultures and wolves which follow armies and caravans. It is not that they enjoy complete immunity, for the governor, son of Bodine, the general who conquered Battambong and the revolted provinces, is viceroy of the state, has absolute power of life and death, and is, they say, very severe, cutting off a head or a hand with little compunction. But still it is Siamese justice, “non inviola:” there are neither gendarmes nor police; the person robbed must himself arrest the offender and bring him before the judge. Even his neighbour will give no assistance in the capture. It was necessary to look out for a dwelling, and I applied to the Chinese, hoping to find a house rather larger than the one where Phrai had settled himself with my luggage, and I had not much difficulty in doing so. At the end of the Chinese quarter, which is the bazaar, commences the town properly so called, which is enclosed by a wall of ferruginous stone and sandstone, brought from the distant mountain--a work which I at once recognised as that of the Khmerdôm. Within is the residence of the governor and those of the other authorities, several pagodas, a caravanserai, and a number of other houses. A stream of water, eight metres wide, crosses the town and is bordered by little plantations of betel and cocoa-nut trees. The real town of Korat does not contain more than five or six thousand inhabitants, including six hundred Chinese. The Siamese I found impertinent and disagreeable, the Chinese friendly and kind. It was the contrast between civilization and barbarism--between the mass of vices engendered by idleness, and the good qualities cultivated by habits of industry. Unfortunately, however, the money acquired by these indefatigable merchants furnishes the means of gratifying their baneful propensities, gambling and opium-smoking.