Penom-Wat is an interesting temple 36 metres long by 40 wide, and the plan resembles a cross with tolerable exactness. It is composed of two pavilions, with vaulted stone roofs and elegant porticoes. The roofs are from seven to eight metres in height, the gallery three metres wide in the interior, and the walls a metre thick. At each façade of the gallery are two windows with twisted bars. This temple is built of red and grey sandstone, coarse in the grain, and in some places beginning to decay. On one of the doors is a long inscription, and above are sculptures representing nearly the same subjects as those at Ongcor and Bassette. In one of the pavilions are several Buddhist idols in stone, the largest of which is 2 metres 50 centimetres high, and actually covered with rags. You might here easily imagine yourself among the ruins of Ongcor. There is the same style of architecture, the same taste displayed, the same immense blocks polished like marble, and so beautifully fitted together, that I can only compare it to the joining and planing of so many planks. The whole building is, without doubt, the work of the Khmerdôm, and not an imitation, and must be as old as the illustrious reigns which have left the traces of their grandeur in different parts of the empire. The exterior is not equal to the interior. Penom was the temple of the Queen, so say the Siamese; that of the King, her husband, is at Pimaïe, a district about 30 miles east of Korat. To consult any existing maps of Indo-China for my guidance in the interior of Laos would have been a folly, no traveller, at least to my knowledge, having penetrated into east Laos, or published any authentic information respecting it. To question the natives about places more than a degree distant would have been useless. My desire was to reach Louang-Prabang by land, to visit the northern tribes dependent on that state, and then again to descend the Mekong to Cambodia. Setting out from Korat, I had but to proceed northwards as long as I found practicable roads and inhabited places; and if I could not go by a direct route to Louang-Prabang, I should only have to diverge to the east when I judged it necessary. RETURN TO CHAIAPUME.