Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume VIII, No. 5 [‎18r] (38/154)

JOURNEY ROUND SIAM.
441
condition, offers much attraction to a foreign market. Easy and cheap
communication by railway would doubtless create a much larger demand
for foreign commodities, but that will be naturally limited by the
scarcity of population. Even judging liberally from the data which I
accumulated on this journey, I do not think that the total population
of the whole of the Mekong basin still remaining in the possession of
Siam can, at the iitmost, amount to more than 1,000,000. As for the left
bank of the Mekong, it is, in comparison, practically uninhabited, as all
the villages are situated on the right bank.
The whole of this country swarms with wild animals, and at different
places are to be found wild elephant, tiger, leopard, bear, pig, and deer. I
occasionally saw the huge, circular tracks of wild elephant on the path
in the forest, and once or twice the spore of tiger in the vicinity of our
camp attested the presence of that uncanny nocturnal visitor. Several
times my faithful “ boy ” told me in the morning, with a tremor in his
voice, that he had heard the roaring of a tiger during the watches of
the night. I never had that luck myself, I’m sorry to say, as the deep
and dreamless slumber of a tired wanderer generally made me oblivious
to all the nightly sounds of the forest, however strange or weird they
might be. I, however, had the pleasure, such as it was, of seeing a real
live leopard at home in his native jungle. Not that I had any desire
to call on the gentleman, and cultivate a closer acquaintance—an un
social disposition which, I rejoiced to see, was even more marked on the
part of the leopard. It was early morning, and I was quietly trotting
along on my Lilliputian charger, when a kind of exaggerated cat, so to
say, slouched across the path. Without condescending to take the
slightest notice of a British Consular official, he disappeared through the
undergrowth at a rapid pace, and took with him, I might add, my
hearty wishes for a bon voyage.
I heard of few fatalities of natives from attacks of tiger, but in
several places I was informed of their depredations on ponies and -
cattle. Not only is the population scanty, but there is apparently such
abundance of deer and pig that little necessity exists for beasts of prey
to approach the haunts of men in search of food. At one place, how
ever, near where we camped at the ruby mines, a native, who was
sleeping out in the open with two others, was pounced upon by a tiger,
and so severely mauled that he died. And in the north of Siam the
sad story of an old woman who had been devoured by a hungry tiger—
and a very bold and hungry beast he must have been to have tackled
an old Siamese woman—kept our whole caravan in a state of excitement
till the scene of the unhallowed repast was left far behind.
The journey from Siamrap to Korat occupied eighteen days, and
that from Korat to Nongkhai fifteen days, and we suffered greatly
from heat and want of water. Not that the temperature went up to
abnormal heights, but on the close stuffy day that it reached 105° in