Only a little of this was clear at Chiang Khan. If there were forebodings for the future in terms of the political complications that might be encountered, they were eclipsed by the dreadful possibility that a British party might already have accomplished the work the French explorers dearly wished to be theirs alone. Leaving Chiang Khan behind them on April 14, the party moved on. Two days later they rounded the great bend in the Mekong that set them firmly to the north once more. It was then, on the morning of April 16, that the expedition heard the worst. Laotians traveling in advance of a foreign party told the depressed Frenchmen that they would soon meet the British. Hurriedly completing their reports and charts, the explorers awaited the moment of truth and disillusion. In terms of what they expected, the moment never came. The “forty British officers” became, in reality, a small survey mission sent out by the King of Thailand that included one naturalized Frenchman of Dutch descent and two men of mixed European ancestry whose role was that of minor employees.
Their fellow French citizen was named Duyshart. Once employed in the colony of Cochinchina himself, Duyshart had left to become the King of Thailand's geographer. He had indeed been engaged in surveying a part of the Mekong that the French mission sought to chart in a scientific fashion for the first time — the section running south and east from Chiang Kong in the North to Luang Prabang — but he had not completed the task and in the face of threatened grave illness and stormy weather was postponing much of his work until the following year. Ironically, while the French mission was waiting apprehensively for the arrival of the non-existent British, Duyshart had been prey to an equally misleading rumor. His informants had warned him of the likely arrival of a group of Frenchmen at the head of an unruly band of Cambodian troops. The explanation of this rumor, it seemed, was to be found in a deformed account of both the actual French expedition and the revolt mounted by the Cambodian rebel Pou Kombo, whose efforts had so inconvenienced Garnier when he was attempting to obtain the passports for China. Neither Duyshart nor Lagrée and his group knew that by this stage Pou Kombo was under mounting pressure from French and Cambodian forces; before the end of the year he would be dead.
Little that Duyshart could tell Lagrée and his men about the territory ahead was comforting. As an employee of the Thai King, he had been well received at Luang Prabang. Farther north the picture he presented was less cheerful. Chiang Kong was the limit of the King of Thailand's suzerainty, and beyond that point Duyshart had not ventured. He reported that the petty states to the north were warring, and he made no secret of his judgment that the twin dangers of political instability and the ever-feared Laotian fevers were sufficient to bring a tragic end to the French explorers' efforts.
It was a meeting that evoked conflicting feelings. The French party could press on without having to act out the pantomime of courtesy and military compliments that they had readied themselves to offer their presumed British “colleagues.” Yet they were uncomfortably aware that from now on their lack of knowledge of the political circumstances facing them beyond Luang Prabang was likely to bring the frustration of delay, which had come close to sapping their enthusiasm previously. If this encounter with Duyshart lacked the drama and pathos of Stanley's with Livingstone, there is every reason to accept Garnier's observation that, long after the disappearance of Duyshart's raft down the river, he and his companions discussed their unexpected meeting with a fellow European in the essentially unknown regions of central Laos.
By the evening of the day after the encounter with Duyshart the expedition was at Pak Lay, the limit of Mouhot's rough reconnaissance of the Mekong south from Luang Prabang. They could still see near the river's bank the traces of a once much-used road that had served for commerce between China and these obscure Laotian regions before the Muslim rebellion in Yunnan had put an end to easy trade between north and south during the 1850s. The countryside through which they passed had changed; the climate seemed more temperate, and the river continued to narrow, breaking into several courses split by rocky outcrops or giant sandbanks that would later be submerged by the floods that followed the melting of the distant Tibetan snows. The population of the region no longer clustered in settlements near the river banks, and the explorers pressed on, sleeping in their pirogues for want of shelter in villages along the way.
On April 23 the boatmen warned the explorers that a great rapid would soon be reached, and as if in confirmation a corpse floated by, a presumed victim of the dangers that were soon to be faced. Once more, as they had done so many times before, the expedition unloaded their craft and slowly and painfully pulled them through the rapids, only to find at the end of the day that a further and equally imposing rapid lay ahead. As they progressed, however slowly, it was of some comfort to know that their hard-earned progress forward would be impossible a month later. The river was already rising and would, at its highest point, be fifty feet higher than it was at this time. The high-water marks on the gorges through which they passed gave eloquent evidence of the transformation that would shortly take place.
Gradually, as the expedition pressed farther north, the countryside became less forbidding, the river ran between hills that no longer rose directly from the waterline, and there was evidence once again of human settlement on the slopes to either side of the water course. They were coming closer to Luang Prabang, and when they camped for the night of April 28 their boatmen told them they would be in the city the next day. The explorers were determined to make a brave show as they entered this important center, where they judged much might be done to aid or hinder the next part of their journey.
Now questions of form became important. Despite their lack of footwear, the Frenchmen drew their best clothes from the valises; even more remarkably, given the circumstances, the escort could still be dressed as if manning an admiral's barge. They donned white shirts and trousers, sailors' collars and straw hats each bearing a ribbon with the word “Mekong” printed in gold. Only then did they prepare to enter the city where their compatriot Mouhot had been so well received six years before.
They came to Luang Prabang around a bend in the river and found before them the largest settlement they had seen since leaving Phnom Penh more than nine months previously. Built on the eastern bank below the dark slopes of hills and mountains that retreated in successively higher waves, the city offered a sharp contrast with the straggling settlements of the river banks to which the explorers had long been accustomed and where, with rare exceptions, even the village pagoda lacked artistic interest. Now they saw a city that was growing in size and commercial importance. Garnier and Delaporte recorded the majority view when they described the princely town in approving terms. De Carné, in contrast, was not impressed. Where the others felt that Luang Prabang showed a fair face to travelers, he found its visage “mean.”
Established as a political center of some importance by a dissident Lao prince in the early eighteenth century, Luang Prabang had benefited both from the destruction of Vientiane in the 1820s and from the fact that its status as a vassal of both Thailand and Vietnam was tempered by its distance from Bangkok and Hue. Dominated by a that on the top of a hill covered in dark foliage, Luang Prabang was a pleasing mixture of pagodas with glistening red roof tiles and whitewashed walls, a vast palace compound, and the houses of a population of some sixteen thousand. Perhaps most pleasing of all to the Frenchmen was not the happy scenic combination of an architecturally exotic city in a setting of natural beauty but, rather, the fact that there was much evidence of trade in Luang Prabang. As Garnier noted in his journal, “This was the first time since leaving Phnom Penh that we found a market, in the sense that one normally gives to the word.”
A market there certainly was, operating under the control of local officials each day. There was, in addition, a long line of open-air traders to be found beside the river. Yet it required eyes suffused by hope to envisage in what Garnier saw a future major center for international trade. In terms of the principality, and even for region
s beyond, Luang Prabang could with accuracy be described as an important commercial location. The goods that were sold, however, were hardly a basis for the colonial trade that men such as Lagrée and Garnier, and La Grandière back in Saigon, had hoped might flow down the Mekong. Mixed with flowers and fruits on the merchants' stalls were cottons and silks, hardware and the distinctive lacquer of Chiang Mai. In short, the stalls the explorers saw were little different from those a traveler would find in northern Thailand or parts of Laos today, a hundred years later. As such, the merchandise had an out-of-the-way charm, more particularly because it did not suffer from the debasement of form and technique that came later, with the growth of a small but artistically disruptive European community in Laos in the twentieth century. If large-scale commerce or the evidence of untapped sources of valuable raw materials was what the French party sought, they would not find it in Luang Prabang.
They did, after a hesitant and uncertain beginning, find amiable hospitality and a remarkable acceptance among the local population and its leaders. The first encounter with the ruler of Luang Prabang was frosty, with both the French and the Laotians unwilling to concede relaxation on the points that each held to be important in the practice of ceremonies and the usage of protocol. Relations rapidly improved, however, and the explorers were free to map the city or make short journeys into the surrounding countryside to record the botany and geology of the region. In this more relaxed atmosphere, Lagrée sought the ruler's permission to construct a monument over Henri Mouhot's grave. Without hesitation agreement was given, and Mouhot received the posthumous honor of a monument at the place of his death from representatives of a country that had been so unconcerned with his labors while he was alive.
Garnier described the memory that Mouhot had left behind him in Luang Prabang in emotional terms. Laotians remembered the French naturalist and brought specimens of insects to the expedition, assuming that the latest foreign visitors would also welcome and recompense the bearers of these offerings. Mouhot had died only a short distance from Luang Prabang on the banks of the Nam Kan, one of the Mekong's tributaries. The site of his grave was less than a day's journey away from the city, but it had been the most deserted place in the world when Mouhot died there in November 1861. The final entries in his diary were written with the universal despair of men dying of dread diseases in deserted places. On October 19, 1861, he had managed to write, “I have been struck down by the fever.” Ten days later his next and last diary entry read, “Have pity on me, Oh my God!” On November 10, after three final and terrible days of coma and delirium, he died. A final episode of pathos for the Frenchmen paying honor to Mouhot came with their discovery that the naturalist's dog Tine-Tine was still alive. Taken in by a Laotian family living in Luang Prabang, the dog no longer recalled that his first master had had a white skin, and he bared his teeth at the Frenchmen's friendly advances.
In carrying out their “pious duty” to Mouhot's memory the explorers acted out, quite without pretense, the standards of their age. With death so close to all of those who served in the then remote areas of Southeast Asia, it was right and appropriate to pay tribute to those who had died before them. Sudden illness leading to an equally sudden death was a possibility that they all knew might confront them personally. Indeed, of the six French principals on the expedition, three would be dead within six years of the day they stood solemnly beside their countryman's neglected grave.
In Luang Prabang itself solemnity was scarcely possible; the Frenchmen found that they had become an object of the greatest interest for the young women of the local prince's household. Once again, in Garnier's description of this interest, there is an only lightly disguised indication of the sublimated sexual drives that he and the other members of the party experienced. They watched and appraised the bare-breasted young women who came to visit their encampment, among them a niece of the ruler, who is immortalized in a drawing by Delaporte. For the young women the soap used by the members of the expedition became the most sought-after gift, for, if Garnier's account is correct, they believed that soap was the secret of the Frenchmen's light skin coloring. Whether genuinely concerned or not, the Frenchmen questioned their most frequent female visitor about the propriety of her spending so much time in their presence. Her reaction was the same as that of the young female porters of northeastern Thailand who had transported Garnier's supplies during his march back from Phnom Penh. With their long beards, she told the explorers, they could not be less than eighty years old, long past the age when it was unsafe or unwise for a young woman to spend time with them unescorted by a chaperone.
For much of the time that the French party was in Luang Prabang, the city was en fête. With the heavy rains of the wet season close to hand the population seized the remaining dry nights as an opportunity for dancing and gossip. The period just before the rains coincided with the celebrations marking the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha. The ceremonies for this occasion took place alongside others that had little to do with the austere philosophy of the Buddha himself. The young men of Luang Prabang, their heads crowned with flowers, danced before their chosen partners, serenaded them, and disappeared with them into the night.
If Garnier and his fellows took some delight in this rustic mating that did not seem too distant from the idealized, spontaneous world of the “noble savage” eulogized by eighteenth-century philosophes, they did not have to look far to see that Luang Prabang was no earthly paradise. Many of the young women who were otherwise so graceful were already afflicted with goiters that disfigured their necks. Among old women these goiters were of proportions that amazed the French observers, who could not understand why the physical deformity did not embarrass those who bore it. And if the sexual mores of the young Laotians whom the explorers observed did not call for censure, the readiness of the population, young and old, to indulge in gambling did. Throughout the nineteenth century there was a consistent readiness on the part of French official observers in the Indochinese region to level sharp, even bitter criticism against the inclination of the local populations to engage in protracted gambling. The reason is not entirely clear. Answers that offer psychological explanations may be partly right. Gambling was scarcely unknown in French society, at all levels. So, the argument might run, the criticism of what was done by others was a defensive reaction that absolved the critic from his own countrymen's vices. But more seems to have been involved. The supposed depravity represented by the presence of gambling as an accepted part of local life, whether in Vietnam, Cambodia, or the Laotian states, provided one irrefutable justification for the mission civilisatrice. To dismiss this attitude as mere rationalization would be to fail to understand how deeply the early colonialists, of whom Lagrée and Garnier were such notable examples, believed in the role they chose to play.
In Luang Prabang, however, the civilizing mission was a possibility for the future, one that could only be accomplished after the explorers had carried out their task and followed the Mekong to the borders of China, and possibly beyond. With the weeks slipping by in Luang Prabang, the question of how the next stage of the journey was to be achieved became a matter of growing concern. The four weeks spent in the northern Laotian capital had offered the explorers an almost Arcadian interlude, but they were faced there with choices they were ill-equipped to evaluate. To go on was a simple, if onerous, decision. They knew that their next three or four months' journeying would be through the worst of the year's weather, but there was no question that go on they must. The real, and for a period irresolvable, problem was to decide where they should go. For the first time during their travels this became a matter of real indecision. For as they relaxed and drew strength from the sojourn in Luang Prabang and observed with largely tolerant eyes the life that went on about them, the political intelligence they were obtaining grew more and more disturbing. At best the path ahead looked uncertain. At worst it seemed possible that to follow the Mekong into China was no longer an option open to them.
CHAPTER VII
BEFORE THE GATES OF CHINA
Lack of adequate information runs as a constant and dominant thread through the fabric of the French explorers' public and private accounts of their travels. Not knowing what lay ahead was the justification and the attraction of exploration. Yet this spur to action was also a cause for uncertainty, irritation, even despondency. And to their lack of knowledge of what lay ahead of them, whether in geographical or political terms, was added the almost total isolation from news of Europe, or even Saigon, that the explorers had experienced ever since Garnier had made his remarkable journey to Phnom Penh four months earlier.
What little the members of the expedition did know about the territories ahead was far from encouraging. When they had received their instructions in Saigon, almost exactly a year before, Admiral La Grandière had made no attempt to hide the uncertainties that existed about the lands that lay to the north of Luang Prabang but below the borders of China. “The ideas that we have of these upper regions,” he noted in the instructions given to Lagrée, “are too uncertain for it to be useful to provide you with any particular instructions concerning these areas.” Lagrée was to take “inspiration” from his general instructions and act “according to circumstances.”
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