The People Were As Gentle And Inoffensive In Their Manners As The
Japanese, Without Their Elaborate Courtesy And Civilized Curiosity.
Having seen all I could see, I turned shipwards, weary, footsore, and
exhausted; my feet so sore and blistered, indeed, that long before I
reached a gharrie I was obliged to take off my boots and wrap them in
handkerchiefs.
The dust was deep and made heavy walking, and the level
straightness of a great part of the road is wearisome. Overtaking even
at my slow rate of progress a string of creaking buffalo carts, I got
upon the hindmost, but after a little rest found the noise, dust, and
slow progress intolerable, and plodded on as before, taking two and a
half hours to walk three miles. About a mile from Cholen there is an
extraordinary burial-ground, said to cover an area of twenty square
miles. (?) It is thickly peopled with the dead, and profuse vegetation
and funereal lichens give it a profoundly melancholy look. It was
chosen by the Cambodian kings several centuries ago for a cemetery, on
the advice of the astrologers of the court. The telegraph wire runs
near it, and so the old and the new age meet.
On my weary way I was overtaken by a young French artillery officer,
who walked with me until we came upon an empty gharrie, and was
eloquent upon the miseries of Saigon. It is a very important military
station, and a sort of depot for the convicts who are sent to the
(comparatively) adjacent settlement of New Caledonia.
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