JOURNEYS IN FRENCH INDO-CHINA (TONGKING, ANNAM,

COCHIN CHINA, CAMBODIA *).

By the Hon. GEORGE N. CURZON, M.P.

THE regions which are embraced by the general title of French IndoChina, and of the methods and incidents of travel in the different parts of which I propose to give some account, comprise the southern and eastern portions of the geographical area commonly described as the IndoChinese peninsula, and consisting of the territories situated between India and China, or in other words, between the basins inclusive of the Irawadi and the Red River. The geographical interest of this country consists in the immense rivers by which it is intersected, and to whose alluvial bounty it for the most part owes its origin, and to the mystery which still overhangs its interior recesses; there on the confines of China, Burma, Siam, and Annam, wild and little known tribes inhabit the pathless mountains, and unexplored rivers thunder down profound ravines. Its commercial interest lies in the competition which it has engendered between rival European nations for the easiest approaches to the remote but populous provinces of Western China, on whose borders it lies; and the immemorial but lengthy caravan routes conducting to which it is sought to supersede by the agency of steam locomotion by river or by land. Its political interest lies in the fact that within the last thirty years the ownership of this vast tract, obeying the universal law by which the hitherto hidden corners of the world are gradually yielding up their secrets to civilisation-has changed and is even now changing hands; the conquest of the French having placed them in possession of the

* The orthography throughout this paper has been made to correspond with the published Rules of the Society. The spelling Cambodia has been adopted on account of its common usage in this country, in preference to Kamboja or Cambogia. The author would prefer the last-named form, as being in stricter accordance both with general acceptance and with local pronunciation.

The map to accompany Mr. Curzon's Paper will be given with the second instalment in the September number.

No. II. AUGUST, 1893.]

H

whole of its eastern face from Cambodia to Tongking, and the acquisition of Upper Burma by the British having brought the latter into similar contact both with China herself and with the frontiers of the one surviving independent Asiatic kingdom, that now separates England from France in the Far East, viz., Siam. The French parts of IndoChina, with which alone I propose to deal in this paper, comprise four separate territories, in different stages of political absorption. These are, in order from north to south, Tongking, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. Their united populations amount to about 18,000,000; they extend along a coast-line 1700 miles in length, and they embrace an area times as large again as France. I will first deal with the main geographical characteristics presented by this dominion, the different sections of which possess a physical unity that facilitates the task of description.

I. GENERAL GEOGRAPHICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

In no part of the world has water exercised a more potent agency in determining the destinies or in providing the livelihood of man. The bulk of the French possessions owe their existence to the deposits of great rivers, the Red River (Song Koi), Black River (Song Bo or Da Jiang), and Clear River (Song Lo) in the north, and the magnificent volume of the Mekong in the south, and may be divided throughout into two areas -the mountains through which these rivers, rising in the plateaux of Central Asia and Tibet, force their way seawards, and the plains or deltas which they have themselves almost wholly created along the coast. The entire populated and wealthy part of Tongking consists of the delta of the Red River with its confluents, which is 80 miles broad at its base. The whole of Cochin China and much of Cambodia consists of the delta of the Mekong. The intervening territory of Annam, in so far as it consists of plain land lying between the mountains and the sea, is also the creation of smaller streams flowing down from the highlands of the interior.

In each of these regions, under conditions differing very slightly, the process of territorial formation, or encroachment upon the sea, can be watched in active development. On the maritime fringe the brick or gruel-coloured streams, surcharged with alluvium, leave their detritus, which the tide is not sufficiently powerful to remove, and which gradually solidifies, and gives birth to a rank vegetation of mangroves and other aquatic plants. Sometimes for a while these form floating islets, which eventually coalesce and find a common anchorage. Sometimes they are covered with saline swamps, in which case they are utilised by the natives as salt-pans. A little later, as the sea recedes, they can be drained and planted, and in a few years, what began as a muddy lagoon is transformed into a ricefield of cloth of gold. The process of

formation is so rapid that Hanoi, the capital of Tongking, which is now 60 miles in a direct line from the sea, was upon it in the 7th century A.D., whilst in the 17th, the Dutch, who traded upon the Red River, had their maritime port at Hongyen, now 35 miles in the interior. I visited a place named Fat Diem, at the mouth of the Dai, on the southern confines of the delta, which has been entirely reclaimed from the sea within living memory, and is now occupied by smiling clusters of villages and rice-plots, irrigated by numerous canals. In Annam the growth of the land at the expense of the sea is accelerated by the action of the tides and winds, principally the north-east monsoon, which pile up long sand-dunes upon the coast, behind which the rivers, unable to pour their entire volume into the sea, spread themselves out in broad and sluggish lagoons, chafing idly to and fro, and daily diminishing in depth, till they too submit to the inevitable process and are choked. The same conditions are responsible for a phenomenon of constant occurrence on the Annamite coast facing eastwards, viz., the formation of sandbars off the mouth of almost every river without exception. These constitute during many months of the year an impracticable barrier to navigation, and compel vessels of any burden to lie out in an offing which rarely furnishes a secure anchorage. On the bars themselves the breakers form successive files of plunging foam, whose grey crests can be seen tossing skywards, and whose thunder can be heard for miles. At Hue, the capital of Annam, I could always hear the moaning of the bar at Thuanan, where is the river embouchure, over 6 miles distant as the crow flies, and at Vinh the roar was audible over an even greater distance. I crossed the bar of the Kua Hoi mouth of the Song Ka River near the latter place in a small native sampan, built mainly of bamboo, which charged the breakers full tilt, just after the crest had broken, and which, if it missed the right moment by a fraction of a second, was deluged from end to end. In Cochin China and Cambodia, a further phenomenon is encountered in the existence of immense tracts of country lying below the river-level, which in times of high water are converted into enormous swamps or lakes, whence only the upper branches of the trees emerge. The great lake of Talé Sap, i.e., the Inland Sea, in Cambodia, which is a depression in the soil of this character, and is fed by the Mekong, experiences transformations so violent that in the rainy season its length increases from 70 to 120 miles, its area is tripled; and while in the low waters the fish, with which it abounds, can almost be ladled from its shallow trough, then from 2 to 4 feet deep, it is swollen by the floods between June and September to a depth of 30 to 50 feet. In Cambodia the abodes of man adapt themselves to these fluctuant conditions, for they consist of palm-leaf and bamboo huts, which, if belonging to a stationary village, are raised upon wooden piles from 5 to 15 feet in height above the ground, or are placed upon floating rafts moored by long poles to the bed of the stream,

and capable of being shifted from site to site according to the height of

the waters.

One other phenomenon must be noticed that is common to these regions, and is replete with a geological as well as geographical interest. This is the existence of a peculiar rock formation, composed of a calcareous stone or marble, superimposed above the Devonian schists, and presenting the most picturesque and fantastic contours both in the sea, at no great distance from the mainland, and also at several points along the river valleys which have in earlier days been similarly situated. It consists of detached blocks or humps of rock, rising to a height of from 50 to 500 feet, with scarped sides and faces, but with summits and ledges covered with a superb and gracious vegetation. The action of the sea has carved the sides and hollowed the interior of these rocks into vast caverns and grottoes, and has fretted their outline into strange and abnormal shapes. The most remarkable instance of this phenomenon occurs in the Bay of Along, with its prolongation the Bay of Fai-tsi-long, an archipelago of thousands of islets so formed, which fringes the coast of Tongking for a distance of over 100 miles from the east border of the Red River delta almost to the Chinese frontier at Cape Pak-lung. One may spend days sailing in and out of the islets of this astonishing inland sea, which I do not hesitate to characterise as one of the wonders of the world, and which far excels the better known beauties of the Inland Sea of Japan. Low tunnelled passages, accessible only at low water, conduct to hidden basins or remote caverns in the heart of some of the rocks, and till recent times afforded an impenetrable retreat to the corsairs who devastated these waters. Near Turan, the maritime port of Hue, a cluster of similar rocks, called by the French the Marble Mountains, rises abruptly from the sand-dunes on the seashore, and is perforated with grottoes, which have been utilised by Buddhist monks for the establishment of one of those retreats wherein they appear uniformly able to combine aesthetic attractions with devotional needs. Their altars are enshrined in the bowels of the earth, and the ecstatic face of the gilded god shines faintly from the cavernous gloom. The other places in Tongking and Annam where I noted or was apprised of the same formation are (1) On a plain to the east of the Kua Kam, that embouchure of the Thai Binh, upon which lies the commercial port of Haifong; (2) between Kaobang and Langson on the east frontier; * (3) between Ninh Binh and the Catholic settlement of Kesho on the Dai, at a distance of over 30 miles from the sea; (4) at Dienho on the frontier between Tongking and Annam; (5) immediately south of Thanh-hoa, the capital of the province of that name. I have been informed that a precisely analogous formation is also visible at Lakhon on the middle waters of the Mekong.

* For a description of these, vide a paper on the Hill Slopes of Tongking, by J. G. Scott, in Proceedings of the R.G.S. 1886 (new series), Vol. VIII., pp. 234-5, 240.