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.”
The immediate difficulty was to know what the “circumstances” were. Well to the north, in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, the Frenchmen knew that an Islamic revolt had been in progress since 1855. The causes and the course of this revolt were complex, and without fresh information the explorers could only guess at the importance it might have for their own progress when they reached Chinese territory. Since the passports they possessed for travel through China were issued by the imperial government in Peking, there was clearly need to avoid any action that might place the party in jeopardy by antagonizing either of the contending Chinese sides.
Before the possible difficulties of China were encountered, however, a way had to be found to that country which, for all the members of the expedition, still remained a presumed if untested source of countless riches. The problems to be overcome were compounded by the political circumstances of a frontier zone that had little if any recognizable similarities with the European pattern of state relations familiar to the explorers. For their ancestors, living five or six hundred years previously in a world of suzerains and vassals, the political configuration of the northern Laotian and Burmese Shan states might have posed few problems of understanding. To Frenchmen in the second half of the nineteenth century the situation was at best confusing. Viewed from Luang Prabang, the area that now forms part of northern Laos and north-eastern Burma was, in 1867, a curiously jumbled region of petty kingdoms or principalities, none of which possessed the power or the prestige to act without some reliance and dependence upon their stronger neighbors, the Burmese, the Chinese, and, for the region directly west of Luang Prabang, the Thai monarch in Bangkok. What made the situation even more uncertain was that most of these petty rulers were in vassalage to more than one greater power.
In these circumstances of instability the fact and memory of war often seemed dominant. The Burmese rulers distrusted the Shan peoples in the Northeast of their kingdom, seeing them as old opponents and ethnic affiliates of their longtime Thai enemies whose power center lay in the lower Chao Phraya (Menam) valley. The Thai conceded Burman interest in the more northerly Shan states but disputed it in such areas as Chiang Mai. As for China, these regions immediately to her south seemed to illustrate all too well the validity of the traditional assumption that the peoples of thoses areas outside direct Chinese control were incapable of governing themselves without advice and direction.
Adding further to such problems of understanding and comprehension was the ethnic confusion of the region ahead. Lagrée and his subordinates were well aware that the Laotions and Shans they encountered were members of the great Tai-speaking people whose most successful political achievement had been the establishment of the Kingdom of Thailand with its capital in Bangkok. Springing from an ethnic base somewhere in southern China, probably as early as the eleventh century, Tai ruling groups had slowly imposed their power over an extraordinary range of what is now modern China and Southeast Asia. Despite the great distances involved, and the different names adopted by various groups, they all spoke (and still speak) Tai dialects of considerable, indeed essential, similarity. But Laotians and Shans were not the only inhabitants of the unknown “upper regions.” A modern ethnolinguistic map of the area only tends to heighten the sense of confusion. Intermingled with the Tai-speaking Laotians and Shans are representatives of half a dozen other ethnic groups, some living in close association with the dominant Tai-speaking peoples of the river valleys, others remaining in essential, if not complete, isolation in the upland regions.
Even to state matters in these terms is to give a misleading impression of the problems that worried Doudart de Lagrée as he reviewed the various possibilities open to his party. With the benefit of hindsight and the accumulation of ethnological and political knowledge, a modern writer can summarize the situation and so diminish, even unconsciously, the confusion and uncertainly. What may now be summarized was known at best imperfectly in May of 1867, and by men who were already paying a heavy physical cost for their prolonged exposure to the dangers of tropical disease. When he wrote to his sister-in-law from Luang Prabang, Lagrée acknowledged his tiredness. At forty-three, he wrote of how age weighed him down. If the doctors who accompanied the expedition had been of a later generation, they would possibly have already diagnosed the disease from which Lagrée was suffering by this time, a disease that sapped his energy and required him to make supreme efforts in order to play his role as leader.
The explorers progress up the Se Moun River. See page 78.
A river scene sketched on April 22, 1867, just before the expedition's arrival in Luang Prabang. See page 100.
Previous pages. The explorers watch as the ‘king' of Bassac receives oaths of loyalty from his senior officials. See pages 66–72.
The ruins of the Wat Pha Keo pagoda in Vientiane. The famous Emerald Buddha, now in Bangkok, was once housed here. See page 98.
A festival in a pagoda in the Thai riverside town of Nong Khay. See page 96.
The fireworks at Bassac. The French explorers were in Bassac at the time of the Water Festival, one of the great events of the year.
A plan of the course of the waters of the Khone falls. See paged 64–5.
The town of Luang Prabang. The explorers spent nearly a month in this scenically attractive city. See pages 112–16.
The That Luang stupa, the most famous monument in Vientiane, which remains revered in contemporary Laos. See page 98.
One of Delaporte's botanical studies. This one concentrates on epiphytic orchids of Laos.
Nothing more surely reveals Lagrée's already diminished physical and mental reserves than the fact that at Luang Prabang he sought his companions' opinion on the next step the mission should take. In the bickering and even bitter dispute that emerged after the expedition was over, its leader dead, the question of who made what decision, and in concert with whom, became important points about which to construct hypothetical assertions concerning the role of this or that participant. Garnier's partisans, who remain the most vocal a century later, see their hero in one role. In the 1870s and 1880s there were those, not least Louis de Carné, who promoted a cult of Lagrée and sought to denigrate his second-in-command. More than a century after the events that kindled such bitter debate judgment can be more balanced, even if the desirability of such balance would have been rejected by those who engaged in the original controversy.
Until the mission reached Luang Prabang Doudart de Lagrée's position as its leader was largely unaffected by health problems. From that period, in April and May of 1867, he was the victim of progressive debilitation. Rather than the “fevers” that had brought him low in southern Laos five months before, or the chronic problems resulting from his persistent throat infection, he began to suffer the effects of amoebic dysentery. With the reticence of the mid-nineteenth century, the chroniclers of the expedition give us little detail on the course of Lagrée's disease. But after his death, the final comments on his abscessed liver and his “unmistakable” symptoms, which can only have been the passing of a bloody flux through the bowels, leave no real doubt as to the nature of his complaint. And the picture we have of periods of remission that permitted Lagrée to act with something of his former dynamism supports this diagnosis. All these symptoms are consistent with a modern understanding of the nature of amoebic dysentery. What might set Lagrée's case apart is the staggering level of physical achievement he managed to maintain before, finally, and six months of travel beyond Luang Prabang, he was forced to admit that he could march no further.
This ultimate physical defeat was still many months distant as Lagrée chose to discuss the future with his associates. Three courses seemed open to them, though not equally desirable. They could strike off to the northeast, abandoning the valley of the Mekong and passing along China s southern borders by way of the extreme north of Vietnam. Despite the hostility that existed between the ruler of Luang Prabang and the Vietnamese court at Hue, there was good reason to believe that this route would involve the least danger. Travel along such a route would have the additional and undeniable attraction that it would be through totally unknown territory. But in terms of the expedition's instructions it would have been an abandonment of the original goal — exploration of the Mekong valley as a route into China.
There were two other alternatives. First, the expedition could continue along the Mekong itself, risking the difficulties that seemed likely to emerge because of continuing clashes between local forces backed by either the Burmese or the Thai court. Second, the Frenchmen could adopt a compromise. Without following the Mekong itself, they could journey into China up the course of another major river, the Nam Ou, a tributary that joined the Mekong near Luang Prabang. All the information available to the explorers suggested that this would be a more direct route. The fact that such a route would bypass those territories that were in vassalage to the Burmese authorities was a further attraction. The Frenchmen had passports for territories whose rulers accepted the Thai ruler as suzerain, and for those that were vassals of the Emperor of China. They did not have authority for travel through areas that acknowledged the power of the Burmese ruler at Mandalay.
Lagrée was in favor of the last alternative. He was conscious of his own weakness and probably recognized the tiredness of the others. Garnier, on the other hand, was vigorous in advocating the Mekong route. Later he was to admit the overriding force of his “monomanie du Mékong” his single-minded mania to travel as far as possible along the great river that had dominated their journey up to this point. For a period, as the explorers still rested in Luang Prabang, the question of the route remained unresolved. Then, just after the middle of May, Lagrée made up his mind. The expedition would continue along the Mekong after all. The political intelligence that had filtered into Luang Prabang suggested that some at least of the suspected dangers along the Mekong route had now disappeared. There had been a pause in the recurrent conflicts between the petty states that had such tenuous existence at the outer reaches of their suzerains' interest. In addition, and even more important, it appeared that the Chinese Government in Peking had achieved some success in bringing rebellious areas of Yunnan province once more under its control, and that as a result a general calm reigned in the regions to the north of Luang Prabang.
Between May 18 and 25 the members of the expedition bustled to prepare once again for protracted travel. With prospects before them so uncertain they decided to reduce their baggage to a bare minimum. The collections and specimens were to be sent to Bangkok rather than carried with the mission, as they had been up to this point. Each individual was, from now on, to make do with a single bag for all his possessions. Even the common stores of the party were affected by the decision. Surplus ammunition and trade objects were considered less important than the ability to move swiftly through the poor weather and worse topographical conditions that were believed to lie ahead. Despite the annoyance of having to leave behind these objects and supplies, the explorers had only one insistent and immediately obvious concern at this time. They were acutely aware that they might run short of money. The expedition had now been traveling for nearly a year, and progress had been much slower than was ever expected at the outset. The cost of hiring boatmen had proved higher than anticipated, and the Frenchmen had dire, and as it proved correct, fears that prolonged land porterage would be even more expensive.
From the time the expedition left Luang Prabang, on May 25, 1867, until they reached the first major settlement in China, the town of Ssu-mao, nearly five months later on October 18, the travelers underwent the most physically and emotionally exhausting experiences they had yet encountered. There is small wonder in the fact that neither the official reports, nor the published and unpublished materials left behind, notably by Garnier and de Carné, make easy reading. The men who left Luang Prabang thinking they were in relatively good health were in fact prime targets for tropical disease, and all succumbed to some degree. As for the political difficulties that they believed had been diminished by recent developments along the Mekong itself and in China, these were to plague them in a fashion beyond their worst imaginings.
The early days of renewed travel were uneventful. The ruler of Luang Prabang's authority extended nearly as far as their first major stopping place, the settlement of Chiang Kong lying on the Mekong and to the west of their recent temporary base. To reach Chiang Kong was a simple matter of following the course of the Mekong, uninterrupted over this section by rapids or cataracts. Once in Chiang Kong, on June 5, political difficulties replaced the more familiar physical obstructions to which the party was so accustomed. The settlement was part of the once powerful principality of Nan, which, while it retained some vestiges of independence, was a vassal of the Thai King in Bangkok. Lying near the extreme north of territory firmly linked with Bangkok, Chiang Kong was administered by a timid Governor who hesitated to act beyond the strict letter of the law. The passports the explorers carried, he observed, gave them the right to free passage through the King of Thailand's dominions. There was no reference, however, to the expedition leaving these dominions and crossing into alien territory.
This was the briefest foretaste of what was to come. The Governor of Chiang Kong's objections were quickly overcome, an understanding being achieved that he would provide boats to carry the explorers to the limits of those regions which acknowledged the King of Thailand's suzerainty. Once there, farther along the Mekong, and in the middle of the forest, as the Governor pointed out with some concern, the explorers would be at the borders of Keng Tung, the largest of all the Shan states whose rulers acknowledged the Burmese King at Mandalay as their master. Despite the brusqueness with which Lagrée had treated the hesitant Governor in order to gain his agreement for the party to proceed, the now certain knowledge that there were Burmese authorities to be considered, and possibly placated, was disturbing. For all their earlier concern to ensure that they possessed passports for China, the explorers had attached less importance to the need for similar papers from the Burmese King at Mandalay. They had tried to obtain passports through the good offices of a French missionary bishop, but these efforts had been made fruitless by a brief but disruptive rebellion that broke out against King Mindon's rule in 1866. In the period of turbulence that followed, the question of passports for an unknown set of alien travelers was temporarily forgotten.
Doudart de Lagrée's decision in these circumstances was to send letters on ahead to the ruler of Keng Tung, arguing that the Burmese court knew of the explorers' intentions (by now a dubious assertion) and requesting permission to pass through the ruler's territory towards the final goal of Yunnan. With the letters the French party's leader sent a collection of minor gifts, scarcely realizing, as Garnier later admitted, that even in such a distant state as Keng Tung, the existence of regular trading arrangements with those areas of Burma that had fallen under British control made their offerings seem notably unimpressive. What was worse, they were to find later, was their failure to include separate gifts for the Burmese agent attached to Keng Tung. The Frenchmen did not know of his existence. They were to pay a heavy cost for this ignorance in the long weeks of despair that followed.
With their letters sent ahead, the party left Chiang Kong on June 14, 1867. One year earlier they had been in Phnom Penh, eager and confident. As they left Chiang Kong they were no less eager to continue, but they had come to learn that confidence was frequently misplaced. When Francis Garnier, always the most optimistic member of the party, had written from Luang Prabang to his close friend Eliacin Luro in Saigon, a few weeks previously, even he had admitted his misgivings. He was forced to acknowledge that it was “very doubtful” if the party could make its way to China. Yet there was no thought of turning back. Moreover, even at moments of deep despondency there was always a point of some interest to be recorded: the ruined sites of once important settlements, the presence of another unrecorded tribal group. Less scientific but just as diverting were the seemingly endless encounters with wild animals, from deer to tigers and elephants, and even the rare rhinoceros.
Four days after leaving Chiang Kong the explorers were at the edge of the King of Burma's dominions. Eight miles from the spot on the river bank where the party first halted was the settlement of Mong Lin, one of the possessions of the ruler of Keng Tung. Still waiting for a reply from Keng Tung, the Frenchmen obtained permission to travel to Mong Lin, which they found to be a sizable village, big enough for a market to be held every five days. Some of the merchandise sold at this market was a cause for bitter reflection on the contrast between British commercial acumen and French disdain for the Asian market. Here, in such a notably isolated corner of the globe, it was possible to buy English cotton goods, printed in the preferred colors of the local purchasers and bearing Buddhist emblems. Not only that, Garnier recorded with grudging admiration, the length and width of these pieces of cloth were the same as the standard product of the local weavers.
Another feature of the local market arrangements provided more immediate cause for concern. It was no longer possible to pay for goods or services in Thai coin. From this point on the custom of the country was to pay in silver, valued against weights at a varying rate of exchange. Melting down their silver coin into bars, the explorers soon found that their payments for such essential items as rice and fowls were extremely high. The concern they had felt over the adequacy of their funds a month earlier as they prepared to leave Luang Prabang seemed all too justified. As Garnier was to record with undisguised annoyance and resentment three years later, the realization that it would be necessary to make sacrifices even in terms of their food supplies came at a time when the party's physical condition was such as to make an ample diet most necessary. Already two of the Frenchmen were seriously ill again. Thorel was suffering from a “digestive infection,” presumably bacillary dysentery. Delaporte was unable to walk, his feet being swollen and ulcerated as the result of walking barefoot over sodden ground and being attacked by countless leeches. And still there was no word from Keng Tung.
Finally, on June 28, there was a favorable response. The ruler of Keng Tung gave the expedition authority to proceed, but only along the valley of the Mekong itself. If the French party should wish to travel to the capital of Keng Tung, further authorization would be necessary. The bearer of this welcome news explained the reasons for delay. Although the ruler of Keng Tung had been ready enough to permit the Frenchmen to proceed, the Burmese agent at his court had opposed this view. He was apparently angered at the failure of the French to send him a gift and made every effort to reverse the ruler's decision. With the agent's opposition overcome, and the news brought back to Mong Lin, the members of the expedition could consider their next step. They knew their next major destination, if virtually nothing of the problems they might encounter along the way. An uncertain but considerable distance to the north was the town of Keng Hung (Yün-ching-hung in modern China). This was the birthplace of their interpreter Alévy, and a center known to the European world as the result of a visit there in 1837 by the British explorer Captain McLeod. McLeod had traveled there from Bhamo in northeast Burma, with six elephants, during an earlier attempt to find a commercial route into China. Lagrée and his men sought to make it their next important stopping place with a growing consciousness of their weakness, and the immediate problems of finding transportation for Delaporte. While the inhabitants of Mong Lin were ready to act as porters for the expedition's supplies, at very high rates, they would under no circumstances carry the hammock on which Delaporte was to travel. He therefore was to be the responsibility of the party's escort.
Without regret the Frenchmen left Mong Lin on July 1. Their pleasure at moving forward was soon qualified by the experience of traveling with the incapacitated Delaporte and by the exactions of the porters. Villagers encountered along the way were reluctant to allow such a demonstrably ill man as Delaporte to travel through their settlements: he might be an omen of death or grave sickness for their village. Only through threats of violence backed by the brandishing of weapons were the explorers able to prevail over this repugnance. As for the charges exacted by the porters, no more than two days after leaving Mong Lin the Frenchmen decided to reduce their baggage once again. They could not continue to pay the prices demanded. As they had done in Luang Prabang, once more they took stock of their possessions, this time ridding themselves of all but the barest essentials, even their mattress pads. When they reached Siemlap, a week after leaving Mong Lin, the explorers were in a pitiful state. Garnier described their circumstances in the following terms:
The state of health of the expedition was deplorable. The last stages that we had just completed, as often in the forests as in the rice fields, where the soil, soaked through by the first major rains, gave off dangerous miasmas and concealed countless leeches, had brought on attacks of fever and led to ulcerations of the feet that meant that half of our personnel were unable to move from their beds.
The village of Siemlap lay on the western side of the Mekong, within the general dominance of the Burmese court but under the control of yet another petty ruler, the “king” of Keng Khang, whose residence was still some distance to the north. The authorities at Siemlap were ready to send on Lagrée's request for passage through the territory of the Keng Khang ruler, but they would not permit him or his party to travel further without express approval. With his companions suffering from illness and fatigue there was little Lagrée could do to counter this refusal. What the next step should be was further complicated by the arrival in Siemlap, on July 16, of a letter addressed to the expedition's leader from the ruler of Keng Tung who, reversing his earlier position, now called on the mission to travel to his capital. Judging this to be merely an invitation of courtesy, Lagrée declined, and only two days later approval came for passage through the territories of Keng Khang.
To receive approval was one thing, to take advantage another. When the main party left Siemlap on July 23, they left behind them Joubert and Delaporte. The latter's feet were still not entirely healed, and Joubert was once again suffering from a combination of the “typhoid” fever, that had struck him down near Stung Treng nine months earlier, and some intestinal infection. For the main party the next two days of travel were a welcome change from the period of enforced inactivity in Siemlap but a renewed drain on their physical resources. They marched at first over an upland route, for the normal path beside the river was now submerged beneath floodwaters. Their bare feet were lacerated by the rough surface, and Garnier's left knee, which had been affected by his dangerous bout of fever earlier in the expedition, caused him severe pain with every step. At the end of the second day the party reached the tiny settlement of Sop Yong. Here in a broken-down pagoda beside the Mekong the party made its base for the next few days. By the time Delaporte and Joubert rejoined them on July 30 the explorers' overall situation had deteriorated. Lagrée was incapacitated with a swollen groin, the result of an infected bite by a leech. Like the other members of the expedition, Lagrée had, for the most part, given up pulling leeches from his body while marching through the day. Only in the evening was a thorough check made to find where the creatures had lodged. The results of this exercise in stoicism were clear in Delaporte's infected feet and now the leader's painfully affected groin.
Although they had rejoined the main party, Delaporte and Joubert were far from strong, and as the rains continued to fall the problem of finding porters became more and more difficult. It was even questionable whether their rough and uncomfortable quarters in the riverside village were safe from a sudden rise in the Mekong's level. As it had so many times before, the party split into two sections. Leaving Lagrée, Joubert, and Delaporte behind at Sop Yong, Garnier went ahead with the others, marching along a muddy path that seemed paved with leeches. On August 1 Garnier's group was at the settlement of Ban Passang, and four days later the others joined them.
Moving north as they were, the expedition had temporarily left behind the territory of the ruler of Keng Khang, returning once more to a region under the control of the ruler of Keng Tung. They were in the province of Mong Yawng, whose capital of the same name lay a little to the north. The French party's arrival had not gone unnoticed, and on the same day that Lagrée rejoined Garnier and his advance group two Burmese soldiers appeared at the explorers' camp. They were the servants of the Burmese agent for the province, and they required information on the party's intentions, indicating their superior's expectation that the French mission would present themselves before him at Mong Yawng.
The explorers pay their respects to the hereditary chief of Mong Yawng.
There was no alternative but to obey what was clearly an order. On August 7 the expedition crossed over the moat surrounding the once-important settlement of Mong Yawng. Within twenty-four hours the fears of serious obstruction that had been growing in the explorers' minds ever since they left Luang Prabang over two months before became a concrete reality. The hereditary chief of Mong Yawng was a weak reed, almost totally dominated by the Burmese court's representative in the settlement. Whether the Burmese agent had already been in correspondence with his senior counterpart in Keng Tung was unclear, but he knew that the Frenchmen had received and declined an invitation to travel to the capital of the territories within which Mong Yawng lay. After a series of cat and mouse exchanges lasting several days, a letter arrived from the authorities of Keng Khang withdrawing the permission that had earlier been granted for the explorers to continue their travels north through that petty principality's territories. The Frenchmen suspected that this refusal had been engineered by the Burmese agent at Mong Yawng. At the same time the weak chief of Mong Yawng, although he acted with personal goodwill towards the expedition, was unready to allow them to travel farther without approval from his master. If the expedition was ever to move forward again, and to avoid the failure that would be involved in returning to Saigon, a new initiative had to be taken. Choosing Thorel, the interpreter Alévy, and two members of the escort to accompany him, Lagrée set off on August 14 for Keng Tung, by now at least a week's travel to the west.
A dreary period of inaction followed Lagrée's departure, during which the remaining explorers fell ill one by one with “fever.” The men blamed this sickness on the foul airs rising from the ground of the forests and marshes they had traversed, but the accounts that remain give few clues as to the actual disease that exacted its cost in fevers and delirium. This was still an age that did not understand the connection between mosquitoes and malaria, but whether this disease alone was the cause of the outbreak of fever that Garnier describes in such restrained terms must remain a mystery. The modern reader of these nineteenth-century journals can only be amazed at the apparent speed with which already debilitated men recovered sufficiently from their bouts of disease to begin, yet again, the arduous travels their mission required. After days of delirium, when one or more of the explorers wandered aimlessly and uncomprehendingly through the rain-sodden streets of Mong Yawng, these same men devoted their energies to recording the history of the region in which they found themselves, nursed their companions, and waited for news of their leader. What depressed them more than anything else, more even than the illnesses to which they succumbed, was the need to wait and the prospect that the end of it all would be an inglorious return along the route they had traveled to this point.
After six anxious days Garnier received a letter from Lagrée. Written before Lagrée had reached his goal, the letter gave an account of the territory through which he had traveled but could offer no certainty on how he would be received once at Keng Tung. After six further days of sickness and waiting, on August 26 another courier brought news to the Frenchmen. The Burmese agent in Mong Yawng summoned Garnier, to inform him that permission had been given for the party to proceed to Keng Hung. This was welcome news but puzzling nonetheless, for there still was no confirmation from Lagrée, who should, by this point, have been in Keng Tung. Days passed with no news other than increasingly disturbing reports of a murderous attack upon a band of opium merchants who were in the ruler of Keng Tung's employ. If bandits could kill twenty-three of the ruler's merchants, what might have happened to two Frenchmen traveling with so little protection?
Not until September 6, more than three weeks after Lagrée's departure, was there a rumor that contained anything like positive news. The leader of the French party, according to the report that filtered into Mong Yawng, had left Keng Tung with permission to travel to Keng Khang and was going there directly. This was welcome but still unsupported news for the party in Mong Yawng. It was enough, however, for Garnier to decide to move on. With their preparations made and departure set for September 8, a letter finally arrived from Lagrée. It was undated, a small but significant indication of the physical and mental toll under which the normally precise leader of the party labored; but dated or not its news was good. The ruler of Keng Tung had received Lagrée on August 25 with the best of will. He was the son of the ruler who, thirty years before, had been visited by the British traveler McLeod. Fortunately, the memory that McLeod had left behind him was a happy one — among other things, he was admiringly remembered for his awesome appetite that led him to eat three times as much at a single meal as one of his Keng Tung hosts would consume in an entire day. But the main point was that the ruler was ready to help rather than hinder the Frenchmen. Even the Burmese agent at Keng Tung, after an initial frosty encounter with Lagrée and Thorel and continuing evidence of undisguised greed for further presents, ceded to the requests of the ruler and gave his authorization for the party to proceed to Keng Khang. On September 13 the whole mission was together again. The absence of Lagrée and Thorel, which had been expected to last no more than three weeks, had lasted nearer to five. Their detour to Keng Tung had involved nearly three hundred miles of hard travel, most of it over steep mountain tracks.
The days spent in Keng Khang were a happy contrast with the period of anxious uncertainty in Mong Yawng. The ruler and his advisers were amiable. The Burmese agent, though clearly less than well disposed to the French party, could not question the validity of the passports issued by the ruler of Keng Tung and the Burmese agent in that capital. With all the members of the party apparently restored to good health, time passed rapidly as the customary ceremonial visits were exchanged and the explorers admired the evidence of substantial prosperity that seemed so much a feature of Keng Khang. The ruler's palace was “vast” and its construction testified to the presence of highly competent craftsmen. Senior officials wore rich silk robes, and the explorers were served from silver plates and bowls. Out of the hearing of the Burmese agent, the ruler confided to them that his territories were rich in minerals, even gold, but this had to remain a secret from the Burmese, who would, if they learned of these resources, require the population to mine them and render up a tenth of the value to the Burmese court. Information of this kind, even if it was unverified, was the stuff that Garnier's dreams were made of. Here was a memory to be guarded as a justification for yet another attempt to find a route to the upper Mekong and southwestern China. Brief though the period in Keng Khang was, it recaptured something of the idyll that the explorers had enjoyed in Luang Prabang.
The party's sense of satisfaction was not to last much longer. One day after leaving Keng Khang on September 18, messengers brought word south that they must not proceed onwards to Keng Hung, the last major center before China. The news came to the expedition when their hopes were highest. They had reached the settlement of Mong Long, to be delighted by the evidence they saw there of their proximity to China, the “promised land,” as Garnier did not hesitate to call it. There was a bridge built in the vaulted Chinese manner at the entrance to Mong Long, and within the settlement they came upon two old Chinese women whose grotesquely small feet emphasized how close they were to the land where foot-binding remained a necessary preparation for crippled adherence to a particular view of beauty. But even as the party prepared to leave Mong Long the letter of interdiction arrived from Keng Hung and was handed to the local authorities. The Frenchmen were not to proceed but were to return along the route they had followed. Then, to add ironic confirmation to the French party's awareness of the proximity of China, the letter concluded, “Keng Hung is not only a dependency of Burma, but also of China.”
For another four days the explorers had to wait in Mong Long while their case was carried to the authorities by the interpreter Alévy. Uncertain as to the real reason for the refusal to let them proceed, they staked all on the capacity of a subordinate whose talents and probity had, in the less demanding months at the beginning of the expedition, often been a matter for jest. If Alévy's own account of his efforts on the party's behalf is to be believed, at this critical juncture he more than justified his place as a member of the expedition. Whether his report of bluster and cajoling before the council determining affairs in Keng Hung was accurate or exaggerated, Alévy succeeded in gaining agreement for the expedition to proceed that far. The news was received on September 25 and by September 29 the group was in Keng Hung.
Whatever their concern for the reception they would be accorded corded at Keng Hung, the route the explorers now traveled was a welcome relief from the painfully slow passages they had made in the preceding three months. Instead of the half-made tracks, churned to mud by a single traveler's progress, that they had followed through rain-sodden forests, they now walked over paths that were even provided with bridges across streams. The land in the valleys was highly cultivated, and picturesque hamlets and villages clustered beneath the heavily wooded hills that more and more came to dominate the scenery. As they drew nearer to Keng Hung the valleys became narrower and narrower. Given the Frenchmen's hopes for commercial discoveries, the oxen carrying lead, cotton, tobacco, and tea that passed by them, heading south from Keng Hung, were a cheering sight.
The town the explorers entered was of very recent construction, but it was the latest manifestation of Keng Hung s longstanding political importance. The Frenchmen had now reached the capital of the fabled Sip Song Panna, a political unit of significance probably as early as the eleventh century and of some continuing importance even today when most of the region has been absorbed within the borders of the Chinese People's Republic. The dominant ethnic group within Sip Song Panna was yet another representative of the Tai-speaking peoples who then, as now, spread so widely across eastern and southeastern Asia.
After more than a century's Western interest in the area, there is still uncertainty as to the exact meaning of the name Sip Song Panna. Gamier thought it meant the number of registered inhabitants in each of the twelve divisions making up the ancient state whose glory had once been immeasurably greater than it was in 1867. Probably the correct literal translation of the name is “Twelve Principalities,” reflecting the fact that under the loose authority of the ruler at Keng Hung there were eleven other territorial divisions spread across what is today China and northern Laos. When Lagrée, Gamier, and the others came to Keng Hung, a bare ten years had elapsed since the old town of that name had been destroyed during the battles and campaigns of the 1850s that had seen local rivalries once more bringing a confrontation between the Burmese and the Thais. Yet despite the relative poverty of the town, the ruler of Keng Hung's council had the vital power of decision over the French expedition's fate. It alone could decide whether the party might move on to China. Even though its first proscription against the expedition coming to Keng Hung had been overcome, the question of moving farther north still remained to be settled.
Garnier was later to write of this situation in terms suggesting that he and his companions were reasonably confident of a successful outcome. This seems, however, very much a case of selective memory. The French party was indeed allowed to proceed, but the necessary authorization was given only after complex maneuvering. In the uncertain circumstances, Lagrée took the offensive. Without revealing the nature of the travel papers he was carrying, he notified the council of Keng Hung that there were only two choices open to its members. They could present him with a written refusal of permission to proceed, and he would make such use of it as he saw fit, or they could provide the French party with the means to travel on to Ssu-mao, the first major Chinese town to their north.
When Lagrée confronted the council of Keng Hung on October 3, he found in it an institutional reflection of the Sip Song Panna's geographical and political character. Presided over by a senior official, a fat old man with white hair, the council had twelve members, the four most important of them being representatives of the divisions of the Sip Song Panna that bordered on the neighboring states. In addition, however, there were places for the agents of the Burmese and Chinese governments. The Burmese agent was present, seated to the left and a little behind the presiding official. The place usually occupied by the Chinese agent was vacant.
The opening exchanges recalled the difficulties the mission had encountered so many times before. Showing the council the passports they had received from the ruler of Keng Tung and the Burmese agent at that court, the Frenchmen were first accorded a negative response by the Burmese accredited to Keng Hung. The passports were all very well, the Burmese official argued, but there was nothing in them relating to passage from Keng Hung into China. If the Frenchmen's judgment was correct, this almost routine expression of opposition helped rather than hindered their case. No less than in the other Tai-language regions through which the explorers had passed, the Burmese agent at Keng Hung was disliked by those whom he advised.
More disturbing was the lack of positive reaction when Lagrée proceeded to show the passports the party had received from Peking. There was uncertainty and even confusion among the council members: they did not recognize the signature on the passports; the documents had not come from the usual authority. Then the icily reserved Lagrée acted. Striving for maximum effect, he slowly drew from an envelope the letter written on the expedition's behalf by one of the most powerful men in China, Prince Kung, the brother of the Emperor Hsien Feng, who had died in 1861.
The result was all that could be wished and more. Silence fell as Lagrée passed Prince Kung's letter to the Chinese functionary representing his country's interests in the absence of the agent. The Chinese official read the letter with amazement and informed the council of its contents. This, indeed, was a letter from Peking, written by a prince of the Chinese Empire. Those who had brought it were men of high rank and should be received with honor and courtesy. The atmosphere of the meeting was transformed. The members of the council prostrated themselves before the letter and those who had borne it to Keng Hung.
The question of whether the party would be free to move on was no longer at issue. The matter was consecrated through a ceremonial audience with the almost powerless ruler of Keng Hung, a nineteen-year-old youth firmly in the grip of his advisers, who now received Lagrée before an assembly of some three hundred followers armed with ancient flintlocks, lances, and rusty sabers. For the Frenchmen, the silk robes of the ruler and his gilded ceremonial headdress, complete with tiny tinkling bells, left nothing more than a “bizarre” impression. With their passage assured, they could give full rein to their prejudices.
On October 7 the expedition was once more traveling north. Leaving Keng Hung the party crossed the waters of the Mekong for the last time, passing by ferry from the western bank. After four days' march they were at Keng Neua, the last settlement of any importance outside the Chinese Empire. The settlement provided little that was of visual interest to the explorers, but they recognized its political utility – if not significance. The ruler of the region in which Keng Neua was located was responsible for translating the messages that passed backward and forward between China and the chief town of the Sip Song Panna, Keng Hung.
The explorers were now moving rapidly through an upland countryside that was notably different from the leech-ridden rain forests to which they had become so accustomed. By October 16 the villages they encountered seemed totally Chinese in character. All the familiar signs were there: calligraphic writing on strips of red paper that hung about the doors of houses; chairs and tables, which the travelers welcomed with undisguised relief; and, overall, the “stamp of routine uniformity” which China's cultural system imposed on the diverse ethnic groups assimilated to its civilization.
Two days later the Frenchmen saw and entered their first Chinese town, Ssu-mao. They had been traveling all day when, at four in the afternoon, rounding the flank of a hill, they saw the unmistakable sight of a Chinese provincial town. Set in a vast plain, Ssu-mao was a fortified city whose center lay behind regular walls. Surrounding this central area were the less-ordered outer settlements, the market gardens, and dotted here and there the villas of wealthy inhabitants. Running away from the settlement were roads paved with stone and gravel, a sight they had not come upon since leaving Saigon more than fifteen months earlier. Here, whatever the disappointments of the past and their state of health in the present, was the country that Gamier had described as the “promised land.” They were finally in China, the first European travelers ever to cross into this southwestern region of the Chinese Empire. The Frenchmen had succeeded where McLeod had failed thirty years previously. He had reached Keng Hung and been turned back before he could enter Yunnan. They had been able to pass on and to reach this point.
At this culmination of so many months of effort, the French explorers for a moment doubted their fitness to proceed. When they entered the city they were met by officials alerted to their coming, and by a gawking crowd. Still walking barefoot, their clothes showed only too well the long months that had passed. Among the naval officers only Lagrée wore a uniform coat, its badges of rank dull and tarnished. The explorers, as Garnier admits in his journal, felt a momentary hesitation and a passing sense of sadness for the apparent poverty of their group. But this sense of hesitancy and near shame could not last. The dominant feeling was one of success. The explorers were in China and, as Garnier noted later, possibly with some regret in view of the trials that came afterward, “everything that proved the existence of China was welcome.” The Islamic rebellion and its possible effect on their travels could be temporarily forgotten, as could information of a devastating outbreak of cholera in the regions nearby. As the explorers rested in their quarters within a pagoda on the night of October 18, to be in China was enough.
