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Updated: June 12, 2025
To the south Saigon is the most important town; it is situated in the Mekong delta, which is increasing in size every year by the addition of the vast quantities of silt carried down by the great river. The country abounds in wild animals, elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, alligators, poisonous snakes, monkeys, parrots, and peacocks.
A stiff climb of a day and a half over a thickly forested mountain ridge, frozen and snow-covered, brought us in sight of the green waters of the Mekong which has carved a gorge for itself in an almost straight line from the bleak Tibetan plateaus through Yün-nan and Indo-China to the sea. Our second camp was on the river at the mouth of a deep valley, near a small village.
In 1904 the French again brought pressure to bear, their territorial booty on this occasion amounting to some eight thousand square miles, comprising the Luang Prabang district lying east of the Mekong and the provinces of Malupré and Barsak.
We crossed the Mekong near a village called Shia-chai on a picturesque chain suspension bridge of a type which is not unusual in the southern and western part of the province. Several heavy iron chains are firmly fastened to huge rock piers on opposite sides of the river and the roadway formed by planks laid upon them.
What a pity that Cap'n Bryant was not alive so that I might sit on the steps of his Mattapoisett cottage and tell him all about it. From Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to Saigon, the capital of Cochin-China, is in the neighborhood of two hundred miles and two routes are open to the traveler. The most comfortable and considerably the cheapest is by the bi-weekly steamer down the Mekong.
To-day, May 7th, we crossed the River Mekong, even at this distance from Siam a broad and swift stream. The river flows into the light from a dark and gloomy gorge, takes a sharp bend, and rolls on between the mountains. Where it issues from the gorge a suspension bridge has been stretched across the stream.
It was hard to break camp and leave that silver palace, for every vista through the forest seemed more lovely than the one before, but we knew that another fall of snow would block the passes and shut us out from the Mekong valley.
Wharton, whose health has suffered of late from his exertions in and out of the House, has been ordered to the East for rest by his medical advisers. He and his friend Sir William Ffolliot start for French Cochin China in a few days. Their object is to explore the famous ruined temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and if the season is favourable they may attempt to ascend the Mekong. Mr.
Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, stands on the west bank of the mighty Mekong, one hundred and seventy miles from the sea. Pnom, meaning "mountain," refers to the hill, or mound, ninety feet high, in the heart of the city; Penh was the name of a celebrated Cambodian queen.
The second day after leaving Hui-li-chou we entered the valley of the Anning Ho, a grey, fast-flowing stream whose course runs parallel with the meridian like all the others of that interesting group of rivers between Assam and eastern Szechuan, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong, the Yangtse, the Yalung.
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