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other Frenchman, Père George La Mothe of the Order of St. Dominic, went to Cochin-China in the company of a Portuguese missionary named Fonseca. The two priests were attacked by the natives, Fonseca was murdered, and La Mothe, sorely wounded, made his escape on board a Spanish ship, but died of the injuries he had received before he could reach Malacca. Jan Huygen van Linschoten, whose book published in 1596 wrought, as we shall presently see, so much injury to the prestige of Portugal, had collected much information concerning all the lands with which the Portuguese held commerce, and he is one of the first to speak of the great river of Kambodia by name.

"Through this kingdom (Champa)," he writes, "runneth the river Mecom into the sea, which the Indians name Captain of all the Rivers, for it hath so much water in the Summer that it covereth and watereth all the country as the river Nilus does Ægypt." . . . "Upwards in the land behind Cambaia (Kambodia)," he adds, "are many nations, as Laos, which are a great and mightie people, others named Auas (Avas, i. e., Burmese of Upper Burma) and Bramas (Lower Burmese) which dwel in the hilles; others dwel upon the hils called Gueos, which live like wild men, and eat men's flesh and marke their bodies with hot irons which they estéeme a fréedome."

The knowledge in his possession, it will be seen, was not precisely accurate, the Burmese being by no means hill tribes, anthropophagy being a practice unknown in Indo-China, and tattooing, which is only in use among the Burmese and the Shans and hill tribes of the north,