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of independence, paying tribute to China and Annam as well as to Siam. The result of this policy is that, after all the vicissitudes which have befallen its neighbours, Luang Prabang remained the most important trade-centre of the Mekong Valley above Cochin-China, and this in spite of the fact that it does not possess natural advan- tages equal to those of lower Laos.

Although, even when continuing their ascent of the Mekong above Luang Prabang, the travellers were not yet traversing country never previously visited by white men, their arrival at this, the last and greatest of the towns of Siamese Laos, presents a convenient opportu- nity for taking a rapid glance at the explorations which had been effected in the Hinterland of Indo-China by Europeans prior to the coming of the French mission.

The earliest of these was undertaken by the Dutch traders led by Gerard van Wusthof' in 1641, of which frequent mention has already incidentally been made. The account of it was originally published in Flemish, nor was it rendered into any other tongue until M. P. Voelkel translated it for Francis Garnier, who printed it with his own notes in the Bulletin de la Société de Gto- graphie in 1871. This has caused the narrative which tells of the first visit paid to Laos by white men to be very generally overlooked, nor indeed is the relation it- self of any extraordinary interest from a geographical or even from an historical point of view. It appears that in March, 1641, certain Laotine merchants visited Batavia

1 Vide Supra, pp. 93, et seq.