Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/380

Batambang he had passed completely round the shores of the great lake of Tonle Sap, visiting Siam-reap and Angkor (which he spelled "Nakon"), subsequently de- scending the branch of the lake to Udong and Pnom Penh. Thence he eventually passed through Cochin- China to the sea. He made no surveys, and his account of his journey, written in a style which has nothing to recommend it to the reader, is curiously barren of inter- est. In 1859 the Angkor ruins were visited and described by Dr. James Campbell, a medical officer of the Royal Navy.

In the previous year, Henri Mouhot, the story of whose wanderings and death near Luang Prabang has been told in an earlier chapter, landed in Siam, and between that time and 1861 explored the lower Menam valley, the greater part of Chantabun and Batambang, the lake of Tonle-Sap and its vicinity, the ruins of Angkor, much of the hill country of Kambodia inhabited by primitive tribes, and finally the land-route between Korat and Luang Prabang. Mouhot, as we have seen, did not live to edit his own notes, and his latitudes were inaccurate, his instruments having suffered in the course of the rough overland journey from the Menam to the Mekong. He was thus robbed of the best fruits of the labours which cost him his life; but none the less, to Henri Mouhot belongs the distinction of being, so far as is known, the first white man to traverse the country lying between Korat and Luang Prabang, and his delightful book, to which so melancholy an interest attaches, threw the first light upon what had hitherto been one of the dark places of the earth.