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Nearly twenty years before Mouhot's time, however, a similar service had been rendered to the upper dis- tricts of western Siam by Richardson, who, in addition to playing the part already described in the history of Burmese explorations, had made his way overland from Maulmain to Bangkok. He was intrusted, as usual, with a commercial mission, and he left Maulmain by boat in December, 1838. At the end of a few days he exchanged his boats for elephants, and followed the Zimi River up into the hills. The extension of these hills towards the south, it may be noted, forms the range which is, as it were, the backbone of the Malay Peninsula. The road was difficult, the country sparsely peopled by rude tribes, and rain fell incessantly, but he wormed his way through the highlands with his accus- tomed doggedness, and on January 14th, 1839, found himself upon the eastern slope within a journey of "five or six days of Tavoi, as the Kareens travel." From this point he descended into the valley of the Meklong, reach- ing Kanaburi on the 25th January, and descending the river from that place, cut across to the Menam, which he reached some distance below Bangkok. In the course of his journey he obtained a good general idea of the mountain system between Tenasserim and Siam, added to the information then possessed on the subject of the Meklong and its tributaries, but otherwise achieved no very important results; for his commercial mission led to nothing. The mountains with their uncivilised in- habitants presented a serious barrier to trade between Siam and Tenasserim.

In 1859 Sir Robert Schomburgk, F.R.S., during his