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tenure of office as British Consul at Bangkok, undertook a long and arduous journey, of which, however, he has left us only a meagre record. Starting from Bangkok on December 12th, he reached Raheng, the most southerly of the Laos cities on the Me-ping, the great western branch of the Menam, on January 9th, 1860. Here he sent his boats back to Bangkok, and continued the jour- ney on elephants, reaching Chieng Mai viâ Lampun—or Labun, as Richardson and his fellows always called it—on 11th February. From Chieng Mai he made his way to Maulmain by the trade route which had already been explored more than once by British officers from the Bur- mese side. Schomburgk was certainly among the earliest, if not the very first, European to reach the Gulf of Ben- gal from the Gulf of Siam, viâ Chieng Mai, since the time of the ill-fated factor, Samuel, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. From Maulmain Schomburgk proceeded by steamer to Tavoi, whence he crossed the mountain range on elephants, and in eight days reached the junction of the Me-nam-noi with the Meklong. Descending the banks of the latter stream as far as Kanburi, he next struck across to Bangkok, where he arrived after an absence of 135 days, 86 of which had been occupied in actual travelling. He made no surveys of the route followed, and the information which he gathered was of a general and statistical rather than of a geographical character. The same remark applies with equal force to other consular journeys made in Siam during the next twenty years, and unofficial visitors to the country, who were either missionaries or traders, were more concerned with their own immediate interests