are, according to our notions, lazy; but I am weary of seeing the
fevered pursuit of wealth, and am inclined to be lenient to these
narcotized existences, provided, as is the case, that they keep clear
of debt, theft, and charity.

Below this amphibious town there is a larger and apparently permanent
floating village, consisting of hundreds of boats moored to the shore
and to each other, poor and forlorn as compared with the Canton house
boats, but yet more crowded, a single thatched roof sheltering one or
more families, without any attempt at furniture or arrangement. The
children swarmed, and looked healthy, and remarkably free from eye and
skin diseases. There were Romish pictures in some of these boats, and
two or three of them exhibited the cross in a not inconspicuous place.
In my solitary explorations I was not mobbed or rudely treated in any
way. The people were as gentle and inoffensive in their manners as the
Japanese, without their elaborate courtesy and civilized curiosity.

Having seen all I could see, I turned shipwards, weary, footsore, and
exhausted; my feet so sore and blistered, indeed, that long before I
reached a gharrie I was obliged to take off my boots and wrap them in
handkerchiefs. The dust was deep and made heavy walking, and the level
straightness of a great part of the road is wearisome. Overtaking even
at my slow rate of progress a string of creaking buffalo carts, I got
upon the hindmost, but after a little rest found the noise, dust, and
slow progress intolerable, and plodded on as before, taking two and a
half hours to walk three miles. About a mile from Cholen there is an
extraordinary burial-ground, said to cover an area of twenty square
miles. (?) It is thickly peopled with the dead, and profuse vegetation
and funereal lichens give it a profoundly melancholy look. It was
chosen by the Cambodian kings several centuries ago for a cemetery, on