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 sandstone outcrops which form at this point a broken bar at right-angles to the current. Looking at this wild scene, Francis Garnier, the lover of beauty and of savage nature, felt that his eye was filled with seeing,-filled with visions of sheer delight; but Francis Garnier the practical statesman, the utilitarian, the naval officer, took small comfort from the conclusions which were now forced upon his recognition. No highway of trade was to be beaten out of this whirling wilderness of troubled waters. Within ten days from his departure from Pnom Penh the hopes which he had cherished of discovering in the Mekong a practicable route, by means of which the trade of Yun-nan might be diverted to Indo-China, had been brought to nought.

Reluctantly and not without a struggle did he admit this truth. The river ran in flood three and a quarter miles in width, and he could not but hope against hope that in all that great expanse some possible channel for a steamboat might be found. Taking a small canoe with two or three native boatmen, he put out into the stream towards the right bank, but before he was well within sight of the great rapid of Preatapang his crew struck work. They refused flatly to carry him beyond an island in mid-stream, whence he could see nothing to his pur- pose. He coaxed, cajoled, bribed, entreated and finally had resort to threats, but all in vain. He had come into collision with the stolid, unshakable resolution of the Oriental whose mind is made up, and storming with rage he was obliged to return a defeated man to his jeering companions.