Page:Notes of a journey across the Isthmus of Krà.pdf/42

 prevent them getting inside, but even then, unless some one was looking after us while engaged in taking angles or reading the perambulator, if we stood still for any time we found them lodge in our necks. The amount of blood these creatures take from one, before coming aware of it, is really exhausting, and it is therefore desirable to warn others.

11.—The night was fine, the rain was reserved till daylight for our special benefit; crossed a tolerably sized (eighty feet) river just beyond Apay, and another at the twentieth mile, a tributary of the Tsoompeon. We came to the end of the hills at the twenty-second mile, and entered upon a fine open country, with patches of jungle and garden and paddy lands, capable of any amount of cultivation. At the twenty-second mile the hills stretched away to the southward, and seemed to run east, parallel with our course, about a mile and a half to the north-ward, and, as we fancied, along the left bank of the Tsoompeon river.

At the twenty-third and twenty-fifth miles, crossed another river of 120 feet in breadth, the margin of which was much cultivated, and we continued along (about half a mile from) the left bank of the river, which seems to be the Pahklong joining the Tsoompeon near its mouth, to the twenty-ninth mile, after which at a distance of thirty miles from Kraw, we crossed the Tsoompeon where it is about 200 feet broad, and arrived at the residence of the chief civil authority of this district, who received us most kindly, at about noon of the 3rd April.

12.—Tsoompeon is a large place of some four or five hundred houses, with a water communication of twenty miles with the Gulf of Siam. We thought of continuing our journey down the stream the same day, but the heavy rain that fell was even more persuasive than the kind and polite old governor, who, as soon as we had made up our minds to remain till next morning, placed everything that weary travellers could require at our disposal, and ordered boats to be in readiness for us at 2 a.m., 4th April, when the ebb made. There is a rise and fall of tide here of about six feet.