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 houses are above a bamboo platform common to the entire settlement and used for drying fish. This lake is an object of superstitious veneration to the natives, the fish furnishing them with the most important source of their livelihood. Enormous quantities are exported, dried or alive in cages, while immense supplies are furnished to Anamese villages to be boiled down into oil, thus giving lucrative employment to thousands.

The small remnant of the ancient kingdom of Cambodia forms a rough parallelogram, consisting in large part of an alluvial plain lying athwart the Mekong, uncomfortably wedged in between Siam, Anam and the French delta, with a very short west coast-line.

It would appear from Chinese annals that at an early period the Cambodians were an exceedingly warlike race, and that their authority extended over many of the Laos and even Siam. But for centuries Cambodian influence in Indo-China has been on the decline. It has little more than the name of an independent government at present, being under a joint protectorate of Siam and France, and tributary to both.

The Cambodians differ from the Siamese in language, but in habits and religion resemble them, with the usual Indo-Chinese type of government. There are Roman Catholic, but no Protestant, missionaries in Cambodia or Cochin-China, though several years ago strong reasons