In 1997, I was so moved when I visited the site where Henri Mouhot was buried that on returning to Bangkok, I re-read his diaries. I was intrigued by this extraordinary human being and felt compelled to reflect upon the little-known man. – Dawn F. Rooney 1997
Who knows what inspires men to go on great journeys, especially when those journeys involved great danger when they were undertaken before the twentieth century?
Our reasons were different, but I was inspired by the story of naturalist Henri Mouhot, who, in 1858, aged 31, sailed from London to Bangkok to explore the interior of Southeast Asia. And when I found he was the Frenchman who came across the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia, and made the discovery known to the world, I had to learn more about him.
I turned to Dawn Rooney, PHD, an American living in Bangkok who compiled thirty years of research on the artistic heritage of Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam; six of the South-East Asia countries that now make up ASEAN.
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It is unknown what influenced Mouhot to travel to the orient. Historians have put forth several factors. He may have been fulfilling a long-cherished dream to travel to Asia; or his concentration on natural history when he moved to Jersey may have stimulated his interest in acquiring unique specimens from the east; or, perhaps, a book, The Kingdom and People of Slam: with a narrative of a mission to that country in 1855 by Sir John Bowring, published in 1857, may have inspired Mouhot’s journey. Another possibility is that he was influenced by the increasing French presence in South-East Asia in the mid-1850s and the extended territorial rights of the French to Cochin-China (South Vietnam) and Cambodia.
On 27 April 1858 Henri Mouhot and his King Charles dog, Tine-Tine, sailed from London for Bangkok, a journey that took four months. Soon after arriving he met Bishop Pallegoix, who put him in touch with other French Catholic missionaries serving at interior posts. They offered him food, shelter and solace, during which time he wrote poignantly of his respites with these missionaries: ‘… have you suffered? If you have, you will appreciate the feelings with which the solitary wanderer welcomes the divine cross, the heart-stirring emblem of his religion. It is to him a friend, a consoler, a father, a brother; at sight of it the soul expands, and the more you have suffered the better you will love it. You kneel down, you pray, you forget your grief, and you feel that God is with you. This is what I did.’
His beloved dog also afforded him comfort and companionship. ‘My little “Tine-Tine” says nothing, but creeps under my counterpane and sleeps at his ease… I much fear that my poor dog will come to an untimely end, and be trampled underfoot by some elephant, or devoured at a mouthful by a tiger’. Tine-Tine ironically outlived his master. When the French Mekong expedition visited Luang Prabang, six years after Mouhot’s death, they found the dog in the care of a Laotian family.
Mouhot used many modes of travel - fishing boats plying the coastline, elephants, surefooted horses for mountainous areas, oxen carts and, often, he trudged through the jungle on foot. He slept in a hut when he could, but his accommodation was usually a hammock strung between two trees and a mosquito net. He even spent one night in a tree when he was exploring a mountain range and lost his bearings while chasing a wild boar.
The preservation of Mouhot’s diaries, illustrations and specimens can be attributed to a fortuitous trip he made to the coastal town of Chantaboun (Chantaburi) where he met one of the two boys who became his travel attendants, and who packed up his materials and carried them from Luang Prabang to Bangkok after Mouhot’s death. Upon arriving in Chantaboun, a Chinese pepper planter offered food and lodging to Mouhot. The planter, a widower, suggested that his eldest son, eighteen-year-old Phrai, become Mouhot’s servant. Phrai was ‘a good young man, lively, hardworking, brave, and persevering…Born amidst the mountains, and naturally intelligent…he fears neither tiger nor elephant. All this, added to his amiable disposition, made Phrai…a real treasure to me’. The other servant with him at his death was Deng ('the Red’), who spoke some English. ‘He is very useful to me as interpreter, especially when I wish to comprehend persons who speak with a great piece of betel between their teeth. He is likewise my cook and shows his skill when we want to add an additional dish to our ordinary fare. This attendant of mine has one little defect, but who has not in this world? He now and then takes a drop too much’.
In the spring of 1859, Mouhot left Chantaboun in a fishing boat and followed the coastline along the Gulf of Siam to Kampot, on the west side. The First King of Cambodia (Ang Duang, reigned 1848-1860) was in residence and granted an audience to Mouhot, who presented the king with an English ‘walking-stick gun.’ The king reciprocated by giving Mouhot permission to travel to the capital of Udong, an eight-day journey to the north-east by oxen. There Mouhot met the Second King of Cambodia (Norodom, reigned 1860-1904) who provided him with wagons and elephants to continue north to the village of Pinhalu where he visited the Stiens, a savage tribe occupying an area east of the Mekong.
During the following winter, Mouhot began the part of his journey that he is most well-known for in the west - his exploration of the ruins of the ancient Khmer capital of Angkor. From Phnom Penh, he followed the river north and noted that ‘the river becomes wider and wider, until at last it is four or five miles in breadth; and then you enter the immense sheet of water called Touli-Sap [Tonle Sap], as large and full of motion as a sea . . .The shore is low, and thickly covered with trees, which are half submerged; and in the distance is visible an extensive range of mountains whose highest peaks seem lost in the clouds. The waves glitter in the broad sunshine with a brilliancy which the eye can scarcely support, and, in many parts of the lake, nothing is visible all around but water. In the centre is planted a tall mast, indicating the boundary between the kingdoms of Siam and Cambodia’.
He planned to spend the remainder of the year in the environs of Luang Prabang, then go to the Laotian tribes to the east in early 1862, and in July or August, to go down the Mekong to Cambodia. His plans, though, were aborted when on 19 October 1861 Mouhot was attacked by a fever. His notes leave little doubt that he himself thought he was near death. ‘If I must die here, where so many other wanderers have left their bones, I shall be ready when my hour comes’. Ten days later he made his last entry in his diary,’- Have pity on me, oh my God….!’ Henri Mouhot died on the evening of 10 November 1861.
Phrai and Deng, Mouhot’s faithful servants, buried him on the bank of Nam Kan River, east of Luang Prabang, at the spot where he died. Then they carried his notes and specimens to Bangkok where they transferred the items to the French Consul who forwarded them to Mouhot’s wife and brother. The family later gave them to the Royal Geographical Society in London, where his hand-written notes are accessible in the archives today.
Although Mouhot visited and described several monuments at Angkor, it is his perceptive observations and drawings of Angkor Wat that captured the imagination of the west. They include the layout of Angkor Wat, architectural features of the terrace, the causeway, roofs, columns, porticos, and galleries and details of the bas-reliefs - scenes, locations, dress, jewellery, military weapons, flora and fauna. ‘What strikes the observer, … [apart from] the grandeur, regularity, and the beauty of these majestic buildings, is the immense size and prodigious number of the blocks of stone of which they are constructed.’
In the summer of 1860, Mouhot set out on another pioneering journey, this time to north-eastern Siam and Laos as far north as Luang Prabang. Before his departure, Siamese in Bangkok told Mouhot that they knew of only one other foreigner in the past twenty-five years, a French priest, who had penetrated the heart of Laos and returned safely. Mouhot, though, believed it was his destiny to make the trip. First he went north to Ayutthaya, then to Korat where he visited a Khmer temple, Prasat Phnom Wan, and on to Chaiyapoon, where his trip was aborted by an official who refused to help him obtain oxen or elephants for his journey. So he returned to Bangkok for additional credentials and then continued to Laos.
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In August 1997, Dawn Rooney visited the tomb of Henri Mouhot, to see the last resting place of an extraordinary Frenchman, who went nearly two years without encountering another European. He risked his life in pursuit of nature and of ‘seeing so much that is beautiful, grand, and new’ in the remote interior of Laos which no other foreigner had seen before him. Dawn wanted to see the environs of Luang Prabang, the treacherous river swirling through the thick jungle that Mouhot poignantly described in his diaries.
She went at the height of the wet season. A torrential rain during the night had left the early morning air still and sticky. The site seemed little changed from Mouhot’s descriptions in his diary, although the access had improved. A low layer of mist floated above. She descended a steep bank to the edge of the swelling Nam Kan River, where muddy water splashed over the foot path. Perspiration rolled down their faces and soaked their clothes, prickly thorns pierced them as they plodded through thick jungle and gooey mud along the river’s edge, which ran parallel to the river. A slight clearing in the jungle and a ray of sun, highlighting the bank, taking their eyes to the steep slope of the bank nearest to them. In the distance, some twenty or thirty yards beyond, they glimpsed a corner of the monument that marked the last resting place of Henri Mouhot. The rest of it was hidden by thick jungle.[1]
[1] The above are extracts from Dawn F. Rooney’s article, ‘In the footsteps of Henri Mouhot.’ Published here http://rooneyarchive.net/index.html