To these enemies add the leeches, which, after the least rain, come out of the ground, scent a man twenty feet off, and hasten to suck his blood with wonderful avidity. To coat your legs with a layer of lime when travelling is the only way to prevent them covering your whole body.
I had left Bangkok on the 12th of April, and on the 16th of May I reached Leuye, the chief town of a district belonging to two provinces, Petchaboune and Lôme. It is situated in a narrow valley, like all the towns and villages through which I have passed since I left Chaiapume.
This is the district of Siam richest in minerals; one of its mountains contains immense beds of magnetic iron of a remarkably good quality. Others yield antimony, argentiferous copper, and tin. The iron only is worked, and this population, half agriculturists, half artisans, furnish spades and cutlasses to all the surrounding provinces, even beyond Korat. Yet they have neither foundries nor steam-engines, and it is curious to see how little it costs an iron-worker to establish himself in a hole about a yard and a half square hollowed out close to the mountain.
They pile up and smelt the mineral with charcoal: the liquified iron deposits itself in the bottom of the cavity, and there hollows out a bed, whence they withdraw it when the operation is completed, and carry it home. There, in another cavity they make a fire, which a child keeps alive by means of a couple of bellows, which are simply two trunks of hollow trees buried in the ground, and upon which play alternately two stopples surrounded by cotton. These are fixed to a small board, and have long sticks for handles, to which are attached two bamboo hollow canes which conduct the air into the cavity.
In several localities I discovered auriferous sand, but only in small quantity. In some of the villages the inhabitants employ their leisure time in searching for gold, but they told me that they hardly gained by this work sufficient to pay for the rice they ate.
In this journey I have passed through sixty villages, numbering from twenty to fifty houses each; and six small towns, with a population of from four to six hundred inhabitants. I have made a map of all this part of the country.