Above Pichit we met but few rafts, and those only consisting of bamboo and "mai kabao," which is much used for small work, such as tables, and is brought down in small pieces, generally about 14 feet long.
Muang Pechai is the chief town of a very extensive and important province, which to the north-east reaches to the Mekong at Chieng Kan. The Governor, Phya Pechai, is a fine, tall young man, who is (and this is not too often the case in Siam) extremely popular with the people. His evident honesty of purpose was apparent the first moment he spoke. We had to stay here a few days to get the elephants together and buy rice. Twelve _kanan_ (a coconut-shell) were selling at a _tical_, and on the average each man consumes one _kanan_ per day. We laid in a stock of 35 _thang_ (of 20 _kanan_), and were shortly after glad to get off on our journey towards the distant hills. I should add that this place is the starting-point for Paklai, on the Mekong, the trail between these two places being the route generally followed by the officials going to Luang Prabang. Apart from this it is not of much importance, and, situated in the uninteresting plain, is subject to high floods in the rains, as the water-marks on the piles of the post-office and the school and court houses attest.
Two days, passing through scrub jungle, brings the traveller to Ban Nam Pi, where there are some iron "mines"--a series of shallow diggings on an extensive deposit of limonite, which seems to be "derivative" from surface decomposition. The quartz rock, which generally underlies it, is probably a quartz sand which has been metamorphosed under pressure into the hard material we now find. In, or in close connection with the latter, the iron nodules are not to be found, but near the surface, where the quartz has softened and looks almost like a sandstone, the nodules occur in abundance.
The great difficulty was to get any one to do any work, even in clearing away _débris_, such is the fear of the "Pi," or spirits, who are said to guard the mineral. Without the offer of a white bullock, who ought first to be slain for their benefit, it was asserted that the spirits would certainly interfere with any one attempting to do any work. I was also told that when the iron ore is removed it brings bad luck to any house in which it is stored, and that, if hung up on a tree (certainly an odd place for stowing ores), it invariably causes the death of the tree. An iron-shod bamboo is the only tool used, but no work has been done for ages, and the small furnace which once existed at the village is quite dilapidated. It was quite vain setting to work myself, and giving out that I had made a permanent arrangement with all the "Pi," even the most vicious, before leaving Bangkok; nothing less than a royal proclamation will ever give the people confidence enough to make the opening up of these places possible.