National Geographic: Glories Of Angkor Page #3

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While Asia's animals enchanted

Mouhot,

its people bewildered him.

Their languages were gibberish to

his ears

- their religion had many spirits,

not one.

The people played music in alien

keys,

and filled their dances with

nightmarish creatures.

Yet the cultural divide that

separated Mouhot from his hosts

was about to be crossed... by the

most unlikely of people.

When Mouhot traveled throughout

southeast Asia,

he employed several helpers who

went with him.

Mouhot became attached to one

particular manservant called Phrai.

He even helped him with some of

his collecting.

He was a guide, he was an

interpreter, he said up the camp.

Phrai started out as a servant of

Mouhot,

but became his comrade and his

constant companion.

In fact we owe to Phrai our knowledge

of the expeditions of Mouhot.

On his expeditions

Mouhot kept meticulous records of

plants and animals,

and made charts of rivers and

mountains unheard of in Europe.

He cataloged the peoples he

encountered,

noting differences in their looks

and customs.

He turned himself into a one-man

research team.

And, in the tradition of great

explorers before him, he suffered...

Insects are in great numbers -

several of my books and maps have

been almost devoured in one night

We suffered terribly from mosquitoes,

and had to keep up the incessant fanning

to drive off these pestilent little

vampires.

There is a small species of leech...

you have to be constantly pulling

them off you by the dozens...

but you are sure to return home

covered in blood.

Scorpions, centipedes,

and above all, serpents, were the

enemies we most dreaded...

But remarkably, while Phrai and the

native bearers were frequently ill,

Mouhot's health couldn't

have been better.

I drank nothing but tea,

hoping by abstinence from cold

water from all wine and spirits,

to escape fever.

In spite of the heat, the fatigue,

and the privations inseparable

from such a journey,

I arrived among the Cambodians

in perfectly good health...

The people flocked to see my

collection,

and could not imagine what I should

do with so many animals and insects...

I offered the children my cigar-ends to smoke,

in return for which they would

run after butterflies

and bring them to me uninjured.

Once more in boats,

the Frenchman and his

companions journeyed north.

Their destination- the rumored

lost city of Angkor,

which interested Mouhot less than the

rare birds he hoped to collect there.

On the way they paused at a

lonely wilderness outpost

- a Catholic mission run by a

French priest.

Years of isolation, and dysentery,

had soured the priest's view of the

tropics,

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