River Road to China Read online

  Copyright © 1975, 1996 by Milton Osborne

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  First published in 1975 by Allen & Unwin, London, as River Road to China:

  The Mekong River Expedition 1866–1873

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Osborne, Milton E.

  River road to China: the search for the source of the Mekong,

  1866–73 / Milton Osborne.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 9780802196088

  1. Indochina—Description and travel. 2. Mekong River—Discovery and exploration. 3. China—Description and travel. I. Title.

  DS534.O8 1999

  915.9704′3—dc21 99-17643

  Design by Joseph G. Reganit

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Map of the Principal Routes of the Mekong Explorers

  A Note on the Spelling of Geographic Names

  Introduction

  A Brief Chronology

  I. Phnom Penh

  II. Great River, Great Idea

  III. The First Rapids

  IV. One Step Backward and One Step Forward

  V. Passports for China

  VI. Middle Passage

  VII. Before the Gates of China

  VIII. Across the Red River

  IX. Missionaries and Muslims

  X. Lagrée Comes Home

  XI. Post-Mortem in Paris

  XII. One More River

  XIII. Epilogue—A Hundred Years Later

  Authors Postscript

  Sources

  Index

  Biographical Note

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS*

  Black and white illustrations

  The state of vegatation at Angkor

  Listening to Laotian music

  A jungle scene

  Lagrée and Delaporte meet at Khemmarat

  Peacock hunting

  The explorers meet the hereditary chief of Mong Yawng

  Dr. Joubert treating the sick

  Delaporte disturbed while sketching

  The coffin-covered plain outside Chiang-ch'uan

  A merchant train in Yunnan

  Portrait of Jean Dupuis

  Color illustrations

  Portrait of Doudart de Lagrée

  The western façade of Angkor Wat

  The Bayon Temple

  The entrance to Angkor Thom

  The western entrance of Angkor Wat

  The explorers entertained by King Norodom

  The passage of a rapid

  The explorers at Angkor, June 1866

  A camp before a set of rapids in Laos

  A view of Stung Treng

  Plans of pirogues

  A photograph of Delaporte

  Traveling up the Se Moun River

  A river scene sketched just before the explorers' arrival in Luang Prabang

  The explorers at a ceremony held by the ‘king’ of Bassac

  The ruins of the Wat Pha Keo pagoda in Vientiane

  A festival in Nong Khay

  Fireworks at Bassac

  A plan of the course of the Khone falls

  The town of Luang Prabang

  The That Luang stupa

  A botanical study by Delaporte

  Night camp beside the Mekong

  Ethnic groups from the province of South Yunnan

  A view of P'uerh

  Traveling through a ravine near Sop Yong

  A view of Yüan-chiang on the Red River

  A view of I-pin on the Yangtze

  Ethnic groups of the Ta-li region

  The lake at Ta-li, the westernmost point in China reached by the explorers

  A group portrait of the surviving explorers, Hankow, June 1868

  *With the exception of the illustration of Jean Dupuis—taken from Jules Gros, Origines de la conquête du Tong-Kin, Paris, 1887—all illustrations originally appeared in the Tour du Monde, where Garnier's journal was first published, or in Garnier's book, Voyage d'exploration en Indochine, or in René de Beauvais' book Louis Delaporte, Explorateur, Paris, 1929.

  For Fiona Emily Wooton Osborne

  A NOTE ON THE SPELLING OF GEOGRAPHIC NAMES

  In the regions traversed by the Mekong explorers no less than five major languages are spoken today, and were spoken more than a century ago when they accomplished their journey. The languages are: Chinese, Burmese, Tai (the language not of Thailand alone, but in its various dialectal forms of millions living in Laos, Burma, China and Vietnam), Cambodian or Khmer, and Vietnamese. In addition, there are almost numberless minor languages and dialects. These many tongues are spoken in regions where political power has shifted substantially over the past hundred years. The situation makes for an author's, and a cartographer's, nightmare.

  One brief example illustrates the problem. In September 1867 the Mekong explorers reached the town of Keng Hung—that, at least, for reasons of both consistency and simplicity is how I have chosen to refer to it. There are arguments to be advanced, far too long to record here, for alternative spellings. The Frenchmen in 1867 called the town Xieng Hong. Other maps show it as Chiang (or Chieng) Rung. In modern China the settlement is Yün-ching-hung.

  In a search for consistency, I have in general followed the usage of The Times Atlas of the World (Comprehensive Edition), London, 1968. Reliance on this authority means that some relatively familiar place names are discarded in favor of more modern variants. For instance, instead of being called Yunnan-fu, the capital of Yunnan province is identified as K'un-ming.

  Some reliance on old and established usage seems justified in certain cases, however. The example of Keng Hung has already been noted. And readers will find reference to the Yangtze River rather than to the Ch'ang Chiang.

  Where additional cartographic guidance has been necessary I have turned to the maps published by the National Geographic Society of Washington, D.C., and to the Atlas of South-East Asia, London, 1964, edited by Professor D.G.E. Hall.

  The existence of these authorities has not solved all my problems. Some of the locations visited by the explorers do not appear on modern, large-scale maps and I have had to rely on their own sometimes idiosyncratic transcriptions. Nonetheless, with the aid of the maps that accompany this book, a reader will have no difficulty in following the broad lines of the explorers' itineraries as they traveled slowly into China.

  INTRODUCTION

  I first saw the Mekong River from a noisily vibrating DC-3, a veteran of the motley but reliable fleet of Royal Air Cambodge. The airline no longer exists, and the Dakota's fate is uncertain, but the Mekong has scarcely changed. I knew little enough in 1959
about Cambodia and its capital, Phnom Penh, but of the great river spread out beneath me I knew nothing beyond its name. Most certainly, I did not realize that men had once hoped it would offer a trade route to China.

  In my ignorance I was in good company, better than I realized at the time. But ignorance could not prevent an immediate awareness that here was a river of extraordinary size. Even in April, at the height of the dry season, the Mekong was a giant. Its winding course stretched endlessly through the brown, baked earth of the surrounding rice fields, disappearing into the dust-choked distance north of Phnom Penh, which sat on the river's western flank. Only later did I come to realize how great could be the transformation when the Mekong was filled with floodwaters and the wide stream of the dry months became an uncontrollable torrent, spilling over its banks to turn hundreds of square miles of dry land into a massive patchwork of temporary lakes.

  Over the years I learned more about the river, traveling on it, beside and above it, in good times and bad. I react ambivalently to the experience of traversing the Mekong delta in a military helicopter. The view through the usually open side doors of a helicopter is spectacular, allowing one, however temporarily, to forget why an armed, khaki-colored machine should be the means of reaching one's destination. Traveling beside the Mekong in more peaceful days was another matter, particularly when the route ran through the remote regions of northeastern Cambodia and the extreme south of Laos. Few signs of man's presence seemed more ephemeral than the border marker between Cambodia and Laos, which I first saw in 1960. The marker stood in a savannah forest, an assertion of the values Europeans place on defining frontiers, rather than of any natural division of peoples and resources. To board a wheezing, wood-burning ferry as dawn crept over a sleepy river town was another way to come to know the Mekong. At that time of the morning it is still possible to believe that the day will be fresh and dry; until 6 A.M. the reality of the heat and humidity to come can be temporarily ignored.

  As I came to know the river itself, so did I learn about its rich history. Most particularly, I found that only some ninety years before I first saw the Mekong, the Western world, and all its learned authorities, did not know the nature of the river's course. In an age that was already probing towards the moon, this seemed a remarkable business. But it was the truth. In 1866 a map of the Indochinese region could show sections of the Mekong with some measure of accuracy, but its source was unknown, and large stretches of the river were recorded only as the inaccurate guesses of imaginative cartographers.

  In an attempt to solve the Mekong's mystery, six Frenchmen headed an expedition that began a survey of the river in 1866, believing their route would eventually lead them into China and so to fabled riches in that most populous of countries. My book traces the history of this expedition, which was a tragic exploration. In scope and achievement the expedition was the equal of much better remembered travels in Africa, such as those of Burton, Speke, Livingstone, and others. Death and disease took their toll, and dissension among the explorers was barely kept in check. For months at a time the French explorers moved slowly forward, never knowing what lay ahead. When the expedition ended, two long years after it had begun, the search for a navigable route to China was still incomplete.

  Like many another “Anglo-Saxon,” I was ignorant of the Mekong River expedition, until chance and an opportunity to live on the river's banks, in Phnom Penh, brought the story to my notice. Slowly, I began to find and read the principals' accounts of their travels. Only one of these, a book by Louis de Carné, has ever been translated into English, and it is a flawed, if interesting, work. The official narrative, by Francis Garnier, and Garnier's more personal unofficial account, both in French, are the major sources, and provided the essential background for this book. But these works present problems. First and foremost, they are difficult reading—not just because of the language but because of their style and approach. It is perhaps not surprising that these massive volumes of undigested information have never been translated.

  There are other difficulties, scarcely less important. The printed sources are of the greatest value, but there is much more that can and should be read to supplement them. The archival sources in Paris offer details and insights lacking in the printed works. I have drawn heavily upon these archival materials in writing this book. It is only in them, for instance, that the true physical cost to the explorers is revealed. Private papers and unpublished official reports tell of the fevers and the dysentery that too often receive only the barest mention in the printed works. The nineteenth century was a stoic age.

  Nor was it only a stoic era; the nineteenth century was also a time of genuine heroism, a factor making for further problems in writing about the Mekong explorers. Their heroism and unselfishness, their capacity to remain determined to pursue their goals despite the costs involved, have become the basis for unthinking adulation in some quarters. I have met Frenchmen who are still fighting the battles of one hundred years ago, when, once the expedition had ended, there was intense debate over the roles its various members had played. These are men who live with busts of the protagonists at their elbows; men who leap to defend or denounce, according to their beliefs and sympathies.

  This passion may be understandable, or in any event forgivable. Some of the explorers were themselves men of passion; all were men of determination. Less forgivable is the fashion in which, over many decades, Frenchmen have chosen to write about the Mekong explorers, for they have deformed reality. The members of the Mekong expedition were men, with the faults and failings of men. The fact that they were singularly endowed with the qualities of courage and resilience should not obscure their essential humanity. In treating Doudart de Lagrée, the expedition's leader, or Francis Garnier, its second-in-command, as more than men, French eulogists have done their heroes little credit.

  This, then, is the story of the Mekong expedition, which left Saigon in 1866 searching for a navigable route into southwestern China, and of the later fatal association of the expedition's most prominent member with an effort to find yet another river route into China, up the Red River of Tonkin. It is a story, but it is also a history. The emotions I have attempted to trace and recreate do not stem simply from imagination. My book is based on the explorers' own writings, and I have tried to be faithful to those writings. To the extent that any writer of history speculates, I hope this will be seen clearly for what it is, speculation and no more. When words appear within quotation marks, or when I write that such and such was said or felt, this is because these were the words and observations of the men whom I, too, have come to admire.

  This book is the product of nearly ten years of intermittent reading and research, and of travel in the Indochinese region that began in 1959. Just as importantly, the book could never have been written if it had not been for the kindness and assistance that so many persons have freely offered me in various parts of the world.

  In research for this book, as with other subjects that I have studied in the French Archives, the staff of the various archival dépots in Paris have been unfailingly kind and helpful. I tender my particular thanks to Mlle M.-A. Menier of the Archives Nationales de France, Section Outre-Mer. My thanks to the staff of the other archival offices, as well as those who work under Mlle Menier's direction, are no less sincere. In Paris, also, M. Ian Feldman has always acted as a kind guide to published sources, searching out rare items for my personal library and wisely convincing me that I should buy these items, which have now become increasingly rare. An author's debt to a knowledgeable book dealer can be great indeed.

  In Vietnam and Cambodia I have debts that stretch back to 1959, when I first saw the Mekong. The current tortured circumstances of those countries inhibit certain acknowledgements that I otherwise would wish to make publicly. For Vietnam, however, I must record my sincere thanks to Senator Le Tan Buu, who was not only my host in Saigon on several occasions but, in addition, made it possible for me to travel over and by sections of the Mekong whi
ch, given the security circumstances at the time, I might not otherwise have seen.

  Friends, both colleagues and students, in North America have lent their assistance in a most helpful fashion. I am particularly grateful to Ella Laffey of McGill University for allowing me to consult her valuable manuscript dealing with the events of 1873 in Tonkin. Tony Milner, at Cornell, never tired of requests that he check details or obtain photocopies of books that I was unable to locate in Washington.

  None of those named, nor the many others who are unnamed, bear responsibility for the shortcomings of this book, which are mine alone. They deserve praise for their contribution to any virtues it might have.

  Milton Osborne

  July 1974

  A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

  1866

  June 5 The expedition leaves Saigon.

  July 7 The expedition departs Phnom Penh.

  August 13 Departure from Stung Treng.

  September 11 The expedition waves goodbye to Khong.

  September 16–December 25 The expedition arrives at Bassac.

  1867

  January 10 Garnier travels to Angkor and Phnom Penh.

  January 20 The main party departs Ubon.

  March 10 Garnier rejoins the main party at Uthen.

  April 4 The expedition leaves Vientiane.

  April 29–May 25 The expedition arrives at Luang Prabang.

  June 14 The expedition departs from Chiang Kong.

  July 1 The expedition departs from Mong Lin.

  August 7–September 8 The expedition at Mong Yawng.

  August 14–September 13 Lagrée away from main party.

  September 18 The expedition leaves Keng Khang.

  October 17 Departure from Keng Hung.

  October 18–30 The arrival at Ssu-mao.

  November 17–26 The arrival at Yüan-chiang.

  December 9 The party leaves Chien-shui.