THE LAND OF DREAMS

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12250, 23 September 1925, Page 10

THE LAND OF DREAMS

TIGERS AND DRAGONS THE “SEA SERPENT” AGAIN. Being entertained . by emperors, kings and lesser rulers oi far-oir Indochina, tiger and deer hunting in the hills m sdiitli Annum, touring in the, deserted ruins-of Angkor, haying native girls adorn one’s brow with flowers and make friendly presents _o£ chicken and rice, and .trailing’a 150foot sea-serpent to sits lair in the rock dotted Bay oi Along—these are only a few of the thrills'which have fallen to the lot of Prince and Princess. Acbille Murta. who recently returned to Paris from a three months' journey to Franoe's distant oniony.. They.were accompanied by Marquis de Salliffert, M.. Regnault Sarasin, the-artist, Mme. Peneau Cosmad, Mine. l>roz, Mme, Laure Avnnzo nnd Comiesse de Downy. “It was like suddenly being thrown in the midst of. things one drean* about, but never‘believes could exist. Princess Achille Murat recently told an interviewer. Reeling on a spacious. silk-draped divsin, laden with cushions, bearing native designs, and herself attired in Annamite fashion—a triple tunic iii pink, pale blue and light yellow silk with shiny., black native pantaloons and'the daintiest - of Annamite slippers—and with a massive Oriental pendant and earrings as the only jewellery necessary to make her a part of her own description, the chanjaiug, lender of French aristocracy continued her story. GIRLS DANCING ALL NIGHT “At Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, King Si-ova th had his sixty dancing girls dance all night for us, said the PrinceSs. 'Their faces were painted white, with just a touch of red on their lips and black over their eyebrows, but they remained expressionless d-triAg the ‘estival. AH expression was conveyed by the sinuous undulations of their bodies. “King Sisovath is now eighty-six years old, smokes a hundred pires of opium or more eveiy day. und does not seem a whit worse for it. His chief delight is his dancers, who are’trained from the age of six years, the training consisting of hours of .physical exercise until every articulation in the body can be twisted ,at will to the accompaniment of the native wooden instruments.” , , \t Hue the party was received by Khai-Dinli. the Annanfite Emperor, and shown through the ancient pa jrodas und tombs of rulers long dead. But no one ever knows where the em T oernrs are renllv buried His favourite belongings are plaacd in a pagoda and devoutly carred for bv hh* vf,rviving wives nnd servants until they too are called »*y death “It was hero that we saw the last of the royal

eunuchs and 'haggard old women whe had married the next to the last Emperor when they were cirls of twelve. Thev are still living beside the icmb of tbeir roval master, forty years after his death,- said the princess. Among other places visited were Tourane, with its Buddhist temples carred into a monntn.n of pink marble rising from the sea; Myson, dedicated to Siva, with its buildings of pink sandstone, in a setting of nrpen hills; Hanoi; the prosperous commercial centre of the eountrv, which is just beginning to exploit its vast coal resources, and fmallv the Bay of Along. HOME OF “SEA-SERPENTS” *‘lf anyone tells you that there are |no s«a-scrpents, they do not know I anything about t,” Prince Achide ' said. “On the rocks in the bedv iof water, there are jungles filled with tigers, caverns which have never been I expiated, and underground rivers, that lean be navigated for hefme the j outlet is reached Amid these rocks, I not ontv* natives, but sane, serious Europeans have seen a monstrous dra-gon-like an»mal. at least thirty metres t long, parading from time to time. For [the natives, who nave alwars consider|ed dragons sacred, he is the ‘‘Deity :of the Bay,” nnd must not he molested.” i After peiietmir.-i to the interior of I Laos, and spending twelve days on the 2000-mile long Mekong siver with its terrific rapids. Prince and Princess Achille Murat hunted with tho Moi i natives of the Dilet district. which abounds with enormous buffalo known as/‘guar,” a hard deer known as “C'or- ; rus Eldi.” which always keeps a female on the look-out for approaching horsemen and large elephants. Their bag consisted of three fine tigers, several deer, and abundant game.