ot hold of them a high opinion.

Producing my .45 caliber service automatic, I slipped a clip into the
magazine and ostentatiously laid it beside me on the seat. It is the
most formidable weapon carried by any civilized people. True, the
German Lueger is larger....

"Tell them," I said to the policeman, "that this gun will shoot through
twenty millimeters of pine. Tell them that they had better dispose of
their property and burn a few joss-sticks before they start to argue
with it. And tell them that, no matter what happens, the car is to keep
going."

But I was by no means as confident as I sounded, for the road was
notoriously unsafe, nor did I put much trust in my companions. I
confess that I felt much happier when that portion of my journey was
over.

As the road to Pnom-Penh is quite uninteresting--just a narrow yellow
highway chopped through a dense tangle of tropic vegetation--suppose I
take advantage of the opportunity to tell you something of this
little-known land in which we find ourselves.

French Indo-China occupies perhaps two-thirds of that great
bay-window-shaped peninsula which protrudes from the southeastern
corner of Asia. In area it is, as I have already remarked, somewhat
larger than Texas; its population is about equal to that of New York
and Pennsylvania combined. It consists of five states: the colony of
Cochin-China, the protectorates of Cambodia, Annam and Tongking, and
the unorganized territory of Laos, to which might be added the narrow
strip of borderland, known as Kwang Chau Wan, leased from China. In
1902 the capital of French Indo-China was transferred from Saigon, in
Cochin-China, to Hanoi, in Tongking.

By far the most interesting of these political divisions is Cambodia,
which, for centuries an independent kingdom, was forced in 1862 to
accept the protection of France. An apple-shaped country, about the
size of England, with a few score miles of seacoast and without railway
or regular sea communications, it lies tucked away in the heart of the
peninsula, its southern borders marching with those of Cochin-China,
its frontier on the north co-terminous with that of Siam. Though the
octogenarian King Sisowath maintains a gorgeous court, a stable of
elephants, upwards of two-hundred dancing-girls, and one of the most
ornate palaces in Asia, he is permitted only a shadow of power, the
real ruler of Cambodia being the French Resident-Superior, who governs
the country from the great wh