Laos: An 1867 sketch by members of a French team exploring the Mekong region, depicting an area of natural beauty in southern Laos.

French expeditioner and artist Louis Delaporte wrote: "When we emerged from the grove, we beheld one of the strangest phenomena we had ever seen. Two huge walls of dark rock, several hundred meters high, revealed a pass leading to a vast shining plain ... About a quarter mile inside and right in the middle, two vertical pillars of rock, like two great candles, rose to a prodigious height ... A herd of wild elephants looking not much bigger than sheep beside the huge masses around them, emerged from a thicket and roamed into the plain."

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Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

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Pictures From History