Red River Lowland

The rail line towards Hanoi had been destroyed in the war against France like so much of the material equipment of Vietnamese life. It had been restored only a few months ago and was now clearly a major artery between China and this newly emergent state.

The train crept southwards between high hills, covered with scrub and forest and dotted with small thatched villages, with tiny patches of rice and maize, of fruit trees and sugar cane.

It was an area obviously thinly peopled, inhabited mainly by tribal groups.

Then, as the afternoon drew on, the blue, forested hills receded into the distance and the great alluvial lowland of the Red River stretched to the horizon—mile after mile of green and pale gold rice fields, of fields newly ploughed or filmed with irrigation water, tiny fields bounded by dykes or ditches, fields which from the air give the effect of a design in green and gold cloisonne enamel.

As we passed over the Red River into Hanoi children were leading the buffaloes down to the red mudladen waters, russet-clad peasants were working in the fields of sugar cane and vegetables, and the fishing boats were spreading their sails to the evening breeze and drifting seawards like clouds of butterflies.