On a high and projecting rock, whose scarped and rugged outlines bid defiance to the pedestrian, stood the stately mansion of Dhotee Bhad, the chieftain of Megara, and the father of Rama, recognizable by its grand appearance, its balconies of fretted stone, and its long windows, which commanded for miles the surrounding country. It is a wild and solitary spot, and out of the direct road to any place; but it had two advantages,—it was almost inaccessible, and it overlooked valleys which were as luxuriant with verdure as the hills around were sterile and barren. Two miles from this spot rises the Ghât Meriâh, crowned with a grove of stately trees, whose profound brown shadows and lurid gloom is said to be caused by the spirits of the victims offered up yearly there, and whose grand proportions are dimly visible at points here and there as you approach the grove. At the foot of this Ghât, in a thick and all but impenetrable forest, are several magnificent ponds from which the inhabitants draw their water.
Such was the home and the birthplace of our hero Rama.
THE REBEL DUKE P'HAYA SI P'HIFOOR.
In the year 1831 a revolutionary war broke out in the northern provinces of Siam. The ringleader of this disaffected part of the country was the Duke P'haya Si P'hifoor, a man who, from his high position, great warlike talents, and immense wealth, possessed an unbounded influence over the inhabitants of the northern provinces. It is said that even from his infancy the demon Ambition had taken such possession of him that he used to imagine himself a king, and that, from that time to the fatal termination of his life, he dreamt of nothing but the sceptre and the supreme sway.
It was one of his first efforts, therefore, to gather from distant lands all the disaffected and ambitious spirits he could muster together,—men who would be brave and skilful enough to take the helm in the storm that must follow his inexorable bidding.
In 1821 he sent secret agents by an Indian merchant ship to Calcutta to enlist for him a troop of hardy warriors of the Rajpoot tribe. Among this troop hired in Calcutta and transshipped to Siam was our prisoner, Rama Singalee,—Rama the lion. He, with the rest of his party, had been implicated in some incipient rebellion against the British government, and had fled for concealment to the densely populated city of Calcutta, where, after several years of hard struggling to obtain some means of livelihood not derogatory to their high caste, they were induced to sell their services to the agent of the Duke P'haya Si P'hifoor. This band of hired mercenaries landed secretly in the Gulf of Martaban, at the mouth of the Irrawady, whence by night travel they arrived at P'hra Batt. Here portions of land in the tenure of the duke were allotted to them, and they were dispersed until a fitting opportunity should offer for striking the final blow which was to place their master on the throne of Siam, and themselves in offices of trust in the kingdom.
So things went on for several years, when Rama fell in love with a Loatian girl of singular beauty, but could not collect money enough to satisfy the demands of her parents.