PREPARING RATTAN FOR CHAIR-MAKING.
One thing that soon strikes the wanderer is the presence of the Chinese. In the most secluded hamlet, and in the deepest jungle, wherever men are gathered together, there are the Celestials in the midst of them, doing the chief share of the work, and taking the largest share of the profits. The wealth of the country consists in its agricultural produce. Rice is the chief food article cultivated, and will be dealt with in the succeeding chapter. But at Chantaboon, now in the hands of the French, excellent pepper is grown. Coffee has only recently been introduced, and it too flourishes in the neighbourhood of the same port. Sugar-cane is very plentiful, but is little used for the making of sugar. Where the refineries do exist they belong to the Chinese. The tobacco plant that is grown is very rank, and too powerful in its effects to become popular with Europeans. If it were properly cured and prepared, it might be more palatable. Amongst the other agricultural products may be mentioned hemp, cotton, cocoa-nut, areca-nut, maize, teak, bamboo, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, indigo, a little tea in the far north, and fruit of many varieties.
FISHING LUGGER.
[Petchabooree] is a typical Siamese agricultural village. It is easily reached by house-boat from Bangkok in two or three days. Through the village runs a clear silvery stream with a white sandy bed. On each side of the stream extends a double row of wooden houses, under which lie innumerable pariahs. Between the double line is a narrow passage forming the street, market, and pleasure-ground of the inhabitants. Buffaloes come down to the river for water at regular hours twice each day. On the broad plains in the neighbourhood rice is grown. A few miles away is a Laos settlement, occupied by the descendants of prisoners of war who were once placed here to till the soil for those who captured them. They still preserve their dark striped petticoats, and are never seen without their long knives at their waists. They spend most of their time at this particular place in manufacturing sugar from the sugar palm. When the fruit appears upon the tree, a man climbs to the top, and cuts it off. To the cut stalk he fastens the hollow stem of a bamboo, about eighteen inches long. As the juice oozes from the cut surface it drops into the wooden cylinder. When this is filled it is removed, and replaced by another. The juice is collected and boiled in iron pans under an attap-thatched shed. The furnace is of very simple construction. A trough is dug in the earth, and the hole thus made filled with wood. A light is applied, and then the pan is placed on the ground, with its centre over the hollow dug-out fireplace. Fresh wood is pushed into the hole when required. As the wood costs nothing and the iron pan is cheap, the manufacture of sugar in this primitive fashion is not at all costly. The thick syrupy liquid is put into big wooden barrels, and sent to Bangkok to be further boiled and converted into sugar. The fresh juice of the sugar palm is sweet and refreshing, but when it begins to ferment it is a powerful intoxicant.
There are many pretty places on the shores of the Gulf of Siam, but these can only be visited by steamer. They are charmingly picturesque, the bathing is excellent, and the fish are delicious. No steamers call at these desirable spots, there are no hotels, and except for fish they have no food for sale. Only one of them—Anghin, has any house in which a foreigner would care to reside. The village of Anghin ("stone basins") is so called because there are several large hollows in the granite rocks, where rain water collects in the wet season. Public attention was first drawn to the place in 1868, when a notice appeared in the local papers in these words:—
"H. E. Ahon Phya Bhibakrwongs Maha Kosa Dhipude, the Pra Klang, Minister for Foreign Affairs, has built a sanitarium at Anghin for the benefit of the public. It is for the benefit of Siamese, Europeans, or Americans, who may go and occupy it when unwell, to restore their health. All are cordially invited to go there for a suitable length of time and be happy, but are requested not to remain month after month, and year after year, and regard it as a place without an owner. To regard it in this way cannot be allowed, for it is public property, and others should go and stop there also."
