In the absence of drunken men and women and the scarcity of women of ill-fame, the streets of Bangkok might well serve as a model for some of the wealthier and more handsome towns of Europe. There is one thing to be regretted in connection with the improvements that are daily being made in the capital, and that is the gradual effacement of all traces of native design or workmanship. Bridges, houses and railway stations are mostly of a distinctly European type, and that type one of uncompromising ugliness. The new streets of Bangkok, if cleaner and sweeter than the old, have nothing of the curious charm of those they have replaced, and are merely excellent examples of unadulterated brick and mortar unrelieved by the faintest trace of anything that could possibly be described as artistic.
[CHAPTER II.]
BY "KHLONG" AND RIVER.
In a walk through any Siamese street the traveller cannot fail to remark the total absence of any carriage or other wheeled vehicle of native design. There are conveyances of many descriptions borrowed from India, China, Japan, and Europe, but none whatever that can be pointed out as being designed by the Siamese themselves. Any enquiry as to the cause of this apparently strange lack of originality in a matter which so directly concerns the daily life of the community, is readily answered. Until a comparatively recent date there were practically no roads in the country, and even at the present time, the roads in any part of the kingdom outside Bangkok scarcely deserve the name. There are scarcely any means of communication between one village and another, and very often only defective communication between two parts of the same village, except by water. The water is the true home of the Siamese, and it is on this, their native element, that their real character and genius are best exhibited. It is true that, in the capital, they now ride ponies and bicycles, for a few roads suitable to such forms of exercise exist, but the boat, not the horse, the paddle, not the whip, are the property of the nation at large.
In earlier times, when they erected houses upon land, they chose as the most convenient sites for their dwellings, the banks of the rivers or the shores of the sea. When agricultural enterprise led to the formation of inland settlements, no roads were made to connect the new settlement with those already existing, but canals or "khlongs" were cut instead. The connections between rivers were made in a similar fashion; and for purposes of pleasure or business, religious processions or state ceremonies, a thousand different forms of boat were planned and constructed. The numberless canals that thread their way across the plains in every possible direction, have turned the lower portion of Siam into a veritable labyrinth of winding water-ways. The khlongs differ in age, appearance and size, as do the roads of more densely populated countries. The ancient highways of Europe here find their parallel in canals whose age and origin it would be difficult to determine, though none of them possess any history extending to periods that Western historians would call remote. Even as the municipalities and corporations of our land construct year by year new roads for the facilitation of traffic, so, for the same purpose new water-ways are being continually cut in the land of Siam. The broad deep khlongs with their double lines of house-boats, and their continual traffic of lumbering barges, cumbersome rafts, comfortable house-boats and tiny canoes, are the great streets of the cities, and the highways of the plains. The foul-smelling, silted-up water alleys, with their rotten disreputable houses, and their heaps of decaying refuse, are the slums and blind alleys; while the green lanes and country by-paths of more temperate lands are here represented by delightful little canals that twine their way through the thick jungle. The palms meet overhead and form a sheltering canopy; birds of many brilliant hues flit lazily from branch to branch, consoling themselves for their loss of song in the contemplation of their gorgeous plumage. There are lonely canals in comparatively unfrequented places, where only occasional travellers disturb the silence. Here the alligator stretches his long ungainly form in the grey and slimy mud; the monkeys chatter to one another amongst the branches of the trees upon the banks; and the squirrels gambol in the tree-tops up aloft, in conscious enjoyment of perfect freedom and everlasting sunshine.
RICE BOATS COMING DOWN THE MENAM.