At Muang Phitsanulok, which stands along a very pretty sweep of water, hid deep in its areca and banana palms, I spent a morning at wat Chinareth. This was the nearest approach to a real piece of effective architecture that I had seen since leaving, and I once more experienced the feeling of exultation which one used to know at home, when enjoying the lights and shadows of some old building where the mind of man had worked with great result. An additional charm was the colouring. The coloured tiles of the roofs of the wats are remarkable in Bangkok; but far in the jungle, when the eye has become accustomed to green for weeks, the wonderful yellow-red, picked off with green borders, and the light-red lower buildings of the cloisters, were most striking. The building was once very extensive, cruciform in shape, in four distinct sections round the great central tower. The western building is the only one in any sort of preservation, and south of it, and at its south-western end, still stand the cloisters. Brick and laterite blocks are the material used, the former in some cases, as in the wall and the pillars of the cloister, being stuccoed. These little pillars are only 6 feet high, and the roof is gabled, supported on simple uprights, which rise from horizontal cross-beams resting on the pillars; and so a very pretty and simple cloister walk is obtained. The remains of such walks lie in every direction round the centre. As for the western building itself, I was much delighted with the interior. One enters a monk's doorway at the south-east corner from a cloister, and is at first lost in gloom. At last the great black columns, with their elaborate gilt ornamentation (the one decoration they understand in Siam), grow out in the feeble light from the little narrow windows in the low side walls. The lofty peaked roof, which rises far into blackness, comes down gradually, sloping less steeply to the columns, of which there are two rows, and so to the low walls, thus as it were covering a nave and side aisles. At the eastern end are placed the usual gilt statues of Buddha, of all shapes and sizes—of which in one cloister alone I saw over thirty-six over 3 feet high. Until these force themselves upon one's notice with all the tawdry wreckage with which they are ornamented, the air of retirement about the place is quite captivating. The central tower is some 60 feet high, covered with niches, in which stand more "prahs," or statues, and on the eastern side is a staircase up halfway to a dome-shaped chamber. The entrance to this was in its day very prettily panelled and gilded; now, alas! cobwebs and bats are legion. But the whole effect, there almost lost in jungle, is memorable.
[Illustration: WAT CHINARETH (CENTRAL TOWER FROM WEST).]
At a smaller wat to the southward (wat Boria) there is a very fine Buddha, on whose head and shoulders the light is thrown from a small window in the roof. The effect is quite impressive, and does great credit to the architect who designed it. This is by no means the only place in Siam where the light is dexterously managed.
[Illustration: A SALA IN THE NAN FORESTS.]
[Illustration: KORAT PLATEAU. ENTRANCE TO FOREST DONG PHYA YEN.]
Throughout this country the rivers, streams, and canals (or klongs) are the highways, and the villages are built on their edge; the banks, owing to the accumulations, the houses, and the preservative effect of the palms in which the villages nestle, are often the highest points in the country round—which in the rains becomes a series of vast lakes, with islands here and there, and the houses standing out of the water gaunt upon their long stilt-like piles of teak. In many parts the buffaloes and oxen have to be driven away for miles to higher ground; and one may meet whole villages moving with as many as forty ox-carts in a gang, with spare oxen trotting behind their masters' carts.
We had met a good deal of teak being rafted down the lower part of the river. The small rafts come through the innumerable klongs and creeks from all directions, and then below Pichit and Paknam Pho the big rafts are made up, and go off downwards with their crew of men, the cock crowing merrily on the roof of the little bamboo shelter which is their "deck-house." Passing sandbanks and shallows is often a very difficult operation. Some three or four men go overboard astern with long 8-feet stakes, to which the end of a long hawser is fast. The sharpened ends they drive into the bottom, clinging on to the top end as the strain comes on, till at last often it is too great, and the stake is pulled over man and all. However, by degrees they will bring the great floating mass to a standstill for the night, or, as the case may be, they succeed in checking the after end sufficiently to keep it to the current, while three or four more hands are working the long transverse-set oars at the fore end in the direction required, and two or three more will be using long poles to keep off the shallows; all hands shout lustily the whole time. By this process, repeated hour by hour, they travel slowly to Bangkok with the current.
[Illustration: GORGE NAM PGOI.]
Above Pichit we met but few rafts, and those only consisting of bamboo and "mai kabao," which is much used for small work, such as tables, and is brought down in small pieces, generally about 14 feet long.
Muang Pechai is the chief town of a very extensive and important province, which to the north-east reaches to the Mekong at Chieng Kan. The Governor, Phya Pechai, is a fine, tall young man, who is (and this is not too often the case in Siam) extremely popular with the people. His evident honesty of purpose was apparent the first moment he spoke. We had to stay here a few days to get the elephants together and buy rice. Twelve kanan (a coconut-shell) were selling at a tical, and on the average each man consumes one kanan per day. We laid in a stock of 35 thang (of 20 kanan), and were shortly after glad to get off on our journey towards the distant hills. I should add that this place is the starting-point for Paklai, on the Mekong, the trail between these two places being the route generally followed by the officials going to Luang Prabang. Apart from this it is not of much importance, and, situated in the uninteresting plain, is subject to high floods in the rains, as the water-marks on the piles of the post-office and the school and court houses attest.