James was protesting that he could not continue another yard when we came most unexpectedly to the edge of the jungle. Before us stretched a vast paddy field, deeply inundated. The soldiers led the way along the tops of the ridges toward a dense grove two miles distant. The howling of a hundred curs heralded our approach, and as many chattering humans swarmed about us when we paused in a large, deep-shaded village at the edge of a river fully a mile wide. It could be no other than the Menam Chow Pya—the “great river” of Siam. Along the low eastern bank stretched a veritable city with white, two-story buildings, before which were anchored large native junks. It was Rehang. The soldiers told us so with shouts of joy and ran away to don their uniforms.
We threw off what was left of our garments and plunged into the stream to wash off the blood and grime of the jungle. When we had prepared ourselves for entrance into civilization the soldiers were gone. We appealed to the villagers to set us across the river. They refused. We took possession of one of a dozen dug-out logs drawn up along the shore, and the village swarmed down upon us in a great avalanche of men, women, children, and yellow curs. We caught up two paddles and laid about us. In two minutes we were alone.
We pushed the dug-out into the stream and were climbing in when two ugly, wrinkled females ran down the bank and offered to ferry us across. They pointed the craft up-stream and fell to paddling, their flabby breasts beating against their paunches with every stroke, their bony knees rising and falling regularly. They were expert water dogs, however, and crossed the swift stream without mishap, landing us at a crazy wooden wharf in the center of the town.
In every published map of Siam you will find Rehang noted—somewhere within a hundred miles of its actual situation. Not that the city deserves such distinction. The geographer must have some name to fill in this vast space on his chart or he lays himself open to a charge of ignorance. On nearer sight the white, two-story buildings were rather pathetic, dilapidated structures. The avenue between them was not much better paved than the jungle paths, and deeper in mud. The sanitary squad, evidently, had not yet returned from an extended vacation. Here and there a dead cat or dog had been tossed out to be trampled under foot. There was no dearth of inhabitants; one could not but wonder how the town could house such a population. But the passing throng was merely a larger gathering of those same uncouth “wild men” of the jungle villages. The fear of being arrested for unseemly exposure soon left us. James, in national costume, attracted much less attention than I, in the remnants of jacket and trousers.
Just one advance agent of modern civilization had reached Rehang. Bill posters had decorated several blank walls with huge lithographs announcing, in Siamese letters a foot high, the merits of a well-known sewing machine. That we had expected, of course. In the back waters of modern progress are a few hamlets where Milwaukee beer is unknown, but the traveler who extends his explorations so far into the wilds as to discover a community ignorant of the existence of the American sewing machine merits decoration by the Royal Geographical Society.
It was easy, however, to overlook the backwardness of this tumble-down thorp on the banks of the Menam; at least it was a market town. James dashed into the first booth with a whoop of delight and startled the keeper out of his wits by demanding a whole three cents’ worth of cigarettes. Saybullies might do well enough as a last resort, but the Australian did not propose to be reduced to such extremities again. He splashed on through the reeking streets blowing great clouds of smoke from his nostrils and forgetting for the time even the smarting of his torn and sun-scorched skin.
Half the merchants of the town were Chinamen. We stopped at a shop kept by three wearers of the pig-tail and, dragging a bench into the center of the room, called for food. One of the keepers, moving as if he deeply resented our intrusion, set canned meat before us, and brought us as a can-opener, after long delay, a hatchet with a blade considerably wider than the largest tin.
When we rose to depart, the Celestials quickly lost their apathy. They demanded ten tecals. I gave them two. The market price of the stuff was certainly not over a half of that sum. A triple scream rent the air and a half-dozen Monguls bounded into the shop and danced like ogres about us. One caught up the hatchet and swung it high above his head. James snatched it from him, kicked him across the room, and threw the weapon among the heaped-up wares. We fought our way to the street. The keeper nearest us gave one stentorian bellow that was answered from every side. Chinamen tumbled out through every open doorway, out of every hole in the surrounding shop walls; they sprang up from under the buildings, dropped from the low roofs, swarmed out of the alleyways, for all the world like rats; screaming, yelping, snarling, clawing the air as they ran, their cues streaming behind them. In the twinkling of an eye the mob at our heels had increased to a hundred. We refused to sacrifice our dignity by running. The frenzied Celestials scratched us savagely with their overgrown finger nails, caught at our legs, spattered us with mud. Not one of them used his fists. When we turned upon them they recoiled as from a squad of cavalry and we could retaliate only by catching a flying pig-tail in either hand to send a pair of yellow-skinned rascals sprawling in the mud. They came back at us after every stand before we had taken a dozen steps. Our backs were a network of finger-nail scratches. We cast our eyes about us for some weapon and found two bemired sticks. Before we could use them our assailants turned and fled, still screaming at the top of their lungs.
The sort of jungle through which we cut our way for three weeks. Gerald James, my Australian companion, in the foreground