A VILLAGE PATHWAY IN SIAM.
Now and then there were little openings in the forest that looked like pathways. The Doctor told his young companions that these paths undoubtedly led to villages or single houses that were hid away in the dense foliage. The Doctor's belief was confirmed by the glimpse of an occasional figure among the trees, and by dusky faces that contemplated the steadily moving steamer.
But it was not all a tropical forest with occasional villages. There were sugar plantations, some of them of considerable extent; and there were rice-fields where dozens and dozens of men were at work. Frank contemplated a lot of these laborers with the captain's glass, and remarked that the Siamese resembled the Chinese so much that it was impossible to distinguish between them. The Doctor laughed, and then gave this explanation:
"The men that you see are Chinese, and not the people of Siam. Nearly all these rice and sugar plantations employ Chinese laborers; and of the five millions of people in Siam not less than two millions are Chinese. They come here, just as they go to America or to Australia, in search of employment; and, though the wages are low, they are quite content. If you could go to every part of Siam you would hardly ever be out of sight of the Chinese, as they are scattered everywhere through the kingdom. There, now, we will have a good view of some of these laborers."
CHINESE FIELD-LABORERS.
As he spoke, the steamer swung quite close to the bank, where there was a group of laborers evidently just ready to depart for the rice-field. Some were squatted, and some were standing; some were fully and some only partially clothed; and all appeared as though they had the good digestion that comes from hard work. It did not need a long study of the assemblage to convince our friends that the men were exactly like those they had seen in Canton and Hong-kong, and the captain told them that probably every one of the crowd was from the Quang-Tung Province of China.