Frank and Fred thought the sight was one of the strangest they had ever seen. Here was a broad river, its surface covered with small boats of a character new to them, and its banks lined with floating houses, such as have been described. Junks, and ships, and sloops, and steamers were anchored in the stream; and occasionally a great barge, rowed by twenty or thirty men, and belonging to some member of a noble family, shot past them, or turned into some of the many canals that open out from the Menam. Houses were just visible through the dense mass of palms and other tropical trees that lined the banks, and the spires of the pagodas rose above like great watch-towers, whose line of vision extended many miles. At a bend in the river the white walls of the royal palace came into view, and as they passed beyond the palace and proceeded up the river their eyes rested upon extensive fields and gardens, and on another fringe of floating houses along the bank. Suddenly a practical question occurred to Frank, and he asked the consul—
"Does the river ever freeze over?"
"Not by any means," was the reply. "The average temperature here is about 82°. April is the hottest month, and the thermometer then goes to 97°, and sometimes above 100°. It rarely falls below 65°, and the lowest ever known is 54°. There are only two seasons—the hot, or wet; and the dry, or cool. The south-west monsoon blows from April till October, and brings heat and rain with it; while from October till April we have the north-east monsoon, which is cool and comfortable. Most of the time during the north-east monsoon we have fine weather; there is now and then a shower, but it rarely lasts long.
"There is a very good story about the absence of cold in this part of Siam. Forty or fifty years ago, when the Protestant missionaries first came here, some of them were taken before the king, who wanted to see what manner of men they were. Up to that time Siam had had very little intercourse with foreign countries, and the old king was not very well versed in the geography of other lands, and their climate and productions. So he asked the missionaries, who were from Boston, what their country was, and what it produced.
"They told him many things about America, described the Falls of Niagara, the Rocky Mountains, the Mississippi, the fields of cotton and wheat, and other things that the soil produced, the great steamboats on the rivers, and talked of many other matters that they thought would interest him. Finally, one of them told him that where they came from the rivers were frozen over two or three months in the year.
"'What do you mean by that?' the king asked, through his interpreter.
"'Why, I mean,' said the missionary, 'that if this palace and the river Menam were at Boston, your majesty could walk across the water during three months of the year as he could walk on this floor. The water becomes solid, and men cut holes in it with axes and saws.'
"'Now I know you are lying,' the king replied, as he rose from his seat in great anger. 'I have thought so for some minutes, and now I am certain of it.' And he ordered the reception to end at once, as he wished no further communication with men who talked about a river getting hard enough for a king to walk on."
The scenery along the river was much like that below the city. There was the same luxuriance of vegetation that had astonished the boys when they entered the Menam, the same trees, and the same creeping and climbing plants. Here and there were great fields of rice; and our friends were not surprised to learn that rice was the chief product of the country, and its only export of consequence. There were also fields of sugar, which was extensively cultivated and exported; and the consul told them that there were exports of hemp, pepper, and cotton that sometimes reached a respectable figure. There was little manufacturing industry in Siam, and what the people wanted in the way of manufactured goods was brought from Europe or America.