The king’s garden is thrown open once a week to the public, and an excellent native band plays for several hours.
Progress marks the condition of things in Bangkok. The young king is one of the most advanced sovereigns of Eastern Asia. He has made a study of the laws and institutions of Western civilization, and has a manly ambition to make the most of his country. All foreigners who meet him speak well of him. He is bright, amiable and courteous in his personal intercourse, and devotes much time to state business, assisted by his brother and private secretary, usually called Prince Devan, who, though young, has the reputation of being a keen, thoughtful statesman. A younger brother is at present being educated at Oxford. The king is a little over thirty, slight in figure, erect, with fine eyes and fair complexion for a Siamese. He was born on the 22d of September, 1853, and came to the throne when only fifteen years of age.
Paknam is situated near the entrance of the eastern mouth, an extensive mud-flat obliging the largest vessels to find anchorage on the open roadstead at the head of the gulf. Five miles above Paknam is Paklatlang, the entrance of the canal which shortens one-half the distance by river from Bangkok. This canal, however, is only available for small boats. A carriage-road runs from Bangkok to Paknam, some twenty-five miles, and here is the custom-house and port of Bangkok. The last division of the Menam occurs below Bangkok, and the river finally disgorges itself by three mouths into the gulf.
Two rivers from the west fall into the middle and westernmost mouths—the Sachen, with its towns and villages, sugar-plantations and mills scattered all along its elegant flexions, connecting by canals with the Menam east and the Meklong west; and the Meklong, an independent stream from the Karen country, flowing through a narrow but extremely fertile valley in which hills and plains of some extent alternate. The capital of the province is situated at the junction of the canal—a town of twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, noted as the birthplace of the Siamese Twins.
The “Sam-ra-yot,” or Three Hundred Peaks, separate Siam from Burmah. This chain consists of a series of bold conical hills, extremely ragged on their flanks and covered with immense teak-forests stretching hundreds of miles over mountains and valleys. The noted pass of the Three Pagodas across this range follows a branch known as the Meklong Nee to the last Karen town on the Siamese frontier, thence on foot or elephants across the summit to the head-waters of the Ataran, and by canoes, shooting the rapids, a somewhat abrupt descent, to Maulmein.
VIEW OF PAKNAM ON THE MENAM.
Petchaburee, on the western side of the gulf, near the foot of this range, is a sanitarium for natives and Europeans. Here is the Presbyterian mission compound, and on the summit of a neighboring hill is the king’s summer palace. The Tavoy road leads through this town. The Laotian captives who built the royal palace are settled in villages all over the Petchaburee valley; “their bamboo huts with tent-like roofs, thatched with long dried grass, rise from the expanse of level plain among fruit and palm trees like green islands in the sea.” Each hut has its well-tilled kitchen-garden, its tobacco- and cotton-plot. The latter, dyed with vegetable and mineral substances, the women weave on their own looms for family use. With the exception of a few Chinese articles, everything about these hamlets is of native make. The Laotian serfs are superior to the Siamese physically, and have more force of character.
The Malay peninsula projects from the Isthmus of Kraw (lat. 10° N.), six or seven hundred miles to Cape Romania, opposite Singapore. If the estuaries between the Pakshan and Chomphon Rivers are ever united by a ship-canal, the peninsula would be put where it ethnically and geographically belongs, as one of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago.