The rich alluvial plain of Siam is estimated at about four hundred and fifty miles in length by fifty miles average breadth. The main stream, above Rahany, is known as the Maping. Below the rocky defiles the river divides several times, and contains some larger and smaller islands; Ayuthia is built on one of the latter. The founding of this city, about 1350 A. D., was one of the most memorable events in Siamese history. In 1766 the Burmese depopulated the country and burned Ayuthia. A new dynasty, with Bangkok for the capital, was founded about a century ago.
Bangkok, sometimes called “the Venice of the Orient,” is the Siamese metropolis—the first city in size, wealth and political importance. Old Bangkok is changing rapidly. European fashions and architecture are introduced among the nobility and wealthy. The new palace is a mixture of European architectural styles, retaining the characteristic Siamese roof. The furniture is on a most costly scale, having been imported from England, it is stated, at an expense of some seventy-five thousand pounds. The large library is filled with books in several languages and furnished with all the leading European and American periodicals. The royal guards are in European uniform, but barefooted, only the officers being permitted to wear boots. In the surrounding area are courts and rows of two-storied white buildings, the barracks, mint, museum and pavilions. The entrance to the throne-room is up a fine marble staircase lined with ferns, palms and plants. The throne-room is a long hall hung with fine oil paintings and adorned with costly busts of famous personages. The spacious drawing-room adjoining is furnished in the most luxurious European style.
RUINS OF A PAGODA AT AYUTHIA.
The palace of the second king (named George Washington by his father, who was a great admirer of our celebrated American statesman) is also European in many of its appointments, with mirrors, pictures and English and French furniture. This prince, still in the prime of middle life, devotes a great part of his time to scientific pursuits, and has collected in his palace much machinery, including a small steam-engine built by himself. He is fond of entertaining European guests in European style; his reception-room is brilliantly illuminated with innumerable little cocoanut-oil lamps.
The Krung Charoon, or main highway of Bangkok, is several miles in length, and used by the nobility and foreigners for driving, except during the high tide of the river, when it is often partly under water. The liveliest quarters in the capital are those mainly occupied by the Chinese, with their eating-houses, pawnbrokers’ and drug-shops and the ubiquitous gambling establishments, and with a Chinese waiang, or theatre, near by.
The finest view of the city and its surroundings is from the summit of Wat Sikhet.
The summer palace recently erected by His Majesty, a few miles below Ayuthia, is a large building in semi-European style, standing amid lovely parks and gardens, ornamented with fountains and statuary, with streams spanned by bridges, and a fine lake with an island on which is built a most delightful Siamese summer-house. The royal wat (temple) opposite this palace is a pure Gothic building fitted with regular pews and a handsome stained-glass window.
“There are a few houses in Bangkok, occupied by the ‘upper ten,’ built of stone and brick, but those of the middle classes are of wood, while the habitations of the poor are constructed of light bamboos and roofed with leaves of the atap palm. Fires are frequent, and from the combustible character of the erections hundreds of habitations are often destroyed. But in a few days the mischief is generally repaired, for on such occasions friends and neighbors lend a willing hand.”