ASCENDING THE MENAM, FROM BANGKOK TO AYUTHIA.
Doctor Bronson had a letter of introduction to the American Consul at
Bangkok, which a friend in New York had given him before his departure.
A few mornings after his arrival in Siam, he called at the consulate to
deliver the letter and make the acquaintance of his country's
representative.
He found the consul seated in a large arm-chair on the veranda of a
spacious building on the east bank of the river, in the foreign portion
of the city. A yard with shade-trees and gravelled walks surrounded the
building, and near the landing-place there was a tall staff from which
the flag of the United States waved in the breeze. The consul was a man
of pleasing manners, and he was heartily glad to meet a compatriot, as
the visits of Americans to Bangkok are not at all numerous. "Until you
arrived," said he to the Doctor, "there had not been an American tourist
here for nearly eight months. I wish more would come, as we lead rather
a lonely life in Siam, and are very glad of anything to break the
monotony."
In a frank, open-hearted way, the consul offered his services to Doctor
Bronson and his young friends, in case there was anything he could do
for them.
The Doctor thanked him for the proffered courtesy, and said they hoped
to be able to see his majesty, the King of Siam, before their departure.
"I think that can be arranged without much difficulty," the consul
answered. "The king likes to see strangers who are enough interested in
Siam to come here out of the beaten track. He is a polite, intelligent,
and most agreeable gentleman, and I feel confident that I can promise to
present you to him.
"Just now he is absent from the city, and will not be back here for
three or four days. On his return, I will endeavor to arrange what you
wish. Meantime there is an excursion going up the river to Ayuthia, the
ancient capital of Siam, and I advise you to join it. A party is going
to see some elephants driven in from the forest, and the sight will be
interesting to you. It can easily be arranged for you to join the
excursion, which will start to-morrow morning."
Doctor Bronson assented at once to the proposal, and, after exchanging a
few general observations, he departed, promising to come again in the
afternoon to learn more fully about the excursion, and to bring the boys
with him to introduce to the consul. He had left them at the hotel, busy
with their first letters to friends at home.
Frank and Fred were delighted at the plan for going to Ayuthia,
especially as they would have an opportunity to see with their own eyes
the way the Siamese catch elephants. They were impatient to be off, and
could hardly keep their minds on their letters, as they were filled with
thoughts of the novelties in store for them.
When they called at the consulate in the afternoon, they found that the
whole business had been settled. They were to have a house-boat or
barge, large enough for half a dozen persons, and it was to be towed by
a steam-launch which had been procured from one of the foreign merchants
at Bangkok. To economize time, it had been determined to start an hour
or two before sunset, and travel during the night; by this means they
would reach Ayuthia early the next forenoon, and thus have the greater
part of the day for sight-seeing. The consul decided to accompany them,
as the cares of the consulate were not very heavy at that particular
time, and, besides, the vice-consul was there to see that nothing went
wrong.
A sufficient supply of cooked and canned provisions was procured, and
the necessary amount of blankets, overcoats, and other comforts was made
ready. The barge came to the front of the hotel at the appointed time,
and in a few moments they were steaming up the river.
[Illustration: PRIVATE GARDEN NEAR BANGKOK.]
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.
[Illustration: A SIAMESE FOREST SCENE.]
The consul pointed out various objects of interest as the boat moved
along the river, and explained many things that otherwise might have
been misunderstood by the boys, or not comprehended at all. Frank had a
commercial turn of mind, and asked many questions about the trade of
Siam; and he was much pleased to find that the consul had the whole
subject at his command, and was able to give all the desired
information. When their dialogue ended, Frank had the following facts
recorded in his note-book:
"In 1876 the exports of Siam amounted to $8,350,000, and the imports to
$7,070,000--an increase in the volume of trade over the previous year of
$686,000. The chief export is rice, and in the year mentioned 4,101,000
piculs of rice were exported. The picul is a Chinese weight of 133
pounds. The direct exportation to the United States was 8800 piculs; but
there is a large amount that is reshipped from Hong-kong, and does not
appear on the records of the Siamese custom-house as going to America.
"In 1857 six foreign ships visited Bangkok; twenty years later, the
number of foreign ships coming there in a single twelvemonth was more
than two hundred. In 1840 there was only one trading-ship flying the
Siamese flag; while in 1874 there were one hundred and twenty-nine
native ships entered at the custom-house of Bangkok, and one hundred and
seventy seven cleared from the port. These ships are nearly all native
built and manned, and they go to Singapore, Hong-kong, and the ports of
Java. They have not yet ventured on voyages to Europe and America, and
are not likely to do so for a long time to come."
Fred wished to know what American articles were used in Siam, and Frank
said he was coming to that as soon as he had written down the notes
about the shipping.
The consul told them it would take a long time to name over all the
foreign articles that could be sold in the country; but he would
certainly not advise anybody to bring a cargo of heavy woollen blankets
and overcoats, as they would not be in demand.
"I should say so," answered Fred. "With the thermometer as we have seen
it since we came here, a heavy blanket or anything of the kind is quite
superfluous. We rather want something for keeping cool, and if somebody
will invent an ice-machine that you can carry in your pocket or even in
your trunk he will make a fortune."
"Yes," the consul answered, "a thing much needed in the East is a cheap,
easily handled, and light ice-machine. Ice is worth from three to six
cents a pound here, and sometimes it can't be had at any price. There is
a machine made by a French company that is somewhat used here, but it
gets out of order easily, and has to be sent to Paris to be repaired.
Where is the Yankee that will make something to go ahead of it?
"But to return to the subject of the things that are made in America and
sent here to sell. We have cotton cloths of various kinds; canvas, iron,
steel, and lead; glassware in several varieties; lamps, kitchen
machinery and utensils; canned fruits and vegetables, together with
canned fish and preserves. By-the-way," he continued, "we had a dinner
at the consulate last year at Christmas-time, when everything edible on
the table was of American origin, and brought to Siam in cans. The
dinner-party was also made up of Americans, and you may be sure we had a
good time, and could easily imagine we were at home.
"Some American machinery is used here, but not much, for the very simple
reason that there is very little machinery of any kind used in Siam. All
the weighing apparatus in the custom-house and other government offices
is from America, as you will find on going through them."
"We passed the custom-house the other day," said Frank, "and I remember
seeing some scales there which seemed like American ones. I looked for
the maker's name, and saw the word which everybody knows at home,
'Fairbanks.' I was told that the king had some of these scales in his
royal museum, and the only weighing-machines used in Siam, at least by
the government, were made by Fairbanks."
"The native merchants are learning the advantages of the American system
of weighing, in preference to their primitive one, as they can get along
so much faster with the new than with the old," the consul answered.
"But the East is conservative, and cannot be expected to adopt anything
new very hastily.
"There is a good deal of American petroleum burnt here," he continued,
"but it comes to Siam from Singapore, and not directly from America. In
fact, about seventy per cent. of all the import and export trade of Siam
is through Singapore, and so the merchants of Siam pay more for their
goods than if they were brought here direct from the countries where
they are produced. The king is desirous of having direct trade with the
United States, and so are many private individuals, and it is to be
hoped that some of the merchants will yet bring it about. It is a pity
that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, or the Occidental and Oriental,
does not see its way clear to a branch line between Hong-kong and
Bangkok, to connect with the regular steamers between Hong-kong and San
Francisco. Two small steamers would perform the service, and I am
confident it would pay."
There were occasional interruptions to this conversation. Now and then
the boys saw a curious tree or something else that they wished to study,
and they were never tired of looking at the native boats that paddled,
or sailed, or floated down the river.
[Illustration: PARASITE AND PALM.]
One of the trees that attracted their attention as they went along near
the shore belonged to the family of parasites, and was not unlike some
they had seen as they ascended the river from Paknam to Bangkok. The
Doctor explained that in this case the parasite was not a vine, but a
distinct tree that grew from a seed deposited by the wind or by the
birds on the trunk or among the leaves of a palm. It grows much faster
than the palm, and in a few years the palm dies and the parasite lives.
It is held in the air by the decaying stem of the parent tree until the
latter altogether rots away and falls. When once the parasite has
obtained a hold, the destruction of the palm is only a question of time.
Frank made a sketch of one of these trees while the boat was stopped a
few moments to enable the engineer of the steam-launch to arrange
something that had got out of order.
[Illustration: THE BAMBOO-TREE.]
The bamboo-tree seemed to abound along the Menam, as it does everywhere
in the East. In some places the stalks stood singly, and shot up
straight as arrows; while in others they were in clusters so dense that
the stems could not be distinguished one from another. While Frank was
busy over his sketch of the parasite, Fred managed to secure a good
picture of one of the most useful trees in the world. It is said that
there are more than a hundred uses for the bamboo among the Chinese, and
it is possible that a few others might be added in Siam and Java.
[Illustration: THE BOAT THEY NARROWLY MISSED.]
Several times they had narrow escapes from collisions with the native
boats, as the men who managed the latter were not very skilful in
handling the rudder. One that passed so close to them as almost to
scrape her sides against the boat of our friends, was a Chinese craft
not unlike what they had seen between Hong-kong and Canton. It was
running before the wind, and had a great sail of matting that was kept
in place by a dozen or more cords gathered in a single line at the
stern. She had a high cabin, that seemed rather top-heavy with the wind
on the beam, but was all right before it; and there was a little deck
forward of the mast, where a couple of men were seated. The narrowness
of the escape did not appear to disturb these natives in the least, and
they kept their places as though nothing had happened.
[Illustration: SCENE AT BANG-PA-IN.]
Night came upon them, but there was a good moon, and they kept steadily
on their way. They were going against the current, and as the boat was
considerably larger than the steam-launch, the progress was not rapid.
At nine o'clock in the morning they passed Bang-pa-in, where the king
has a summer palace on a very pretty island in the most picturesque part
of the river. The palace is built in European style, and was completed
only a few years ago; the grounds are handsomely laid out, and there is
an abundance of shade-trees, in irregular groves, from one end of the
island to the other.
Ayuthia is ten miles above Bang-pa-in; and soon after passing the
picturesque island Frank discovered some ruins of a temple close to the
river's bank. The consul told him they would soon see an abundance of
ruins, and sure enough at the next turn of the river they came in
sight of what seemed to be a deserted village. Then they saw a number of
floating houses tied to the shore, and farther on the towers and domes
of Ayuthia were visible. The boat was stopped in front of a rude wharf,
and the party stepped ashore in the ancient capital of Siam.
[Illustration: A RIVER SCENE.]