life and trade; it is the great highway for traffic and the great
cleanser and purifier of the cities; its tide sweeps out to the sea
all the dirt and refuse accumulating therein; it is the universal bath
for all the Siamese. The children paddle and play their games in it;
it is the scene of their frolics in infancy, their means of livelihood
in manhood, and to many of them their grave in death. At sunset, when
work is suspended, there is a great splashing and plunging going on all
along the river banks, everybody taking a bath or amusing themselves
in the water. The river bar is a great trouble to navigators. The
king will not have it dredged, as he, in his ignorance, thinks it a
natural protection to his country, as only ships of a shallow draft can
cross. Trading ships have to be built specially constructed for that
purpose. No large man-of-war can cross, but the king did not take into
consideration the small torpedo boats that can do so much mischief;
recent events, however, must have opened his eyes. We cannot rush into
Siam at railway speed; the ship must be lightened as much as possible,
and we must wait until the tide is at its highest--it may be two hours,
or it may be twenty-two--and even then the channel is so narrow that if
we go a little to the right or to the left we run aground. Many times
there are two ships fast aground; once or twice there have been four
and five. Some have had to stay seven and eight days, and have every
movable thing taken out before they could rise. Nothing can exceed
the monotony of lying aground there; there is nothing to see, only in
the distance some low-lying ground covered with a scrub, no sign of
habitations, no cliffs or green hills rising out of the sea--nothing
but water, water all around, and a glimpse of flat low-lying ground
with wild shrubs on it.
After crossing this vexatious river bar, we proceed up the river eight
miles with nothing to see but low banks until we come to the forts
at Paknam. The river banks are very low, and fringed at the water’s
edge with palms and huge tree ferns; the mango and tamarind trees hang
over and the banyan tree, with its branches hanging down and taking
root again, makes quite an entanglement of roots and branches. At
night these trees are lit up with thousands of fire flies; on a dark
night they glisten and sparkle like the firmament. But in the morning
the river is alive with buyers and sellers. We very soon come to a
market lying in the river--all kinds of Eastern fruits and vegetables
and crockeryware are piled up on floating rafts, the sellers sitting
cross-legged beside their wares, and the buyers rushing about in small
canoes propelled with one oar.
If the officers in charge of steamships like to be mischievous and go
full speed, leaving a big swell in their track, they have the fun of
seeing the floating stalls swaying up and down, banging against one
another fruit and vegetables, rolling off into the water, with the
stall-holders shouting and plunging into the river to save their wares!
[Illustration: THE MENAM]
We then come to more floating houses and houses on piles. Europeans
find the advantage of living on the river to be that they get more
breeze and fewer mosquitoes; so here and there, among the floating
mat-shed erections, we see a neat painted wooden house on piles; it has
to be approached by a boat, and you enter up a staircase on to a wide
verandah. The sitting-rooms and bedrooms all open out of this verandah.
No windows, no fireplaces are needed in this country--very strange
un-home-like residences they are to any one coming fresh from England,
yet they are suitable for the climate.
Here and there amongst the palm trees, and under wide-spreading
tamarind trees we see white-washed temples, with fantastically-shaped
gilded roofs; they look very picturesque amongst the trees; they have a
style of architecture peculiar to the country, which is more prominent
in the shape of the roof, which is a sloping Gothic roof, with all
the corners branching out and turning up; one roof is surmounted with
another smaller, and then a smaller one still. These buildings give
quite a character to the country and are very numerous. It makes
Siamese architecture quite distinctive from that of other countries.
As we get to the city of Bangkok, the sides of the river are lined
with timber and saw-mills and rice-mills, with tall chimneys, and
black smoke oozing out. This is European enterprise; they quite spoil
the scenic effect on the river, but not any more than the mean, dirty
bamboo huts that line the riversides. The Siamese have no medium
respectability; it is all either gorgeously gilded palaces, and
fantastically-adorned temples, or filthy-looking huts. A great many
of the shopkeepers have their shops right on the river. Some of them
are neatly arranged, with a platform in front, on which you land from
your boat. All the family are lounging about this platform, the wife
carrying on her domestic duties, washing up the cooking utensils
by dipping them into the river; the clothes (what few they wear) go
through the same process; and the children, naked, are sporting about
this narrow platform, or sitting on the edge with their feet in the
water.
It is very convenient for a shopkeeper who wishes to change his place
of business; if he thinks there is a more desirable and more frequented
spot, he just unmoors his floating shop and has it towed to the place
he wants, without disarranging his wares.
Branching off from the river are innumerable canals, or creeks--the
Siamese call them klongs--the banks of which are lined with houses
and shops; they make a canal where we would make a road or a street.
Up some of these klongs there are pretty views, especially at sunset.
Graceful ferns and palms, bamboo trees, with their branches dipping
into the water and reflected therein, and between the branches the
sloping roof of some house or temple is visible. But many of these
klongs or canals, in the most frequented part of the city, are the
reverse of pretty. They are just like a large open sewer running down
to the river, full of filthy garbage. When the tide is low there are
the black slime, the naked children playing in it, and the dirty huts
on rickety piles leaning forward as if they wanted to slide down into
the mud; sometimes a dead body comes floating down, and plenty of dead
animals.
It is very lively on the river in the city. Here are ocean-going
steamers and sailing vessels moored amid-stream, or tied up to the
various wharves, whilst an endless variety of native craft are darting
about--narrow boats, like canoes, propelled with one oarsman, hawking
fruit and betel; pretty little house boats, fashioned something like
the Venetian gondolas, with four, six or more rowers, standing up,
dressed in bright uniforms, according to the rank of the family they
belong to; the rice boats from far up the country, of very peculiar
construction, flat-bottomed, to go through shallow water, and wide
bulging out sides, roofed over like houses. In the rainy season,
when the river is full, the large teak-wood rafts about 1,000 feet
long, come floating down, with huts for the steersman built on them.
Small steam launches and ferries, running up and down from various
places, all combine to make the river scene pretty and interesting.
One enthusiastic newspaper correspondent pronounced Bangkok to be the
Venice of the East. It may resemble Venice in the amount of water
traffic, but it would require a great stretch of imagination, and the
help of some glorifying and transfiguring tints from the setting sun,
before we could allow the comparison; but no doubt it bears the same
relation to the East, where filth and squalor predominate, as Venice
bears to the refined and cultured Europe.
There are a few well-kept houses of business and private residences
bordering the river, but not many, and these in no way resemble the
marble palaces of European Venice. The general aspect of the river
banks is dirty disorder--rotten piles, with untidy-looking floating
houses, mat-sheds, and bamboo huts, reaching up to the King’s palace.
The palace walls enclose many buildings, offices, temples, private
residences, gardens, and residences for the sacred white elephants. The
attractive part of these buildings and the great ornamentation are in
the roofs, which are very gorgeous. Some have tall pointed pinnacles,
all gilded; some are covered with a fantastic pattern in porcelain,
with little gilded peaks, which look dazzling in the sun. Viewed from
a distance these buildings realize all that has been written in glowing
terms of Eastern palaces, but near to the charm is not so vivid, as
there is much tawdriness about them. Whilst remaining on the river
the filth and refuse are not so prominent; the tide sweeps all away.
But leave the river, and take to the woods. Oh! the offensive sights
and smells that greet one’s eyes and nose--offal and waste of every
description thrown in front of the houses in the public streets. But
nature is kind and very luxurious here; in a short time these heaps of
rubbish are covered with a growth of grass and creeping plants. The
principal shops are like those on the river--one large room open to the
street, no doors or windows, the family living there, and the domestic
arrangements mixed up with the business of selling.
Bangkok is a modern city. It is not more than 250 years old. It has
risen to importance through the ever-increasing exportation of rice
and timber. It is not purely Siamese, being a mixture of all Eastern
nations, the Chinese being very largely represented; and the European
influence is very prominent. The rice-mills for cleaning the rice and
the saw-mills are all fitted up with modern machinery and are the
outcome of European enterprise. There is a fine naval dockyard entirely
managed by English engineers, and the regular lines of steamers running
here constantly are all British. I must just mention that fifty years
ago the Siamese had a fine fleet of sailing vessels, built in Bangkok
of teak-wood; but the steamers have taken away their trade and that
industry has died out. The ship-building yards are quite deserted and
silent now.
But if we wish to see a real Siamese city, we must leave Bangkok and
go to Ayuthia, the old capital, before Bangkok was thought of.
It is sixty miles farther up the river. The scenery going up is
monotonous--no variety at all; it is a flat country. In the months of
October and November it is all under water; the river rises and floods
the country for miles, so we can understand the reason for living in
floating houses and on piles. But how can any one describe Ayuthia? It
is so different from any other city in the world; and entirely Siamese.
The inhabitants live principally on the river in small houses of
bamboo, roofed with Atap palm leaves. In some parts there is only a
narrow passage for a small boat, the river is so crowded up with their
houses. The trade seems to be buying and selling, and the principal
things sold rice and fruit, with a few very simple cooking utensils.
There is an old palace here which illustrates how much richer the kings
must have grown with the increase of trade.
In the Siamese court there are several very interesting ceremonies,
probably unlike anything belonging to any other country, a pageantry
peculiar to Siam, and of great magnificence.
One of the principal of these is a royal cremation. Then there is a
royal hair-cutting. This is an occasion for very great rejoicing. When
a boy attains the age of fourteen or fifteen, his head is shaved, and
then he enters the priesthood. When it is one of the royal family,
or the Crown Prince, then not many other courts can exceed such a
magnificent and gorgeous festival. The ceremony lasts for a week--a
continued succession of religious rites, with processions and feasts.
One of these is the sacred bath in the river, where the priests dip the
young prince.
Another elaborate spectacle is when the king, attended by all his
nobles, visits every great temple. This takes some weeks to accomplish,
is an annual event, and is another series of grand processions. It is
a water procession, and the barges which are kept and only used on
this occasion are most sumptuous. They are richly carved and gilded,
with silken awnings. They are long, narrow boats about 100 feet long,
rowed by over 150 oarsmen with gilded oars. The whole procession is a
scene of barbaric splendour, and recalls the stories of Aladdin and his
Wonderful Lamp.
THE MERRIMACK
HENRY D. THOREAU
We were thus entering the state of New Hampshire on the bosom of the
flood formed by the tribute of its innumerable valleys. The river was
the only key which could unlock its maze, presenting its hills and
valleys, its lakes and streams, in their natural order and position.
The Merrimack, or sturgeon river, is formed by the confluence of the
Pemigewasset, which rises near the notch of the White Mountains, and
the Winnipiseogee, which drains the lake of the same name, signifying
“The smile of the Great Spirit.” From their junction it runs south
seventy-eight miles to Massachusetts, and thence east thirty-five miles
to the sea. I have traced its stream from where it bubbles out of rocks
of the White Mountains above the clouds, to where it is lost amid the
salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island Beach. It was already the
water of Squam and Newfound Lake and Winnipiseogee, and White Mountain
snow dissolved, on which we were floating, and Smith’s and Baker’s
and Mad Rivers, and Nashua and Souhegan and Piscataquong, and Suncook
and Soucook and Contoocook, mingled in incalculable proportions,
still fluid, yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, ineradicable
inclination to the sea.
So it flows by Lowell and Haverhill, at which last place it first
suffers a sea change, and a few masts betray the vicinity of the ocean.
Between the towns of Amesbury and Newbury it is a broad, commercial
river, from a third to half a mile in width, no longer skirted with
yellow and crumbling banks, but backed by high green hills and
pastures, with frequent white beaches on which fishermen draw up their
nets. I have passed down this portion of the river in a steamboat, and
it was a pleasant sight to watch from its deck the fishermen dragging
their seines on the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign strand.
At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with lumber, standing
up to Haverhill, or else lying at anchor or aground, waiting for wind
or tide, until, at last, you glide under the famous Chain Bridge, and
are landed at Newburyport. From the steeples of Newburyport you may
review this river stretching far up into the country, with many a white
sail glancing over it like an island sea, and behold, as one wrote who
was born on its head-waters, “Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main
blending with the blue above, Plum Island, its sand ridges scalloping
along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the distant outline broken
by many a tall ship, leaning, _still_, against the sky.”
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPANY THE
MERRIMACK]
Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the Merrimack reaches
the sea by a course only half as long, and hence has no leisure to
form broad and fertile meadows, like the former, but is hurried along
rapids, and down numerous falls, without long delay. The banks are
generally steep and high, with a narrow interval reaching back to the
hills, which is only rarely or partially overflown at present, and is
much valued by the farmers. Between Chelmsford and Concord, in New
Hampshire, it varies from twenty to seventy-five rods in many places,
owing to the trees having been cut down, and the consequent wasting
away of its banks. The influence of the Pawtucket Dam is felt as far
as Cromwell’s Falls, and many think that the banks are being abraded
and the river filled up again by this cause. Like all our rivers, it
is liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been known to rise
twenty-five feet in a few hours. It is navigable to vessels of burden
about twenty miles; for canal-boats, by means of locks, as far as
Concord in New Hampshire, about seventy-five miles from its mouth; and
for smaller boats to Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen miles. A small
steamboat once plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the railroad was
built, and one now runs from Newburyport to Haverhill.
Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the sand-bar
at its mouth, see how this river was devoted to the service of
manufactures. Issuing from the iron regions of Franconia, and flowing
through still uncut forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, with
Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and Newfound, and Massabesic Lakes for its
mill-ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where it has
been offering its _privileges_ in vain for ages, until at last the
Yankee race came to _improve_ them. Standing at its mouth, look up its
sparkling stream to its source,--a silver cascade which falls all the
way from the White Mountains to the sea,--and behold a city of each
successive plateau, a busy colony of human beavers around every fall.
Not to mention Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence, and Lowell,
and Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord, gleaming one above the other.
When at length it has escaped from under the last of the factories, it
has a level and unmolested passage to the sea, a mere _waste water_,
as it were, bearing little with it but its fame; its pleasant course
revealed by the morning fog which hangs over it, and the sails of
the few small vessels which transact the commerce of Haverhill and
Newburyport. But its real vessels are railroad cars, and its true and
main stream, flowing by an iron channel farther south, may be traced
by a long line of vapour amid the hills, which no morning wind ever
disperses to where it empties into the sea at Boston. This river was
at length discovered by the white man “trending up into the land,” he
knew not how far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea. Its valley, as
far as the Winnipiseogee, was surveyed in 1652. The first settlers of
Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, in one part of its course
ran north-west, “so near the great lake as the Indians do pass their
canoes into it over-land.” From which lake and the “hideous swamps”
about it, as they supposed, came all the beaver that was traded between
Virginia and Canada--and the Potomac was thought to come out of or from
very near it. Afterwards the Connecticut came so near the course of the
Merrimack that, with a little pains they expected to divert the current
of the trade into the latter river, and its profits from their Dutch
neighbours into their own pockets.
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream,
though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a
swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost
no weeds, and comparatively few fishes. We looked down into its yellow
water with the more curiosity, who were accustomed to the Nile-like
blackness of the former river. Shad and alewives are taken here in
their season, but salmon, though at one time more numerous than shad,
are now more rare. Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and
dams have proved more or less destructive to the fisheries. The shad
make their appearance early in May, at the same time with the blossoms
of the pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is for
this reason called the shad-blossom. An insect called the shad-fly also
appears at the same time, covering the houses and fences. We are told
that “their greatest run is when the apple-trees are in full blossom.
The old shad return in August; the young, three or four inches long,
in September. These are very fond of flies.” A rather picturesque and
luxurious mode of fishing was formerly practised on the Connecticut,
at Bellows Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. “On the steep
sides of the island rock,” says Belknap, “hang several arm-chairs,
fastened to ladders, and secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen
sit to catch salmon and shad with dipping nets.” The remains of Indian
weirs, made of large stones, are still to be seen in the Winnipiseogee,
one of the head-waters of this river.
It cannot but affect our philosophy favourably to be reminded of these
shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers,
and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast
in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in
the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend
their way downwards to the sea. “And is it not pretty sport,” wrote
Captain John Smith, who was on this coast as early as 1614, “to pull up
twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul and veer
a line?”--And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less
hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air
from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea.
THE YEN-E-SAY
HENRY SEEBOHM
We left London on Thursday, the 1st of March, at 8:25 P. M., and
reached Nishni Novgorod on Saturday, the 9th inst., at 10 A. M.,
having travelled by rail a distance of 2,400 miles. We stopped three
days in St. Petersburg to present our letters of introduction and to
pay some other visits. At Nishni we bought a sledge, and travelled
over the snow 3,240 English miles, employing for this purpose about
a thousand horses, eighteen dogs, and forty reindeer. We left Nishni
on the evening of the 10th of March, and travelled day and night in a
generally easterly direction, stopping a couple of days at Tyu-main,
and a day at Omsk, and reached Kras-no-yarsk on the morning of the 2d
of April, soon after crossing the meridian of Calcutta. We rested a day
in Kras-no-yarsk, and sledged thence nearly due north, spending four
days in Yen-e-saisk and three days in Toor-o-kansk.
The Yen-e-say is said to be the third largest river in the world,
being only exceeded in size by the Amazon and the Mississippi. The
principal stream rises in the mountains of Central Mongolia, enters
Siberia near the famous town of Kyakh-ta, on the Chinese frontier, and
flowing through Lake By-kal, passes Eer-kutsk (Irkutsk) the capital
of Siberia, under the name of the An-go-ra or Vairkh-nya, Tun-goosk,
and enters the smaller stream, whose name it subsequently bears, a
few miles south of Yen-e-saisk. Up to this point its length may be
roughly estimated at 2,000 miles, and judging from the time it takes
to sledge across the river at Yen-e-saisk, its width must exceed an
English mile. Following the windings of the river from the latter town
to the Arctic Circle, the road is calculated as a journey of 800 miles,
during which the waters are augmented by two important tributaries,
the Pod-kah-min-a-Tun-goosk and the Nizh-ni-Tun-goosk, which increase
the width of the river to more than three English miles. On the Arctic
Circle it receives an important tributary, the Koo-ray-i-ka, about a
mile wide, and, somewhat more circuitously than appears on our maps,
travels to the islands of the delta, a distance possibly slightly
over-estimated, during which the average width may be about four miles.
The delta and lagoon of the Yen-e-say are about 400 miles in length,
and must average twenty miles in width; making the total length of the
river about 4,000 miles.
Throughout the whole extent of the river, from Yen-e-saisk, in latitude
58° to Gol-chee-ka in latitude 71½°, the banks are generally steep and
lofty, from sixty to one hundred feet above the water-level, and so far
as I could learn, comparatively little land is covered by the summer
floods. The villages on the banks are from twenty to thirty versts
(fifteen to twenty miles) apart, and are of course built upon high
ground. As we sledged down the river, we had always a heavy climb up to
the port stations; and in descending again into the bed of the river,
it sometimes almost made our hearts jump into our mouths to look down
the precipice, which our horses took at a gallop, with half-a-dozen
villagers hanging on the sledge to prevent an upset, a feat they
performed so cleverly, that although many a peasant got a roll in the
snow, we always escaped without any serious accident. We found a
good supply of horses as far as Too-ro-kansk. The second stage from
this town we travelled by dogs, and completed the rest of the journey
by reindeer. Soon after leaving Yen-e-saisk agriculture practically
ceases. A few cows graze on the meadows near the villages, and hay is
cut for their use during winter, but the villagers are too busy fishing
during the short summer to till the land.