"BIJREPUREE," OR THE DIAMOND CITY.
Meanwhile his Majesty was better, and it was the last day of October.
So the court and I, with my boy, and all the most favored of the
royal family, set out for our annual visit to Bijrepuree,--leaving
the Invincible City and the disconsolate princess with her pale-faced
companions to the care of the high officials Mai Ying Thaphan within,
and the Kroma Than Song Wang without.
Bijrepuree, or Petchabury, as it is commonly called, is the third city
in size, and second in importance, in Siam, and is situated nearly one
hundred and fifty miles in a south-westerly direction from Bangkok, on
a river of the same name, which waters a country a thousand-fold more
picturesque and beautiful than that around Bangkok. As you ascend the
river, a chain of mountains varying from seventeen to nineteen hundred
feet in height rises above the surrounding country, the loftiest of
which is called Khoa L'huang, or Royal Mountain. This is one of his
Majesty's most favored country residences. A splendid palace has been
built on its summit, on which five hundred laborers have been employed
daily for ten years, and it is still (1866) unfinished. A winding path
which leads up to it has been admirably contrived amid the volcanic
rocks which cover the surface of this mountain district. I climbed to
no such favored spot during my residence in Siam.
On the hither side far away stretches from north to south a chain of
mountains called Khoa Dèng, and inhabited by many rude and independent
tribes of the primitive Kariengs. Beyond these again rises another
chain of lofty hills, the outlines of which appear like misty clouds in
the distant horizon.
On the slopes and in the valleys are immense forests of magnificent
trees, hiding in their dark recesses myriads of unknown plants and
lesser forests of ferns, with palm-trees, rice-fields, tobacco and
sugar plantations looking intensely dark in the setting sun, and
dividing the lights and shades into numberless soft radiating shafts
which fall in a red haze of different degrees of strength on the
pellucid river that flows gently through them.
Then to the south and east stretches another plain, and beyond this
lies the Gulf of Siam, on whose waters, fading away in the distant
horizon, were sometimes sparkingly revealed a few scattered sail,
outward and homeward bound.
On the peaks of several mountains adjoining the royal residence rise
stately temples and p'hra-cha-dees. All over these mountains the
workmen are still toiling, laying out the grounds into gardens and
shrubberies. In the centre of many of them may be seen beautiful stone
vases of Egyptian form, cut out of the self-same rock, and filled
with gorgeous flowers. Attached to the palace is a school-house and a
residence for the teacher, with a private chapel for the ladies; but no
distinct "harem," or woman's city, as at Bangkok. Those of the women
who accompany the king on his annual visits have rooms allotted to them
in the western wing of the palace, which is only curtained off by a
wall and guarded by Amazons.
[Illustration: CRENELLATED TOWERS OF THE INNER CITY.]
We, that is the young Prince Somdetch Chow Fa, my boy, and I, made the
most of our visit to this delightful region, rambling over the hills
and forests, gathering wild flowers, and visiting the hot springs,
caves, and grottos, which form some of the more interesting features
of the neighborhood. In the foreground, near the school-house, stood a
clump of ferns full of pictures; a little farther on was a cave, over
the mouth of which trailed huge convolvuli; and immediately above it an
overhanging rock variegated with natural tints and colors, the effect
of which was most wonderful.
From this spot there were tempting walks through groves of dark green
trees, opening upon wide terraces which commanded exquisite views of
the country, rich with cultivation or dotted with houses and gardens,
or the still more fertile valleys, winding amongst which might be
traced the silvery thread of the Diamond River.
Not far from the Royal Mountain are several grottos, two of which are
of surprising extent and great beauty, an exact painting of which would
be looked upon with incredulity, or as an invention of fairy land.
Whatever may have been the origin of these grottos, owing to the
moisture continually dropping through the damp soil of the rocks they
have been clothed with the richest and most harmonious colors, and
adorned with magnificent stalactites, which rise in innumerable slender
shafts and columns to support the roof and walls. The setting sun
reveals a gorgeous mass of coloring, ending in dark blue and purple
shadows in the distant chambers and hollows.
I never witnessed such wonderfully illusive transformations as the
sunlight effected wherever it penetrated these subterranean halls. No
human hands have as yet touched their marvellous walls and roofs and
pillars. All that has been done by man is to cut a staircase in the
rock, to aid the descent into the grottos, and enable the visitor to
see them in all their regal beauty.
The largest grotto has been converted into a Buddhist temple; all along
the richly tinted rock-walls are contemplative images of the Buddha,
and in the centre, just where is concentrated the richest depth of
coloring, lying on a horizontal bed of rock, is a large sleeping idol
of the same inevitable figure, with the same mysterious expression
about the closed eyelids, as if he were in the habit, even in sleep, of
penetrating distant worlds, in his longing to gaze upon the Infinite.
Lower down the mountain lies a calm lake, with its smooth silvery
surface ever and anon broken by the leaping of a fish, as if to prove
that it is water and not glass, and beyond the lake are more mountains
rolling up into the sky in purple and green folds, with the faintest of
blue borders and crimson-tipped edges, for they are many miles off.
It was evening, and we had just spent a delicious fortnight here,
teaching in the mornings and rambling in the evenings, and his Majesty
had assured me, to my great delight, that we should stay yet another
while among the mountains; my boy and I had retired to our little rocky
nest, around which there was an impression of savage grandeur and of
loneliness almost overpowering, and where I used to imagine the "Hill
Giants," of whom I had heard so much, lurking in secret in the caves
and hollows, as ready to tear the Royal Mountain from its base and cast
it into the gulf beyond, for the pitiless way in which the monarch
doomed those poor five hundred slaves to toil on and on, without any
prospect of ever coming to an end, in smoothing and shaping its rugged
sides. And it was here that I first realized and appreciated the belief
of the simple people about me in ghosts and spirits, pleasant and
unpleasant:--
"Genii in the air,
And spirits in the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts with eyes as fair
As starbeams through the twilight trees."
But in spite of them all we were sleeping soundly that night in the
third story of our little eyry, when, about three o'clock in the
morning, the sound of tocsins, gongs, and trumpets was flung out all
over the distant hills and mountains, and re-echoed tauntingly, like
the cry of so many demons full of mad sport, in the multitudinous
voices of the rocky solitudes. We were suddenly transported from deep
sleep to wide-awake realities, to find the royal palace all alive with
lights and sedans and horsemen, and torch-bearing, shadowy phantoms,
issuing from dark portals, gliding hither and thither among the rocks,
and coming towards us.
What did it all mean?
The whole thing looked so mysterious that I at first thought the king
was dead, or that the palace was besieged, or that the "favorite,"
Peam, taking advantage of the mountain fastnesses, had run away.
The torchlight phantoms proved to be veritable brawny Amazons, who came
to inform us that the court would return to Bangkok within an hour.
"What! not stay another fortnight?" I inquired, sadly.
"No, not another hour. Get ready to follow," was the peremptory order.
And so, on the third day succeeding, we were all settled down in our
respective places at Bangkok.