Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1884-01-10
A QUEER COUNTRY.
Curious Aspect Of Life in the King
dom of Siam.

CuFIOiS aspect Oh LIie III Tic Mig
dom of Siam.
That celebrated raiah who compi-
mented British admiral by making
his band play champagne Charlie, "
in the belief that it was the English ma
tional anthem, had scarcely more erro-
neous ideas of the far west than most
untraveled Europeans have of the far
east. If the great use of travelling be,
as some maintain, to teach a man that
he knows nothing, my first fortnight in
the land of the ''golden-footed king"
has indeed been abundantly profitable.
The discovery that Siam is neither an
island in the Straits of Malacca nor a
Chinese province somewhere between
Burmah and Hindustan would of itself
be q sufficient shock to the ordinary
tourist. Worse still, however, must be
the sudden and hopeless collapse of the
Que fact of which he thought himself
certain respecting Siam-viz., that it
produced white elephant, and the
Siamese twins. Fancy the effect of
learning all at once that the white ele-
rhant is not white, and that the Isl
amese" twins were (by their fathers
side. at least,) not SiameSe, their for
tunate progenitor having been a China
man.
Even after India and Malacca, every
thing that one sees in this strange re
gion is kind of surprise in itself. The
printed Siamese character-as a sam
pie of which / have preserved our cards
of invitation from the Kromatah-sug-
gests a row Of posts with two or three
acrObats turning sOmerSaultS over them.
The silver tikal, which is the standard
of value III Siam, looks just like q con-
zeal bullet with it's two ends Knocked
together, and, as the half and quarter
tikals are exactly the same thing on
reduced scale, any commercial transac-
ton is very much like getting change
for 4 rife-ball in buckshot. One of the
fayorite native games is a quaint paro-
dy Of lawn-tennis, without the net,
played by knocking a wicker-work ball
to and fro, not with their hands, but
with their feet, the ball being often
kept up for five minutes together, and
the players using the instep of the foot
or It's sole with equal ease. You call
on your friends in boat or a steam
launch instead Of a carriage, and watch
the tide. Your servants scrub the floor
with cOcoanut shells, and refresh them
selves ut their work by smoking burr,
or dried reeds filled with tobacco,
which, when not in use, they stick be-
hind their ears or between their toes
Men and women look exactly alike,
and do the same work in the same way.
Children run about the streets in the
garb of Adam before his fall, and pass
from land to water and from water to
land as one might 90 from one room
to another. When a Siamese brings
you a message he goes down on all
tours and craWls into your presence
like crocodile, retreating in the same
way with your answer. In word
any one who visits Siam for the first
time may we'll say, with the English
alderman, ''Wonders will never have
done ceasing" As regards the city of
Bankok itself, anyone wishing to pie
ture it has only to imagine a half-built
log town on the wooded banks of some
great American river, favored with
some ten or twenty many-colored Chi
neSe pagodas and a score or so of
quaint, barbaric temples whose peaked
roofs glisten like St. Georges dragon
with the scale-shaped lilies of green and
gold. All these gaudy colorS contrast
strikingly enough with the thick brown
current of the Siamese Mississippi,
which is a match for the Nile itself in
what an Irish essayist calls pure
filth" But this appears to be mere
tritle in the eyes of the natives. 1t is
quite a common thing to see man
drinking freely from the river close to
the spot where a second man is empty
ing Stops, third bathing, and fourth
washing his clothes.-Cor. Nee0 York.