Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1885 — In the Land of the Lotos. [ARTICLE]

In the Land of the Lotos.

The city of Bangkok—the capital of the kingdom of Siam -has often been called “Oriental Venice,” because it was what' might be termed a floating city, but it is wholly unlike Venice in almost ever-aspect, except that it is located upon and surrounded by water. It is situated on either side of the magnificent Chow Phya river, and is traversed or divided by a multiplicity of canals called klaungs. Many of these canals are artificial, and are simply uncovered sewers. Some of them weare intended for navigation by small boats, and others as merely lateral conduits or trenches, through which the daily accummulations of the city are carried to the river ,whence they are swept seaward by the clensing tide. From the palace of the King to the extreme lower ehd of the city there are about thirty of these natural and artificial canals, but many of them have been partially closed, or obstructed in such a manner as to prevent the free ingress of the tidal waters of the river. Some of them have been covered by small bamboo buildings thatched with atap, or encroached upon, to such an extent as to wholly impair their usefulness, instead of serving the purposes for which they were originally constructed or designed by nature, they are now the reservoirs of decomposed vegetable and animal substances that emit poisonous vapors which are borne by the wind at certain seasons over the entire city. A little more than a century ago Bangkok was a comparatively insignificant village. Now it is one of the wealthiest as well as one of the most important commercial ports in the far East, and contains nearly 1,000,000 of inhabitants.

The royal city which contains the palaces of the King, treasury buildings, mint, museum, royal gardens, elephant houses, private temple of the King, barracks of royal guard, and the establishment es the princes of the realm, is on the east side of the river, and enclosed by a circular wall about twentyfive feet in height. This wall is composed of earth, brick, and rough stones, but is constructed in a substantial manner. It has ten massive gate?, all of which are closed at midnight and opened usually at 5 o’clock in the morning. Near each of the gates are stone towers overlooking the city. Bangkok has been called “the Asiatic Hades,” in consequence of the excessive heat which prevails there throughout the entireyearr The population of the city is composed of Chinese, Siamese, Malays; Burmese, Camboflians, Javanese, Parsees, and the natives of Madras and Laos. There are also to be found there the representatives of almost every other nationality. Bangkok is a city of strange, natural,, and artificial extremes. On either side there are delightful odors and intolerable stenches, regal splendor aud abject squalor. It is a “garden city,” us its name implies, as it is filled with fruit trees of every variety known in the tropics, and its temples, palaces, and minarets are embowered in perennial verdure. Its sacred edifices are unsurpassed in exterior brilliancy and interior adornment, and its pagodas and prachadees inlaid with porcelain and crystal, under the blaze of a tropical sun, are dazzling and magnificent. Although seldom visited by the ordinary tourist, it is one of the most attractive places in the Far East, and the strange scenes that one beholds on every hand more than repay the visitor who turns aside from the usual route on the journey around the world.— David Sickles, in the Current.