IN SIAM. A BOOK OF YELLOW-ROBE LAND.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 28, 3 February 1908, Page 2

IN SIAM. A BOOK OF YELLOW-ROBE LAND.

Siam is the green country shaped like a camel kneeling, kneeling between pink Burma and lilac Annam. Take youx atlas and regard it : see now near it is to Australia, which is so close to New Zealand, and ponder how far it is in imagination. Have jou thought once about Siam this year? True, it is not necessary; but Mr. Ernest Young shows us that it may bo diverting. Siam is strange aud picturesque, simmering away up there in the heat, with its great lukewarm river running into its considerable tropical gulf. Mr. Ernest Young surely enjoyed! himself there, since his book is co enjoyable. Called "Tho Kingdom of the Yellow Robe," it gives the most piquant family portrait of the Siamese that 1 have met in English. A discriminating public has purchased it into a third edition, issued in a revised form by Constable and Co., London, at the price of 5s net. Life in Siam remains as it was hundreds of years ago. It is a somnolent slice of Asia, inhabited) by a simple race, who live slowly and gladly and get a lot of pleasure out of the process. Mr. Young varies his description of the people with many pictures, nearly all interesting. Bu^ his pictures in prose are more interesting. H» succeeds in setting a fragment of Siamese life before us in its own bright colours, with a gaiety that befits. Beginning at Bangkok, the capital, "the Venice of the East," sitting asprawl on the vast and lazy Menam, ho wanders hither and thither among habits and traditions, laws and ceremonies, and entertains us well. There are few tra-vel-books more charming. It i 3 rather warm in Siam. The rather warmness is felt throughout Mr. Young's book as the atmospheric effect il is. The thermometer is not obtruded, yet due feels that the mercury has mounted, and! may presently fnll— plop !— on a page. The Siamese, when they can afford it, suit themselves to the climate, All tho business of the State, and all tho pleasures of Society, are conducted in tho cool hours of evening, night, or early morning. During tho broiling daylight beauty sleeps and officialdom rests. Apparently all the Siamese are either beautiful or official. There are nearly as many Chineso in the country as there are Siamese-, and the Chineso do tho hard work. The Siamese do the governing, as we do. ISven in Siam the unlucky Chinaman suffers a poli-tax, but itamounts only to five or six shillings, payable every three years to a. Siamese policeman. ' The streets of Bangkok are so many rainbows of colour, especially 'at the Chinese New Year. Then pigtails dangle above rich silken robes of heliotrope, or lavender, or green, or yellow— all fresh from the pawnshops, whither they will presently return to be kept safely for another year. The hot, bright sunlight falls impartially on the Siamese and all the A'aces that they welcome. In every ( crowd maY be seen Sikhs in scarlet turbans, Bdrmese in yellow and pint, Malays in gaudy sarongs, Lao 3 in dark striped petticoats ; as well a,s Annamese, lvlings, Tamils, and Japan, ese, each dressed in the garb that untunes of custom havo defined as^iis own particular method of clothing his nakedness. "When to the effect of all these pleasing colours," says Mr. Young, "is added the happy merriment of thousands of faces that have never yet experienced the fierce struggle for 'existence, a scene is realised which is nowhere to be met with except in the sun-kissed lands of the East." / The lower part ' of Siam is a wilderness< of canals, called "khlcngs." Almost everything in Siam goes by khlong. Until recently there were hardly any roads in the kingdom, and even since recently a road by any other name would be 'described as filthy. It is on water, rather than on land, that the Siamese are at home. The khJongs go criss-cross-ing everywhere, and on the khlongs sail or 1 paddle the Siamese in a thousand kinds of barges, rafts, canoes, and house-boats. The lower part of Siam was once the head of the Gulf., The tides of a receding sea are filling up the Gulf with mud, rapidly overgrown by tropical jungle. Canals aro easily cut, and the obedient water follows the digger all over the lower country. Menam i& the Siamese word for river: literally and approximately "mother-Vv-ater." All the Siamese rivers are "menam," and the big "Menam" of th 3 maps has in Siamese an appellation added to signify tha* it is the lord and master of rivers. The Gulf does its best to fill up the Menam, and has succeeded in piling at the entrance a liberal bar of sand and mud. When a Siamese Minister for Foreign Affairs was asked why no attempt was made to remove this bar, so making the river more -navigable, he replied. "For the same reasons that you English don't relish the idea of a Channel tunnel." The, neighbouring countries of Annam, Cochin-China, Cambodia, and Burma, now owe allegiance to a foreign government; and tho only remaining independent Buddhist monarch is King dralalongkorh of Siam. Mr. Young adds thousands of facts concerning tho customs, laws, and religious ceremonies of the Siamese ; ho surveys their public and domestic life; and always he contrives to amuso us. It may be profitable to end with his quotation of tho Siamese reasons for permitting a man to have as many wives as he pleases, while they refuse to grant a like privilege to women folk. Woman, they say, is man's inferior, Is under his control, and may not be allowed the luxury of (possessing two masters. Besides, if a woman had several husbands, she would never know who was the father of her children, and ,the chil.dren, not knowing their own father, I might possibly at some time or other injure him, or even commit parricide without knowing it. And, moreover, there- is a remarkable difference in the several dispositions of men and women ; men, however many wives they have, and whatever their feelings towards them, would never desire to kill them, I bub if women had moro husbands than one, they would wish to put to death all except tho one they liked best, for buch is their nature. A.G.S.