* * * * *

The present ruler of Siam, King Rama VI, is in most respects the antithesis of the popular conception of an Oriental monarch. Though polygamy has been practised among the upper classes in Siam from time beyond reckoning, he has neither wife nor concubines. Instead of riding atop a white elephant, in a gilded howdah, or being borne in a palanquin, as is always the custom of Oriental rulers in fiction, he shatters the speed laws in a big red Mercedes. For the flaming silks and flashing jewels which the movies have educated the American public to believe are habitually worn by Eastern potentates, King Rama substitutes the uniform of a Siamese general, or, for evening functions at the palace, the dress coat and knee-breeches of European courts. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge and later graduated from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, being commissioned an honorary colonel in the British Army. He is the founder and chief of an organization patterned after the Boy Scouts and known as the Wild Tigers, which has hundreds of branches and carries on its rolls the name of nearly every youth in the kingdom. Each year the organization holds in Bangkok a grand rally, when thousands of youngsters, together with many adults from all walks of life, for membership in the corps is not confined to boys, are reviewed by the sovereign, who appears in the gorgeous and original uniform, designed by himself, of commander-in-chief of the Wild Tigers.

In one respect, however, King Rama lives up to the popular conception of an Oriental ruler: like his father before him, he is generous to the point of prodigality. This trait was illustrated not long ago, when he sent eight thousand pounds to the widow of Mr. Westengaard, the American who was for many years general adviser to the Government of Siam, accompanied by a message that it was to be used for the education of her son. This recalls a characteristic little anecdote of the present ruler's father, the late King Chulalongkorn. The early youth of the late king and his brothers was spent under the tutelage of an English governess, who was affectionately addressed by the younger members of the royal family as "Mem." Upon her return to England she wrote a book entitled An Englishwoman at the Siamese Court, in which she depicted her employer, King Mongkut, the father of Chulalongkorn, in a none too favorable light. Some years later, upon the occasion of King Chulalongkorn's visit to England, his former governess, now become an old woman, called upon him.

"Mem," he said, in a course of conversation, "how could you write such unkind things about my father? He was always very good to you."

"That is true, Majesty," the former governess admitted in some confusion, "but the publishers wouldn't take the book unless I made it sensational. And I had to do it because I was in financial difficulties."

When she had departed the King turned to one of his equerries. "Send the poor old lady a hundred pounds," he directed. "She meant no harm and she needs the money."

The chief hobby of the present ruler is, curiously enough, amateur dramatics, of which his orthodox and conservative ministers do not wholly approve. In addition to having translated into Siamese a number of Shakesperian plays, he is the author of several original dramas, which have been produced at the palace under his personal direction and in several of which he has himself played the leading parts. As a result of this predilection for dramatics, he has accumulated an extensive theatrical wardrobe, to which he is constantly adding. When I was in Bangkok I had some clothes made by the English tailor who supplies the court—an excellent tailor, but expensive.

"You'll excuse my taking the liberty, I hope, sir," he said during the course of a fitting, "but, being as you are an American, perhaps you could assist me with some information. I've received a very pressing order for a costume such as is worn by the cowboys in your country, sir, but, though I've found some pictures in the English illustrated weeklies, I don't rightly know how to make it."

"A cowboy's costume?" I exclaimed. "In Siam? Who in the name of Heaven wants it?"

"It's for his Majesty," was the surprising answer. "He's written a play in which he takes the part of an American cowboy and he's very particular, sir, that the costume should be quite correct. Seeing as you come from that country, I thought I'd make so bold, sir, as to ask if you could give me some suggestions."

It was quite apparent that he believed that when I was at home I customarily went about in chaps, a flannel shirt and a sombrero, and, knowing the English mind, I realized that nothing was to be gained by attempting to disillusionize him.

"Let's see what you've made," I suggested, whereupon he produced an outfit which appeared to be a compromise between the costume of an Italian bandit, the uniform of an Australian soldier, and the regalia of a Spanish bull-fighter. Suppressing my inclination to give way to laughter, I sketched for the grateful tailor the sort of garments to which cowpunchers—cowpunchers of the screen, at least—are addicted. If he followed my directions the King of Siam wore a costume which would make William S. Hart green with envy.

King Rama's literary efforts have not been confined to playwriting, however, for his book on the wars of the Polish Succession is one of the standard authorities on the subject. If you go to Siam expecting to see an Oriental potentate such as you have read about in novels, His Majesty, Rama VI, is bound to prove very disappointing.



But, though the monarch and his court are as up-to-the-minute as the Twentieth Century Limited, many of the spectacular and colorful ceremonies of old Siam are still celebrated with all their ancient pomp and magnificence. For example, each year, at the close of the rainy season, the King devotes about a fortnight to visiting the various temples in and near Bangkok. On these occasions he goes in the royal barge, a gorgeously decorated affair, 150 feet in length, looking not unlike an enormous Venetian gondola, rowed by three-score oarsmen in scarlet-and-gold liveries. The King, surrounded by a glittering group of court officials, sits on a throne at the stern, while attendants hold over his head golden umbrellas. From the landing place to the temple he is borne in a sedan chair between rows of prostrate natives who bow their foreheads to the earth in adoration of this short, stout, olive-skinned, good-humored looking young man whom nearly ten millions of people implicitly believe to be the earthly representative of Buddha.

* * * * *

Another picturesque observance, the Rice-Planting Ceremony, takes place early in May, when the Minister of Agriculture, as the deputy of the King, leads a long procession of officials and priests to a field in the outskirts of the capital, where a pair of white bullocks, yoked to a gilded plough, are waiting. Surrounded by a throng of functionaries glittering like Christmas trees, the Minister ploughs a few furrows in the field, being followed by four young women of the court who scatter rice grains on the freshly turned soil. Until quite recent years, the officials taking part in this procession claimed the privilege of appropriating any articles which caught their fancy in the shops along the route. But this quaint practise is no longer followed. It was not popular with the merchants. The Siamese, like all Orientals, place much reliance on omens, the position of the lower hem of the panung worn by the Minister of Agriculture on this occasion indicating, it is confidently believed, the sort of weather to be expected during the ensuing year. If the edge of the panung comes down to the ankles a dry season is anticipated, even a drought, perhaps. If, on the contrary, the garment is pulled up to the knees—a raining-in-London effect, as it were,—it is freely predicted that the country will suffer from floods. But if the folds of the silk reach to a point midway between knee and ankle, then the farmers look forward to a moderate rainfall and a prosperous season. It is as though the United States Weather Bureau were to base its forecasts on the height at which the Secretary of Agriculture wore his trousers.

The panung—a strip of silk or cotton about three yards long is the national garment of Siam and among the poorer classes constitutes the only article of clothing. It is admirably adapted to the climate, being easy to wash and easy to put on: all that is necessary is to wind it about the waist, pass the ends between the legs, and tuck them into the girdle, thus producing the effect of a pair of knickerbockers. As both sexes wear the panung, and likewise wear their hair cut short, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish between men and women. Siamese women keep their hair about four or five inches long and brush it straight back, like American college students, without using any comb or other ornament, thus giving them a peculiarly boyish appearance. In explanation of this fashion of wearing the hair there is an interesting tradition. Once upon a time, it seems, a Siamese walled city was besieged by Cambodians while the men of the city were fighting elsewhere and only women and children remained behind. A successful defense was out of the question. In this emergency, a woman of militant character—the Sylvia Pankhurst of her time—proposed to her terrified sisters that they should cut their hair short and appear upon the walls in men's clothing on the chance of frightening away the Cambodians. The ruse succeeded, for, while the invaders were hesitating whether to carry the city by storm, the Siamese warriors returned and put the enemy to flight. The Siamese prince who told me the story, an officer who had spent much of his life in Europe, remarked that he understood that American women were also cutting off their hair.

"True enough," I admitted. "In the younger set bobbed hair is all the vogue. But they don't cut off their hair, as your women did, to frighten away the men."

* * * * *

If you will take down the family atlas and turn to the map of Southern Asia you will see that Siam, with an area about equivalent to that of Spain, occupies the uncomfortable and precarious position of a fat walnut clinched firmly between the jaws of a nut-cracker, the jaws being formed by British Burmah and French Indo-China. And for the past thirty years those jaws have been slowly but remorselessly closing. Until 1893 the eastern frontier of Siam was separated from the China Sea by the narrow strip of Annam, at one point barely thirty miles in width, which was under French protection. Its western boundary was the Lu Kiang River, which likewise formed the eastern boundary of the British possessions in Burmah. On the south the kingdom reached down to the Grand Lac of Cambodia, while on the north its frontiers were coterminous with those of the great, rich Chinese province of Yunnan. Now here was a condition of affairs which was as annoying as it was intolerable to the land-hungry statesmen of Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay. That a small and defenseless Oriental nation should be permitted to block the colonial expansion of two powerful and acquisitive European nations was unthinkable.

The first step in the spoilation of the helpless little kingdom was taken by France in 1893, when, claiming that the Mekong—which the French were eager to acquire under the impression that it would provide them with a trade-route into Southern China—formed the true boundary between Siam and Annam, she demanded that the Siamese evacuate the great strip of territory to the east of that river. Greatly to the delight of the French imperialists, the Siamese refused to yield, whereupon, in accordance with the time-honored rules of the game of territory grabbing, French gunboats were dispatched to make a naval demonstration off Bangkok. The forts at the mouth of the Menam fired upon the gunboats, whereupon the French instituted a blockade of the Siamese capital and at the same time enormously increased their demands. England, which had long professed to be a disinterested friend of the Siamese, shrugged her shoulders whereupon they yielded to the threat of a French invasion and ceded to France the eastern marches of the kingdom. Meanwhile the frontier between Siam and the new British possessions in Burmah had been settled amicably, though, as might have been expected, in Britain's favor, Siam being shorn of a small strip of territory on the northwest. In 1904 the French again brought pressure to bear, their territorial booty on this occasion amounting to some eight thousand square miles, comprising the Luang Prabang district lying east of the Mekong and the provinces of Malupre and Barsak. Seeing that the process of filching territory from the Siamese was as safe and easy as taking candy from children, the French tried it again in 1907, this time obtaining the provinces of Battambang, Sisophon and Siem-Reap, constituting a total of some seven thousand square miles, thus bringing within French territory the whole of the Grand Lac and the wonderful ruins of Angkor. In 1909 it was England's turn again, but, disdaining the crude methods of the French, she informed the Siamese Government that she was prepared to relinquish her rights to maintain her own courts in Siam, the Siamese being expected to show their gratitude for this concession to their national pride by ceding to England the states of Kelantan, Trengganu and Kedah, in the Malay Peninsula, with a total area of about fifteen thousand square miles. It was a costly transaction for the Siamese, but they assented. What else was there for them to do? When a burly and determined person holds you up in a dark alley with a revolver and intimates that if you will hand over your pocketbook he will refrain from hitting you over the head with a billy, there is nothing to do but accede with the best grace possible to his demands. In a period of only sixteen years, therefore, France and England, by methods which, if used in business, would lead to an investigation by the Grand Jury, succeeded in stripping Siam of about a third of her territory. The history of Siam during that period provides a striking illustration of the methods by which European powers have obtained their colonial empires.

It was the Great War which, by diverting the attention of France and England, probably saved Siam from complete dismemberment. Now, in robbing her, they would be robbing an ally and a friend, for in July, 1917, Siam declared war on the Central Powers, despatched an expeditionary force to France, interned every enemy alien in the kingdom and confiscated their property, thus ridding France and England of the last vestige of Teutonic commercial rivalry in southeastern Asia. The Siamese, moreover, have had a national house-cleaning and have set their country in thorough order. Their national finances are now in admirable condition; they have accomplished far-reaching administrative reforms; they are opening up their territory by the construction of railway lines in all directions; and they have obtained the practical abolition of French and British jurisdiction over certain of their domestic affairs, while a treaty which provides that the United States shall likewise surrender its extra territorial rights and permit its citizens to be tried in Siamese courts has recently been signed.

The future of Siam should be of interest to Americans if for no other reason than that it is the one remaining independent state of tropical Asia. Indeed, it is known to its own people as Muang-Thai—the "Kingdom of the Free." Whether it will remain so only the future can tell. I should be more sanguine about the continued independence of the Land of the White Elephant, however, were it not for the colonial records of its two nearest neighbors, which heretofore, in their dealings with Asiatic peoples, have usually followed

"The good old rule ... the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can."



CHAPTER XI

TO PNOM-PENH BY THE JUNGLE TRAIL

Indo-China is a great bay-window bulging from the southeastern corner of Asia, its casements opening on the China Sea and on the Gulf of Siam. Of all the countries of the Farther East it is the most mysterious; of them all it is the least known. Larger than the State of Texas, it is a land of vast forests and unexplored jungles in which roam the elephant, the tiger and the buffalo; a land of palaces and pagodas and gilded temples; of sun-bronzed pioneers and priests in yellow robes and bejeweled dancing girls. Lured by the tales I had heard of curious places and strange peoples to be seen in the interior of the peninsula, I refused to content myself with skirting its edges on a steamer. Instead, I determined to cross it from coast to coast.

I had looked forward to covering the first stage of this journey, the four hundred-odd miles of jungle which separate Bangkok, in Siam, from Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on an elephant. Everyone with whom I had discussed the matter in Singapore had assured me that this was perfectly feasible. And as a means of transportation it appealed to me. It seemed to fit into the picture, as a wheel-chair accords with the spirit of Atlantic City, as a caleche is congruous to Quebec. To my friends at home I had planned to send pictures of myself reclining in a howdah, rajah-like, as my ponderous mount rocked and rolled along the jungle trails. To me the idea sounded fine. But it was not to be. For, in shaping my plans, I had been ignorant of the fact that during the dry season, which was then at hand, Asiatic elephants are seldom worked—that they become morose and irritable and are usually kept in idleness until their docility returns with the rains. I was greatly disappointed.

The overland route thus proving impracticable, so far as the first part of the journey was concerned, the sea road alone remained. Of vessels plying between Bangkok and the ports of French Indo-China there were but two—the Bonite, a French packet slightly larger than a Hudson River tugboat, which twice monthly makes the round trip between the Siamese capital and Saigon; and a Danish tramp; the Chutututch, an unkempt vagrant of the seas which wanders at will along the Gulf Coast, touching at those obscure ports where cargo or passengers are likely to be found. The Bonite swung at her moorings in the Menam, opposite my hotel windows, so, made cautious by previous experiences on other coastwise vessels, I went out in a sampan to make a preliminary survey. But I did not go aboard. The odors which assailed me as I drew near caused me to decide abruptly that I wished to make no voyage on her. The Chutututch, I reasoned, must be better; it certainly could not be worse. And when I approached her owners they offered no objections to earning a few-score extra ticals by extending her itinerary so as to drop me at the tiny Cambodian port of Kep. The next day, then, saw me on the bridge of the Chutututch, smoking for politeness' sake one of the genial captain's villainous cigars, as we steamed slowly between the palm-fringed, temple-dotted banks of the Menam toward the Gulf.



On many kinds of vessels I have voyaged the Seven Seas. I once spent Christmas on a Russian steamer, jammed to her guards with lousy pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, in a tempest off the Syrian coast. On another memorable occasion I skirted the shores of Crete on a Greek schooner which was engaged in conveying from Canea to Candia a detachment of British recruits much the worse for rum. But that voyage on the Chutututch will linger longest in my memory. From stem to stern she was packed with yellow, half-naked, perspiring humanity—Siamese, Laos, Burmans, Annamites, Cambodians, Malays, Chinese—journeying, God knows why, to ports whose very names I had never before heard. They lay so thick beneath the awnings that the sailors literally had to walk upon them in order to perform their work. From the glassy surface of the Gulf the heat rose in waves—blasts from an opened furnace door. The flaming ball of molten brass that was the sun beat down upon the crowded decks until they were as hot to the touch as a railway station stove at white heat. The odors of crude, sugar, copra, tobacco, engine oil, perspiration and fish frying in the galley mingled in a stench that rose to heaven. In the sweat-box which had been allotted to me, called by courtesy a cabin, a large gray ship's rat gnawed industriously at my suit-case in an endeavor to ascertain what it contained; insects that shall be nameless disported themselves upon the dubious-looking blanket which formed the only covering of the bed; cockroaches of incredible size used the wash-basin as a public swimming-pool.

The other cabin passengers were all three Anglo-Saxons—a young Englishman and an American missionary and his wife. These last, I found, were convoying a flock of noisy Siamese youngsters, pupils at an American school in Bangkok, to a small bathing resort at the mouth of the Menam, where, it was alleged, the mercury had been known to drop as low as 90 on cold days. Because of its invigorating climate it is a favorite hot weather resort for the well-to-do Siamese. Here, in a bungalow that had been placed at their disposal by the King, the missionary and his charges proposed to spend a glorious fortnight away from the city's heat. Now do not draw a mental picture of a sanctimonious person with a Prince Albert coat, a white bow tie and a prominent Adam's apple. He was not that sort of a missionary at all. On the contrary, he was a very human, high-spirited, likeable fellow of the type that at home would be a Scout Master or in France would have made good as a welfare worker with the A. E. F. Once, when a particularly obstreperous youngster drew an over-draft on his stock of patience, he endorsed his disapproval with an extremely vigorous "Damn!" I took to him from that moment.

When, their energy temporarily exhausted, his charges had fallen asleep upon the deck and pandemonium had given place to peace, he told me something of his story. For four years he had labored in the Vineyard of the Lord in Chile, but, feeling that he "was having too good a time," as he expressed it, he applied to the Board of Missions for transfer to a more strenuous post. He obtained what he asked for, with something over for good measure, for he was ordered to a post in the northeastern corner of Siam, on the Annam frontier. If there is a more remote or inaccessible spot on the map it would be hard to find it. Here he and his wife spent ten years preaching the Word to the "black bellied Laos," as the tattooed savages of that region are known. Then he was transferred to Bangkok. There are no roads in Siam, so he and his wife and their five small children made the long journey by river, in a native dugout of less than two feet beam, in which they traveled and ate and slept for upwards of two weeks.

I asked him if he wasn't becoming weaned of Bangkok, which, as a place of residence, leaves much to be desired.

"Yes, I've had about enough of it," he admitted. "I'm anxious to get away."

"Back to the Big Town?" I suggested. "To God's Country?"

"Oh, no; not back to the States," he hastened to assure me. "I haven't finished my job out here. I want to get back to my people in the interior again."

Whether you approve of foreign missions or not, it is impossible to withhold your respect and admiration from such men as that. Though at home they are too often the butts of ignorant criticisms and cheap witticisms, they are carrying civilization, no less than Christianity, into the world's dark places. They are the real pioneers. You might remember this the next time an appeal is made in your church for foreign missions.

The young Englishman was likewise an outpost of progress, though in a different fashion. For seven years he had worn the uniform of an officer in the Royal Navy. At the close of the war, seeing small prospect of promotion, he had entered the employ of a British company which held a vast timber concession in the teak forests of northern Siam, far up, near the Chinese border. He was, he explained, a "girdler," which meant that his duties consisted in riding through the forest area allotted to him, selecting and girdling those trees which, three years later, would be cut down. To girdle a tree, as everyone knows, is to kill it, which is what is wanted, there being no market for green teak, which warps. He remained in the forest for four weeks at a stretch, he told me, without seeing a white man's face, his only companions his coolies and his Chinese cook. His domain comprised a thousand square miles of forest through which he moved constantly on horseback, followed by elephants bearing his camp equipage and supplies. Once each month he spent three days in the village where the company maintains its field headquarters. Here he played tennis and bridge with other girdlers—young Englishmen like himself who had come in from their respective districts to make their monthly reports—and in gleaning from the eight-weeks-old newspapers the news of that great outside world from which he was a voluntary exile. One would have supposed that, after seven years spent in the jovial atmosphere of a warship's wardroom, his solitary life in the great forests would quickly have become intolerable, and I expressed myself to this effect. But he said no, that he was neither lonely nor unhappy in his new life, and that his fellow foresters, all of whom had seen service in the Army, the Navy or the Royal Air Force, were equally contented with their lot. I could understand, though. The wilderness holds no terrors for anyone who went through the hell of the Great War.

We dropped anchor at midnight off Chantaboun, where a launch was waiting to take him ashore. He was going up-country, he told me, to inspect a timber concession recently acquired by the company that employed him. Yes, he would be the only white man, but he would not be lonely. Besides, he would only be in the interior a couple of months, he said. He followed the coolies bearing his luggage down the gangway and dropped lightly into the tossing launch, then looked up to wave me a farewell.

"Good luck," he called cheerily.

"Good luck to you!" said I.

That is the worst of this gadding up and down the earth—it is always—"How d'ye do?" and "Good-by."

Three days out of Bangkok the anchor of the Chutututch rumbled down off Kep, on the coast of Cambodia. Kep consists of a ramshackle wooden pier that reaches seaward like a lean brown finger, an equally decrepit custom house, a tin-roofed bungalow which the French Government maintains for the use of those fever-stricken officials who need the tonic of sea air, a cluster of bamboo huts thatched with nipa—nothing more. You will not find the place on any map; it is too small.

It is in the neighborhood of three hundred kilometers from Kep to Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and for nearly the entire distance the highway has been hewn through the most savage jungle you can imagine. There was only one motor car in Kep and this I hired for the journey. I say hired, but bought would be nearer the truth. It was an aged and decrepit Renault, held together with string and wire, and suffering so badly from asthma and rheumatism that more than once I feared it would die on my hands before I reached my destination. It had as nurses two Annamites, who took unwarranted liberties with the truth by describing themselves as mechaniciens. Accompanying them were two sullen-faced Chinese. All four of them, I found, proposed to accompany me to Pnom-Penh. At this I protested vigorously, on the ground that, as the lessee of the machine, I had the right to choose my traveling companions, but my objections were overruled by the Chef des Douanes, the only French functionary in Kep, who assured me that if the car went the quartette must go, too. One of the Annamites, he explained, was the chauffeur, the other was the cranker, for in Indo-China automobiles are not equipped with self-starters and the chauffeurs firmly refuse to crank their own cars. They thus "save their face," which is a very important consideration in the estimation of Orientals, and they also provide easy and pleasant jobs for their friends. It is an idea which some of the labor unions in America might adopt to advantage. I make no charge for the suggestion. The two Chinese, it appeared, were the joint owners of the machine, and both insisted on going along because neither would trust the other with the hire-money. Thus it will be seen, we made quite a cozy little party.

The road to Pnom-Penh, as I have already remarked, leads through a peculiarly lonely and savage region. And it is very narrow, bordered on either side by walls of almost impenetrable jungle. A place better adapted for a hold-up could hardly be devised. And of the reputations or antecedents of my four self-imposed companions, I knew nothing. Nor was there anything in their faces to lend me confidence in the honesty of their intentions. As we were about to start a native gendarme beckoned me to one side.

"Beaucoup des pirats sur la route, M'sieu," he warned me in execrable French.

"Brigands, you mean?" I asked him.

"Oui, M'sieu."

That was reassuring.

"How about these men?" I inquired, indicating the motley crew who were to accompany me. "Are they to be trusted?"

He shrugged his shoulders non-commitally. It was evident that he did not hold of them a high opinion.

Producing my .45 caliber service automatic, I slipped a clip into the magazine and ostentatiously laid it beside me on the seat. It is the most formidable weapon carried by any civilized people. True, the German Lueger is larger....

"Tell them," I said to the policeman, "that this gun will shoot through twenty millimeters of pine. Tell them that they had better dispose of their property and burn a few joss-sticks before they start to argue with it. And tell them that, no matter what happens, the car is to keep going."

But I was by no means as confident as I sounded, for the road was notoriously unsafe, nor did I put much trust in my companions. I confess that I felt much happier when that portion of my journey was over.

As the road to Pnom-Penh is quite uninteresting—just a narrow yellow highway chopped through a dense tangle of tropic vegetation—suppose I take advantage of the opportunity to tell you something of this little-known land in which we find ourselves.

French Indo-China occupies perhaps two-thirds of that great bay-window-shaped peninsula which protrudes from the southeastern corner of Asia. In area it is, as I have already remarked, somewhat larger than Texas; its population is about equal to that of New York and Pennsylvania combined. It consists of five states: the colony of Cochin-China, the protectorates of Cambodia, Annam and Tongking, and the unorganized territory of Laos, to which might be added the narrow strip of borderland, known as Kwang Chau Wan, leased from China. In 1902 the capital of French Indo-China was transferred from Saigon, in Cochin-China, to Hanoi, in Tongking.

By far the most interesting of these political divisions is Cambodia, which, for centuries an independent kingdom, was forced in 1862 to accept the protection of France. An apple-shaped country, about the size of England, with a few score miles of seacoast and without railway or regular sea communications, it lies tucked away in the heart of the peninsula, its southern borders marching with those of Cochin-China, its frontier on the north co-terminous with that of Siam. Though the octogenarian King Sisowath maintains a gorgeous court, a stable of elephants, upwards of two-hundred dancing-girls, and one of the most ornate palaces in Asia, he is permitted only a shadow of power, the real ruler of Cambodia being the French Resident-Superior, who governs the country from the great white Residency on the banks of the Mekong.

I know of no region of like size and so comparatively easy of access (the great liners of the Messageries Maritimes touch at Saigon, whence the Cambodian capital can be reached by river-steamer in two days) which offers so many attractions to the hunter of big game. Unlike British East Africa, where, as a result of the commercialization of sport, the cost of going on safari has steadily mounted until now it is a form of recreation to be afforded only by war profiteers, Cambodia remains unexploited and unspoiled. It is in many respects the richest, as it is almost the last, of the world's great hunting-grounds. It is, indeed, a vast zoological garden, where such formalities as hunting licenses are still unknown. In its jungles roam elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, leopards, panthers, bear, deer, and the savage jungle buffalo, known in Malaya as the seladang and in Indo-China as the gaur—considered by many hunters the most dangerous of all big game.

Nailed to the wall of the Government rest-house at Kep was the skin of a leopard which had been shot from the veranda the day before my arrival, while raiding the pig-pen. The day that I left Kampot an elephant herd, estimated by the native trackers at one hundred and twenty head, was reported within seven miles of the town. Twice during the journey to Pnom-Penh I saw tracks of elephant herds on the road—it looked as though a fleet of whippet tanks had passed.

Nevertheless, I should have put mental question-marks after some of the big game stories I heard while I was in Indo-China had I not been convinced of the credibility of those who told them. Only a few days before our arrival at Saigon, for example, an American engaged in business in that city set out one morning before daybreak, in a small car, for the paddy-fields, where there is excellent bird-shooting in the early dawn. The car, which, owing to the intense heat, had no wind-shield, was driven by the Annamite chauffeur, the American, a double-barrel loaded with bird-shot across his knees, sitting beside him on the front seat. Rounding a turn in the jungle road at thirty miles an hour, the twin beams of light from the lamps fell on a tiger, which, dazzled and bewildered by the on-coming glare, crouched snarling in the middle of the highway. There was no time to stop the car, and, as the jungle came to the very edge of the narrow road, there was no way to avoid the animal, which, just as the car was upon it, gathered itself and sprang. It landed on the hood with all four feet, its snarling face so close to the men that they could feel its breath. The American, thrusting the muzzle of his weapon into the furry neck of the great cat, let go with both barrels, blowing away the beast's throat and jugular vein and killing it instantly. With the aid of his badly frightened driver, he bundled the great striped carcass into the tonneau of the car and imperturbably continued on his bird-shooting expedition. Some people seem to have a monopoly of luck.

Though Saigon and Pnom-Penh do not possess the facilities for equipping shooting expeditions afforded by Mombasa or Nairobi, and though in Indo-China there are no professional European guides, such as the late Major Cunninghame; the elaborate and costly outfits customary in East Africa, with their mile-long trains of bearers, are as unnecessary as they are unknown. The arrangements for a tiger hunt in Indo-China are scarcely more elaborate and certainly no more expensive, than for a moose hunt in Maine. A dependable native shikari who knows the country, a cook, half-a-dozen coolies, a sturdy riding-pony, two or three pack-animals, a tent and food, that is all you need. With such an outfit, particularly in a region so thick with game as, say, the Dalat Plateau, in Annam, the hunter should get a shot at a tiger before he has been forty-eight hours in the bush. In a clearing in a jungle known to be frequented by tigers, the carcass of a bullock, or, if that is unavailable, of a pig, is fastened securely to a stake and left there until it smells to high heaven. When its odor is of sufficient potency to reach the nostrils of the tiger, the hunter takes up his position in the edge of the clearing, or on a platform built in a tree if he believes in Safety First. For investigating the kill the tiger usually chooses the dimness of the early dawn or the semi-darkness which precedes nightfall. With no warning save a faint rustle in the undergrowth a lean and tawny form slithers on padded feet across the open—and the man behind the rifle has his chance. I have found, however, that even in tiger lands, tigers are by no means as plentiful as one's imagination paints them at home. It is easy to be a big-game hunter on the hearth-rug.

Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, stands on the west bank of the mighty Mekong, one hundred and seventy miles from the sea. Pnom, meaning "mountain," refers to the hill, or mound, ninety feet high, in the heart of the city; Penh was the name of a celebrated Cambodian queen. Until twenty years ago Pnom-Penh was a filthy and unsanitary native town, its streets ankle-deep with dust during the dry season and ankle-deep with mud during the rains. But with the coming of the French the flimsy, vermin-infested houses were torn down, the hog-wallows which served as thoroughfares were transformed into broad and well-paved avenues shaded by double rows of handsome trees, and the city was provided with lighting and water systems. The old-fashioned open water sewers still remain, however, lending to the place, a rich, ripe odor. Pnom-Penh possesses a spacious and well ventilated motion-picture house, where Charlie Chaplin known to the French as "Charlot" and Fatty Arbuckle convulse the simple children of the jungle just as they convulse more sophisticated assemblages on the other side of the globe.

But all that is most worth seeing in Pnom-Penh is cloistered within the mysterious walls of vivid pink which surround the Royal Palace. Here is the residence of His Majesty Prea Bat Samdach Prea Sisowath, King of Cambodia; here dwell the twelve score dancing-girls of the famous royal ballet and the hundreds of concubines and attendants comprising the royal harem; here are the stables of the royal elephants and the sacred zebus; here a congeries of palaces, pavilions, throne halls, dance halls, temples, shrines, kiosks, monuments, courtyards, and gardens the like of which is not to be found outside the covers of The Thousand and One Nights. It is an architectural extravaganza, a bacchanalia of color and design, as fantastic and unreal as the city of a dream. The steep-pitched, curiously shaped roofs are covered with tiles of every color—peacock blue, vermilion, turquoise, emerald green, burnt orange; no inch of exposed woodwork has escaped the carver's cunning chisel; everywhere gold has been laid on with a spendthrift hand. And in this marvelous setting strut or stroll figures that might have stepped straight from the stage of Sumurun—fantastically garbed functionaries of the Household, shaven-headed priests in yellow robes, pompous mandarins in sweeping silken garments, bejeweled and bepainted dancing-girls. It is not real, you feel. It is too gorgeous, too bizarre. It is the work of stage-carpenters and scene-painters and costumers, and you are quite certain that the curtain will descend presently and that you will have to put on your hat and go home.

From the center of the great central court rises the famous Silver Pagoda. It takes its name from its floor, thirty-six feet wide and one hundred and twenty long, which is covered with pure silver. When the sun's rays seep through the interstices of the carving it leaps into a brilliancy that is blinding. On the high walls of the room are depicted in startling colors, scenes from the life of Buddha and realistic glimpses of hell, for your Cambodian artist is at his best in portraying scenes of horror. The mural decorations of the Silver Pagoda would win the unqualified approval of an oldtime fire-and-brimstone preacher. Rearing itself roofward from the center of the room is an enormous pyramidal altar, littered with a heterogeneous collection of offerings from the devout. At its apex is a so-called Emerald Buddha—probably, like its fellow in Bangkok, of translucent jade—which is the guardian spirit of the place. But at one side of the altar stands the chief treasure of the temple—a great golden Buddha set with diamonds. The value of the gold alone is estimated at not far from three-quarters of a million dollars; at the value of the jewels one can only guess. It was made by the order of King Norodom, the brother and predecessor of the present ruler, the whole amazing edifice, indeed, being a monument into which that monarch poured his wealth and ambition. Ranged about the altar are glass cases containing the royal treasures—rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds of a size and in a profusion which makes it difficult to realize that they are genuine. It is a veritable cave of Al-ed-Din. The covers of these cases are sealed with strips of paper bearing the royal cypher—nothing more. They have never been locked nor guarded, yet nothing has ever been stolen, for King Sisowath is to his subjects something more than a ruler; he is venerated as the representative of God on earth. For a Cambodian to steal from him would be as unthinkable a sacrilege as for a Roman Catholic to burglarize the apartments of the Pope. And should their religious scruples show signs of yielding to temptation, why, there are the paintings on the walls to warn them of the torments awaiting them in the hereafter. It struck me, however, that the Silver Pagoda offers a golden, not to say a jeweled opportunity to an enterprising American burglar.

On the south side of the courtyard containing the Silver Pagoda is a relic far more precious in the eyes of the natives, however, than all the royal treasures put together—a footprint of Buddha. It was left, so the priests who guard it night and day reverently explain, by the founder of their faith when he paid a flying visit to Cambodia. Over the footprint has been erected a shrine with a floor of solid gold. Buddha did not do as well by Cambodia as by Ceylon, however, for whereas at Pnom-Penh he left the imprint of his foot, at Kandy he left a tooth. I know, for I have seen it.

In an adjacent courtyard is the Throne Hall, a fine example of Cambodian architecture, the gorgeous throne of the monarch standing on a dais in the center of a lofty apartment decorated in gold and green. Close by is the Salle des Fetes, or Dance Hall, a modern French structure, where the royal ballet gives its performances. Ever since there have been kings in Cambodia each monarch has chosen from the daughters of the upper classes two hundred and forty showgirls and has had them trained for dancing. These girls, many of whom are brought to the palace by their parents when small children and offered to the King, eventually enter the monarch's harem as concubines. Admission to the royal ballet is to a Cambodian maiden what a position in the Ziegfeld Follies is to a Broadway chorus girl. It is the blue ribbon of female pulchritude. Unlike Mr. Ziegfeld's carefully selected beauties, however, who frequently find the stage a stepping-stone to independence and a limousine, the Cambodian show-girl, once she enters the service of the King, becomes to all intents and purposes a prisoner. And Sisowath, for all his eighty-odd years, is a jealous master. Never again can she stroll with her lover in the fragrant twilight on the palm-fringed banks of the Mekong. Never again can she leave the precincts of the palace, save to accompany the King. The bars behind which she dwells are of gold, it is true, but they are bars just the same.

When I broached to the French Resident-Superior, who is the real ruler of Cambodia, the subject of taking motion-pictures within the royal enclosure, he was anything but encouraging.

"I'm afraid it's quite impossible," he told me. "The King is at his summer palace at Kampot, where he will remain for several weeks. Without his permission nothing can be done. Moreover, the royal ballet, which is the most interesting sight in Cambodia, is never under any circumstances permitted to dance during his Majesty's absence."

"But why not telegraph the King?" I suggested, though with waning hope. "Or get him on the telephone. Tell him how much the pictures would do to acquaint the American public with the attractions of his country; explain to him that they would bring here hundreds of visitors who otherwise would never know that there is such a place as Pnom-Penh. More than that," I added diplomatically, "they would undoubtedly wake up American capitalists to a realization of Cambodia's natural resources. That's what you particularly want here, isn't it—foreign capital?"

That argument seemed to impress the shrewd and far-seeing Frenchman.

"Perhaps something can be done, after all," he told me. "I will send for the Minister of the Royal Household and ask him if he can communicate with the King. As soon as I learn something definite, you will hear from me."

The second day following I received a call from the chief of the political bureau.

"Everything has been arranged as you desired," was the cheering news with which he greeted me. "The defile will take place in the grounds of the palace tomorrow morning. Already the necessary orders have been issued. Thirty elephants with their state housings; eighty ceremonial cars drawn by sacred bullocks; the royal body-guard in full uniform; a delegation of mandarins in court-dress; a hundred Buddhist priests attached to the royal temple; and, moreover, his Majesty has granted special permission an unheard-of thing, let me tell you!—for the royal ballet to give a performance expressly for you to-morrow afternoon on the terrace of the throne-hall. It will be a marvelous spectacle."

"Bully!" I exclaimed. "Won't you have a drink?"

"There is one thing I forgot to mention," the official remarked hesitatingly, as he sipped the gin sling which is the favorite drink of the tropics. "There will be a small charge for expenses—tips, you know, for the palace officials."

"Oh, that's all right," I replied lightly. "How much will the tips amount to?"

"Only about two hundred piastres," was the somewhat startling answer, for, at the then current rate of exchange a piastre was worth about $1.50 gold. "The resident will pay half of it, however, as he believes that the pictures will prove of great value to the country."

Yet most people think that tipping has reached its apogee in the United States!



When we entered the gate of the palace the next morning, I felt as though I had been translated to the days of Haroun-al-Raschid, for the vast courtyard, flanked on all sides by marble buildings with tiled roofs of cobalt blue, of emerald green, of red, of brilliant yellow, was literally crowded with elephants, bullocks, horses, chariots, palanquins, soldiers, priests, and officials all the pomp and panoply of an Asiatic court, in short. Though close examination revealed the gold as gilt and the jewels as colored glass, the general effect was undeniably gorgeous. In spite of the brilliance of the scene, Hawkinson was as blase as ever. He issued orders to the Minister of the Household as though he were directing a Pullman porter.

"Have those elephants come on in double file," he commanded. "Then follow 'em with the bullock-carts and the palanquins. I'll shoot the priests and the mandarins later."

"But the priests must be taken at once," the minister protested. "They have been waiting a long time, and they are already late for the morning service in the royal temple."

"Well, they'll have to wait still longer," was the unruffled answer. "Tell them not to get impatient. I'll get round to them as soon as I finish with the animals. Think what it will mean to them to have their pictures shown on the same screen with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford! I know lots of people who would be willing to wait a year for such a chance."

Just then there approached across the courtyard a trio of youths in white uniforms and gold-laced kepis, their breasts ablaze with decorations. At sight of them the minister doubled himself in the middle like a jack-knife. They were, it appeared, some of the royal princes—sons of the King.

There ensued a brief colloquy between the minister and the eldest of the princes, the conversation evidently relating, as I gathered from the gestures, to the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow, who at the moment were delightedly engaged in feeding candies to a baby elephant.

"His Highness wishes to know," the minister interpreted, "when the ladies of your company are to appear. His Highness is a great admirer of American actresses; he saw your most famous one, Mademoiselle Theda Bara, at a cinema in Singapore."

It seemed a thousand pities to destroy the prince's delusion.

"Tell his Highness," I said, "that the ladies will not act in this picture. They only play comedy parts."

The princes received the news with open disappointment. If the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow had only consented to appear on the back of an elephant, or even in a palanquin, I imagine that they might have received a mark of the royal favor in the form of a Cambodian decoration. It is a gorgeous affair and is called, with great appropriateness, the "Order of a Million Elephants and Parasols."



That afternoon, on the broad marble terrace of the throne-hall, which had been covered with a scarlet carpet for the occasion, the royal ballet gave a special performance for our benefit. The dancers were much younger than I had anticipated, ranging in age from twelve to fifteen. Dancing has ever been a great institution in Cambodia, the dances, which have behind them traditions of two thousand years, being illustrative of incidents in the poem of the Ramayana and adhering faithfully to the classical examples which are depicted on the walls of the great temple at Angkor, such as the dancing of the goddess Apsaras, her gestures, and her dress. The costumes worn by the dancing-girls were the most gorgeous that we saw in Asia: wonderful creations of cloth-of-gold heavily embroidered with jewels. Most of the dancers wore towering, pointed head-dresses, similar to the historic crowns of the Cambodian kings, though a few of them wore masks, one representing the head of a fox, another a fish, a third a lion, which could be raised or lowered, like the visors of medieval helmets. The faces of all of the dancers were so heavily coated with powder and enamel that they would have been cracked by a smile. It was a performance which would have astonished and delighted the most blase audience on Broadway, but there in the heart of Cambodia, with the terrace of a throne-hall for a stage, with palaces, temples, and pagodas for a setting, with a blazing tropic sun for a spot-light, and with actors and audience clad in costumes as curious and colorful as those worn at the court of the Queen of Sheba, it provided a spectacle which we who were privileged to see it will remember always. What a pity that Cap'n Bryant was not alive so that I might sit on the steps of his Mattapoisett cottage and tell him all about it.



CHAPTER XII

EXILES OF THE OUTLANDS

From Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, to Saigon, the capital of Cochin-China, is in the neighborhood of two hundred miles and two routes are open to the traveler. The most comfortable and considerably the cheapest is by the bi-weekly steamer down the Mekong. The alternative route, which is far more interesting, consists in descending the river to Banam, a village some twenty miles below Pnom-Penh, on the opposite bank of the Mekong, where, if a car has been arranged for, it is possible to motor across the fertile plains of Cochin-China to Saigon in a single day. That was the way that we went.

Though separated only by the Mekong, that mighty waterway which, rising in the mountains of Tibet, bisects the whole peninsula, Cochin-China is as dissimilar from Cambodia as the ordered farmlands of Ohio are from the Florida Everglades. In Cambodia, stretches of sand covered with low, scraggy, discouraged-looking scrub alternate with tangled and impenetrable jungles. It is a savage, untamed land. Cochin-China, on the other hand, is one great sweep of plain, green with growing rice and dotted with the bamboo poles of well-sweeps, for water can be found everywhere at thirty to forty feet. These striking contrasts in contiguous states are due in some measure, no doubt, to differences in their soils and climates and to the industry of their inhabitants, but more largely, I imagine, to the fact that while the Frenchman has been at work in Cochin-China for upwards of sixty years, Cambodia is still on the frontier of civilization.

The roads which the French have built in Indo-China deserve a paragraph of mention, for, barring the rivers and the three short unconnected sections of railway on the East coast of the peninsula, they form the country's only means of communication. The national highways consist of two great systems. The Route Coloniale, which was the one I followed, has its beginning at Kep, on the Gulf of Siam, runs north-eastward through the jungles of Cambodia to Pnom-Penh, and, recommencing at Banam, swings southward across the Cochin-China plain to Saigon. The Route Mandarine, beginning at Saigon, hugs the shores of the China Sea and, after traversing twelve hundred miles of jungle, forest and mountain land in Annam and Tongking, comes to an end at Hanoi, the capital of Indo-China. The entire length of the Route Mandarine may now be traversed by auto-bus—an excellent way to see the country provided you are inured to fatigue, do not mind the heat, and are not over-particular as to your fellow passengers. A motor car is, of course, more comfortable and more expensive; a small one can be rented for ninety dollars a day.

Nowhere has the colonizing white man encountered greater obstacles than those which have confronted the French road-builders in Indo-China; nowhere has Nature turned toward him a sterner and more forbidding face. But, though their coolies have died by the thousands from cholera and fever, though their laboriously constructed bridges have been swept away in a night by rivers swollen from the torrential rains, though the fast-growing jungle persistently encroaches on the hard-won right-of-way, though they have had to combat savage beasts and still more savage men, they have prosecuted with indomitable courage and tenacity the task of building a road "to Tomorrow from the Land of Yesterday."

Saigon, the capital of Cochin-China and the most important place in France's Asiatic possessions, is a European city set down on the edge of Asia. So far as its appearance goes, it might be on the Seine instead of the Saigon. The original town was burned by the French during the fighting by which they obtained possession of the place and they rebuilt it on European lines, with boulevards, shops, cafes, a Hotel de Ville, a Theatre Municipal, a Musee, a Jardin Botanique, all complete. The general plan of the city, with its regular streets and intersecting boulevards, has evidently been modeled on that of the French capital and the Saigonnese proudly speak of it as "the Paris of the East." In certain respects this is taking a considerable liberty with the truth, but they are very lonely and homesick and one does not blame them. Most of the streets, which are paved after a fashion, are lined with tamarinds, thus providing the shade so imperatively necessary where the mercury hovers between 90 and 110, winter and summer, day and night. At almost every street intersection stands a statue of some one who bore a hand in the conquest of the country, from the cassocked figure of Pigneau de Behaine, Bishop of Adran, the first French missionary to Indo-China, to the effigy of the dashing Admiral Rigault de Genouilly, flanked by charging marines, who took Saigon for France.

The most characteristic feature of Saigon is its cafe life. During the heat of the day the Europeans keep within doors, but toward nightfall they all come out and, gathering about the little tables which crowd the sidewalks before the cafes in the Boulevard Bonnard and the Rue Catinat, they gossip and sip their absinthes and smoke numberless cigarettes and mop their florid faces and argue noisily and with much gesticulation over the news in the Courrier de Saigon or the six-weeks-old Figaro and Le Temps which arrive fortnightly by the mail-boat from France. They wear stiffly starched white linen—though the jackets are all too often left unfastened at the neck—and enormous mushroom-shaped topees which come down almost to their shoulders and are many sizes too large for them, and they consume vast quantities of drink, the evening usually ending in a series of violent altercations. When the disputants take to backing up their arguments with blows from canes and bottles, the cafe proprietor unceremoniously bundles them into pousse-pousses, as rickshaws are called in Saigon, and sends them home.

Along the Rue Catinat in the evenings saunters a picturesque and colorful procession—haggard, slovenly officers of the troupes coloniales and of the Foreign Legion, the rows of parti-colored ribbons on their breasts telling of service in little wars in the world's forgotten corners; dreary, white-faced Government employees, their cheeks gaunt from fever, their eyes bloodshot from heavy drinking; sun-bronzed, swaggering, loud-voiced rubber planters in riding breeches and double Terais, down from their plantations in the far interior for a periodic spree; women gowned in the height of Paris fashion, but with too pink cheeks and too red lips and too ready smiles for strangers, equally at home on the Bund of Shanghai or the boulevards of Paris; shaven-headed Hindu money-lenders from British India, the lengths of cotton sheeting which form their only garments revealing bodies as hairy and repulsive as those of apes; barefooted Annamite tirailleurs in uniforms of faded khaki, their great round hats of woven straw tipped with brass spikes like those on German helmets; slender Chinese women, tripping by on tiny, thick-soled shoes in pajama-like coats and trousers of clinging, sleazy silk; naked pousse-pousse coolies, streaming with sweat, graceful as the bronzes in a museum; friars of the religious orders in shovel-hats and linen robes; sailors of the fleet and of the merchant vessels in the harbor, swaggering along with the roll of the sea in their gait; Armenian peddlers with piles of rugs and embroideries slung across their shoulders; Arabs, Indians, Malays, Cambodians, Laos, Siamese, Burmese, Chinese, world without end, Amen.

But, beneath it all, a paralysis is on everything—the paralysis of the excessive administration with which the French have ruined Indo-China. There are too many people in front of the cafes and too few in the offices and shops. There is too much drinking and too little work. The officials are alternately melancholy and overbearing; the natives cringing and sullen. It is not a wholesome atmosphere. Corruption, if not universal, is appallingly common. Foreigners engaged in business in Saigon told me that it is necessary to "grease the palms" of everyone who holds a Government position. As a result of this practise, officials who are poor men when they arrive in the colony retire after four or five years' service with comfortable fortunes—and France does not pay her public servants highly either. And there are other vices. The manager of a great American corporation doing business in Saigon told me that ninety per cent of the city's European population are confirmed users of opium. And, judging from their unhealthy pallor and lacklustre eyes, I can well believe it. But what else could you expect in a country where the drug is sold to anyone who has money to pay for it; where it is one of the Government's chief sources of revenue?

On the native population the hand of the French lies heavily. In 1916 there was an attempted jail delivery of political prisoners in Saigon, but the plot was discovered before it could be put into execution, the ring-leaders arrested, and thirty-eight of them condemned to death. They were executed in batches of four, kneeling, blind-folded, lashed to stakes. The firing party consisted of a platoon of Annamite tirailleurs. Behind them, with machine guns trained, was drawn up a battalion of French infantry. The occasion was celebrated in Saigon as a public holiday, hundreds of Frenchmen, accompanied by their wives and children, driving out to see the sight. The next day picture postcards of the execution were hawked about the streets. But the authorities in Paris evidently disapproved of the proceeding, for the governor of the colony and the commander of the military forces were promptly recalled in disgrace. The terrible object-lesson doubtless had the desired effect, for the natives cringe like whipped dogs when a Frenchman speaks to them. But there is that in their manner which bodes ill for their masters if a crisis ever arises in Indo-China. I should not like to see our own brown wards, the Filipinos, look at Americans with the murderous hate with which the Annamites regard the French. In Africa, by moderation and tolerance and justice, France has built up a mighty colonial empire whose inhabitants are as loyal and contented as though they had been born under the Tricolor. But in far-off Indo-China French administration seems, even to as staunch a friend of France as myself, to be very far from an unqualified success.

During the ten days that I spent in Saigon I stayed at the Hotel Continental. I shall remember it as the place where they charged a dollar and a half for a highball and fifty cents for a lemonade. It was insufferably hot. I can sympathize now with the recalcitrant convict who is punished by being sent to the sweat-box. Battalions of ferocious mosquitoes launched their assaults against my unprotected person with the persistence that the Germans displayed at Verdun. In the next room the tenor of the itinerant grand opera company that was giving a series of performances at the Theatre Municipal squabbled unceasingly with his woman companion. Both were generally much the worse for drink. One particularly sultry afternoon, when the whole world seemed like the steam room of a Turkish bath, their voices rose to an unprecedented pitch of violence. Through the thin panels of the door came the sound of scuffling feet. Some heavy article of furniture went over with a crash. Then came the thud of a falling body.

"Thou accurst one!" I heard the tenor groan. Then "Help me!... I'm dying!"

"She's done it now!" I exclaimed, springing from my bed.

"Are you stifling with blood?" the woman hissed, fierce exultation in her tone.

"Help me!... I'm dying!" moaned the man. "And done to death by a woman!"

It was murder—no doubt about that. Clad only in my pajamas though I was, I prepared to throw myself against the door.

"Die, thou accurst one! Perish!" shrieked the woman.

I was on the point of bursting into the room when I was arrested by the sound of the tenor's voice speaking in normal tones. There followed a woman's laugh. I paused to listen. It was well that I did so. They were rehearsing for the evening's performance the murder scene from La Tosca!

On another occasion, long after midnight, I was aroused from sleep by a terrific racket which suddenly burst forth in the streets below. I heard the crash of splintering bottles followed by the steps of the native gendarmes beating a hasty retreat. Then, from throats that spoke my own tongue, rose the rollicking words of a long-familiar chorus:

"I was drunk last night, I was drunk the night before, I'll get drunk tomorrow night If I never get drunk any more; For when I'm drunk I'm as happy as can be, For I am a member of the Souse Fam-i-lee!"

Leaning from my casement, I hailed a passing Frenchman.

"Who are they?" I asked him.

"Les touristes Americains sont arrives, M'sieu," he answered dryly.

By the light of the street-lamps as he turned away I could see him shrug his shoulders.

Thinking it over, it struck me that I had been overharsh in my judgment of the homesick exiles who in this far corner of the earth are clinching the rivets of France's colonial empire.

The next morning I set sail from Saigon for China. Leaving the mouth of the river in our wake, we rounded the mighty promontory of Cap St. Jacques and headed for the open sea. The palm-fringed shore line of Cochin-China dropped away; the blue mountains of Annam turned pale and ghostly in the evening mists. A sun-scorched, pestilential land.... I was glad to leave it. But already I am longing to return. I want once more to sit at a cafe table beneath the awnings of the Rue Catinat, before me a tall glass with ice tinkling in it. I want to hear the pousse-pousse coolies padding softly by in the gathering twilight. I want to see the little Annamite women in their sleazy silken garments and the boisterous, swaggering legionnaires in their white helmets. I want to stroll once more beneath the tamarinds beside the Mekong, to smell the odors of the hot lands, to hear again the throbbing of the tom-toms and the soft music of the wind-blown temple bells. For

"When you've 'eard the East a-callin' You won't never 'eed naught else."



Transcriber's Notes:

Inconsistencies in the hyphenation of words preserved. (blind-folded, blindfolded; body-guard, bodyguard; coast-guard, coastguard; co-operation, cooperation; co-terminous, coterminous; cock-fighting, cockfighting; harbour-master, harbourmaster; head-dresses, headdresses; light-houses, lighthouses; net-work, network; off-shore, offshore; old-time, oldtime; three-score, threescore; to-day, today; to-morrow, tomorrow; water-front, waterfront; white-washed, whitewashed; wide-spread, widespread)

Table of Contents, heading for Chapter IX says "PROSPECT RULERS AND COMIC OPERA COURTS" while the chapter heading in the main text says "PUPPET RULERS AND COMIC OPERA COURTS". "PUPPET" is more likely to have been the word intended by the author but the original words have been preserved in both cases.

Pg. 73, opening double quote mark at beginning of paragraph removed as text here does not appear to be quoted speech and there is no closing quote at the end. (There is held each year)

Pg. 79, "Portgual" changed to "Portugal". (King of Portugal, had shifted)

Pg. 148, "ampitheatre" is more commonly spelled "amphitheatre". Author's original text preserved.

Pg. 209, "Turquoise Mosque in Samarland". "Samarland" is more likely to be "Samarkand" but the author's original text is preserved.

Pg. 221, "Chulalungkorn" is spelled elsewhere in the text "Chulalongkorn". Author's original text preserved.

Pg. 237, inserted closing double quote mark. (know how to make it.")

Pg. 265, inserted opening double quote mark. (he greeted me. "The)

THE END