Siam and Laos, as Seen by Our American Missionaries

HIS SUPREME MAJESTY, CHULALANGKORN I., KING OF SIAM. _Frontispiece._ BURMESE TEMPLE 23 RUINS OF A PAGODA AT AYUTHIA 29 SIAMESE GENTLEMAN IN MODERN COURT-DRESS 32 SIAMESE LADY IN...

When about to visit a foreign country the prudent traveler is careful to seek in guidebooks and from maps some data in regard to its position, prominent features and relation to...

To give you some idea of Bangkok, the capital city of Siam, I will imagine myself once more a resident there, with you for a visitor, and will invite you this fine morning to ta...

In the cool season in Siam, or in the months of December and January, the missionaries frequently go in boats into the country, to be absent two, three, or four weeks at a time,...

Our mission-boat, with its drawers and cupboards and shelves for storing away food, clothes, etc., awaits us at Bangkok. Rowers are hired for twenty-four cents per day, with eno...

Provided with a tropical climate, the forests and jungles, the air and the water of Siam, teem with animal life. The elephant heads the list. It is said that the king can muster...

There is no census taken in this country, and even the government has no positive means of knowing the number of inhabitants. But we may safely suppose the above statement to be...

In a Siamese home, which stood in the midst of most beautiful fruit-gardens, where the rosy-cheeked pomegranate nodded and played hide-and-seek among its leaves with the purple...

All ordinary Siamese houses must have three rooms. Indeed, so important is this considered that the suitor must often promise to furnish the requisite number before the parents...

When the Siamese young folks get up in the morning they do not go to the washstand to wash their faces, for the simple reason that Siamese houses can boast no such article of fu...

The attention of the traveler as he passes in his boat along the rivers and canals of Siam, in town or country, is often arrested by the sound of music proceeding from beneath a...

In Siam schools are made up of boys and girls, just as they are in other countries. But the boys and girls of Siam are not made of “sugar and spice and all that’s nice,” but of...

Siamese holidays are very different from those of Europe and America. They have no Christmas, for, as a nation, they know nothing about Christ. Their New Year holidays, strange...

All the front of the room in which the gamblers are seated is open to the river. As you pass along you may see them in a brilliant light, sitting in two parties on the floor, an...

The human body is supposed to be composed of the same elements, which they divide into two classes――visible and invisible. To the former belong everything that can be seen, as t...

Those indeed were dreadful days in the summer of 1849, when, after being free from it thirty years, cholera again broke out in Siam; when in less than a fortnight more than twen...

When a Buddhist prince or princess is at the point of death, the attendants, wishing to give the departing spirit as good a passport into the spirit-world as possible, suspend e...

“On the pagoda-spire The bells are swinging, With their little golden circlets in a flutter With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter, Till all are ringing As if a choir O...

Of immense advantage to the Buddhist faith, and equally an obstacle to the development of any other religion, is the fact that Siamese history, on being traced back beyond the m...

Paint to your fancy a village of curious Oriental houses, with a high, thick wall, three miles in circuit, surrounding it. In this village, or miniature city, are the king’s qua...

The Siamese monarchy is not hereditary――that is, not in the sense that that term is understood in Europe. There is what is called the _Senabodee_, or royal counselors, consistin...

The American trading-vessel, commanded by Captain Coffin, which in 1829 brought to this country the famous “Siamese Twins,” brought also an earnest appeal for aid in evangelizin...

You will read in the following pages of a people about whom little is known and less published――a people possessing many qualities of remarkable attractiveness, and yet having n...

As the newly-arrived missionary for Laos stands in Bangkok and looks “up the river,” the five hundred miles that lie between him and Cheung Mai mean more to him perhaps than any...

My friends often say to me, “Tell us something about Laos, where you lived when a child.” Listen, then, to a few of the things I remember about Cheung Mai, the people who live i...

Let me take you in imagination to our home in the Laos country. The house is on the banks of the river Maping, and faces the west. As you walk from the front gate up through the...

The cabin of the picture could hardly have been copied from any one in Cheung Mai. In the garden districts temporary huts may be found which resemble this one. But these, being...

A full account of the superstitions of the Laos would very fairly represent their intellectual attainments: their reasoning facilities are entirely in subjection to the imaginat...

The treatment of the sick among the Laos ranks as a distinct profession. Although the Laos doctors may not have classified their knowledge of diseases in a way that we should ca...

This journey was made by G. W. Vrooman, M. D., and the Rev. Mr. McGilvary in 1872, to ascertain, in a portion of the East but little known to us, the size and comparative import...

Cheung Mai is one of the five northern Laos provinces belonging to Siam. This northern Laos country is bounded on the north (lat. 20° 20′ N.) by the Shan states, tributary to In...