The Herald Advance

Consists of Four Cities.

Bangkok is virtually an aggregation of four associate cities. The European or consular section is the part of Bangkok that takes to tennis and driving after the day's routine, is later comforted by whisky and soda, and finally is wafted into the land of dreams by the cooling draughts of punkahs kept in motion by seemingly tireless Chinese coolies. Next is the Chinese city. Most of the pawnshops of Bangkok are in the Chinese quarter. There, too, have flourished the opium joints.

The Siamese native quarter of the town is characteristic. The greater part of it rests both upon the river's bank and the broad, swift flowing bosom of the Menam. It is virtually nothing more than a succession of piers or rafts, upon which are the native shops, with their open fronts displaying their curious wares at the water's edge, so that the passerby in his boat can see where to stop for his bargaining.

It is in commercial relations that the native woman rises superior; and the masculine shopkeeper will conclude no sale or business deal until he has consulted either his wife or his daughter. With a total population of something like a million souls, quite a number of the capital's citizens live within floating habitations. These floating homes are not all upon the Menam, but lie upon a network of waterways tributary thereto, and this has given Bangkok at times the name of the Venice of the East.

The streets are narrow and ill kept, while the water thoroughfares are wide and deep enough for boat travel. Traffic and intercourse are therefore principally by water and the skill of the native boatman has long been the object of European admiration.

Near the royal habitation are housed the sacred white elephants in a temple or wat built especially for them. Each elephant has its own apartment and personal keeper, and over these attendants, by royal appointment, are several supervising noblemen of the court. The elephants are not really white, but either a light gray or a gray of a pinkish hue. Their eyes are pale and resemble those of a human albino. The so-called white elephant is considered an incarnation of Buddha. The well being of the king and that of the elephants are supposedly intimately identified, hence the reason for the deference accorded those in the palace temple. They are fed on the tenderest of grasses, bananas, herbs, sugar cane and a special sort of coarse biscuit, and for drink they have the purest of water, into which fragrant blossoms are thrown.