ention.

The Oriental Hotel, the banks, the shipping offices, the business
houses, and all the legations save only the American, are clustered on
or near the river in a low-lying and unattractive quarter of the town.
But follow the long, dingy, squalid highway known as the New Road, a
thoroughfare lined with third-rate Chinese shops and thronged with
rickshaws, carriages, bicycles, motors, street-cars, and Asiatics of
every religion and complexion, and you will come at length into a
portion of the city as different from the mercantile district as
Riverside Drive is from the Bowery. Here you will find broad
boulevards, shaded by rows of splendid tamarinds, lined by charming
villas which peep coyly from the blazing gardens which surround them,
and broken at frequent intervals by little parks in which are fountains
and statuary. There is a great common, green with grass during the
rainy season, known as the Premane Ground, where military reviews are
held and where the royal cremations take place; a favorite spot in the
spring for the kite-flying contests in which Siamese of all classes and
all ages participate. Fronting on the Premane Ground are the not
unimposing stuccoed buildings which house the Ministries of Justice,
Agriculture and War. Not far away is the new Throne Hall, a huge,
ornate structure of white marble, in the modern Italian style, its
great dome faintly reminiscent of the Capitol at Washington. From the
center of the spacious plaza rises a rather fine equestrian statue of
the late king, Chulalungkorn, and, close by, the really charming Dusit
Gardens, beautifully laid out with walks and lagoons and kiosks and a
great variety of tropical flowers and shrubs and trees. But, most
characteristic and colorful of all, a touch of that Oriental splendor
which one looks for in Siam, is the congeries of palaces, offices,
stables, courtyards, gardens, shrines and temples, the whole encircled
by a crenelated, white-washed wall, which is the official residence of
King Rama VI.

There are said to be nearly four hundred Buddhist temples within a
two-mile radius of the royal palace, of which by far the most
interesting and magnificent is the famous Wat Phra Keo, or Temple of
the Emerald Buddha, which is really a royal chapel, being within the
outer circumference of the palace walls. I doubt if any space of
similar size in all the world contains such a bewildering display of
barbaric magnificence, such a riot of form and c