From The Minster Magazine. THE LAND OF SIAM.

closely. Joe's gallant stroke had done its work; the thing's back was broken. We knew he was an adder. Adders, THE real white elephant has never we had been told, had flat heads, all been an object of worship. He has poisonous snakes have them; it took | always been highly prized by the king no great effort of imagination to see of Siam for the same reason that a garthe head of this creature flat. Adders, dener prizes a black tulip because it we had been told, had a diamond mark is rare, and hence the proverb that has all down the back; we were not famil- passed into our language to betoken iar with diamonds, but were sure that something that is of embarrassing rarthis snake had these marks. Another ity and utter uselessness. The provblow still left the poor brute wriggling. Then Joe told us, what of course we knew already, that snakes never die till sunset. This was a complication, for it was necessary for us to bear home in triumph this proof of our prowess. At length, however, we managed to wedge him in the cleft of a stick, pushing him in, with the greatest respect, by means of another stick; and in this manner, while his wrigglings grew weaker, we contrived, without touching him, to bear him home; and summoned all and sundry to witness the dragon of which we had rid the earth.

Of course the Authorities said it was nothing but a grass snake. We had known in our heart of hearts, that it would be so. Authorities, we reflected bitterly, had always some malignant way for belittling our achievements, nor were matters bettered by the knowledge that this way was the way of truth; it only showed once again with what reserve one should put trust in the sympathy of Authorities. Two whole days were needed to arrive at the frame of mind in which we were ready to confess to ourselves that it really was a grass snake; and after that it was our dearest ambition to take unto ourselves such a snake for a pet. We had heard that they made the most delightful pets, living in a box under glass, feeding on slugs and on bread and milk, and revelling in an occasional bath in a basin of water. Luckily, perhaps, we never had the opportunity again of catching a snake unawares; luckily, we say, for perhaps on that occasion it might have happened to be a viper.

erb is a little unjust to the white elephant, for history declares that he was not always so unserviceable. Mounted on a white elephant, the king of Siam used to lead his army against the Burmese, and the black elephants of the enemy no sooner caught sight of the unnatural color than they charged through their own line in wild flight. The white elephant is to the black what the white Yorkshire pig is to his Berkshire cousin. He is an albino, as the white pig was originally, before his color was fixed by generations of artificial selection. Like the pig, the white elephant is of a pale, unwholesome pink or flesh-color. The eyes, dark brown in a black elephant, are in the albino pale blue. There are in Siam two varieties of elephant-a large, tuskless species, strong, fierce, and untamable, and a smaller kind with tusks, which can be easily broken to work if not too old. The large species, handicapped as they are, have been known to fight and kill a full-grown tusked male of the smaller breed. Albinos have never been found among them, and the species itself is said to be fast approaching extinction. Once a year a herd of the smaller species is driven into a corral built of tree trunks, and, after the most likely looking of the young animals have been noosed, the rest are set at liberty. Yet, in spite of this rough treatment, wild elephants show no sign of diminution.

White elephants are too valuable to be allowed to risk injury in the scrimmage that takes place at the gate of the corral; too profitable to their captors to await the annual hunt. As soon as one of them is seen, the swiftest of the tame elephants of the district is chosen

to carry his pursuer. Armed with a The history of Siam is full of traglasso, the hunter scours the forests of edy. Dynasties have changed, and the hill country where the beast was with every change the founder of the last seen until he finds him. From new line has waded to the throne that moment he never leaves the trail through blood. Even the legitimate until the noose has been drawn tight succession of sons to their fathers was about the hind leg of the flying quarry. not always unstained by bloodshed. To experienced elephant hunters the Until lately it was not the custom for rest is easy. Shackled to two tame the king to nominate his successor. elephants, the captive is escorted down The eldest son of the principal queen the river to Bangkok, whither the news usually succeeded, but since the king of his capture has preceded him. The had more than one wife of high rank, new ideas from the West, that are so it was difficult to distinguish between fast obliterating the landmarks of old the claims of their children. Success Siam, have not impaired his value, fell to him who had the most powerful although he is doomed to stand idle in adherents, and these, for their own the palace stables instead of honorably safety, compelled their protégé to inaucarrying the king at the head of a vic-gurate his reign by executing his rival torious army. The fortunate captor brothers. Princes of the blood had the still receives knighthood and a graut of distinction of being executed in a more money.

painful way than the common herd of malefactors. The ordinary criminal received the apologies of his executioner seated cross-legged upon the ground. Until he gave his pardon for the libcrty that was to be taken with him, the execution could not go on; but, so courteous is the Siamese nature, that there is no recorded case of the pardon

mo

At the present time the king has five white elephants, one of which is no larger than a pony, and a sixth of a hideous piebald of brown and black. They are to Siam what the lion is to England, the national emblem, and they give their name to the most honorable order of merit in the gift of the king. White elephants were the being withheld from interested cause of the first humbling of Siam tives. The victim's ears were then by Burmah. In 1548, King Maha Jak-plugged with clay to deaden the sound ra-pâd (King-of-the-white-elephants) of the executioner's approach, and, as owned no less than seven, and the he sat with bowed head, the swordsfame of this vast wealth reached the man drew nearer and nearer in a sort king of Burmah. Envoys were sent of conventional dance, and at last sevto beg two out of the seven for their ered the vertebra at a single stroke. master, and within a few months of Then he rushed off to the nearest temtheir repulse a Burmese army en-ple to be purified, leaving his assistant camped at the gates of the city of to lift the prone head, and finish the Ayuthia. Taken by surprise, the Si- business with his knife. The blood of amese king was fain to meet the in- princes was not shed; their life was vader at a spot without the walls, where beaten out of them. Tied up in a kind an image of Buddha was set up and of sack, they were fastened to a short priests sat on lofty seats as assessors in post with a cross-beam under their the dispute. The Burmese king now chins. Four men armed with bludgdemanded a war indemnity of four ele- eons then ran upon them from behind, phants, and the king's eldest son and each dealing them a heavy blow on the chief minister, who had counselled him nape of the neck. The quivering bodto deny the suit of the envoys, as hos-ies were seized and flung, sack and all, tages. To all these humiliating de- into the river. Such were the privi mands the king of Siam was fain to leges of being born in the purple.

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His courtship to the dark-browed night; And we had such sweet secrets to tell to While images of molten seas,

From The London Quarterly Review.

SIR WILLIAM PETTY.1

with much judgment. The result is a volume with which all students of the period must of necessity make themselves familiar.

LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE has produced one of the most valuable biographies of the season. It will William Petty was born at Rumsey, scarcely be popular, but it is singularly in Hampshire, on May 26, 1623. His instructive. It recalls attention to a father was a clothier, and, as Aubrey scientific man who took a chief part in notes, "did dye his own cloths." The founding the Royal Society, and whose chief amusement of Petty's boyhood brain teemed with projects for the im- was to watch the skilled workmen of provement of shipping, of trade, and of the little town-smiths, watchmakers, education. It allows us to step behind carpenters and joiners-busy at their the scenes in the later days of the Com-trades. At twelve years old, Aubrey monwealth, and throws a flood of light says, with some pardonable exaggeraon those difficult problems in Ireland tion, he could have worked at any of which taxed the resources and the pa- these trades. The boy had a vein of tience of the government so sorely in satirical humor and a power in caricathe latter half of the seventeenth cen- ture drawing which made the townsfolk tury. Sir William Petty was one of take special note of the precocious little the pioneers of modern science and fellow. Petty describes himself as of political economy; he accomplished perfect cheiromantes.' His Hampone of the greatest feats ever attempted shire school gave him a grounding in by a surveyor, and proved himself in Greek and Latin, which proved of many trials a man of rare courage and steadfast purpose. He was the maker of his own fortune, and from the time when as a cabin-boy he astonished the people of Caen by talking in Latin down to the last day of his life he proved himself worthy of respect and admiration, bent, as Jean Paul Richter would have said, on making the best of the stuff, on using every faculty and opportunity to the highest advantage.

The biography is founded on the Bowood manuscripts, including Petty's own papers, which afterwards came into the hands of his grandson, the Earl of Shelbourne, and Sir William's letters to his friend, Sir Robert Southwell, which appear to have been added to the collection at Bowood by the third Marquis of Lansdowne. Scattered manuscripts in the Sloane and Egerton collections at the British Museum and in the Rawlinson collection at the Bodleian have also been used

a

much service in later days. When he was fifteen, Petty made some unsuccessful attempts to exchange home and employment with a lad from the Channel Islands. He afterwards bound himself apprentice to the master of a vessel in which he sailed for France. Aubrey says, "he knew not that he was purblind [short-sighted] till his master bade him climb up the rope ladder; and give notice when he espied a steeple, somewhere upon the coast, which was a landmark for the avoiding

of a shelf. At last the master saw it

from the deck; and they fathomed, and found they were but in foot water; whereupon as I remember his master drubbed him with a cord." The sailors, who were jealous because he knew so much more about the art of navigation than themselves, ill-treated him and finally abandoned him with a broken leg at a little French inn near Caen. He was able to tell his story in Latin, and all Caen began to talk about 1 The Life of Sir William Petty, 1623-1687. One "Le petit Matelot Anglois qui parle of the First Fellows of the Royal Society; some Latin et Grec." As soon as he could time Secretary to Henry Cromwell, Maker of the "Down Survey" of Ireland, Author of "Political move, an officer sent for him in order Arithmetic," etc. Chiefly derived from Private that he might learn something about Documents hitherto unpublished. By Lord Ed- the tactics of the English navy. mond Fitzmaurice, author of the "Life of William, he got employment as a teacher of

Earl of Shelbourne. With Map and Portraits.
London: John Murray. 1895. 168.

Then

English, and saved enough to buy a