TEMPLES AND ELEPHANTS.*
MR. CARL BOCK'S travels extended between four and five hundred miles nearly due north from Bangkok, the furthest point reached being Kiang-Tsen. Any one who will compare the map which he gives of his route with recent atlases will see that he has made no inconsiderable additions to our knowledge of an in- teresting country. Siam, with its dependency, Lao, is a country which, as far as anything beyond the coast region is concerned, has been little visited. Mr. Bock, indeed, claims to have been the first European traveller who has penetrated into Lao since Lieutenant Macleod, in 1837. Yet its situation would seem to bring it easily within the circle of Europeanising influences. British Burmah skirts it on the west, while the newly awakened spirit of conquest or colonising in the French is active on the east. Its ruler, too, is not averse to Western ideas. The traveller is loud in praise of Chulaloukou I., the enlightened monarch who for the last fifteen years has occupied the throne of Siam. His portrait has nothing of the Oriental about it, but shows an elegant young gentleman, in a military uniform blazing with decorations, and might very well be passed off as the likeness of one of the obscurer Kuropean princes who have of late years been decorated, or decorated them- selves, with the title "king." He has been well educated, under European influences, is acquainted with English, though it is etiquette to seem ignorant of it and to employ an interpreter when he gives audience, and numbers several Europeans among his confidential friends and advisers. If Great Exhibitions are held to be a true note of civilisation, then King Chula- lonkou has had one at Bangkok. A more substantial proof of enlightened ideas is his action with regard to slavery, which is being gradually abolished; all children of slaves born since 1872 being free. But, as Mr. Bock says, his Majesty is at least a hundred years in advance of his subjects, and hatred of the foreigner, shown, however, by petty annoyances rather than by any active hostility, is still a dominant feeling over the greater part of his dominions.
Though Temples and Elephants (to whom do we owe this un- happy title?) adds, as we have said, to our geographical know- ledge, it is somewhat disappointing as a book of travel. The element of personal adventure is prominent, but it is not of a very interesting kind. It is, perhaps, unreasonable to make it a complaint against a traveller that he has no hair-breadth escapes to relate, but it is certainly. true that the difficulties which Mr. Karl Bock encountered were common-place and, at least to those who read of them, unexciting. How the princes of the towns which he visited would not give him lodgings at all, or give him only lodgings that were ruinous, how they re- fused him elephants or supplied only she-elephants (to give a traveller a she-elephant seems to be as insulting as it would be to mount a friend on a donkey in the" Shires"), what difficulties they made about provisions, are, for the most part, the dis- agreeables of travel which he has to relate ; and they do not excite either pity or terror, or even amusement. The -King, whose knowledge of English made him a competent judge in the matter, remarked to the traveller, on his return to the capital, that his difficulties had been partly owing to the incompetence of his interpreter. The fact of his having been compelled to use an interpreter at all, of course, seriously detracts from the value of his observations, as it, doubtless, added to the disagreeables of his journeying. We are sometimes reminded, as we read, of what seems to have been
• Templea and Elephants the Narrative of a Journey of Exploration through 17pper Siam and Lao. By Carl Bock. London: Sampson Low and Co. 1884.
the experience of Herodotus in Babylonia and Egypt. The old Greek traveller was probably anxious to do his best (for we cannot accept Professor Sayce's theory of his deliberate dis- honesty), but he must have been very much at the mercy of deluding interpreters and hoaxing priests. Another circum- stance, which detracts from the value of his book, is that he was made by the King to promise that he would make no observations on political matters, an undertaking which he has fulfilled, though, to his own harm and the harm of his readers. Still, all deductions made, much that is of interest and value remains.
"White Elephants" naturally claim a place of honour among the subjects of which Mr. Bock treats. He has given us a picture of an animal drawn and coloured from the life. His first sketch, he tells us, did not please. It was too dark. He was then invited to pay the animal a second visit. Meanwhile, the attendants had been busy washing it with tamarind - water, and had produced a noticeable effect upon its colour. Such dark patches as remained would, he was assured, yield to the effects of this lotion. The picture given presents the animal as he appeared after having been thus doctored. He is not white, the only really white thing about him being the hairs or bristles which fringe his back and fore-legs. The hue is rather a "pale, reddish brown ;" but if Mr. Barnum had been able to secure him, little criticism would have been passed on the acquisition. Mean- while, Mr. Bock states explicitly that "a 'white' elephant, however few the pale spots which he may have, is revered throughout the length and breadth of the land." The word "revered," of course, opens a very difficult question. Enlightened Buddhists deny--and from their point of view are right in deny- ing—the worship of the elephant altogether. Just so, if we may be allowed the comparison without offence, Roman-Catholic divines deny that honours infringing on the prerogatives of Deity are paid to the Virgin and the Saints, though they be confronted with extravagant expressions of popular or devotional feeling which are certainly open to the charge. We must read with something of the reserve thus suggested all that Mr. Bock has to say, and he says much in the course of his volume, about the developments of Buddhist faith and worship. Most religions have their esoteric theory and their exoteric aspects, and in a country where education is almost unknown, the divergence between these two is likely to be exceedingly wide.
Some of the traveller's observations on matters concerned with the outside life of the people are very curious. Here is a picture of native diet :—
" Seeing the women returning home in the evening from the woods, I was curious to know what their baskets were laden with. K.ao said it was only makkan (food), but as that was a very indefinite term, food varying in every country, I asked to be allowed to see for myself, a request which amused the women, who were shy of approaching a farang (foreigner). Among the most valued contents of the baskets were some moss and mushrooms' a quantity of Mengda-ua, a species of belostoma or water-beetle, belonging to the order of hemiptera, found in mud and ponds ; some of the large fresh- water shells, ampultaria, so common in the paddy-fields, and called hoi.khong by the Siamese, who eat them with curried rice; the stems of an arum, also eaten with curry ; and a number of wasps' nests, containing the grubs only, which the natives say are very fat and oily, and which, when mixed with pork-fat, are considered a bonne- bouche !"
Some of the domestic customs have curious classical associa- tions. The upper classes in Siam, for instance, wear a bulk, a" small silver leaf or heart-shaped plate ;" but it is hung not round the neck, but round the waist. The obol put into the mouth of the dead as Charon's fare is represented by a small piece of money or a precious stone, which is to pay the "spirit-fine" in the next world. Bodies are cremated, but not generally till after the lapse of several months. Children, however, are buried. The funeral ceremonies of chiefs are honoured by combats of boxing, after the fashion of heroic times.
Of the scientific results of his travels, Mr. Bock says but little. They are probably reserved for readers more competent than the general public. We may take leave of him with a compliment to the excellent English which he writes. He calls it " imperfect " in his preface, and thanks a friend for correcting it ; but no correction would have availed, unless it had very substantial merits to begin with.
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