Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/44

 Bangkok. The last division of the Menam occurs below Bangkok, and the river finally disgorges itself by three mouths into the gulf.

Two rivers from the west fall into the middle and westernmost mouths—the Sachen, with its towns and villages, sugar-plantations and mills scattered all along its elegant flexions, connecting by canals with the Menam east and the Meklong west; and the Meklong, an independent stream from the Karen country, flowing through a narrow but extremely fertile valley in which hills and plains of some extent alternate. The capital of the province is situated at the junction of the canal—a town of twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, noted as the birth-*place of the Siamese Twins.

The "Sam-ra-yot," or Three Hundred Peaks, separate Siam from Burmah. This chain consists of a series of bold conical hills, extremely ragged on their flanks and covered with immense teak-forests stretching hundreds of miles over mountains and valleys. The noted pass of the Three Pagodas across this range follows a branch known as the Meklong Nee to the last Karen town on the Siamese frontier, thence on foot or elephants across the summit to the head-waters of the Ataran, and by canoes, shooting the rapids, a somewhat abrupt descent, to Maulmein.

Petchaburee, on the western side of the gulf, near the foot of this range, is a sanitarium for