Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/488

 the breaches in the wall. It was on the pretext that our two Laos Christians had disobeyed this command that they were arrested and so cruelly put to death.

You may be interested in what Sir Robert Schomburg says about the streets of Cheung Mai: "The streets of this city have been (originally) laid out at right angles. Time, it seems, has worked changes with regard to their regularity; nevertheless, I have not seen any other Siamese city laid out apparently so regularly at its foundation as Cheung Mai appears to have been." If you could walk about the streets of the city you would see, instead of our Christian churches, very many wats, or temples, and the prachadees which seem peculiar to Cheung Mai. Again we quote Schomburg: "'We pray to Guadama (or Buddh) on passing a prachadee,' said a Laos. 'They were built in memory of him and his divine acts, and some of his doctrines are written on tablets.' These remarkable towerlets are only cased with brickwork and filled up with soil. They are plastered on the outside, are of pyramidal shape and terminate at the summit in a sharp-pointed spire." Most of them are now in a state of decay, and are covered with vines and other vegetation. You would see no floating houses in Cheung Mai, as in Bangkok. The houses in the city are built far enough apart to afford space for the cultivation of flowers, for