Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/90

 size and description that pass, for the Siamese are very skillful boatmen.

Your attention is already attracted by the beautiful wat, or temple, with its surroundings, on our right. Is it not a beautiful spot, so prettily laid out with fine shade trees, flowering plants and well-swept walks? There are about two hundred wats in Bangkok consecrated to the worship of Buddha. Some of them have groves several acres in extent, containing pagodas, image-houses, priests' dwellings and salas, or lounging-places. They occupy the pleasantest parts of the city, and the deluded people spend vast sums on these temples and their idols, expecting in this way to make merit for themselves. You will not wonder that they are anxious to make all the merit they can when their religion teaches them that at death their soul enters the body of some animal—a bird, it may be, or a snake, an elephant or a buffalo—unless they have made enough merit to be born something better and higher.

Observe the exterior of this temple. What a gay appearance the neat-colored tiles give the roof! The front, how laboriously carved and how richly gilded! The doors and windows too are more or less carved and gilded. Now we will go inside. The scenes with which these inner walls are so gayly painted are chiefly from the life of Buddha, and see, in the farther end, on