Page:Siam and the Siamese.pdf/12

12 The claims of the female aristocracy are manifested in a curious way. It is the practice in China for ladies of rank to make them­ selves useless. Their finger nails are allowed to grow to a length of 5 or 6 inches, and they never go to bed without having them care­ fully covered up. But the ladies of Siam have a still stranger habit of exhibiting their emancipation from labour. Their elbows are con­torted and turned outward, so that deformity is one of the recom­mendations of a Siamese lady. No doubt you have heard of the reverence with which the white elephant is held in Siam. The stable is beautifully adorned; he is magnificently caparisoned; is fed on the sugar-cane; he has nobles constantly in attendance; and he never goes forth unaccompanied by bands of music. Among the presents given to me for our Queen was a gold box, with a golden key, contaningcontaining [sic] a few hairs of the white elephant’s tail, which the King deemed to be the most precious of all the royal gifts. The white elephant is believed to be one of the resting places of Buddha in his transmigration through the dominions of earth. The Siamese invariably place high value upon white animals. The white elephant, white monkey, and the white deer, are peculiarly prized. I dontdon't [sic] know whether this was the inspiration of my friend Words­ worth, when he wrote of the “white doe” of Rylstone.

I found in Siam an instructive application of the decimal system— one of the most useful discoveries of human intelligence, and one of the most valuable auxiliaries to human progress, as without it we could scarcely penetrate into the realms of geological and astrono­mical discovery. The Siamese distinguish the varieties of rank by cyphers. No arithmetic oan represent that of the sovereign. The second king stands at 100,000; the half-brother at 50,000; a son, in office, at 40,000; out of office at 15,000. The highest lady in tie land at 10,000; the next in rank only at 600. Then, remote cousins of royalty stand at 599 and so down to the lowest denomination.

The value of a living being — in other words, the compensation to be obtained for the loss of such — is regulated by law, and reduced to English money, may be thus represented:—

The allotted time is exhausted. I will, therefore, merely add that I am much obliged to you for your attendance, and for your kind attention, and if you should think that anything which I have said affords you new materials for thought, new motives for the exercise of candour and charity in the estimate of other nations and other religions, I shall rejoice.

The service concluded with a selection of sacred music.