June U, I860.] SCHOMBURGK'S REPORT ON THE TRADE OF SIAM. 217 



the very place where sea-island cotton might be produced — a far better cotton 

 than Ave could get from Africa. The staple of the country was rice, which was 

 exported in very large quantities to Singapore, and at the present moment to 

 China, where, owing to existing disturbances, it was much needed. Another 

 production was sugar, an article which was only introduced into the country 

 about twenty years before his visit, but which was now quoted in the London 

 ' Price Current.' Another article which the country produced was what was 

 called in the Custom House returns " tea :" it was brought to this country in 

 large quantities, and, after the oil was extracted, it formed a capital material 

 for fattening cattle. 



The President said no man was better able than Mr. Crawfurd to give 

 information with respect to this country, and any words of his in approbation 

 of the papers of Sir llobert Schomburgk must be entitled to consideration. 

 Still, notwithstanding Mr. Crawfurd's low estimate of the civilization of the 

 people, he ventured to think they were capable of improvement, for they were 

 conscious of their defects, and quite ready to adopt our improved methods of 

 cultivation. Moreover, the King was a man of considerable intellect, and was 

 doing everything in his power both to extend trade and to develope the 

 industry of his people. 



Mb. Crawfuud said the two kings of Siam, when young men, were confined 

 in a monastery, their elder brother (a natural son of the king, whom he had 

 the honour to be presented to when he was in Siam) having usurped the 

 throne. Upon his death, the nobility assembled and insisted upon the legiti- 

 mate son being elected ; but such was his affection for his brother, that he 

 would only consent to reign on condition that his brother was elected along 

 with him. It was the eldest who had so distinguished himself, and who made 

 the treaty with Sir John Bowring. He understood our language perfectly, 

 and wrote it very well. The American missionaries, led by Dr. Judson, had 

 converted forty thousand of the Siamese to Christianity : a greater number 

 than in the course of a hundred years we had been able to convert in India or 

 China. The territory which had been ceded to us, and was at the time thought 

 to be a bad bargain, had turned out to be quite the reverse ; and at this mo- 

 ment it was, he thought, one of the most prosperous portions of the British 

 empire. 



Captain Sheraed Osborn, r.n., f.r.g.s., said, that ever since Major Yule's 

 remarkable paper on Burmah,in 1857, he had felt an interest in the question of 

 finding access to the western states of China by the group of rivers that come 

 down from the north-west shoulder of the Tibetan range, the Mekong, the 

 Menam, and the Sal win. They all took their rise in the province of Yunan, 

 in Western China, a province as extensive as Spain. He approached it within 

 600 miles, when he ascended the Yang-tse-Kiang. Its products were abundant, 

 and some of the finest teas in China were produced there. It was described by 

 the Chinese as an elevated plain, bounded on the north by the great moun- 

 tains of Tibet, which rise into the Snowy range. Through this great plain 

 ran three different rivers, separated from each other by spurs of mountains. 

 The Mekong, which was decidedly the most important of the three, no doubt, 

 split the province of Yunan into two, and ran directly south from it. The 

 mouth of this river is now in possession of the French. He fancied that by 

 these rivers we might obtain communication with the western provinces of 

 China, and he had no doubt if this Society were to point out to travellers and 

 missionaries the importance which would attach to the opening up of this 

 communication, in a commercial and geographical sense, and it were set before 

 them as a specific object, that before long we should succeed in reaching the 

 western provinces of China by that route. 



Colonel W. H. Sykes, f.r.g.s., said he believed there was already a com- 

 munication between Siam and the western provinces of China, for the people 



