LITERARY XOTICES. 



245 



and of half a dozen other colors. Human 

 nature secretes the same incongruities wher- 

 ever we find it. Frank Vincent has writ- 

 ten, and the Harpers have published, a 

 beautifully illustrated and most readable 

 book about the people, the products, the 

 cities, and the temples, of a vast tract of 

 Indian country, known as the " Land of the 

 White Elephant." In the course of his three 

 years' journey round the world, the author 

 of this volume spent eleven months in the 

 " marvelously - beautiful countries," and 

 amid the " strange people and stranger 

 customs " of Farther India — a country of 

 one million square miles and twenty-five 

 million inhabitants, with a productive soil 

 and extended commerce. After visiting 

 every thing of interest in Lower Burma, the 

 writer made an excursion up the great Irra- 

 waddy River to Mandalay, in Upper Burma, 

 or Ava — a distance of seven hundred miles, 

 Mandalay, the capital, is a new city. It be- 

 gan to be built in 1855, and in 185*7 the 

 king and court adopted it as the royal resi- 

 dence, while it now has a population of 

 one million. Let Chicago hide its dimin- 

 ished head in presence of the enterprise of 

 these heathen. " The city proper is a 

 square — a mile on each side — and is sur- 

 rounded by a lofty and very thick wall of 

 loose brick (unplastered) with a notched 

 parapet, and having a broad and deep moat 

 filled with clear water. There are three 

 gates on each side, and macadamized streets 

 about a hundred feet in width, leading from 

 them, intersect the city at right angles ; 

 then, between these are small and irregular 

 streets and by-paths. Along the sides of 

 the larger avenues there run channels for 

 carrying water (which is brought from the 

 river in a canal fifteen miles long) through- 

 out the city. Each gate-way is surmounted 

 by a lofty, pyramidal-shaped wooden tower 

 with the customary terraced roof, and, at 

 irregular intervals, there are turrets, raised 

 a little higher than the wall, and surmount- 

 ed by small wooden pavilions of the same 

 model as those over the great gates. We 

 crossed the moat on a massive wooden 

 bridge, and passed through one of the west- 

 ei-n gate-ways — the only one through which 

 corpses are allowed to be taken from the 

 city, as my guide observed. The gates are 

 of enormous height and thickness, and are 



built of teak beams, fastened together with 

 huge iron bolts." The author says, "I 

 determined to make this trip, to pay my 

 respects to his majesty the king." Accord- 

 ingly, on his airival in the city, through 

 the favor of a Chinese resident who enjoyed 

 the friendship of his majesty, he was grant- 

 ed an audience. The king seems to have 

 taken a fancy to him, and offered him good 

 business facilities and as many Burmese 

 wives as he wanted, if he would stay and 

 help him ; but the virtuous young mar said 

 he would see his folks about it before de- 

 ciding. 



Inspired by his elephant-hunting curios- 

 ity, ^Ir. Vincent afterward visited the King 

 of Siam at Bangkok, and discourses upon 

 the condition of his elephants and the phi- 

 losophy of the subject as follows : 



" The first animal whose stable we en- 

 tered was quite small, and possessed few of 

 the peculiar characteristics of a ' dark-cream 

 albino,' excepting perhaps the eyes. The 

 keeper fed him with bananas, and caused 

 him to make a salaam (a profound saluta- 

 tion or bow) by raising his proboscis to his 

 forehead for a moment and then gracefully 

 lowering it to the ground. In another shed 

 we saw a larger and also whiter elephant, 

 its body having the peculiar flesh-colored 

 appearance termed ' white.' Here there 

 was, besides, a white monkey — ' white ani- 

 mals are the favorite abodes of transmi- 

 grating souls ' — kept to ward off bad spir- 

 its, as the attendant informed us. 



" Sir John Bowring — and he is about 

 the only person who has written at length 

 on this subject — in a very interesting ' chap- 

 ter on elephants,' tells us that the Buddhists 

 have a special reverence for white quadru- 

 peds ; that he has himself seen a white mon- 

 key honored with special attention. Also, 

 that white elephants have been the cause 

 of many a war, and their possession more 

 an object of envy than the conquest of ter- 

 ritory or the ti-ansitory glories of the battle- 

 field. In the money-market the white ele- 

 phant is almost beyond price. Ten thou- 

 sand sovereigns (fifty thousand dollars) 

 would hardly represent its pecuniary value ; 

 a hair from its tail is worth a Jew's ran- 

 som. 'It was my good fortune,' he says, 

 'to present (in 1855) to the first king of 

 Siam (the Siamese have two kings exer- 



