14 THE KING'S MAHOUT 



down to that of a French pea. There is also much 

 flat money made of copper, glass and china, run- 

 ning into fractions of a cent. The favorite game 

 is a species of roulette, for which purpose the 

 money is admirably suited to the rake of the 

 croupier. Comparatively recently the Government 

 has been issuing flat ten cent silver pieces, and the 

 extent of gambling is suggested by the great num- 

 ber of these coming to one in the ordinary course 

 of the day's business, that have been cupped to 

 facilitate their handling on the gaming board. 



After four days on the Meinam we turned off 

 on a smaller river somewhere below Ayuthia, and 

 took a northeasterly direction through heavy 

 foliage, and more monkeys than I had ever seen. 

 The first night we stopped at a house dilapidated 

 rather more than ordinarily, where inside a lone 

 old woman sat weaving a varied colored cloth, 

 while outside on the veranda-like addition— which 

 is practically half of every up-country Siamese 

 abode— were a girl and a boy making water buckets 

 and ornaments of bamboo. 



I often wondered what these Far Eastern people 

 would do without bamboo. It is a pivot of their 

 industrial life. Growing in groves ranging from 

 twenty to forty feet in height, though I have seen 

 some higher, it varies in diameter from two to 

 fifteen or even more inches. The tender shoots of 



