1840.] Mission to the Court of Siam. 237 



with floating houses and boats ; several other small branches 

 or canals run at right angles from this through the town, 

 the walls of which are of brick, about eighteen feet thick, and 

 perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet high, following the slight 

 sinuosities close along the banks of the stream, but could 

 only be seen occasionally from the crowded state of the houses 

 on the banks. There is at each angle of the walls a pro- 

 jecting sort of bastion with a double wall, and a turret of flimsy 

 construction, and the whole works seem exceedingly contempt- 

 ible; the passage of this branch, which surrounds a little more 

 than one-half of the town, occupied about forty minutes, and 

 about twenty more from this to the Christian location. Every 

 thing about them, except the houses of the chiefs, Benedito and 

 Pascal, was mean, dirty, and disgusting, beyond any thing I have 

 seen in this part of the world, and the character of the inha- 

 bitants is said to correspond ; we visited also the priests, both 

 of them Frenchmen, who are highly respectable men in their 

 station. The bishop is just now absent at Singapore. Besides 

 the descendants of Portuguese, who amount at this station, 

 which is called the Cambodea Camp, to 700, there are 1400 

 Cochin-Chinese Roman Catholics who fled from that country, 

 being persecuted on account of their religion, about four years 

 ago. Though the hovels they live in are miserably small and 

 dirty, yet they are said to be tolerably contented, and find it 

 easier to obtain a livelihood here than in Cochin- China, where 

 they say there are hundreds of families who never knew what it 

 was to be possessed of one coin of the smallest denomination; they 

 chiefly occupy themselves, I believe, in fishing, though many 

 of them, beg about the town. We remained at Pravie-tsets 

 (Benedito) about two hours, and returned home by the main river. 

 Visited the Praklang after dinner. When we arrived at his 

 house, we found the second Praklang and other officers there 

 as before ; there was a good deal of conversation regarding Bir- 

 mah and England, on which last subject the Praklang, from 

 his intimacy with Mr. Hunter, is better informed than people 

 on this side of the Ganges generally are, though I am cer- 

 tain he does not believe what he has been told of the extent 

 and number of our colonies, the tonnage of our shipping, &c. 



