AN ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY 



ACROSS THE MALAY PENINSULA 



FROM KOH LAK TO MERGUI. 



BY 



ARTHUR KEITH,m,b, CM, 



ULLY a century ago much of the traffic between Siam 

 and the West passed over the Malay Peninsula 

 between Mergui and Koh Lak, and in the month 

 of June of this year, having occasion to visit Mergui, 

 I chose this old route. In those olden days car- 

 riages with ladies riding in them and driven by 

 cockaded coachmen were wont to pass to and fro by this route, 

 but the remains of the old road that can be seen to-day lead 

 one to suspect that such a statement was the gloss some old 

 writer put upon the rustic, squeaking bullock-carts with their 

 native drivers that wore their hair cut in a shoe-brush fashion 

 by way of a cockade. In those days Tenasserim stood at the 

 terminus on the Burmese side, then the capital of a kingdom 

 and often spoken of as a Venice of the East, for she possessed 

 a large fleet of vessels that carried her commerce all over the 

 Bay of Bengal, while at the Siamese terminus, Koh Lak 

 sheltered many junks and big boats that carried the overland 

 traffic to Ayuthia or to Bangkok and further if necessary. But 

 th\e rapid transit brought about by steam has killed this trade, 

 Tenasserim is little better than a memory, a white man is a 

 rare sight in Koh Lak, and the jungle has seized and made 

 much of the road its own again, 



