No doubt the manner in which they are governed makes them cowardly; for they are taught to behave as if they were worms. Whoever enters the presence of the king, must creep about on hands and knees. The great lords require their servants to show them the same respect. Servants always crawl into a room, pushing in their trays before them; and when waiting, they walk about on their knees. How shocking to see men made like worms to gratify the pride of their fellow-men! The rule is never to let your head be higher than the head of a person more honorable than yourself; if he stand, you must sit; if he sit, you must crouch. The Siamese are like the Burmese in cruelty. When an enemy falls into their hands, no mercy is shown. A king of a small country called Laos, was taken captive by the Siamese. This king, with his family, were shut up in a large iron cage, and exhibited as a sight. There he was, surrounded by his sons and grandsons, and all of them were heavily laden with chains on their necks and legs. Two of them were little boys, and they played and laughed in their cage!--so thoughtless are children! But the elder sons looked very miserable; they hung down their heads, and fixed their eyes on the ground; and well they might; for within their sight were various horrible instruments of torture;--spears with which to pierce them;--an iron boiler, in which to heat oil to scald them;--a gallows on which to hang their bodies, and--a pestle and mortar in which to pound the children to powder. You see how Satan fills the heart of the heathen with his own cruel devices. The people who came to see this miserable family, rejoiced at the sight of their misery: but they lost the delight they expected in tormenting the old king, for he died of a broken heart; and all they could do _then_, was to insult his body; they beheaded it, and then hung it upon a gibbet, where every one might see it, and the beasts and birds devour it. What became of his unhappy family is not known. But though so barbarous to their _enemies_, the Siamese in some respects are better than most other heathen nations, for they treat their _relations_ more kindly. They do not kill their infants, nor shut up their wives, nor cast out their parents. Yet they show their cruelty in this:--they often sell one another for slaves. They also purchase slaves in great numbers; and there are wild men in the mountains who watch Burmans and Karens to sell them to the great chiefs of Siam. It is the pride of their chiefs to have thousands of slaves crawling around them. BANKOK.