Those indeed were dreadful days in the summer of 1849, when, after being free from it thirty years, cholera again broke out in Siam; when in less than a fortnight more than twenty thousand people perished in the one city of Bangkok; when, go where you would in the streets, you would meet men carrying their dead slung from a bamboo borne on the shoulders of two of them; when hundreds of corpses were thrown into the river and heaps on heaps were piled up like logs and burned to get them out of the way. I need not say that the Siamese were very much frightened when this dreadful disease broke out among them. They saw their friends and neighbors sicken in an hour and dying on their right hand and left in almost every house, and each one feared it might be his turn next. But where did they look for help? Did the king proclaim a fast-day, think you? and the people repent of their many sins and pray to God to have mercy on them? Alas! God was not in the thoughts of this people at all. Their religion teaches them there is no God――no Creator who made the world: the world made itself, they say; it always was. The god they do worship, Buddha, whose images are in every temple, was nothing but a mere man like themselves, and, now he has left the world, knows nothing, cares nothing, about it, or indeed about aught else. The common notion about the pestilence was that an army of wicked spirits had come invisibly to carry off mankind to make them their servants in the unseen world. Oh, how anxious they were to make these spirits of the air their friends! So the people made various offerings in order to conciliate the good-will of these spirits of the air. It was a common practice in those days to form a little square tray from pieces of the plantain tree, and, placing the offerings thereupon, leave them by the side of the street, where the spirits would find them, or else, placing them on the water, let them float down the stream. The river and land were full of them. Coming home one night, I stumbled over one right in my path, and, having a lantern, stopped to examine it. On the rude tray, which was about a foot square, were strewed rice, some coarse salt tied up in a little rag, some fresh flowers, betel-nut, sliced plantain, the end of a torch, and two rough images of clay representing a man and woman, each with a dirty shred of cloth about it. The object in making images was that the spirits might accept them for their servants instead of the persons who offered them. The invisible spirits never carried off any of these dainty gifts, but I have seen sensible-looking dogs helping themselves freely to the rice and whatever else was eatable.