[Illustration: PORT OF CHANTABOON.] Anghin is a little village frequented by foreigners for a few weeks in February or March for surf-bathing. A sanitarium was erected there some years ago, and the following advertisement appeared in the Bangkok newspaper, August 29, 1868: “His Excellency Ahon Phya Bhibakrwongs Maha Kosa Dhipude, the Phra Klang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, has built a sanitarium at Anghin for the benefit of the public. It is for the benefit of the Siamese, Europeans or Americans to go and occupy when unwell to restore their health. All are cordially invited to go there for a suitable length of time and be happy, but are requested not to remain month after month and year after year, and regard it as a place without an owner. To regard it in this way cannot be allowed, for it is public property, and others should go and stop there also.” The eastern coast of the gulf is lined with numerous hills, and a little way out in the gulf are islands, many of them extremely precipitous and wild and romantic in appearance. Chantaboon, the most eastern Siamese province on the gulf, is one of the most fertile and populous districts. The government regards it as of much importance, and has fortified it at great expense. The plain is irrigated by a network of short streams. The coast west of the bay is mountainous, and a projecting arm guards the entrance. The river near its mouth is perfectly clear, while the Menam is muddy. Ten miles inland of the coast the Sah Bap hills extend some thirty miles. Bishop Pallegoix says that in an hour or two’s wandering through these mountains his party collected a handful of precious stones. Gems are more abundant on the frontiers of the Xong tribes, at the north-east corner of the gulf, where the mountains form an almost circular barrier and the wild highlanders are accused of poisoning the frontier wells to keep off strangers. Ship-timber abounds near Chantaboon, and building after European models is prosecuted with vigor at the government dockyards. The chief town is situated some miles inland, near Sah Bap, where the windings of the little streams, the high forest-clad mountains, give a varied and picturesque aspect, and the climate, owing to the mixture of sea- and mountain-air, is more propitious than at Bangkok. The famous Lion Rock, a mass of rudely-shaped stone which stands like the extremity of a cape near this port, is held in great veneration by the natives. “From a distance,” says M. Mouhot, “it so resembles a lion that it is difficult to believe that nature unassisted formed this singular colossus. Siamese verse records an affecting complaint against the cruelty of the Western barbarian――an English captain, whose offer to purchase had been refused, having pitilessly fired all his guns at the poor animal.” [Illustration: LION ROCK, AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE PORT OF CHANTABOON.]