To make the cabin of the picture a copy of the common Cheung Mai house, the stair-ladder and the southern wall, as seen there, must be removed. A platform from eight to twelve feet wide must be raised within a few inches as high as the floor of the main building. This platform must extend from near the centre of the house at its southern end, beyond its south-western corner, to give passage-way to the kitchen. At the west end of this platform stands a covered settle for the earthen water-pots which hold water for drinking and cooking. The outer posts of this platform rise high enough to support a railing, and a board on top of this railing gives room for earthen flower-pots and for boxes of earth in which are growing, for family use, onions, red pepper, garlic, etc. The floor of the platform serves in daytime for drying betel-nuts and fruit. At night, after the heat of the day, it furnishes a place for rest under the cooling sky. The stairs are placed at the end of this platform. Such a house may be built entirely of bamboo except the grass thatch required for the roof. Neither hammer nor nail is needed for its construction. The different parts are held together by thongs of split bamboo or ratan. These houses are built at small cost. Very many of them are kept neat and tidy. And they have their conveniences. The writer had occasion to pay a native peasant a considerable sum of money. This man, after counting the rupees and testing their genuineness, one by one, by poising it on the tip of his finger and tapping it gently with another rupee, tied the money up in a piece of rag, and, rising, dropped it from the top into the hollow of one of the posts that supported the wall behind him. This post gave him a perfect concealment for his treasure. It was _his_ “safe,” answering the same purpose to him that the iron one, with its intricate locks, does to the banker, except that in the case of the Oriental a stray spark would soon set his house and his “safe” ablaze together. Still, he could linger near for the few moments it would take the flame to lick up his house, and very soon after he would have his silver rupees, melted, it might possibly be, into a common mass. There is no time――nor is it necessary――to speak of the trees that throw around and over the houses of the native peasantary their cool and protecting shade. Many of these houses are hidden away among the trees, some of which, for size, vie with those of the forest. Among the most beautiful of these trees are clumps of bamboo, from which material has been obtained for the building or repair of the very houses which they now envelop in their shade.