"'Pechaburi is a thriving town, containing about twenty thousand inhabitants. The houses are, for the most part, neatly built, and no floating houses are visible. Rice and sugar are two-thirds dearer at Bangkok than they are here, and the rice is of a particularly fine description. We called upon the governor during the evening. Next morning we started for home, and arrived without any accident.'" It was not until the completion of his prolonged tour of exploration through Cambodia, and his visit to the savage tribes on the frontier of Cochin-China, that Mouhot found time for his excursion to Pechaburi from Bangkok. "I returned to the capital," he says, "after fifteen months' absence. During the greater part of this time I had never known the comfort of sleeping in a bed; and throughout my wanderings my only food had been rice or dried fish, and I had not once tasted good water. I was astonished at having preserved my health so well, particularly in the forests, where often wet to the skin, and without a change of clothes, I have had to pass whole nights by a fire, at the foot of a tree. Yet I have not had a single attack of fever, and been always happy and in good spirits, especially when lucky enough to light upon some novelty. A new shell or insect filled me with a joy which ardent naturalists alone can understand; but they know well how little fatigues and privations of all kinds are cared for when set against the delight experienced in making one discovery after another, and in feeling that one is of some slight assistance to the votaries of science. It pleases me to think that my investigations into the archæology, entomology, and conchology of these lands may be of use to certain members of the great and generous English nation, who kindly encouraged the poor naturalist; while France, his own country, remained deaf to his voice. "It was another great pleasure to me, after these fifteen months of travelling, during which very few letters from home had reached me, to find, on arriving at Bangkok, an enormous packet, telling me all the news of my distant family and country. It is indeed happiness, after so long a period of solitude, to read the lines traced by the beloved hands of an aged father, of a wife, of a brother. These joys are to be reckoned among the sweetest and purest of life. "We stopped in the centre of the town, at the entrance of a canal, whence there is a view over the busiest part of the Meinam. It was almost night, and silence reigned around us; but when at daybreak I rose and saw the ships lying at anchor in the middle of the stream, while the roofs of the palaces and pagodas reflected the first rays of the sun, I thought that Bangkok had never looked so beautiful. However, life here would never suit me, and the mode of locomotion is wearisome after an active existence among the woods and in the chase.