"The grandest and most characteristic pagoda is on the right bank, surrounded by a fine and verdant wood. It rises amidst a cluster of small towers which command a central pyramid three hundred feet high. This is at the base in the form of the lower part of a cone, with one hundred and fifty steps; then it becomes a six-sided tower with dormer windows supported by three white elephants' trunks; the graceful spire then rises from a nest of turrets, and shoots upward like a single column rounded off into a cupola at the summit; from thence a bronze gilt arrow extends twenty crooked arms that pierce the clouds. When lighted up by the rays of the sun it all becomes one mass of brilliancy; the enamelled colors of flaming earthenware, the coating of thousands of polished roses standing out in the alabaster, give to this pagoda, with its pure and brilliant architecture unknown under any other sky, the magical effect of a dream with the colossal signs of reality. "As we approached it, gliding slowly along in a gondola against the impetuous current of the river, the promontory looked like an entire town, a sacred town of irregular towers, crowded kiosques, painted summer-houses, colonnades and statues of pink marble and red porphyry. But on landing we had to pass the ditches and shallows which surround the sacred ramparts, where, walking with measured steps, was a whole population of men, with heads and eyebrows shaved, and whose dress was a long saffron-colored Roman toga. These were the 'talapoins,' or Buddhist priests. In one hand they hold an iron saucepan, and in the other the 'talapat,' a great fan of palm-leaves, the distinguishing sign of their rank. The lanes they live in are horribly dirty, and their houses are huts built of dirty planks and bricks, which are falling to pieces. One could imagine them to be the foul drains of the porcelain palaces which touch them, luckily hidden by bowers of luxuriant trees. More than seven hundred talapoins or 'phras' looked at us as we passed, with an indifference that bordered on contempt. And when we saw the sleepy and besotted priests of Buddha, who looked like lazy beggars, and the twelve or fifteen hundred ragged urchins who surrounded them in the capacity of choristers, and who grow up in the slums together with groups of geese, pigs, chickens, and stray dogs, it seemed a menagerie of mud, dirt, and vermin belonging to the monastery; and we could not help noticing the remarkable contrast which exists between the fairy-like appearance of the temple as seen from the town, and the horrible condition of the hundreds of priests who serve it.