"We only had to go up a few steps to pass from the dirty huts to marble terraces. We scaled the great pyramid as high as we could go; no such easy matter beneath a scorching sun which took away our strength, and blinded by the dazzling whiteness of the stone-work. But a panorama of the whole town was now laid before us, with the windings of the river, the royal palaces, the eleven pagodas in the first enclosure, the two and twenty in the second, and some four hundred porcelain towers and spires, looking as though planted in a mound of verdure formed by the masses of tropical vegetation. In the symmetrical colonnades which we visited there are hundreds of altars, decorated with millions of statuettes of Buddha, in gold, silver, copper, or porphyry. On the left side is a very large temple with a five-storied roof in blue, green, and yellow tiles, and dazzling walls. A double door of gigantic size, all lacker-work inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, opened to us, and we were in the presence of a Buddha of colored stone-work. He was seated on a stool, nearly fifty feet high, his legs crossed, a pointed crown upon his head, great white eyes, and his height was nearly forty feet. This deified mass, altogether attaining to the height of ninety feet, is the only thing that remains unmoved at the sound of more than fifty gongs and tom-toms, which the bonzes beat with all their strength. Incense burns in bronze cups, and a ray of light penetrating the window strikes upon five rows of gilded statuettes which, in a body of two or three hundred, crouch at the feet of the great god, and baskets of splendid fruit are offered to them: you can imagine who eats it. Suits of armor are fixed against the walls, and at certain distances the seven-storied umbrella hangs like a banner. As for the bas-reliefs, their description would take a whole volume; they represent all the tortures of the Buddhist hell. I shuddered as I looked on these wretched creatures, some fainting away, thrusting out their tongues, which serpents devoured, or picking up an eye torn out by the claw of an eagle, twisting round like tee-totums, or eagerly devouring human brains in the split skull of their neighbor. On the other side of these walls there are colored frescoes. The illustrations extend into a whole world of detail of the Buddhist religion, which varies in every part of Asia and is so impossible to separate from tradition, and so contradictory in its laws." [Illustration: PORTICO OF THE AUDIENCE HALL AT BANGKOK.]