Gas and kerosene are both used for illumination, the former in the palaces of royalty and the nobility, where the electric light has also been introduced. Foreign steam engines and machinery are employed in increasing numbers, while iron bridges span many of the smaller canals, and steam dredges keep the river channel clear. Telegraphic communication has long since been established with the French settlement of Saigon, in Cochin China, and thus with the outer world, and since the British occupation of Burmah a line is promised from Rangoon into Siam. A railway has been commenced between Bangkok and Ayuthia, to extend thence to Korat, a total distance of 170 miles; but the overflow of the Meinam, which renders a considerable embankment or causeway along the river necessary, is a serious obstacle to its construction, while the great water-way itself renders a railroad less necessary in Siam than in other countries. Another line, from Bangkok to the mouth of the Pakong River, 36 miles southeast of the city, is also in contemplation; while a design exists to eventually connect Zimmé with the sea by a line running the whole length of the Meinam Valley. Thus the beautiful city, in awaking from the dream of its old, narrow life, must become by degrees like other busy trade centres of the civilized world, cursed with its sins as well as blessed with its strength and excellence. The tastes and education of the present sovereign have led him to hasten, so far as a single will could, this progress toward modern methods of living. He has abolished the ancient custom of prostration in the presence of a superior, so that now a subject may approach even his king without abasement. He has by degrees put an end to slavery as a legalized institution, throughout the country, and although many of his poorer subjects are hardly better off under the system of forced service than as actual slaves, the change, if only in some sort one of name, is a change for the better. He strives to make Bangkok the pulse of the kingdom, through which the life-blood of its commerce and control must course, achieving by his polity that highly centred system of administration, without which no pure despotism can be either beneficial or successful.