It was hard not to moralize over the old man as the representative of a nation which had all the time been going backward since it led the van of discovery in the Indies centuries ago; while the people whom his ancestors found heathenish and benighted are starting on a career of improvement and elevation of which no man can prophesy the rate or the result. The old Portuguese referred to would seem to be the same whom Sir John Bowring mentions in the following passage, and who has been so long a faithful servant of the government of Siam that his great age and long-continued services entitle him to a word of honorable mention, notwithstanding the droll appearance which he presented in his remarkable costume. Sir John Bowring, writing in 1856, says: "Among the descendants of the ancient Portuguese settlers in Siam there was one who especially excited our attention. He was the master of the ceremonies at our arrival in Paknam, and from his supposed traditional or hereditary acquaintance with the usages of European courts, we found him invested with great authority on all state occasions. He wore a European court dress, which he told me had been given him by Sir James Brooke, and which, like a rusty, old cocked hat, was somewhat the worse for wear. But I was not displeased to recognize in him a gentleman whom Mr. Crawford (the British ambassador in 1822) thus describes: "'July 10 (1822). I had in the course of this forenoon a visit from a person of singular modesty and intelligence. Pascal Ribeiro de Alvergarias, the descendant of a Portuguese Christian of Kamboja. This gentleman holds a high Siamese title, and a post of considerable importance. Considering his means and situation, his acquirements were remarkable, for he not only spoke and wrote the Siamese, Kambojan, and Portuguese languages with facility, but also spoke and wrote Latin with considerable propriety. We found, indeed, a smattering of Latin very frequent among the Portuguese interpreters at Bangkok, but Señor Ribeiro was the only individual who made any pretence to speak it with accuracy. He informed us that he was the descendant of a person of the same name, who settled at Kamboja in the year 1685. His lady's genealogy, however, interested us more than his own. She was the lineal descendant of an Englishman, of the name of Charles Lister, a merchant, who settled in Kamboja in the year 1701, and who had acquired some reputation at the court by making pretence to a knowledge in medicine. Charles Lister had come immediately from Madras, and brought with him his sister. This lady espoused a Portuguese of Kamboja, by whom she had a son, who took her own name. Her grandson, of this name also, in the revolution of the kingdom of Kamboja, found his way to Siam; and here, like his great-uncle, practising the healing art, rose to the station of Maha-pet, or first physician to the king. The son of this individual, Cajitanus Lister, is at present the physician, and at the same time the