[Illustration: FISHING LUGGER.] Petchabooree is a typical Siamese agricultural village. It is easily reached by house-boat from Bangkok in two or three days. Through the village runs a clear silvery stream with a white sandy bed. On each side of the stream extends a double row of wooden houses, under which lie innumerable pariahs. Between the double line is a narrow passage forming the street, market, and pleasure-ground of the inhabitants. Buffaloes come down to the river for water at regular hours twice each day. On the broad plains in the neighbourhood rice is grown. A few miles away is a Laos settlement, occupied by the descendants of prisoners of war who were once placed here to till the soil for those who captured them. They still preserve their dark striped petticoats, and are never seen without their long knives at their waists. They spend most of their time at this particular place in manufacturing sugar from the sugar palm. When the fruit appears upon the tree, a man climbs to the top, and cuts it off. To the cut stalk he fastens the hollow stem of a bamboo, about eighteen inches long. As the juice oozes from the cut surface it drops into the wooden cylinder. When this is filled it is removed, and replaced by another. The juice is collected and boiled in iron pans under an attap-thatched shed. The furnace is of very simple construction. A trough is dug in the earth, and the hole thus made filled with wood. A light is applied, and then the pan is placed on the ground, with its centre over the hollow dug-out fireplace. Fresh wood is pushed into the hole when required. As the wood costs nothing and the iron pan is cheap, the manufacture of sugar in this primitive fashion is not at all costly. The thick syrupy liquid is put into big wooden barrels, and sent to Bangkok to be further boiled and converted into sugar. The fresh juice of the sugar palm is sweet and refreshing, but when it begins to ferment it is a powerful intoxicant. There are many pretty places on the shores of the Gulf of Siam, but these can only be visited by steamer. They are charmingly picturesque, the bathing is excellent, and the fish are delicious. No steamers call at these desirable spots, there are no hotels, and except for fish they have no food for sale. Only one of them--Anghin, has any house in which a foreigner would care to reside. The village of Anghin ("stone basins") is so called because there are several large hollows in the granite rocks, where rain water collects in the wet season. Public attention was first drawn to the place in 1868, when a notice appeared in the local papers in these words:--