United States or Bhutan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I had looked forward to covering the first stage of this journey, the four hundred-odd miles of jungle which separate Bangkok, in Siam, from Pnom-Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on an elephant. Everyone with whom I had discussed the matter in Singapore had assured me that this was perfectly feasible. And as a means of transportation it appealed to me.
We came in sight of Pulo Condore on the 13th March, and anchored next day on the north side of that island, in ten fathoms, on clean hard sand, two miles from the shore. Pulo Condore is the chief of a group of isles, and the only one of them that is inhabited, in lat. 8° 44' N. long. 106° 5' E. forty leagues S. by E. from the mouth of the river of Cambodia, otherwise called the Japanese river.
Adolf Bastian, a well-known traveller in Siam, Cambodia, China, and the Indian Archipelago, and who, moreover, had visited Ambassi or Salvador do Congo, the old missionary capital, in 1857, was at once sent out as pioneer and vanguard to prospect the coast for a suitable station and a point de depart into the interior a scientific step dictated by trained and organized common sense.
In May of 1970, when President Nixon sent American troops into Cambodia supposedly in the process of de-escalating the war in Vietnam, protests spread all across the country, and several campuses exploded with riots. At Kent State University in Ohio, the National Guard shot and killed four white student protesters. At Jackson State in Mississippi, the police killed two black students.
The work of De Morga has value as a novelty, as it is more than a defense a laudation of the Spanish rule in the Philippines in the sixteenth century. The title page is a fair promise of a remarkable performance, and it is here presented: The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, Siam, Cambodia, Japan and China, at the close of the Sixteenth Century By Antonio de Morga. Hon. Henry E. J. Stanley.
After that you make in the pot a decoction which confers the gift of invulnerability. Thus just as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic plant are supposed to render the wearer invulnerable, so in Cambodia a decoction made from another parasitic plant is considered to render the same service to such as make use of it, whether by drinking or washing.
At the same time Great Britain had secured further Capitulations in the Chefoo Convention; in 1862 France had acquired Cochin China, in 1864 Cambodia, in 1874 Tongking, and in 1883 Annam. This led in 1884 to war between France and China, in which the French did not by any means gain an indubitable victory; but the Treaty of Tientsin left them with their acquisitions.
The voyage to Siam or Cambodia looked very much like an adventure, and the young men were deeply interested in it. "I don't think we are likely to encounter any very heavy weather in the western part of the China Sea," said Captain Scott, as he put his pencil on the chart again. "We may be overhauled by a typhoon." "And what is a typhoon?" asked Felix.
There were several large islands along the coast of Cambodia; but the course was fifty miles outside of the mainland, which could not be seen. "Why do you keep so far from the shore, Captain Scott?" asked Louis; for all the party would have been glad to observe the shore. "Because we all wish to get to Bangkok to-morrow evening. What is the shortest way between two points, Louis?"
It was a performance which would have astonished and delighted the most blasé audience on Broadway, but there in the heart of Cambodia, with the terrace of a throne-hall for a stage, with palaces, temples, and pagodas for a setting, with a blazing tropic sun for a spot-light, and with actors and audience clad in costumes as curious and colorful as those worn at the court of the Queen of Sheba, it provided a spectacle which we who were privileged to see it will remember always.
Word Of The Day