Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
In the blaze of it the boy saw the miracle run from ship to ship the timber bursting into leaf with the song of birds and the scent of tropical plants. Across the avenue of teak which had been the Nubian's bulwarks he saw the Dutchman's galley, now a summer-house set in parterres of tulips.
Saya Chone spoke to him and it sounded like a password, for the man sprang to his feet and stepped aside. The great bar of teak was drawn from its staples, and the door was opened. The Malay thrust Jack into the room, and the door was at once closed and barred behind him. Jack now found himself in a bare stone cell, lighted only by one small window eight feet or more from the ground.
Ivory, gold, gems, precious stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood, camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir, olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones were the chief articles of exchange.
Now, great Irrawaddy take us safely down your length, and preserve us from sandbanks and let us spend some more hours on your lovely banks; and we will go down with your rafts of bamboos, and teak, and pottery, and canoes, and we will avoid all trains till you fraternise with old ocean again in Rangoon river. Then we will bid you good-bye, it may be for years, but we hope not for ever.
He stalked solemnly out of the room and downstairs, and, safe in the parlour, gave vent to his feelings in a wild but silent hornpipe. He cannoned against the table at last, and, subsiding into an easy-chair, crammed his handkerchief to his mouth and gave way to suppressed mirth. In his excitement he forgot all about tea, and the bereaved Mrs. Teak made no attempt to come downstairs to prepare it.
In the forest were great trees of teakwood and these the elephant workers had to drag out so they could be loaded upon carts, with great wooden wheels, and brought to the river. One day Umboo and Keedah were taken together to the teak forest. "Now is our chance, Umboo," said the other elephant after a while as they went farther and farther into the woods. "Now is our chance!"
Its sides were quite open, and its fantastic roof of grotesquely carved teak plastered with gilding, painting, and tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars painted a deep red.
The vessel in which I now found myself, the King-Shing, was of about seven hundred tons. She was built entirely of teak, and her skipper, or Ty Kong, as he is called, alleged that she was more than a hundred years old, and said that one of her crew who had recently died, had served in her for fifty years.
When his eye fell upon this his vivid imagination at once pictured it as in operation in a mill erected upon a spot which he had already recognised as most suitable for the purpose; and he saw, too, that now they need no longer be dependent upon the old ship-timber, full of bolt and trenail holes, for the timber and planking of their craft, as they would be enabled with the assistance of the saw to provide themselves with all the planking, and, indeed, timber of every description which would be necessary in their work, from the magnificent teak and other trees which grew in such abundance on the island.
The mode adopted for this purpose by the Chinese is to bury the timber for a considerable time in marshy ground; thus treated, they say teak becomes hard as iron. The mast did not go within four feet of the bottom the ship having no kelson but, to use the technical term, was "toggled" to two large pieces of wood which answered as partners.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking