boats, averting their eyes, pressing their hard, labor-grimed hands
against their sweating foreheads, and lowly louting in blind awe to
these whited bricks. Even the naked children hush and crouch, and lay
their little foreheads against the bottom of the boat.

His Majesty Somdetch P'hra Paramendr Maha Mongkut, the late Supreme
King, contributed interesting _souvenirs_ to the enlargement and
adornment of this temple.

The town, which the twin islands redeem from the ignominy it otherwise
deserves, lies on the east bank of the river, and by its long lines of
low ramparts that face the water seems to have been at one time
substantially fortified; but the works are now dilapidated and
neglected. They were constructed in the first instance, I am told, with
fatal ingenuity; in the event of an attack the garrison would find them
as dangerous to abandon as to defend. Paknam is indebted for its
importance rather to its natural position, and its possibilities of
improvement under the abler hands into which it is gradually falling,
than to any advantage or promise in itself; for a more disgusting,
repulsive place is scarcely to be found on Asian ground.

The houses are built partly of mud, partly of wood, and, as in those of
Malacca, only the upper story is habitable, the ground floor being the
abode of pigs, dogs, fowls, and noisome reptiles. The "Government House"
was originally of stone, but all the more recent additions have been
shabbily constructed of rough timber and mud. This is one of the few
houses in Paknam which one may enter without mounting a ladder or a
clumsy staircase, and which have rooms in the lower as well as in the
upper story.