al loading and unloading from lighters outside. The banks of the port
are closely lined with the offices, warehouses and wharves of commercial
houses, with timber yards and innumerable rice-mills, while the custom
house, the harbour master's office and many of the foreign legations and
consulates are also situated here. Of the 750 steamships which cleared the
port in 1904, three out of every seven were German, two were Norwegian and
one was British, but in 1905 two new companies, one British and the other
Japanese, arranged for regular services to Bangkok, thereby altering these
proportions. It is notable that the heavy trade with Singapore shows a
tendency to decrease in favour of direct trade with Europe. A fleet of
small steamers, schooners and junks, carries on trade with the towns and
districts on the east and west coasts of the Gulf of Siam. The trade of
Bangkok is almost entirely in the hands of Europeans and Chinese. The
principal exports are rice and teak, and the principal imports, cotton and
silk goods and gold-leaf. The value of trade, which more than doubled
between the years 1900 and 1907, amounted in the latter year to L5,600,000
imports and L7,100,000 exports. Of the total trade, 75% is with the British
empire. Many of the best known mercantile firms and banks of the Far East
have branches in Bangkok. The unit of currency is the _tical_ (see SIAM).

The government of Bangkok is entrusted to the minister of the capital, a
member of the cabinet. Under this minister are the police, sanitary,
harbour master's and revenue offices. The police force is an efficient and
well-organized body of 3000 men headed by a European commissioner of
police. The sanitary department consists of a board of health, a
bacteriological laboratory and an engineer's office, all managed with
expert European assistance. Under the act of 1905, the want of which was
long felt, the port and the city water-ways are controlled by the harbour
master. Local revenues are collected by the revenue office. The ordinary
law courts are under the control of the ministry of justice, but in
accordance with the extra-territorial rights enjoyed by foreign powers in
Siam, each consulate has attached to it a court, having jurisdiction in all
cases in which a subject of the power represented by such consulate is
defendant.

The population, which is estimated at 450,000, is mixed. Mingling with
Siamese and Chinese, who form the major part, may be seen perso