e skinning and I'll have it on board
before you sail."

Now--so the story goes--after dinner in the magnate's New York home he
takes his guests into the smoking room for cigars and coffee. Spread
before the fireplace is a great orange and black pelt, a trifle faded
it is true, but indubitably the skin of a tiger.

"Yes," the host complacently in reply to his guests' admiring comments,
"a real man-eater. Shot him myself in the Johore jungle. Easy enough to
get a tiger if you use American business methods."

* * * * *

When, upon reaching Singapore, the great seaport at the tip of the
Malay Peninsula which is the gateway to the Malay States and to Siam, I
learned that small but not uncomfortable steamers sail weekly for
Bangkok--a four-day voyage if the monsoon is blowing in the right
direction--or that, by crossing the narrow straits on the ferry to
Johore, we could reach the capital of Siam in about the same time by
the Federated Malay States and Siamese railways, there seemed no valid
excuse for keeping the _Negros_ any longer. So, bidding good-by to
Captain Galvez and his officers, I gave orders that the little vessel,
on which we had cruised upward of six thousand miles, amid some of the
least-known islands in the world, should return to Manila. To leave her
was like breaking home ties, and I confess that when she steamed slowly
out of the harbor, homeward bound, with her Filipino crew lining the
rail and Captain Galvez waving to us from the bridge and the flag at
her taffrail dipping in farewell, I suddenly felt lonely and deserted.

When the people whom I met in Singapore learned that I was
contemplating visiting Siam they attempted to dissuade me. I was warned
that the train service up the peninsula was uncertain, that the
steamers up the gulf were uncomfortable, that the hotel in Bangkok was
impossible, the dirt incredible, the heat unendurable, the climate
unhealthy. And when, desiring to learn whether these indictments were
true, I attempted to obtain reliable information about the country to
which I was going, I found that none was to be had. The latest volume
on Siam which I could find in Singapore bookshops bore an 1886 imprint.
The managers of the two leading hotels in Singapore knew, or professed
to know, nothing about hotel accommodations in Bangkok. Though the
administration of the Federal Malay States Railways generously offered
me the use of a private car over their