t was not to be. For,
in shaping my plans, I had been ignorant of the fact that during the
dry season, which was then at hand, Asiatic elephants are seldom
worked--that they become morose and irritable and are usually kept in
idleness until their docility returns with the rains. I was greatly
disappointed.

The overland route thus proving impracticable, so far as the first part
of the journey was concerned, the sea road alone remained. Of vessels
plying between Bangkok and the ports of French Indo-China there were
but two--the _Bonite_, a French packet slightly larger than a Hudson
River tugboat, which twice monthly makes the round trip between the
Siamese capital and Saigon; and a Danish tramp; the _Chutututch_, an
unkempt vagrant of the seas which wanders at will along the Gulf Coast,
touching at those obscure ports where cargo or passengers are likely to
be found. The _Bonite_ swung at her moorings in the Menam, opposite my
hotel windows, so, made cautious by previous experiences on other
coastwise vessels, I went out in a sampan to make a preliminary survey.
But I did not go aboard. The odors which assailed me as I drew near
caused me to decide abruptly that I wished to make no voyage on _her_.
The _Chutututch_, I reasoned, _must_ be better; it certainly could not
be worse. And when I approached her owners they offered no objections
to earning a few-score extra ticals by extending her itinerary so as to
drop me at the tiny Cambodian port of Kep. The next day, then, saw me
on the bridge of the _Chutututch_, smoking for politeness' sake one of
the genial captain's villainous cigars, as we steamed slowly between
the palm-fringed, temple-dotted banks of the Menam toward the Gulf.

[Illustration: Transportation in the Siamese jungle

Long files of elephants, bearing men and merchandise beneath the hooded
howdahs, rocking and rolling down the dim and deep-worn jungle trails]

On many kinds of vessels I have voyaged the Seven Seas. I once spent
Christmas on a Russian steamer, jammed to her guards with lousy
pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, in a tempest off the Syrian coast. On
another memorable occasion I skirted the shores of Crete on a Greek
schooner which was engaged in conveying from Canea to Candia a
detachment of British recruits much the worse for rum. But that voyage
on the _Chutututch_ will linger longest in my memory. From stem to
stern she was packed with yellow, half-naked, perspiring
humanity--Siamese, La