sea. Pnom,
meaning "mountain," refers to the hill, or mound, ninety feet high, in
the heart of the city; Penh was the name of a celebrated Cambodian
queen. Until twenty years ago Pnom-Penh was a filthy and unsanitary
native town, its streets ankle-deep with dust during the dry season and
ankle-deep with mud during the rains. But with the coming of the French
the flimsy, vermin-infested houses were torn down, the hog-wallows
which served as thoroughfares were transformed into broad and
well-paved avenues shaded by double rows of handsome trees, and the
city was provided with lighting and water systems. The old-fashioned
open water sewers still remain, however, lending to the place, a rich,
ripe odor. Pnom-Penh possesses a spacious and well ventilated
motion-picture house, where Charlie Chaplin known to the French as
"Charlot" and Fatty Arbuckle convulse the simple children of the jungle
just as they convulse more sophisticated assemblages on the other side
of the globe.

But all that is most worth seeing in Pnom-Penh is cloistered within the
mysterious walls of vivid pink which surround the Royal Palace. Here is
the residence of His Majesty Prea Bat Samdach Prea Sisowath, King of
Cambodia; here dwell the twelve score dancing-girls of the famous royal
ballet and the hundreds of concubines and attendants comprising the
royal harem; here are the stables of the royal elephants and the sacred
zebus; here a congeries of palaces, pavilions, throne halls, dance
halls, temples, shrines, kiosks, monuments, courtyards, and gardens the
like of which is not to be found outside the covers of _The Thousand
and One Nights_. It is an architectural extravaganza, a bacchanalia of
color and design, as fantastic and unreal as the city of a dream. The
steep-pitched, curiously shaped roofs are covered with tiles of every
color--peacock blue, vermilion, turquoise, emerald green, burnt orange;
no inch of exposed woodwork has escaped the carver's cunning chisel;
everywhere gold has been laid on with a spendthrift hand. And in this
marvelous setting strut or stroll figures that might have stepped
straight from the stage of _Sumurun_--fantastically garbed
functionaries of the Household, shaven-headed priests in yellow robes,
pompous mandarins in sweeping silken garments, bejeweled and bepainted
dancing-girls. It is not real, you feel. It is too gorgeous, too
bizarre. It is the work of stage-carpenters and scene-painters and
costumers, and you are