tions, you mean."

"Yes; thunderations," added Achang.

"Inundations!" roared the Bornean's preceptor.

"That's what I say; and that's the first reason. The second is that
there are many snakes"--

"Then, it's the place for me!" exclaimed Felix.

"Many snakes and wild beasts; the stilts help to keep them out of the
house."

"But most snakes can climb trees," Scott objected.

"Fixed so that snake can't get off the post into house," the Bornean
explained.

"The little corn-houses in New England and other places are protected in
the same way from rats. Four posts are set up for it to rest on, with a
flat stone, or sometimes a large tin pan turned upside down, placed on
the post. When the building is erected with the corners on the large,
flat stone or the pans, rats or other rodents cannot get over these
obstructions, and the corn is safe from them," continued Louis,
illustrating his subject with a pencil for the post, and his hand for
the stone or the pan.

Scott, who was an officer of the ship, ordered Stoody to take the party
to the landing nearest to the Temple of Wat Chang, as the professor
requested.

"The religion of Siam, like that of Burma, is Buddhist, in whose honor
most of the temples whose spires you can see are erected," said the
professor, as he pointed to several of them.

"We don't care to see them in detail, even if we had the time,"
suggested Louis. "I know they are magnificent pieces of architecture,
and wonderful to behold; but we have had about enough of that sort of
thing."

The party landed, and walked to the temple. It looked like an
exaggerated bell, the spire being the handle, and the lower portion
looking like an enormous flight of circular stairs for the roof. It was
over two hundred feet high. Attached to it in the rear was a structure
with a pitched roof. They bought photographs of it at the stand of a
native who spoke a little French. At this point Achang procured a guide
who spoke French, and he conducted them to the Temple of the Sleeping
Idol.

"It is not much of a temple compared with the one we have just visited,"
said the professor. "We must go into it."

They entered, conducted by the guide. The building looked like three
pitched-roof structures set together, the middle one into the largest at
the bottom, and the smallest into the middle one. It contains an
enormous figure of Buddha, one hundred and sixty feet long, which about
fills the interior of the temple. It