Synopses & Reviews
FROM SIAM TO SUEZ By JAMES SAXON GUILDERS DECORATED BY WILLAR0 BONTSf D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK MCMXXXH J LONDON THE MAD PRIEST OF AX KoK ANP I HI-, AtTHUR MB, Tlif autlwf h tht riffa. J2, y, IX, Ami if AND COMPACT tl, Th fa t t r futrtt fieri of r IK wri or To ROBERT C. TURNER OF SHANGHAI, CHINA, WHOM I MET ONE DAY AND HAVE LOVED BVEE SINCE ILLUSTRATIONS The mad priest of Angkor and the author . frontispiece FACING FAC5K Siamese boxing ., ..... 24 The Bangkok snake farm ..... 44 Opium, ....., .. 66 Javanese dancers, ..... 92 Kutus hunting in Bali ., .., .. XX2 The Balinese high priest ....., 128 Thaiptisam ..., ., . 142 The Orient Occidental izcd .., .., 150 Burmese debutante and her eight-Inch cheroot . . 166 The little shepherdesses ... . 174 The Taj Mahal ....., ..., . 190 Hindu holy men, ... 206 The burning ghat beside the Holy Ganges . 226 An Indian water-carrier filling his goatskin while his granddaughter waits to fill her bowl 238 And tell me, do they still paddle long boats through the quiet waters ., .., ..... 256 vii t ND so Mac, old boy Fm writing you this letter JLJL to share my gloom Do you remember that gracious Greek, NIco Zographos and how he served us our first night in Deauville Remember how we heard Neuf a I banque until finally Zographos dealt the financial coup de grace, and we went away from the table with shriv eled pockets And do you remember the year the bookmakers banqueted at our expense after Sergeant Murphy beat Shaun Spadah in the Grand National And do you recall a certain trip we made third class from Monte Carlo back to our rooms at Oxford, be cause of an absolute famine of fives, seventeens and thirty-twos on the Monte Carlo wheels Those experienceswere trying, but trivial when com pared to what happened to-day for to-day 1 went from Hongkong to Macao, the Portuguese colony In China, and lost every cent I had. And while m France and England one is among friends In Macao, one is just around the corner from the sewers of hell. Macao as you know, is called the Monte Carlo of the Orient. It docs exist almost solely on gambling, but in other ways It Is not like Monte Carlo it Is ragged, dirty and smelly In the town are twelve FROM SIAM TO SUEZ tawdry fan-tan dives, heaven only knows how many opium houses, and not even heaven has a record of all the brothels. The ground floor of the Yeng-Hang gambling house, where I went to run my thousand dollars to a fund large enough to finance me around the rest of the world, is given over to coolies and to the riffraff that swarm in and out of the place. In the balconies sit cleaner and wealthier persons. Portuguese ladies. Tourists. Lordly Chinese gentlemen in silks softly sibilant. Delicate little Chinese girls who gamble all day, and at the beginning of night go back to houses of strange practices. I sat between an elderly Chinese gentleman and a Portuguese lady, looking down at the foki, the croupier, a half-naked fellow, stupid, with rolls of fat at his belly and rolls of fat at his throat, whose eyelids never lifted. The other attendants, too, were drowsy with opium. I knew I could win at fan tan from a lot of sleepy Chinamen. Before the foki at one end of the table a bowl is placed over a small mound of cash, old-fashioned Chinese coins with holes in the centers. After all bets have been made, the foki lifts the bowl and counts the coins four and four and four and four, until the last fouror any part thereof is left. Bets are made on the number of coins remaining after the count is fin ished. In the balcony one bets by giving the money to an attendant who puts it in a basket and lowers it to the foki. For a time I played a combination bet called faan, a FROM SIAM TO SUEZ but I lost at faan, so I tried nim, then kwok, then Ching...