manner, a few hundred ticals were expended
nightly, during the continuance of the festival,
which lasted ten days. In addition to this,
there were given away in alms daily at the
palace, during the same period, five hundred
ticals. The amusements generally, were very
poor. What appeared to me deserving of more
admiration than any thing else, was the very
orderly manner in which the people conducted
themselves, notwithstanding the vast concourse
collected from all parts of the country.: The
preparations and conduct of the whole affair did
the Siamese much credit, and would not disgrace
any country in Europe. They certainly
thought not a little of it themselves, and frequently
asked me if I ever saw .the like before.
I was obliged to confess I „had not. The fire
from which the pile is lighted they pretend is
celestial, having, as they allege, been taken from
a ball of fire which fell at the door of the palace
several centuries ago, and which has never since
been suffered to extinguish.”
Charity to the lower animals is considered by
the Siamese as a religious virtue of great merit,
and this frequently gives rise at funerals to a
disgusting'and abominable rite, never performed,
however, except in compliance with the dying
request of the deceased. I t consists in cutting
slices of flesh from the corpse, and with these
feeding the birds of prey and dogs, whieh are
seen in numbers about the temples, waiting for
this horrid feast. After this ugly rite, the remains
of the body are buried in the usual manner.
The only honourable funeral amongst the
Siamese, consists in burning the body, and the
practice is very general. I t seems to be viewed
as a religious rite, and as a ceremony necessary
to assist the passage of the soul to a higher
grade in the scale of transmigration, and finally
to its extinction or rest. The persons not
deemed worthy of this rite, are women dying
pregnant, or in child-birth ; persons who come to
a sudden death; persons who die of the smallpox,
and malefactors. The death of all such is
considered as the punishment of some offence in
the present or a former state of existence. They
are consequently deemed unworthy of regular funereal
rites, and buried. Under ordinary circumstances,
so much importance is attached to the
rite of burning the dead, that if the ceremony
cannot be performed soon after death either from
poverty, or from the party dying at a distance,
the body is first buried, and afterwards, as soon as
convenient or practicable* disinbumed, and consigned
to the funeral pile. Of persons of dis.
tinction, a few of the bones are kept, and either
preserved in urns in the houses of their relatives,
or buried, with little pyramidal monuments
c 2