1th Oct.
Beyonp seeing occasionally in the har-hour a sailing vessel flying the red flag with a white elephant on it, we have not much to do here with Siam, and yet it is interesting to know something of its trade and progress; and in Mr. Acting Consul-General Gould's report on the Trade of Bangkok for 1888 we find a few points worth notice. It will probably astonish Mr. Quin to read that in the year in question the total shipping of the port increased by some 30,000 tons, that under the British fag showing an' increase of 26} thousand tons, and that under the German a decrease of nearly 20 thousand. In rts, 1888 was the best year Bang-ook has ever had, the quantity of rice shipped being some forty per cent. above the average for the previous ten years. This was due to the excellent rainfall in 1887, the rainfall in 1888 having been deficient, so that the eosperts of the present year are not nearly so good. Of teak, another Siamese staple, the export was also large, and this, too, was partly due to the rainfall, which filled the rivers and facilitated the bringing down of the logs from the forest. Philosophers tell us that there is no such thing as an unmixed good or an unmixed evil; and the rise in freights in 1888 which gladdened the hearts of shipowners everywhere, considerably diminished the profits of exporters of teak. Low freights, while they naturally depress the shipowning class, are a greater gain to commerce generally, rendering possible the exchange of bulky goods, and sometimes actually creating new lines of business. 'I'he export of bullocks is feature in Siamese trade, and cattleliftin, seems to beaprominentfactorin thetraftic. To check this enterprise—the sale of stolen cattle—which was going on on a large scale, a regulation was adopted in June, 1888, by which no bullock could be exported that was not protected by a certificate that it had been honestly bought in the presence of the local officials. Still there was a remarkable increase in the export in 1888, which is not so unaccountable when we read that "some 25,000 blank sale papers were clandestinely obtained by the cattle traders from the Government printing office." We can hardly agree with Mr. Gould that it is difficult to say whether this had anything to do with the fact that the new regulations did not check the increase in the export. Persons of taste will regret to read that "the export of dye-woods, zamboge, indigo, and other materials used in dyes shews no increase, the fact being that chemical dyes are now rapidly supplanting the vegetable." As might be expected, in a year in which so good an export business was done, the import business was also large but the Siamese seem to take about one-fourth of the payment for their exports in the precious metals, the net import of treasure for the year having been something over four million dollars, of which a fair portion was in gold leaf from China, so that Siam is not a gold-exporting country. All kinds of cotton goods shewed an advance, a favourite fabric being a cloth manufactured at Ahmedabad, called " chawls." The Siamese have not the reputation of being a very industrious people, and we are not therefore surprised to read that " while the import of manufactured cotton goods is increasing, the import
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.