Excerpt from Toward the Rising Sun: Sketches of Life in Eastern LandsFifty years ago little was known in America Of the kingdom Of Siam beyond the fact that' it was the native land Of the Siamese twins, and in a vague way we had heard that the people Of Siam worshiped white elephants.After the Sepoy Rebellion in India, English civilization made its way through India, on to Burma, and opened the closely sealed ports Of Siam and Cochin China. We then began to learn something Of the Heart Of Farther India. Now the flood of Europeans pouring into the South Pacific Islands is day by day carrying Western manners and ideas into the shut-in kingdom.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.