National Geographic: Glories Of Angkor Page #2

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was bad.

The boat was small, the captain

was drunk all the time

and he writes of his perils on the

ship and the passengers being sick.

Mouhot is really interesting to me

because he went there without a

clearly defined program.

He was also went there on his own

funding.

In a sense he took a real chance

but there was just this wanderlust.

This, this chance to open up a new

area

to the rest of the world and he

in a sense seized the moment.

After pausing in Singapore and

Paknam,

Mouhot recovered his land-legs in

Bangkok,

famous in Europe as 'the Venice

of the East.'

At Bangkok's Royal Palace,

the Frenchman dined with Siam's

monk-turned-monarch, King Mongkut.

The cultured king grilled Mouhot for news of Europe.

He'd become an expert in foreign

affairs,

in order to defend his nation.

While countries around Siam fell

to European powers,

Mongkut would sign trade treaties

with many of them,

knowing that this would

discourage any one

from invading his kingdom.

To teach English to his children,

he'd hire the tutor Anna Leonowens.

Her memoirs would inspire the

musical The King and I.

Its clownish portrait of Mongkut

would become the modern

world's sole impression of a ruler

who almost single-handedly

saved Siam from colonization.

Mongkut's gifts were all but lost

on Mouhot as well.

Barely acquainted with Asia,

he was distracted by its 'peculiar'

customs.

Every inferior crouches before

a higher in rank.

He receives his orders with

abject submission and respect.

The whole of society is in a

state of prostration...

Despite such attacks on his

sensibilities,

Mouhot relished his journeys by

boat and even elephant

through uncharted regions of Siam,

and in time, to the frontier of

Cambodia.

He was warmly received by lesser

kings,

and met with enthusiastic curiosity

by all those unaccustomed

to having a farang, or white man,

parade into their midst.

Mouhot wasted little time on

making friends;

his goal was Science.

My principal object...

is to benefit those who in the quiet

of their homes

delight to follow the poor traveler

who with the sole object of being

useful to his fellow man...

crosses the ocean and sacrifices

family, comfort, health,

and all too often their life itself.

Nature has her lovers,

and those alone who have tasted

them know the joy she gives.

In the 19th century, the science of

natural history was in its infancy;

studying exotic species meant

shooting them,

or dunking them alive in jars of

spirits.

Mouhot's zoological treasure

included seven types of mammals,

ten reptiles, eight freshwater fish,

fifteen land shells, and a spider.

The spider still bears his name.

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