The Siamese twins, Chang and Eng : a biographical sketch.

Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Siamese twins, Chang and Eng : a biographical sketch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/28 (page 4)
    THE NAVIGATION. To a European or an American entering the Gulf of Siam, and ap- proaching the mouth of the Menam, a singularly dazzling spectacle presents itself. This is in the arrival and departure of junks, the me- dium of the carrying trade between Siam and China. Some seasons as many as a hundred and fifty junks of the largest size arrive at Bun- kok (the London of Siam), bringing immense numbers of Chinese emigrants and a variety of Chinese merchandise, and taking, as re- turn cargo, raw cotton and silk, and also sugar, oil, elephants’ teeth, ivory, logwood, and other commodities. These junks are of a very large size, and make but one voyage a year, which they always per- form when the monsoon is favorable. Every junk is provided with a large gong, instead of a bell, and whenever there is an arrival or de- parture of a junk, it is the custom for those at anchor to show their respect by firing off crackers and sounding their gongs. When there are a great number of vessels at anchor, the noise is quite astounding. A STRANGE CUSTOM. A very singular custom prevails in regard to these junks. A fe- male is never allowed to make a passage in a junk. In many cases in which females have got on board disguised in male attire, and have afterwards been discovered, they have invariably been thrown over- board. A SUPERSTITION. The building of a junk is an affair of great moment, and attended with much form and great attention to “times and seasons; ” the keel must be laid on a particular day, at a particular hour; and the tree which is to form the mast must also be cut at a particular time. This superstitious adherence to particular days and hours appears very ab- surd. But Chang and Eng have seen things equally ridiculous in the “ civilized ” world. On one occasion they stopped for a few hours at the house of a family of Welsh descent, in one of the charming val- leys of the Alleghany Mountains, in Pennsylvania, and observing all the family (including a venerable old lady, upwards of eighty years of age) very busily employed in planting potatoes during a very se- vere rain-storm, they asked why the planters did not leave off work until the storm had ended? The old lady replied with the utmost gravity, that they were very anxious to finish the planting during the dark of the moon! And on another occasion, the twins enquired of a Dutchman in Ohio why the shingles on his house presented so very rough an appearance; and the answer of the Dutchman was, that tho man who put on the shingles, forgetting to look at the almanac, had done the work at the most unlucky period of the moon’s age 1