All the Siamese tributary States are virtually under the Protectorate of the King of Siam – the king being Lord paramount or Suzerain. When a chief accedes to the seat of supreme authority in any tributary State, it is necessary that he obtain the sanction of the Suzerain. In case the Suzerain is called upon to select a chief for any tributary State, he must make the selection from that State and the prince must be unanimously approved by both officers and people of the State. Enjoying such popularity his appointment may be confirmed by the king of Siam, and not otherwise.

By this conventional evolutionary psychology script, the man who skips from one nubile spouse to another over time is, like the sultan who hoards the local maidenry in a single convenient location, simply seeking to “maximize his reproductive fitness,” to sire as many children as possible with as many wives as possible.

I fancied at first the stuff was paraffin wax, and smashed the jar accordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable. It struck me as singularly odd, that among the universal decay, this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousand years.

She drew to the open window, purple with the night-shadows, made dimly distinct by here and there a distant star; the gulf beneath blended in the darkness, till but one atmosphere seemed both above and below, sometimes illumined by flashes of phosphoric light—meteors that might have suited sea or sky, and, broken by two or three ridges of foam, seen in obscurity, like lines of snow.