1 numerous family, including 44 concubines and 50 children. • Siamese civil servants. • An astonishing lot of costly items and belongings. • An unknown number of Australian racing horses. • 37 Elephants. 26 of them carrying the big man’s daughters and ‘ballet girls’ in the howdahs. • Very many ordinary elephant tusks. • Herd of ordinary horses. • Herds of cattle, oxen, sheep and goats. • 3 Axis deer’s. • A life guard of 40 men, armed with rifles and swords.
The Silver When convoy number 2 finally reached Prachinburi - heavily guarded and protected - Seidenfaden felt the relief. A gang of robbers were said to be in the heels of the convoy. The convoy had transported 1.800.000 Silver Piastres. At that time, the Silver Piastre was linked to the French Franc at a fixed value of 10 Franc for 1 Silver Piastre. In 2012 money this silver treasure equals not less than 200 million Danish Kroner or 1.1 billion Thai Baht. Using the steamers of the gendarmerie, the money boxes were then all and everyone sailed to a bank in Bangkok. Here the staff worked more days to count all this money.
Mission accomplished Finally, the last convoy reached Kabinburi. From here land transport was impossible because of all the tributaries to the Prachin-
The photos are in geographical sequence from the border to Prachinburi. 1. A cart of baskets - today’s export from Cambodia. 2. Typical river slope near Aranyaprathet. 4. The river widens. Baan Klong Yang. 5. This slope also had to be navigated. Non Phan Suk. Photos: Claus Gundersen
2 buri River which were flooding the whole area. Luckily 5 steamers belonging to the Gendarmerie plus 40 big barges could take over and sail all the goods and animals of all the convoys the last part of the way. Meanwhile the detachment of gendarmes was decimated by mostly beriberi, malaria and dysentery. In this last convoy the small and skinny Erik Seidenfaden himself laid in a cart, fewer stricken and with nobody to look after him. A sergeant found him and tried to help. His Danish colleague Captain Johansen, had heard about the situation and came to his rescue. He was brought to the captain’s comfortable houseboat and sailed down to the Bay of Siam as fast as possible. In the air of the sea he recovered.
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Epilogue The Governor-general was then appointed ordinary Governor over the much smaller Prachinburi Province, where he hopefully could find space enough for his wealth. He was furthermore elevated to Chao Phra-
4 June 2012 • ScandAsia.Thailand 37