Note 2 — Relation of 1626

The old capital of Siam was Ayuthia (also written, in early documents, Yuthia and Odia). It was founded in the year 1350, and was built on an island in the river Meinam—the proper name of which, according to M.L. Cort’s Siam (New York, 1886), p. 20, is Chow Payah, the name Meinam (meaning “mother of waters”) being applied to many rivers—seventy-eight miles from the sea. Ayuthia was captured and ruined by the Burmese in 1766, and later the capital was removed to Bangkok (founded in 1769), which lies on the same river, twenty-four miles from the sea. Crawfurd, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, gives the estimated population of Ayuthia at 40,000, and that of Bangkok at 404,000—the latter probably much too large. See his Dict. Indian Islands, article, “Siam.”