Through India and Burmah with pen and brush E-Book

A. Hugh Fisher

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Down came the rain, sudden, heavy and terrible, seeming to quell even the sea's rage and whelming those defenceless hundreds of dark-skinned voyagers in new and more dreadful misery.
Terrors were upon them, and in abject wretchedness and hopeless struggle men, women and children spread every strip of their belongings over their bodies and even used for shelter the very mats upon which they had been lying.
What trouble a Hindoo will take to keep his body from the rain! Extremely cleanly and fond of unlimited ablutions he yet detests nothing so much as a wetting from the sky, and now, wholly at the mercy of the elements, do what they would, no human ingenuity availed to keep these wretched people dry.

Leseprobe

THROUGH INDIA AND BURMAH

WITH PEN AND BRUSH

BY

A. HUGH FISHER

"The beauty of the world is simple like a looking-glass."

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743864 

PREFACE

The following series of "Travel Pictures" is an endeavour to embody some of my impressions and experiences in India and Burmah.

For kind permission to reproduce among the illustrations eight of the painted sketches I made for them, my thanks are due to the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office who sent me out to the East as their artist.

The two chapters "The Moharam Festival" and "Rakhykash" are included in this book by the courtesy of the Editor of The Fortnightly Review, in which publication they have already appeared.

A. HUGH FISHER.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. RANGOON II. HIS HIGHNESS THE SAWBWA OF HSIPAW III. UP THE IRRAWADDY TO BHAMO IV. THE DEAD HEART OF A KINGDOM V. MANDALAY VI. SOUTHERN INDIA, THE LAND OF HINDOO TEMPLES VII. CALCUTTA VIII. MY FIRST SIGHT OF THE HIMALAYAS IX. BENARES X. LUCKNOW XI. CAWNPORE XII. THE HOUSE OF DREAM XIII. DELHI XIV. DEHRA DUN AND LANDOUR XV. AN EVENING OF GOLD XVI. "GUARD YOUR SHOES" XVII. "A GATE OF EMPIRE" XVIII. THE CAPITAL OF THE PUNJAB XIX. AT THE COURT OF HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHA XX. IN SIGHT OF AFGHANISTAN XXI. RAJPUTANA XXII. SIR PRATAP SINGH XXIII. THE MOHARAM FESTIVAL XXIV. RAKHYKASH XXV. POLITICALINDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

"THEY COULD NOT LIE DOWN WITHOUT OVERLAPPING"MONGOLIAN TYPE OF MOHAMMEDANMUTAMA, A HINDOO BABYHINDOO GIRL, SHOWING ELABORATE JEWELLERYALTAR TABLE AT A BUDDHIST SOCIETY'S CELEBRATIONBOY SHOWING TATOOING CUSTOMARY WITH ALL BURMESE MALESIN THE SHAN STATES: GUARD AND POLICEMANKATHAAT A BURMESE PWEBURMESE ACTORS AT BHAMOA VILLAGE ON THE IRRAWADDYBURMESE MURDERERSPAGANBURMESE DWARF (3 ft. 5 in. high) SUFFERING FROM CATARACTBURMESE PRIEST AND HIS BETEL BoxBURMESE MOTHER AND CHILDTHE SACRED TANK AND THE ROCK, TRICHINOPOLYTHE MAIN BAZAAR, TRICHINOPOLYKARAPANASAMI, THE BLACK GODHINDOO MOTHER AND CHILDBENGAL GOVERNMENT OFFICES, CALCUTTABENGALEE ACTRESS, MISS TIN CORRY DASS THE YOUNGER"A CHARMING OLD GENTLEMAN FROM DELHI"AVENUE OF OREODOXA PALMS, BOTANICAL GARDENS, CALCUTTATHE KUTAB MINAR AND THE IRON PILLAR, FATEHPUR SIKRITHE FORT OF ALI MASJID, IN THE KHYBER PASSHIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHATHE PALACE OF THE MAHARAJAH OF UDAIPUR (DRYPOINT ETCHING)THE MOHARAM FESTIVAL AT AGRA

THROUGH INDIA AND BURMAH

CHAPTER I RANGOON

Down came the rain, sudden, heavy and terrible, seeming to quell even the sea's rage and whelming those defenceless hundreds of dark-skinned voyagers in new and more dreadful misery.

Terrors were upon them, and in abject wretchedness and hopeless struggle men, women and children spread every strip of their belongings over their bodies and even used for shelter the very mats upon which they had been lying.

What trouble a Hindoo will take to keep his body from the rain! Extremely cleanly and fond of unlimited ablutions he yet detests nothing so much as a wetting from the sky, and now, wholly at the mercy of the elements, do what they would, no human ingenuity availed to keep these wretched people dry.

It was the season of the rice harvest, when South India coolies swarm over to Burmah much as the peasantry of Mayo and Connemara used to crowd to England every summer.

If anybody is really anxious to remember that there are paddy fields in Burmah he should cross the Bay of Bengal in December.

Somebody said that our ship was an unlucky one—that it ran down the Mecca on her last trip and killed her third officer; but we got through safely enough, though that crossing was one of the most disagreeable as well as the most weird I ever made—disagreeable because of the bad weather, and weird because of the passengers.

The deck and the lower deck were tanks of live humanity, and when it began to get rough, as it did the morning after we left Madras, catching the end of a strayed cyclone, it was worse than a Chinese puzzle to cross from the saloon to the spar deck, and ten chances to one that even if you did manage to avoid stepping on a body you slipped and shot into seven sick Hindoo ladies and a family of children.

There were six first-class passengers, all Europeans, and 1700 deck passengers, all Asiatics, and the latter paid twelve rupees each for the four days' passage, bringing with them their own food.

"THEY COULD NOT LIE DOWN WITHOUT OVERLAPPING."

The first evening all six of the Europeans appeared at dinner—a Trichinopoly collector, a Madras tanning manager and his wife (who told me that half your American boots and shoes are made from buffalo skins shipped from Madras to the United States), a young lieutenant going to take charge of a mountain battery of Punjabis at Maimyo in Upper Burmah, and a young Armenian, son of a merchant at Rangoon, who had been to Europe about his eyes.

After coffee the man next to me suddenly leapt from his chair with a yell. He thought he had been bitten by a centipede. The centipede was there right enough, but as the pain passed off the next day we supposed the brute had only fastened his legs in and had not really bitten.

The nights were sultry and the ship rolled worse every watch. I think, however, that I never saw people try harder than those natives did to keep clean. They had all brought new palm-leaf mats to lie upon, but they could not lie down without overlapping. I asked the captain what he did about scrubbing decks, and he said it was always done at the end of the voyage! Next morning the downpour, already referred to, began and did the business with cruel effectiveness.

As we neared Burmah the sea grew calm again and the rain abated. The sun dried sick bodies and cheered despondent hearts. I spoke to a woman crouching by some sacks and tin cans, with an old yellow cloth round her head and shoulders, and another cloth swathing her loins. She had very dark brown eyes, and her fingernails were bright red and also the palms of her hands from the "maradelli" tied round the nails at night. She was the wife of a man the other side of fourteen people, some four yards away. I asked his name, not knowing that a Hindoo woman may not pronounce her husband's name. She called him "Veetkar," which means uncle or houseman: the man was of the Palla caste, which is just a little higher than the Pariah, and they had been married five years but had no children. This was the man's second marriage, his first wife having died of some liver complaint he said. Like most of the passengers they were going out for paddy-field work, but unlike so many others, they were "on their own" not being taken over by a labour contractor. The man said he should get work at Kisshoor village, about eight miles from Rangoon. Every year for seven years he had been over.

Altogether, this man had saved, according to his own statement, two hundred rupees in the seven years' work, and had invested this in bullocks and a little field near his village, which was named Verloocooli. He had left the son of his first wife to look after the house and the field.

MONGOLIAN TYPE OF MOHAMMEDAN.

Under a thin muslin an ayah was watching our talk. She said she was a Christian and came from Lazarus Church. Her husband ran away, leaving her with three children in Madras, so she works now as an ayah to an Eurasian lady, while her mother looks after the children in Madras.

About twenty people round one corner of the open hatch seemed to belong to one another. They came from the Soutakar district and were drinking rice-water—that is the water poured off when rice is boiled. A Mohammedan with two sons was going to sell things. The boys would watch the goods, he told me. He was returning to Upper Burmah, where he had lived twenty-four years, and he had only been over to Madras to visit his mother and father. He has "just a little shop" for the sale of such goods as dal, chili, salt, onions, coconut oil, sweet oil, tamarind, matches and candles.

Then there was the Mongolian type of Mohammedan. He was very fat and greasy, and had one of his dog teeth long like a tusk. He was a tin-worker and made large cans in his shop in Rangoon.

I went down between decks and never saw people packed so closely before except on Coronation Day. Even "marked" men discarded all clothing but a small loin cloth: most of them could not move hand or foot without their neighbours feeling the change of position; and as upon the deck above, they often lay partly over each other. Yet in spite of the general overcrowding, I noticed a woman of the Brahmin caste lying at her ease in a small open space marked out by boxes and tin trunks. There was a large lamp in a white reflector hanging by the companion-way, and some of those lying nearest to it held leaf fans over their faces to keep the light from their eyes.

The next day was brighter. There was a light wind and the whole sunlit crowd was a babel of excited talk. A little naked Hindoo baby, just able to walk, was playing mischievously with me. I had been nursing her for a while and now she was laughing, and with palms up-turned was moving her hands like a Nautch dancer as her eyes twinkled with merriment. She was called Mutama, and the poor mite's ears had had a big cut made in them and the lobes were already pulled out more than two inches by the bunches of metal rings fastened in for this purpose.

A purple shawl, tied up to dry, bellied out in the wind over the side of the ship in a patch of vivid colour. It had a border of gold thread and was of native make. Not that the gold thread itself is made in Madras. It is curious that English manufacturers have tried in vain to make these shawls so that their gold thread shall not tarnish, whereas the gold thread obtained from France does not do so.

On a box in the midst of hubbub, a Mohammedan was praying, bending his body up and down and looking toward the sun.

MUTAMA, A HINDOO BABY.

The following morning we reached very turbid water, thick and yellow, with blue reflections of the sky in the ripples. We could just see the coast of Burmah and about noon caught sight of the pilot brig, and entering the wide Rangoon river, passed a Chinese junk with all sails spread. Now the mats began to go overboard and gulls swooped round the ship. We had passed the obelisk at the mouth of the river when, above a green strip of coast on a little blue hill, the sun shone upon something golden.

"The Pagoda!" I cried, and a pagoda it was, but only one at Siriam where there is a garrison detachment. The Golden Pagoda—the Shwe Dagon—appeared at first grey and more to the north. The water was now as thick and muddy as the Thames at the Tower Bridge. It was full of undercurrents too, and there was a poor chance for anyone who fell in.

Over went the mats, scores and scores and scores of them!

There is a bar a little further on called the Hastings, and it was a question whether we'd get over it that afternoon. A line of yellow sand detached itself from the green, and then the water became like shot silk, showing a pale flood of cerulean slowly spreading over its turbid golden brown. On the low bank were green bushes and undergrowth, and beyond—flat levels of tawny-yellow and low tree-clad rising ground that reminded me of the Thames above Godstow.

Beyond the green point of Siriam, just after the Pegu River branches off to the right, the Rangoon River sweeps round in a great curve, at the far end of which stretches the city. It was pale violet in the afternoon light, with smoke streaming from vessels in the harbour, and on the highest point the Shwe Dagon just showing on one edge that it was gold. Far to the right were some twenty tall chimney-stacks of the Burmah Oil Works, but their colour, instead of being sooty and unclean, was all blue and amethyst under a citron sky.

The Customs Officer came out in a long boat, pulled by four men in red turbans, and in his launch the medical officer of the port with a lady doctor. There is a constant but ineffectual struggle to keep plague out of Burmah, and every one of our 1700 deck passengers had to be thoroughly examined—stripped to the waist with arms up, while the doctor passed his hands down each side of the body.

The same night, on shore, I drove to the Shwe Dagon past the race-ground, where a military tattoo was going on by torchlight.

Two gigantic leogryphs of plaster-faced brick stand one on each side of the long series of steps which lead under carved teak roofs and between rows of pillars up to the open flagged space on which the Pagoda stands.

I left the "tikka gharry" on the roadway and went up the steps of the entrance alone. It was a weird experience, walking up those gloomy stairs at night. Alone? At first it seemed so—the stalls at the sides of each landing or wide level space between the flights of steps were deserted; but, as I walked on, a Pariah dog came snarling viciously towards me and another joined him, and then like jackals, their eyes glowing in the darkness, more and more of them came. I had no stick with me, and as I meant going on it was a relief to find that among the shadows of the pillars, to right and left, men were sleeping. One stirred himself to call off the dogs and I walked up another flight of steps, which gleamed a little beneath a hidden lamp.

Between great pillars, faced with plaster, red on the lower portion and white above, I walked on while more dogs came yelping and snarling angrily. I heard a low human wail which changed to a louder note and died away—someone praying perhaps. Then all was quite still except for the crickets. Now I was in a hall of larger columns and walked under a series of carved screens—arches of wood set between pairs of them. Half-way up these columns hung branches of strange temple offerings, things made in coloured papers with gold sticks hanging from them.

At last I came out upon the upper platform on which stands the Pagoda itself. Facing the top of the last flight of steps at the back of a large many-pillared porch, reeking with the odour of burnt wax, I saw a cavernous hollow, and set within it, behind lighted candles, dimly a golden Buddha in the dusk. Outside, a strip of matting was laid over the flagged pavement all round the platform, and in the stones little channels cut transversely for drainage in the time of the rains lay in wait to trip careless feet.

Some years ago when the great "Hti" was brought down from the summit of the Pagoda, after an earthquake, to be restored and further embellished, people of all classes brought offerings of money and jewellery through the turnstiles on to this platform. What a sight it must have been to see the lines of Burmese people crowding up through these two turnstiles, one for silver and one for gold—one woman giving two jewelled bracelets and the next a bangle; a receipt would be given to each donor and then bangle and bracelets thrown into the melting-pot after their jewels had been taken out for adding to the "Hti."

HINDOO GIRL, SHOWING ELABORATE JEWELLERY.

Glittering metal drops quivered from the edges of richly-decorated umbrellas; columns, covered as in a kind of mosaic with jewels and bright glass, shone and sparkled; colossal figures cast grim shadows, and over all the vast mass of the Shwe Dagon rose in its strange curved grandeur of worn and faded gold far up into the night sky with a compelling loveliness, and from the air above came floating down the sweet silvery tinkle of jewelled bells shaken by the breeze.

Night had driven unscourged the money-changers from the temple, and the magic light of the moon weaving silver threads through every garish tint of paint had changed crude colours to ideal harmonies. Not colour alone but form also was glorified. The grotesque had become dramatic, confusion had changed to dignity, all surrounding detraction was subdued and the great ascending curves of the Pagoda rose in simple, uncontested beauty. Nature adored, acknowledging conquest, and the sound of those far wind-caught bells was like that of the voices of angels and fairies singing about the cradle of a child.

I had seen no building of such emotional appeal nor any that seems so perfectly designed to wed the air and light that bathe it and caress it. But imagine the Shwe Dagon transplanted to the cold light of some gargantuan museum near the Cromwell Road; the nicest taste, the most steadfast determination, could not unlock its charm. Here, upon easy hinge, the door swings back at every raising of the eyes, and illumination is for all beholders.

The following afternoon I was again at the Shwe Dagon, and to watch its beauty under the glory of the setting sun was a further revelation. It seemed to show fresh and delicate charm at each part of the day, and after burning at sunset, like a man filled with impetuous passion, shone in the after-glow with the diviner loveliness of the woman who gives her heart.

The river front of Rangoon is a wide, busy and dusty thoroughfare, on to which wide streets open—Phayre Street, Bark Street and the rest, and great piles of office buildings face the water—buildings with Corinthian porticoes and columns with great drums like those of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus without their sculptures. A line of white stucco houses curves round the bend of the Sule Pagoda Street, wide and tree-bordered, like a road at Dorchester or a Paris boulevard, making a handsome vista with its Pagoda surmounting a flight of steps at the far end.

Building proceeds at such a rate that the big city seems to be growing while you look at it, but there are plenty of open spaces. Government House, in red brick and white stone, with an old bronze bell hung in front of the portico between two brass cannon, stands in a goodly park with fine trees and wide lawns and the Royal Lakes, across which there is a beautiful view of the Shwe Dagon, are surrounded by large grounds with trim, well-kept walks and drives. While I was painting by one of the lakes a water-snake every now and then lifted its head above the surface, sometimes a foot and a half out of the water like some long-necked bird.

I was driving back towards the hotel along the Calvert Road when I noticed a temporary wood-framed structure, covered with coloured papers and painted trellis-work. On inquiry I found it had been erected by a Buddhist Society of that quarter of the city, and that the same night upon a stage close to it in the open air a "Pwe" would be given, to which I was bidden welcome about nine o'clock.

At my hotel two people had been poisoned by tinned food a few weeks earlier, but whatever the table lacked in quality it made up in pretentiousness. I quote that day's menu for comparison with the items of another repast the same evening:—

Canapes aux anchois. Potage à la Livonienne, Barfurt—sauce Ravigotte. Inlets mignons à la Parisienne. Civets de lièvre à la St Hubert. Cannetons faits aux petits pois—salade. Fanchonettes au confiture. Glace—crême au chocolat. Dessert. Café.

It was after an early and somewhat abridged version of the above that I drove in the cheerless discomfort of a "tikka gharry" through Rangoon again in the moonlight. After twenty minutes I saw once more the paper temple. There were two long lines of lanterns high in the air in the shape of a horizontal V, and under them a great crowd of people. The trellised temple itself was also charmingly decorated with lanterns.

ALTAR TABLE AT A BUDDHIST SOCIETY'S CELEBRATION.

Inside I was effusively welcomed. A chair was placed for me on gay-coloured carpets at one side of a raised altar platform, at the back of which was a glass-fronted shrine containing an alabaster Buddha and strange lamps in front, with two large kneeling figures and a pair of bronze birds. The whole raised space before the shrine, some ten yards long by four yards deep, was covered with white cloths, on which was placed close together a multitude of dishes and plates of rich cakes, fruits and dainties. There were green coconuts, piles of oranges, melons with patterns cut upon them, leaving the outer green rind in curves and spirals, while the incised pattern was stained with red and green pigment, and a mighty pumpkin with a kind of "Christmas tree" planted in it, decked with packets of dried durian pickle pinched in at a little distance from each end so that they looked like Tom Smith's crackers. Now refreshment was brought to me in the shape of dried prawns and, upon a large plate in neat little separate heaps, the following delicacies:—

Green ginger, minced. Sweet potatoes, shredded. Fried coconut. Sesamum seeds in oil. Dried seed potatoes. Tea leaves. Fried ground nuts.

The president of this Buddhist Society, a stout Burman, with a rose-pink silk kerchief rolled loosely round his head, came and bowed to me, raising his hands and then sat upon another chair at my side, while a young Burman stood behind to interpret our mutual felicitations.

Four silver dishes were now brought to me on a lacquered box, and these contained Burmah cheroots, betel leaves and areca nut, tobacco leaves and chunam (lime). Chilis were also brought, which made me long in vain for a cool drink.

Outside, beyond the walls of pale green trellis, glowed the lanterns, and faces peered at us between the strips of wood. Cloth of red and white stripes lined the roof, and countless flags, quite tiny ones, were fastened along the outer green railing.

In front of the Buddha had now been placed some beautiful gold chalices. The white alabaster figure of Gautama was half as high as a man, and a band covered with gems glittered across its breast.

The interpreter informed me that the whole gathering was a festival of the Buddha Kaitsa Wut Society, and he added:—"We are the people in Burmah always polite to everybody—do please whatever you like here." He spoke English with assurance, but to me his meaning was not always clear. Here are some of his actual words in answer to my request for further information:—"In time long past the monies of the members were according to the orders of the chief here, but they always used to pray every night with white dress, not any sort of fancy dress. Whenever we pray in order yearly we used to give charity to everybody."

About ten o'clock I moved outside, where another arm-chair had been placed for me, this time in the midst of a great crowd of people.

In front of me rose a staging of bamboo framework, with seven oil lamps hanging before it. Immediately below this staging a native orchestra played strange instruments by candle-light and upon the ground, which sloped conveniently, were ranged considerably over a thousand people. I counted thirty-six rows of over twenty-five each, and ever-increasing crowds thronged back and sides. Most of the seated audience were on mats or low bedsteads, and many were smoking the large light-coloured cheroots.

My interpreter had now gone to join some ladies, and I was left to make the best I could of this, my first, Burmese "Pwe."

Two characters were dancing on the stage when I took my seat. Perhaps they were a prince and princess—at any rate they were dressed in old Burmese court style, in very narrow skirts similar to the "hobble," and strange short jackets cut with curled bases like horned moons stretched and held in shape by bamboo frames. There was much swaying and posturing of the body, combined with quick, jerky movements, the arms were moved a great deal with bent elbows and the hands with fingers straight and the palms bent back sharply at the wrists. When these dancers left the stage two men entered in long white gowns, with broad white bands tied round the head in big bows. They turned their backs upon the audience at first, and then turning round squatted upon the floor. Two more similarly dressed came in in the same manner, and after they had squatted beside the others two quite astounding figures came on the scene with long bare swords.

The music all this while kept up an accompaniment of jingle and clapper and tum, tum, tum—jingle and clapper and tum, tum, tum, with a particularly squeaky wind instrument going ahead at the same time like a cork being drawn backward and forward over a pane of wet glass.

I discovered now that on turning their backs to the audience on first entering, the performers made obeisance to a draped bench at the back of the stage. Two more sword-bearing figures came in and two lance-bearers in very lovely bejewelled dresses of old gold. There was a long shrill speech now—then a loud bang, at which all the actors fell to the ground, and a figure entered bearing a short-pointed mace and sat at once on the draped bench.

It was the beginning of a long drama of old Burmese court-life which would go on all night long. The sword and lance-bearers went out, leaving the gentleman with the mace talking to the four white-gowned men (they were probably a king and his ministers), and he went on talking to them for a long half-hour, during which, at rare intervals, one of them sat up and made some remarks. At last a curtain came down, leaving two of the white-gowned ones outside it. These were joined by a manifestly "comic" character, a man with bare chest and a dark blue skirt, who kept the audience in continual merriment while he was on the scene.

Every now and then I turned my head to look up at the great V-shaped line of lanterns hanging high in the air overhead from tall bamboo poles, and the stars shining over all from the night sky. A number of the children were sleeping, though their elders made a good deal of noise, laughing heartily at the comic actor as the play went on and on and on. I should like to have stayed longer, but an appointment with some elephants at an early hour the next morning made me reluctantly leave the "Pwe" at midnight and hunt among the back rows of the audience for the driver of that "tikka gharry."

Everyone has heard of the Burmese elephants piling timber. The largest of the timber companies employing elephants is the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, Limited. The logs, floated down the river from forest-lands, eight hundred or a thousand miles upstream, are stranded at high rain-tides at Poozoondoung, a tract of lowland to which I drove in the early morning.

I reached there just after sunrise, before the dew of the night was yet evaporated, and the logs, on which one had to walk to avoid the mud, were very slippery and more difficult to negotiate with boots than without.

The work of the elephants is to push, drag or pile the teak logs, and on the morning of my visit there were three of the great quadrupeds at work:—Hpo Chem, aged fifty, a fine tusker who had been twenty years at the work, and two female elephants, Mee Cyan, seventy years of age, and Mee Poo, thirty. The male elephant has, of course, tremendous strength in his tusks and uses them for carrying, holding the log firmly with his trunk as he gravely walks up the pile of logs to place his burden on the top. Female elephants can only pile by a combined lift and drag, and do not raise the log entirely from the ground. Pushing with the head is called "ounging."

Most of the elephants in use in Burmah have been got by Kheddah operations, the Kheddah being a big stockade built under Government direction in a similar way to the Kraals of Ceylon. At the last Kheddah many elephants died suddenly of anthrax (some two hundred in about three days), and a number of the trained animals were lost as well as those newly captured.

The hours of elephant labour at Poozoondoung are strictly limited, being from six to nine in the morning and from three to six in the afternoon.

At Poozoondoung, not far from the timber-yards, the chief rice-mills are situated. They were idle now, but when I saw them again after the harvest their big chimneys were belching forth black smoke from the burning husk. The husk obtained from the milled grain is not only sufficient for all fuel requirements, but much has to be shot into the creek for waste.

The engine staffs are, as upon most of the flotilla steamers, Chittagonians, Burmese being employed chiefly as clerks.

Native boats called "Loungoes" brought such of the "paddy" from the country as did not come by rail.

"Hulling" the rice is the operation of breaking off the husk. There were rows of pairs of round flat stones, the under ones stationary, the upper ones revolving, not grinding but merely breaking off the husk. Both grain and husk fell from these stones together to the floor below, and were carried by bucket-elevators to a fanning-room, where the husk was blown off. After leaving the fans the grain had its remaining inner skin taken off in "cones"—cement-faced stones made to press the grain against an outer jacket of perforated wire. At the base of the cone a cloth hung round an opening in the floor, through which the rice dropped, while the white skin fell upon the floor outside to be called "bran," and shipped to Europe for use in the manufacture of cattle cakes.

In the process of "whitening" much of the grain is broken and sorted by graduated sieves, into four or five degrees of size. Finally the rice bags are shipped on to a cargo boat in the creek, for despatch by steamer to India or Europe.

When the rice-mills are in full work the smoke of their chimneys hangs above Rangoon, but overhead every evening the flying foxes pass as usual, and the beautiful Pagoda is far enough away to remain untarnished upon its little hill.

BOY SHOWING TATOOING CUSTOMARY WITH ALL BURMESE MALES.

CHAPTER II HIS HIGHNESS THE SAWBWA OF HSIPAW

I left the Phayre Street station at Rangoon on a bright morning, which made me think of England and the perfect beginning of a warm summer day at home. The paddy-fields were like an ocean on each side of the railway line, and as yellow as ripe corn: some distant hills, the Eastern Yomans which divide Burmah from Siam, were faintly visible and became clearer after I had passed Pegu. There are no elephants in those hills, though they are yet in their thousands in the Western Yomans (one man I met had counted sixty in a single herd).

Railway journeys with unshuttered windows are like miscellaneous collections of snapshot photographs—now men in the paddy-fields wearing the huge low conical bamboo hats of the Shan States; then big anthills and snipe; a banyan tree—the gutta-percha banyan tree, Burmese Nynung, out of which the natives make their birdlime; grey squares of flat hard mud, the Burmese threshing floor; a crowd of brown hawks about a group of natives drying fish; a small eagle with four-foot spread of wings, sometimes called a peacock hawk, having blue eyes instead of the usual eagle yellow; an Eng tree, a taxed tree largely used for building purposes (a tree that comes up and is of no use is called here a Powk-pin); in a stream a man swinging a fishing-net hung on crossed arched hoops at the end of a pole—a net of just the same pattern I have seen on Arno shallows at Florence; a dull leaden-coloured layer of rotting fish on bamboo screens raised above the ground on poles—when rotted enough and full enough of insects, it will be pounded up to make a national dish called "Ngape."

In the distance on the other side of the line the Western Yomans now appeared: they are lower than the Eastern Yomans, and do not rise much above four thousand feet. The window pictures went on changing: little streams full of tree-climbing perch; small fisheries—everyone of them taxed to swell the revenue; bright coloured bee-eaters, the only insectivorous birds that build in the earth and not in trees; corrugated iron—oh! very much corrugated iron—even in the smallest villages, it is used for the hut roofs wherever the railway goes.

I was now passing through the home of the hamadryad, that serpent of temerity and unprovoked assaults, but soon came nearer to the foothills and the edge of the jungle. It was about five o'clock, the time when at this season of golden paddy-fields the jungle fowl come out to steal the rice—peacocks with tails longer than they grow in captivity, and even more numerous than those unnumbered I have seen in the grounds of Warwick Castle. About this time of year, when he has been feeding on rice for a few weeks, your peacock is considered very good eating and is not difficult to get on a moonlight night. He gives three calls before he settles to sleep, just to tell anyone who may be interested which tree he is in.

Pale and feathery the tall tufts of elephant grass quivered gently, and through them I could see a village stockaded against dacoits. A fellow-traveller told me that any man who owns ten houses has to fence the village, and remarked that two hundred dacoits were killed hereabouts during the previous year. My companion was a well marked man. He had a white scar on his chin where he had been clawed by a leopard, and a mark on one arm where he had been shot by boxers in China.

We were passing Kanutkwin, which means "the crooked place," and was the scene of great man-eating operations a few years back, when one tiger killed twenty-five people before he was accidentally shot! A man was out in the jungle after birds with a shotgun, and seeing something move near him, fired precipitately and with great luck ended the career of that four-footed dacoit.

The night was cold and the early morning colder still. I noticed that the third-class carriages were crowded with passengers—long compartments with a third row of people on a long bench down the middle. Rolled up in shawls or thick wadded and quilted coats, the natives kept their heads in woollen wrappers, hoods or "Balaclava helmets," while up on the racks and heaped at the open ends of the carriages were the huge bamboo hats, looking like savage shields or targes, which would be needed in the heat of the day. Some men also carried long swords, for here in the Shan States a man may go armed without question.

At Sedaw, a little after seven o'clock, I reached the beginning of the hills, and about three of that afternoon, with a live hen and some provisions obtained while the train waited at Maimyo (a station where there is a native Indian mountain battery), I got out at Gokteik—Gokteik of the famous bridge—Gokteik of the gorge and the cave and the highest graded railway in the world. But if you asked a Shan to take you to Gokteik, it is not here he would take you, but to a Shan village many miles away, surrounded as all Shan villages are by thick clumps of bamboos.

Along the steepest part of the railway track are laid a second pair of rails, which lie covered with sand between wooden side-slips, so that in case of brakes failing a runaway train could be switched on to these as retarders. At Gokteik Bridge I think the only purpose for a railway station is for the convenience of the engineer, who has occasionally to come up and examine the structure. I found a dak bungalow near the station, with clean rooms but without any cook, so that Tambusami, my servant, had an opportunity of showing his skill with the pots and pans placed there for the stranger's use.

I left him to attend to the kitchen and crossed the long trestle bridge of steel girders—it is 820 feet above the torrent at the bottom of the gorge; then, following the railway line through a couple of short tunnels, I climbed out on to a spur of the mountain from which I could look back at the gorge. The torrent below comes out through a vast stalactite cave or tunnel, the lower opening of which is like part of some great cathedral dome. The rock above crosses like a natural arch 500 feet high, and it is upon that arch that the stupendous, though spidery-looking structure of the viaduct has been raised by an American firm. Their tender was very much less than that of any English house, and although it is possible that American engineers have had more experience in this kind of work, it is suggested that the lowness of the tender was partly to ensure a big advertisement. Walking alone high in air across the 750 yards of that narrow bridge, which has no kind of railing, was certainly one of the "sensations" of my journey, and in a thick mist the experience must be weird in the extreme.

The present engineer of the line was, at the time of my visit, also staying at Gokteik (investigating a suspected change of curve through heat expansion), and he took me in the early hours of the morning through some of the dense jungle in the gorge above the feet of the bridge. The engineer carried a Winchester repeater, and I was armed with a good double-barrelled rifle, but our hopes of seeing certain stripes reported to be near were vain. We crept for a long time stealthily through dense jungle-growth, with a variety of prickles and spikes, and came upon fresh hoof-marks of wild boar, small deer, saumbur and buffalo but no sign of a tiger, and I could not remain for a second attempt.

My next stopping-place was Hsipaw, a town of some size, in which is the palace of Sawche, the Sawbwa of Hsipaw. I was sorry to find that this gentleman's English adviser, to whom the authorities had promised to write about my coming, was away on leave. There was no other English resident at Hsipaw except the keeper of the refreshment-room at the railway station, which included the usual accommodation of a dak bungalow. This was a man with a pronounced Cockney accent and a humorous twinkle in his eye, and in view of the approaching Christmas season he had laid in a large number of cured hams, which hung all round the room. At Hsipaw that evening there sat at table with me two other passengers who were changing trains; one, the medical officer for the Shan States, whom I had joined on leaving Gokteik, and the other, a mining engineer who had had blackwater fever at Buluwayo and had come to Burmah for a change of air.

The doctor was on the look-out for plague cases, and where he had native assistants they waited at the railway stations to report to him as he passed through. Thus at Kyankine I had heard a native assistant tell the doctor that a Shan woman, who was selling bringalls in the market, had declared she had seen four or five people dying at an outlying village.

"Can you rely on her statement?" said the doctor.

"I can't exactly say."

"You should have sent for the poogi" (the "poogi" or "pudgy" is the village headman who collects the taxes and takes them to the "Nabang," the head of a circle of villages and responsible to the Government). "You should have sent for the poogi," said the doctor.

"I did, sir," the assistant answered, "but he said he had not heard anything about it."

"What about the Jaremai Nabang—isn't he here?"

"He is away from here, sir; he goes sometimes to Lashio—the woman said it was seven or eight days ago, but the poogi did not know anything about it."

"Well, keep your ears open and find out all you can. I'll run that poogi in—wire for Chatterjee for any bad case."

I was amused at the Cockney talk of the keeper of the refreshment-room as he brought in the dishes, when the mining engineer said to him as he came up to the table:—"I don't want to be offensive, but a man at Tongu told me you have committed bigamy."

"Let 'em prove it," said the Cockney, "let 'em prove it—that's what I say. I'm not a going to give myself away to you gentlemen nor to my own frens—what I say is, they've got to prove it. I'm not a-saying, mind yer, that there isn't nothin' I've been foolish about or no mistake as I 'aven't made in the past. They tried 'ard to arrest me yesterday—yes, they did, doctor, but they couldn't do it, not they."

"But the man at Tongu showed me a marriage certificate," said the mining engineer. Here the doctor applied the closure and we got on with our dinner.

When it was over I took a Shan boy as a guide to find the Sawbwa's house. Tambusami, my own Hindoo servant, was, of course, useless here as regards conversation. The Shan boy knew some English, being able to say "yes," "no," and "railway station." It was just after eight o'clock when we started, and after walking one and a half or two miles along a white road and turning twice, we crossed two small bridges over a stream or moat, and I saw in front of us some large buildings. When I asked at a guess if this were the house of the Sawbwa, the boy assented "Sawbwa."

Under a covered arcade two men were crouching in the cold over a fire of sticks, watching a giant kettle, which I think was copper and not brass. The arcade led into the hall of a large house whitewashed and with a coloured pattern running round the wall and across several doors. At one side was a staircase leading to the floor above, and at the bottom of the stairs eight or ten pairs of plush slippers were scattered about untidily near a large red-lacquered box and a cat, which was eating from a round dish.

Some kind of guard or policeman in a red turban and bearing a long sword outside his ample cloak came to have a look at me, and was soon joined by another in similar uniform. I talked to them and the men by the kettle and thought they understood that I wanted them to take my card to the Sawbwa, and that I wanted to see him. They all put their heads on one side with cheek on hand and shut their eyes, by which I supposed they meant he had gone to bed. It was not yet nine o'clock, however, and as I had been told that Sawche had been educated in England, I doubted such early hours and I persisted in pretending that I did not understand.