[35]An improvement on the splendid tip is to use the gummy tape used for insulating electric wire.
[35]An improvement on the splendid tip is to use the gummy tape used for insulating electric wire.
It was a grand river, what I'd call a small salmon river, tumbling into pools over great water-worn boulders, with a tangle of reeds and bamboos above flood mark. It was piping hot fishing, and the water seemed rather clear for the phantom I tried. I had two on for a second, and had a number of touches from small Mahseer that I saw following the minnow, but failed to land anything, so alas!—I can't swear I've caught a Mahseer yet or killed a jungle fowl—my two small ambitions just now. G. collected seeds and roots of wild plants to send home, so she had a better bag than I had. We rode back to our halting place to lunch—or tiffen, or whatever it's called in these parts—a sort of solid breakfast at one o'clock,—on the side of the pony track; the Chinese pack-ponies wandered round eating bamboo leaves and tough looking reeds. Along the road we passed many groups of Kachins, all with swords and mild wondering eyes. This halt was rather a business I thought,—all the packages unladened, pots and pans and fires, and a complicated lunch. I incline to our home fashion when living out of doors, of a crust and a drink at mid-day and a square meal after the day's outing.
As we were getting our cavalcade started, along came Captain Kirke and Carter in shirt-sleeves, riding back hard to Headquarters. They are hard as nails but looked just the least thing tired, having ridden a great distance since yesterday on an inspecting tour from some hill village. They hoped to get to Bhamo by nightiftheir steeds held out.
For the rest of the day we rode, at first with our whole crew, latterly by ourselves and the two Sepoys:—cantered a hundred yards or so and jog-trotted, ambled, walked, cantered again and climbed slowly up hillside paths; through damp hollows, between brakes of high reeds with beautiful fluffy seeds, under tall trees festoonedwith creepers with lilac flowers, and over hard sunny bits of the path with butterflies floating up against us, and overhead, orchids and pendant air roots and wild fruits. I suppose it was the beautiful surroundings that made the ride so enjoyable, and the change from the plain to the hill air.
Towards evening we rode up a saddle ridge that crossed the valley along which we had been riding, and came out of trees and bamboos into the open. Here we found another pretty public-work's dak bungalow of dark teak uprights and cross beams, with white-washed cane matting between and neat grass thatch laid over bamboos, with wide views up and down the valley of rolling woods and distant hills. To the north-east a distant range of blue hills cut across the valley, touches of sunlight showed they were covered with forest; below us the path led zigzagging into the yellow and green bamboos. Looking back to the south down the valley we had come up, the Chin hills bounded the horizon, but between us and them lay miles and miles of rolling woods, and a haze at the foot of the hills over the plain of the Irrawaddy.The air was delicious, the views enthralling, the lodging comfortable, the country we might call our own, with no one about, except the native Durwan, or caretaker, and his Kachin women folk, only in the distance on a hillside were two Kachins clearing a patch of jungle—otherwise solitude and peace. Our ponies and baggage arrived all right but some time after us; it ought to have been looted if what recent writers say about the Kachins is right—that "they do no honest labour, but live by lifting cattle, looting caravans, and stealing anything upon which they can lay their hands." Krishna and all the others set at once to unpack and get ready our meal, which felt rather late—I should have timed them to arrive before us. It grew chilly in the evening, and our red blankets soon seemed uncommonly attractive.
Sunday forenoon.—You might, if of a contemplative mind, and not harassed by desire for sport, or movement, or travel, stay for many hours, even days, with great content at this Kalychet bungalow, looking out over forest and glen, inhaling the pure air, and even run to poetry were you of the age.
"Watching shadows, shadows chasing,"
"Watching shadows, shadows chasing,"
—over the forest-clad mountains which have only cleared patches here and there, where Kachins have cut the bamboos, taken a crop or two and then moved on, leaving the ground to lie fallow and grow over weeds again. On the hillside there are two of these clearings across the track above us, some two acres or so in extent, with the bamboos cut and stumps of trees projecting, and in the middle of one of these there is a native hut, like a fragile boat-house, projecting from the slope of the hill. Narrow footpaths through the bamboos lead from our cleared space up to them. Two little Kachin women are climbing up these paths, their cattle in front of them; each has a basket on her back, and she spins as she goes—now they are followed by a sprightly boy and his sister, the boy straight as a dart, with a sword slung across his back, andhis gay red-tasselled satchel on his left side; both have bare feet, and neither of them seem to heed the thorns. The girl has a loose bundle of thin hoops of brass and black cane round her hips, under her short black jacket, and two great silver torques round her neck and breast; her clothes are dark blue, black, and red.
… There is the quiet of the mountains; only slightlybroken at intervals of an hour or so when a caravan passes, but sometimes these pass perfectly silently without stopping; barefooted carriers with their merchandise slung across the shoulder on bamboos, and sometimes with ponies, and bells jingling cheerily. Just now, one has come from the China frontier, some ten carriers wearing pointed straw hats several feet wide. They unlimber and drink a little water from a spring that spouts out of the side of a hill through a bamboo; they are quiet people—their voices and the gurgling of the spring just reach us. Then from Burmah side come women carriers, Shans, I think, old and young, in dark blue clothes, short petticoats and tall turbans; they come sturdily up the hill and joke with the Chinese coolies as they pass without stopping down the zigzag path into the bamboos, by the path our ponies and people have already followed. But here is movement! and a cheery jingling!—a whole string of Chinese pack ponies, eighty at least, coming up from Bhamo, each laden with bales, a Chinaman to every three ponies. At the end stalks a lean Indian. I suppose he owns the show—his wife follows, a very black thing, a Madrassee, to judge by her not very white and inelegant hangings. They drink and spit at the spring, and he seesus and salaams, and looks in to see the durwan, who is one of his countrymen.
But now we must be jogging too, though it is pleasant here. We leave one sowar behind, in pain he says, but I doubt if he's very ill. So we get on to our rather big polo ponies, one black, the other white, and go down the valley on the path to China—said bridle path quite dry now excepting under bamboo clumps, though it rained hard in the night.
7P.M.—Kulong Cha—"There's no place like home" they say, and I thought so; now I think there is, perhaps even better. Our own highlands must have been like this before General Wade and Sir Walter Scott opened them to the tourist; the Pass of Leny or where Bran meets Tay, when there was more forest, and only bridle tracks, and men going armed, must have been like this, even to the free fishing and shooting.
We are in a cup-shaped wooden glen, our rest-house eighty feet up the hillside above the track, and a brawling burn that meets the Taiping a few hundred yards beyond our halting place. The burn suggests good fishing, and the Taiping looks like a magnificent salmon river. It is 7P.M.and Krishna busy setting dinner, and your servant writing these notes to the sound of many waters and by a candle dimly burning, for the sun has gone below the wooded hills and left us in a soft gloom. Several camp fires begin to twinkle along the road where the caravans we overtook, and others from the east, are preparing for the night. Our Chinese coolies too have their fires going near us, the smoke helping to soften the already blurred evening effect. We have had, for us, a long afternoon's ride—a little tiring and hot in the bottom of the valley when the path came down to the Taiping river,—a winding and twisting path, round little glens to cross foaming burns, level enough for a hundred yards canter, then down, and up, hill sides in zigzags, here and there wet and muddy with uncertain footing, through groves ofbamboos and under splendid forest trees, some creepers hanging a hundred feet straight as plumb lines, others twisted like wrecked ships' cables, and flowering trees, with delicious scent every hundred yards or so. We felt inclined to stop and look, and sketch vistas of sunlit foliage through shadowy aisles of feathery bamboos, or splendid open forest views with mighty trees, and theriver and its great salmon pools. There were splendid butterflies, some large and black as velvet, with a patch of vivid ultramarine, others yellow with cerulean, and another deep fig green with a blazing spot of primrose, and pigeons, and of course jungle fowl, because I had not my gun!
Our caravan arriving here was picturesque. They came round the corner over the burn bridge, walking briskly, the sick sowar riding in the rear, the cook and his Burmese wife leading—she so neat, with a pink scarf, green jacket, and plum-coloured silk skirt, her belongings in a handkerchief slung over her shoulder from a black cotton parasol, and in her left hand, carried straight as a saint's lilies, a branch of white flowers for G.; then came the Burman youth, also with some bright colour, a red scarf round his black hair and tartan kilt; he carried my gun, and the Chinamen in weather-worn blue dungarees, loose tunics and shorts, and wide yellow umbrella hats slung on their backs, with their shaggy brown and white ponies. We arrived at five, the mules and baggage at six, and already dinner is almost cooked, our belongings in place, beds made, mosquito curtains up,—and this day's journal done!
… Wish somebody would write this day's log for me—I must fish! The burn in front is in grand spate, so is the Taiping river, roaring down discoloured. If I know aught of Highland spates, they will both be down in the hour and fishable. The glen is full of sun from behind us, and the mist is rising in lumps. It rained in the night; when we turned in, the mist had come down in ridges on us, and it felt stuffy and warm under blankets, and the sound of the waters was muffled by the mist. I awoke with a world of vivid white light in my eyes, the glen was quivering with lightning, and the gods played awful bowls overhead! Green trees up the hillsides and contorted mist wreaths showed as in daylight, and then were buried in blackness and thunder. Then the rain came! to put it intil Scottis—asnell showir' dirlin' on the thatch. There was the bleezin cairn, and the craig that lowped and dinnled i' the dead-mirk dail, the burn in spate and the rowin flood o' the Taiping dinging their looves thegither at their tryst i' the glen—ane gran' an' awesome melee. But I don't like these effects, so I buried myself in red blankets, and as the rain thundered down, thought of our coolies; I expect they got from under their hats and went below the floor of our bungalow. The atmosphere, after an hour, grew suddenly pleasant and cool—a breeze rose—there was light in the left, and the glint of many stars—and I pulled on another blanket and slept at last refreshingly. What a night the Chinese up the road must have had. No jungle however thick could have kept out that rain, and it is thin where they are, for many campers have cut down the branches and bamboos for fodder and firewood. They sleep with only a piece of matting over their bodies, the wide straw hat over their head and shoulders; and their fires, of course, were extinguished. The sort of thing our Volunteers enjoyed in S.A., and for which they got rheumatism and experience, and a medal, and no opportunity to wear it.
One of the sepoys has cut me a bamboo, so it's time to be off to put on snake-rings, and get out tackle and try somehow to hang on to one of these Mahseer that I have heard of so much and of which I know so little. Local information there is none, but I have spoons and phantoms, and so—who knows!
The above notes and remarks, full of hope, were written with a little impatience to be "on the water." Now, after two hours scrambling through jungle to and from the river, I've less hope and an empty basket. It was hot and still down in the glen, like the vale wherein sat grey-haired Saturn, and—
"Forest on forest hung about his headLike cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,Not so much life as on a summer's dayRobs not one light seed from the feathered grass,But where the dead leaf fell,theredid it rest."
and fruit and flowers too lay sodden under foot. It was tough work getting through the few hundred yards of jungle of creeper thorns and boulders to the river's edge. I fished two or three sheltered runs, and came back soaking from within and without from the heat and wet foliage, scratched by thorns, with ears drumming from the noise of many waters, and no basket, and the river not down two inches and muddy as could be!
We must be off again now—or at least let the pack ponies and servants go.
12th, Monday.—Nampoung, after two hours on our little gees, two hours that seemed days! Hot and stuffy down in the glens in the din and roar of the Taiping in spate, climbing up for a thousand feet, a hundred yards on the level, twisting round corries—such fascinating corries,stuffed with every sort of tropic growth, like the pictures one saw in stories of Jules Verne, but in such rich varied colouring! I vow I saw creepers of two hundred feet, wild plantains with fruit, and great ferns, heavy-leaved dark foliage and feathery bamboos, the leaves yellow and dropping and covering our path with a crisp brown carpet.
We rode generally in single file, our right sides against rocks or cuttings in the yellow earth bank, and every here and there were views through the foliage, sometimes almost straight down below us a thousand feet, where we could catch a glimpse of foaming river and hear its roar coming up to us.
The sowars cut branches for us to hold over our shoulders to keep the heat of the afternoon sun off neck and back—Birnam woodsa deux, and Nampoung fort instead of Macbeth's castle.
Nampoung—the edge of the Empire!—We are now well into the Kachin Highlands, 6000 to 7000 feet above the sea, and the air is delicious. The last part of our ride here was very steep. G. and her pony were only just able to scrape up together. I and the sepoys had to walk. Almost in the steepest part some sixty Chinese mules and ponies came down, and we pulled aside at a bit of the path where two could barely pass. It was a cheery sight, the long line of ponies and the blue coats and mushroom hats, jogging, slipping, and jangling down the zigzag path, with an occasional cheery shout to the beasts as they disappearedround corners, appeared again, and finally showed a mile below, when only the sound of their bells came up to us faintly from the tropic woods in the bottom of the Nampoung Valley.
I am not sure that having reached a point within pistol-shot of the back of China fills one with any enormous sense of accomplished endeavour. What strikes me mildly is the feeling of being at the present extremity of British possessions, and we speculate where the March may be in years to come—East or West? The tiny little frontier fort we have arrived at is on a saddle-back hill, and overlooks the angle of China between two valleys, that of the Taiping and its tributary, the Nampoung. As we passed through the wire entanglements on the summit, after our climb up, the Indian sentinel facing China across the glen struck me as being rather a suggestive figure, so here he is.
"Capin Kurruk" was our effective password. Kirke I suppose, had heliographed our arrival, and the Subadar and the native doctor met us. The Subadar, a Sikh, I think, had almost the only Indian face I have seen so far that I liked—big, potent, and with the appearance of a sportsman and gentleman. The doctor was of rather an opposite type, though clever-looking, and spoke a little English.
The dark bungalow was a few hundred yards down the hill from the fort looking down the valley we had come up into the sunset. On these higher hills I see more Kachin clearings, and with the glass make out their sturdy little figures in the tracks leading from one clearing to the other, interminable bamboo jungle above and below them. They certainly have a splendid country to hold. They are said to have come into Burmah with the great Mogul invasion; and when the Northerners retreated, the Kachinsstayed and took up their quarters in the hill tops, and have raided the low countries since.
The cut of their women's dress resembles the reindeer skin dress of the Laps in north of Norway, and the geometric ornaments are similar, and the torque or heavy penanular necklet of silver has ends like the druidical serpents head.
12th February.—Down at Kulong Cha the night was warm and stuffy! last night up here at Nampoung it was precious cold. We could hardly sleep, though we had on our whole wardrobe. The weak point was our having only two thin quilts underneath on the charpoys. As these bungalows are all made after one design on the principle of a meat-safe, to keep you cool in the low hot levels, they are only too effective up here. So we turned out very early to find a spot where the sun shone hot on the Empire's wall. In an hour or two we will be down to the Nampoung River, and it will be hot there as an oven.
Lives there a man who has sat by the riverside at mid-day in the glen, with a pipe and a cup, and a fish in the bag, the air hot and full of the sound of running waters, and the sun laughing in the spirals of the mountain dew, who has not felt that beautiful life could offer nothing better than another fish? (I'd have brought a "man or woman" into this already involved interrogatory sentence, but for the pipe!) So we feel, as we rest by the side of Nampoung River, between China and Upper Burmah, after a morning's ride and an hour's fishing. There is a delicious blend of wood, and hill, and running water, and we have a good Mahseer in the bag—or pot rather—a perfect beauty, though not quite up to the record weights we read of; but it played handsomely, and it comes in handily for lunch. I got it at the tail of a lovely clear running pool,[36]just above the ford where the caravans cross from China. The river must be much netted by the coolies who camp for the night here; as I wound up before lunch one of these, a Chinaman, with a boy came and cast a circular net with great skill over half the pool in which I'd landed the Mahseer, but they didn't get anything, as I expect I'd driven the Mahseer into the rough water at the top of the pool. Down the river where it meets the Taiping I am told there is splendid fishing, but I must content myself with the hope that "a time will come." It is pleasant in the meantime; there are sweet scents in the air, and pleasant colours. Our little camp kitchen, one hundred yards down the river, wreaths the trees with wisps of blue smoke. The Burmese girl and her brotherwear bright red and white, and near us there are wild capsicums and lemon trees dangling all over with yellow fruit and sweet-scented blossoms. The fruit has rather a coarse skin, but the juice is pleasant enough under the circumstances.
[36]Fresh food a treat, as larder is becoming "tinny."
[36]Fresh food a treat, as larder is becoming "tinny."
How good the Mahseer was fried, with a touch of lemon! I daresay if it had been big enough to feed all hands it would not have had such a delicate flavour; it was rather like fresh herring. If our servants hadn't much fish, I at least, helped their larder to a crow from a swaying bough above us some forty odd yards—brought it down with a four-inch barrelled Browning's colt. It and its comrades made a racket above us, and disturbed a nap G. and I were having on the bank up the river from our camp, so I drew as I lay and fired, and was fairly well pleased with the shot; but the smiles and astonishment of some Chinese and Kachins, who had gathered from I don't know where, and were very unexpectedly showing their heads round us, were truly delightful, and the feathers were off in a twinkling. I liked these aborigines' expressions after the shot a good deal better than before.
Then we got up and went on to China, G. on her white pony, the writer on foot, and when we came to the ford the pony wouldn't face the stream for love or a stick, so I'd to carry G. pick-a-back, and it took me to the thick of the thigh and G. well over her ankles. We walked three steps on Chinese ground and stopped, and looked at the Chinese riffraff soldiery that turned out from a cane house, and they likewise looked at us. As they offered no signs of welcome, we began our homeward journey, took a breath, said a prayer, and "hold tight," and waded back. These guards, I am told, lose their heads if they allow anyone to pass without a permit; we did not have one, so I can quite well understand their expressions. G. knew this before we crossed, but I did not, so I reflect. I do not suppose we could have forded sooner as the river was falling; afew hours later, it could have been crossed with less difficulty.
So we got back to our ponies again, and followed our baggage jogging back down from China, in and out, and up and down the valleys; and it was just as nice as jogging up: we were glad to see the scenes of wood and valley and foaming rivers over again from new points of view.
At Kulong Cha, we stopped the night in the Glen of the Sound of Many Waters. A leopard called on us in the night—came into the back verandah with a velvety thud, and so we each turned out with our Browning revolvers, and when we met with candles dimly burning, each said we "heard a rat!" It probably was in search of the terrier of the Burmese wife of our native cook; but it did not succeed in the quest. Terriers' lives here are short and full of sport, and leopards love them. What an adventuresome day—Bag one crow—one Mahseer.
The desperate play of the Mahseer and our adventure into China had tired us, so that we left Kulong Cha late, after a "European breakfast"; which is to say, a breakfast at or about nine, and rode with much pleasure till lunch time. Then fell in with our servants, camped in flickering shadows under bamboos beside the yellow surging Taiping, the fire going and the air redolent with an appetising smell of roast duck; our last dear duck, whose fellow ducks and hens had accompanied us in the baskets at either end of a pole across a coolie's back from Bhamo.
In less than fifteen minutes by the watch, we had a rod cut, salmon reel attached and rings put on with the invaluable plaster, and all ready for underhand casting. I fished the most magnificent-looking salmon pool; there were fresh leopard tracks on a bank of sand beside it, and G. and the Burmese woman made a great collection of orchids and bulbs, and ants and stinging beasts as they climbed the trees. But alas, I got only one fish, and it was no beauty! I rather think the Taiping water is too discoloured and sandy for Mahseer.
If the ride in the morning was pleasant, that in the afternoon and evening was even more so. As we came down the glens to Kalychet,—the gold of the evening faded in front of us, and left us in soft sweetly-scented darkness. The fire-flies lit up, and their little golden lamps flickering alongside through the intricacies of the dark bamboo stems helped to show us the track.
… How tired we were when we at last reached the rest-house: tired of the delight of the day and the difficulty of riding in the dark. It blew a little during the night and grew cold, but we thought of the heat of the day and made belief that we were very snug, though the wind did play freely through the open floor and cane walls.
From Kalychet to Momouk in the sun in the morning was perhaps our most enjoyable ride, such heat, and light, and exhilarating air, the air of Norway with southern colour. Butterflies, huge black fellows with dazzling blue patches, fluttered off the sandy bits of road, their shadows blacker than themselves, the ponies' feet crackled the great hard teak leaves. Out of forest and creepers into bamboothickets; then into glades with flowering kaing grass and wild fruit, redder than tomatoes, hanging from creeping plants; across slender wooden bridges, over roaring streams, always getting lower till the path came out on the plains again on the wide macadamised road.
… It was rather sad getting on to the plain again. We left our hearts in the Kachin Highlands, and thought, with a little melancholy, how long it would be before we breathed clean hill air again.
Our train got a little disorganised getting into Momouk, the pack-ponies' backs were the worse of wear, and our Boy had fallen out with sore feet—the poor fellow had been working up to his collar. He crept in hours after the others and collapsed, his bare soles cracked and legs in pain. Silly fellow won't wear shoes for some caste or religious superstition; he is more fitted for his clerks work than for tramping. I held his pulse and tried to look as if I knew what to do with a sick Hindoo, tucked him up in his blanket under the bungalow and left him in charge of the native Durwan, and arranged to send out a conveyance for him on the morrow from Bhamo.
Then we took the hard high road again in the pony cart, and it felt very hum-drum trundling along on wheels on the straight level road across the plain. Groups of Kachins passed us going homewards to the high ground we had left, and we envied them; for hills are elevating and plains depressing, whatever Shopenhaur or the Fleet Street philosopher may have said to the contrary.
As the evening came on, we passed the Mission House, and the cemetery, and the Dak bungalow and the Club, pretty nearly all there is of European interest in Bhamo, excepting the Fort, and pulled up at the Deputy-Commissioner's Bungalow. The D.C., Mr Leveson, was at home this time, and gave us a very hospitable welcome.
… The military police officers to dinner. The conversation mostly on sport; what constitutes a "good snipe shot," what may be called a "good bag of snipe," and themany ramifications of these subjects. Then music, our host singing, "When Sparrows Build," and Kirke sang and played his own "Farewell to Burmah," of which both music and words expressed the very essence of the charm of this country, and a little of the sweet sadness there is in glens and rivers, and of the peace of evening when the kaing grass is still and the white ibis and crows flight home across the broad river into the sunset. You who know the song of Dierdre of Naoise, fairest of the sons of Uisneach, and the charms of each glen she sings of in Alba—you will know the quality I mean.…
"Beloved, the water o'er pure sand,Oh, that I might not part from the East,But that I go with my Beloved."
"Beloved, the water o'er pure sand,Oh, that I might not part from the East,But that I go with my Beloved."
I think Percy Smith was strongest at coon songs, and Trail sang all sorts, and G. and Kirke played accompaniments, whilst the writer picked out his own to a chantie respecting the procedure to be taken with an inebriatedmariner—such a merry evening!—the best of which, to me, was the jolly rattle of witty talk of these youthful administrators, the oldest, if you please, well under thirty, talking of the other soldier men as boys. We finished our concert at one, and the young soldiers had to get home, and start up the river before daybreak for warlike manœuvres—(or polo?) at Myitkyna, 140 miles north-west of Bhamo; there will be a jolly reunion I gather, of men who have been for long months keeping watch and ward from their lonely mountain eyries o'er the furthest marches of the British Empire!
17th February.—I vow that there is this morning, at the same time, a suggestion in the air of both spring and autumn. There is a touch of autumn grey, and the plants in the garden droop a little as they do at home before or after frost. A level line of cloud rests half-way up the steel blue hills, it has hung there motionless for hours since the sun rose, and the air is very pure, with a sweet scent of stephanotis and wood-smoke and roses. Possibly it is the stephanotis and the wood-smoke combinedthat makes me think of spring—spring in Paris; but more probably Paris is brought to my mind this morning by the interview we had yesterday with M. Ava about our berths on the cargo boat down to Mandalay; he is the Bhamo Agent for the Flotilla Company. M. Ava left Paris at the time of the birth of the Prince Imperial, and came to Burmah with his own yacht, and has stayed here ever since. I wish he would write a book on the changes of life he has seen; about the court life of the Empire, and his semi-official yachting tour, and of his long residence with Thebaw and his queens, of the intrigue and ceremonies in their golden palaces, the thrilling episodes of which he was witness, and of the many changes of fortune he has himself experienced.
… Someone said last night, "How interesting it would be if an artist were to paint the various types of the tribes here," and my conscience smote me for not seizing the occasion. So to-day I got my Boy to ask the native cook, to ask his Burmese wife, to ask her Kachin female assistant to pose for me, and here she is. Isn't she sweet?—and seventeen, she says, and she is so shy!—and has a queer, queer look in the back of her narrow eyes that I'd fain be able to translate; perhaps there's a little pride of race, and perhaps a little of the timidity of a wild thing from the jungle—perhaps all the histories of old Mongol invasions and retreats if we could but read! Her dress is rather rich, jacket black velvet, edged with red, tall turban of blue frieze cloth, and kilt and putties of the colours of low-toned tartan made of hand-woven cloth, in diced and herring-boned patterns. She has a silver torque round her neck of the druidical shape, the ends of the circle almost meeting, and bent back with two shapes like flat serpents' heads. In her ears are silver ornaments the size and shape of Manilla cheroots, enamelled and tasselled with red silk. As I drew her, the rest of Mr Leveson's domestics, Burmese and native, sat round on the lawn and helped by looking on, and were greatlydelighted in seeing the buxom beauty reproduced in colour on paper.
A Kachin Girl
A Kachin Girl
A Burmese matron then came along with her daughter to sell two silver swords with ivory handles, and I got the swords, and a sitting of a few minutes from the daughter, and here she is: a fairly average Burmese girl, but not nearly one of the prettiest. The green broadcloth jacket you see up here frequently, but further south the girls all wore thin white jackets. As I painted, G. and the servants packed orchids, box after box—I must be at my packing too; leopards' skins, and Kachin and silver-mounted Shan dahs are my most interesting trophies.
Dined with the Algys of the Civil Police force—Captain Massey there, a pleasant bungalow, a wealth of roses on the table, heavy red curtains against white and pale blue plastered walls; a wood fire and lots of open air and music, and talk of sport and big game. I am asked to a great drive of geese, sambhur, and syn, but cannot accept for want of time—was there ever anything more annoying!
19th February.—Good-bye, sweet Bhamo. You weep, and we weep; but we go with a hope we may return.
How it pours! The Chinese ponies on the sandbank huddle together. A Burmese lady goes up the bank to loosen the painter of her canoe; she wears a pink silk skirt and white jacket, and carries a yellow paper umbrella and apparently thinks little of the downpour. I've noticed heaps of these pretty oiled paper umbrellas in the bazaars, I suppose being prepared for this kind of weather. Even in pouring wet, Bhamo is beautiful. Good-bye again; we will tell our friends at home that there is such a desirable quiet country on this side of Heaven, where the mansions truly are few, but the hosts are very kind.
Now we let go our wire rope from the red and black timber head in the sand, slip away quietly into the currentand leave the sandbank to the Chinese ponies and a few bales of cotton, all in the dripping rain.
The kaing grass is drooping with the downpour, but it will be dry as tinder in an hour or two, dry on the top at least.
Now, great Irrawaddy—take us safely down your length, and preserve us from sandbanks and let us spend some more hours on your lovely banks; and we will go down with your rafts of bamboos, and teak, and pottery, and canoes, and we will avoid all trains till you fraternise with old ocean again in Rangoon river. Then we will bid you good-bye, it may be for years, but we hope not for ever.
… At Katha again. The wet pigeon-grey sky lifting, the river the colour of the Seine. The decorative fig and cotton trees have leaves just budding, and through the grey stems of the leafless Champaks with wax white flowers we see groups of figures in dainty colours in the quiet light, and of course there is the glint of white and gold of a pagoda.
… In the morning we woke early and drank in the beauty of the clouds lifting off the river and floating up the corries in the distant hills. We did not awake early intentionally; the wet mist in the night tautened the cord of the fog horn, and when the steam pressure rose, off it went loud and long enough to waken seventy sleepers.
… We pass villages quickly on our way down. We have a flat on either side, but there is only a half-hearted bazaar in one, and the other is empty, so we can use it as our promenade.
By lunch time the sky had all cleared into a froth of sunshine and blue and white clouds. The sand and distant forest and hills became well nigh invisible in the bright light, and the river seemed a shield of some fine metal, that took all the sky and smoothed it and reflected it with concentrated glitter. For our foreground we have the white table on deck in shade, with a heap of rosesand white orchids in a silver bowl; the fallen petals blend into the half-tone of the table cloth, and there's peace and quiet and sleep, to the pulsation of the paddles and the hissing of the foaming water passing astern.
A Girl of Upper Burmah
A Girl of Upper Burmah
At Tayoung in the evening we swing round, head up stream, and lie along the shore—too late to go shooting, so we put on a cast of flies and cast over rising fish, and get a dozen very pretty fish in half-an-hour. I confess I put a tiny piece of meat on each fly, but hardly enough to call it bait fishing. These were all silvery, "butter fish," excepting one, which was rather like a herring. Meantime we had the heavy sunk line baited with dough, and by and bye it began to go out into the stream, and we paid out line rapidly, and then suddenly hauled taut and were fast to a "big un." It was pull devil, pull baker for about five to ten minutes, when the big fish came alongside, and we got a noose round its tail and hauled it on board. It weighed twenty-eight lbs!
… The 22nd.—I think, but who can tell?—for each glorious hot day is as monotonously beautiful as the day before; all bright and shining, the blue and white sky reflected in the endless silky riband of the river down which we steadily paddle, between silver strands and bowery woods, stopping only for the night, and possibly for an hour or two in the day, when we go ashore to sketch, or sometimes to shoot.
I have been trying to make up my mind which of two perfect days' shooting was the best. This afternoon's shoot and tramp through the jungle—Bag, my first brace francolin, to my own gun, or a day last year in stubble and turnips, and twenty-five brace partridges to my own gun and black pointer. I think the jungle day has it, though the bag was so small, by virtue of its beauty, as against the trim fields of the Lothians.
We started together, G. and her maid to collect seedsand roots and orchids, and I wandered on to shoot with a Burmese guide.
Some of the tall trees have shed their leaves, and are now a mass of blossom. One high tree had dropped a mat of purple flowers, as large as tulips, across the dried grass and brown leaves at its foot. Another tree with silvery bark had every leafless branch ablaze with orange vermilion flowers. "Fire of the Forest," or "Flame of Forest," I heard it called in India,—its colour so dazzling, you see everything grey for seconds after looking at it. Then there were brakes of flowering shrubs like tobacco plants with star like white flowers, and the scent of orange blossom; and others with velvety petals of heliotrope tint, and masses of creepers with flowers like myrtle, and a fresh scent of violets and daisies—the air so pure and pleasant that each scent came to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way, being free to you or your neighbour.
With a shade of luck, I'd have had quite a decent bag; but you know how some days things just miss the bag—you can't exactly tell why—so it was this afternoon; there should have been two hares, and two quail, and two birds that seemed very like pheasants. One fell in impenetrable thorns, and we could not get nearer than about ten yards, and I missed another sitting. To restore my reputation with the Burmese boy, I had to claw down some high pigeons from untold heights on their way home to roost. After this, as I was loading, a partridge got up from some stubbly grass in a clearing, with an astonishingly familiar whirr, and went clear away, and I'd barely loaded when a Button quail whipped over some bushes, and it dropped, but in impenetrable thorns! I'd not heard of Burmese partridges,but the flight and whirr were unmistakeable, though the bird was larger than those at home. So we went on, longing for the company of my silky, black-coated pointer Flo, and a couple of hardy mongrel spaniels—together we would soon have filled the bag!… It is such fun going through new country, without a ghost of an idea which direction to take or what method to pursue, or what game to expect.
At the next cleared space we came to, two birds, mightily like pheasants, were feeding on some ground that had once been tilled, so, by signs to the Burmese boy (he cleans the knives on board) I easily made him understand he was to drive them over me, and we each made a circuit, he round the open, the gun behind a brake of dog roses and plantains, and the birds came over with rather too uncertain flight for pheasants. I got one, and the other fell far into thorns, but they were, after all, only a large kind of magpie, but with regular gamey-brown wings, blue-black heads, and long tails that gave them on the ground a passing resemblance to pheasants. The next open space seemed absolutely suited for partridges, and, as we walked into the middle, up got two and came down to quite a conventional right and left, and our glee was unbounded when we found them in the dried grass. The colours of their plumage was handsome, not quite so sober as that of our partridge at home, and their size and shape was almost between that of a grouse and a partridge; Francolin,[37]I've since heard they were. Two hares I just got a glimpse of, greyish in colour, and very thin-looking beasts. Then the sun got low, and we heard deer barking in knolly ground, and would fain have sat the evening out quietly, and waited, and watched the night life of the jungle.
[37]There is not a specimen quite like them in S. Kensington.
[37]There is not a specimen quite like them in S. Kensington.
It was dark when we made for the river and the soft, dusty track through the green grass at its edge. Big beetles passed us humming, and we met some children with lamps swinging, and they sang as they went, to keep away the Nats or spirits of things.
Our steamer looked pleasantly homelike, lying a yard from the shore. The purdahs were up and showed the lamp-lit table on deck, set for dinner, and flowers, books and chairs, a cosy picture. The light was reflected in the grey river, and waved slightly in the ripple of the current from the anchor chain. A cargo steamer, forsooth! a private yacht is the feeling it gave.
There are only two passengers besides ourselves, a Mr and Mrs S. With the master and mate we make six at dinner, and the concert after, in which the first mate plays piano accompaniments to all the chanties we can scrape together—"Stormy Long,"—"Run, let the Bulgine Run,"—"Away Rio:" cheerful chanties like "The Anchor's Weighed," with its "Fare ye well, Polly, and farewell Sue," and sad, sad songs of ocean's distress, like "Leave her, Johnnie; Its time to leave her." Neither the master nor mate have seen salt water for many a day, but I know their hearts yearn for the wide ocean and tall ships a-sailing; for all the beauties of all the rivers in the world pale beside the tower of white canvas above you, and the surge and send of a ship across the wide sea.
… 23rd February.—Kyonkmyoung—not pronounced as spelt, and spelling not guaranteed. We spent the night at above village. Now we are passing a wooded shore, and two remarkable pagodas side by side, like two Italian villas, with flat roofs and windows of western design, each has a white terrace in front with a small pagoda spire, and in the trees there are many white terraces and steps up to them from the river's edge.
… The up-river mail has passed us, it had been delayed on a sandbank; we ship an American family party from it. Having lost some hours on the sandbank, they cannot now proceed up the river to Bhamo, as they had intended, so they returned with us to Mandalay. The first gangway plank was hardly down when they were ashore and away like a bullet, with a ricochet and a twang behind; a Silver king, they say, and a future president!—How rapidlyAmericans travel, and assimilate facts, and what extraordinary conclusions some of them make.