CHAPTER XVA Unique Enterprise
InMarch, 1897, the Rangoon Orphanage was removed to the Karen Hills, east of Tomgoo, and established on an industrial basis, where it has been maintained these four years under the new plan, and it has become the “Unique Institution of the East,” as one discerning official called it.
When one starts an enterprise that is entirely new he is called upon for his reason for doing so. So long as he proceeds exactly as other people, he needs no apology. But in all conservative countries to go contrary to “custom” is to invite criticism, even if one’s efforts are an advance on the established order. One curse of India is that its people are enslaved by “custom;” and some of these customs are very bad, and most of them are wholly unprogressive. Custom has bound chains on the people, and they have worn these chains so long that they have come to love their bonds better than liberty. In most matters “change” is undesired, and to announce that a plan is “new” is enough to condemn it hopelessly with many, and to start a thousand tongues to attack it.
It has been shown elsewhere how pitiably situated are the poor of European descent in all partsof Southern Asia, there is a greater percentage of these poor dependent on some form of public or private charity than among any people I know of in any land. Perhaps in no country do the social customs do more to unfit the poor to help themselves. I am persuaded also that very much of the charity of the country, of which there is a great deal, is unwisely, if not harmfully, bestowed. Rangoon, for instance, like all Indian cities, has a charitable society made up of ministers and officials, which dispenses a great deal of relief. Studying its methods as a member for six years, I became convinced that, while very much good was done, the system pauperized a relatively large number of people, who should have been self-sustaining.
In this general dependent condition of a large part of these people, there is the ever-present and acute distress of poor or abandoned children, for which there have been established many Orphanages and schools. All managers of these Orphanages are appealed to by indolent or destitute parents to give free schooling, including board and clothing, to their children. The truly orphaned, or the abandoned, children are always touching our sympathies, and appealing irresistibly to us for aid. The number of children born in wedlock, as well as out of legal bonds, who are abandoned by parents or legal relatives, is astonishingly large. The result of all these combinations is to fill our Orphanages; for the innocent child must not be allowed to suffer all the consequences of others’sins. So the “Orphanages” are found everywhere to care for these children of European descent, whether they be Anglo-Indian or Eurasian.
The founding of the Methodist Orphanage in Rangoon has been noted elsewhere. In managing this Orphanage for a number of years after the custom of the country, I became convinced that while the amount of relief and protection given to child-life during its earlier years was exceedingly great, there was a very serious defect in the system of conducting all such institutions. I have intimated elsewhere how little ordinary work is done by anybody of European extraction in the whole of Southern Asia. This applies generally to the schools, including even the Orphanages. Everything that can be done by servants is delegated to them. It may surprise many American readers to know that “orphanages” and “homes” for Eurasians in India depend on the work of servants, and very little on the inmates, much as other establishments of the country. This, too, not only in those things where the work is beyond the power of boys and girls to do, but in many kinds of work which it is considered “improper” or “undignified” for them to engage in.
It is considered right and proper for the girls to learn to sew, in addition to learning their lessons, and sometimes to arrange their own beds. Some of them even learned to cook some kinds of food, generally “curry and rice.” But to sweep, or scrub a floor, or thoroughly to clean a house, to wash or iron their own clothes, much less theclothes of others, or to take up cooking or dish-washing as a regular task, is not thought of. Those are “menial tasks;” a “servant should do them.” What a lady of refinement and wealth in a Western land often does from choice, even the destitute depending on “charity” are ashamed to do in Asia. To be dependent or even to “beg” is no disgrace; but to be a cook, a nurse for a lady, or housekeeper, unless aided by servants, is considered a disgrace. Indeed, these kinds of work are never done by any one unless under great extremities. The boys and men are even less willing to do the ordinary work of life. Clerkships and such like only are considered “respectable” employment.
In all this it will be observed that the question is not one of indolence or lack of energy, but one of a social system. The individual is not so much to blame. He does not do differently from his neighbors. In the matter of the children, the managers of the Orphanages are responsible, in so far as they can resist the enfeebling social conditions under which they work.
We then contemplated teaching the girls and boys under our care to help themselves where others depended on servants; to do this as a necessary part of a well-rounded education. Of course, we recognized the fact that we were undertaking to modify the social order, universal among an entire people. This was recognized as a very difficult task, and nothing but a settled conviction that the old order was fearfully defective led us toundertake it. Looking back now, we have much interest in recalling the comments on this undertaking. Many assured us that it was a work that should be done, but would fail if undertaken. Others wanted the girls especially trained for housekeepers, “so we can be released from dependence on the Madrassi servants.” This suggestion was wholly philanthropic! Another said several times: “What are you training those girls for? For servants? I want some servants.” The author of the latter remark has never made any other contribution to the Orphanage so far as I can learn. People who had always received something for nothing, of whom there were many, were opposed to the plan. The “prophets,” of whom Asia has her share, were all against us. The “loquacious oracles,” talking about what they did not know, as was their habit, were all against us. But we had a few friends who gave unqualified encouragement. These were of two classes; one a small company of brave missionaries, of whom Bishop and Mrs. Thoburn were the representatives. The other class were those who had done most for and given most money to the Orphanage on the old basis. These people who gave money and sympathy, while others gave poor advice and criticism, said, “If you only teach these boys and girls to care for themselves, it will be the greatest service to them.” We were led to follow the advice of our friends, who really had the problem on their hearts, and our own convictions, and so ventured on this untried undertaking.
The first consideration was to find a more suitable location for our Orphanage. To have undertaken to dispense with servants and all native helpers, and to introduce an entirely new household order in Rangoon, would have been to invite such a degree of intermeddling by irresponsible people, as we did not care to be annoyed with. Besides, the climate in the plains is very hot, and too oppressive for foreigners to do the extent of physical labor required to pioneer such an undertaking. The help that the boys and girls could give at the beginning would be insignificant. We sought a cooler climate. This could only be found in hills high enough to lift you into a substantially cooler and less oppressive atmosphere.
I had been making investigation in the hills of Burma one hundred and sixty miles north of Rangoon, for four years. The original object of this investigation was to find a cool mountain retreat to which our missionaries could go when worn with their labor in the plains. Other parts of India had well-established hill stations, but Burma had none. In my own case, when health failed, I had to go the long journey to India, and to remain there many months. Had I been acquainted with the hills of Burma, this could all have been avoided by a change from the heat of the plains when I first began to decline. After my return to Burma, I determined to find such a place in Burma, if possible.
The first intimation of an accessible place came to me on a visit to Tomgoo, where a member ofmy Church lived. His name was D. Souza, a pensioner of the Indian Survey Department of the Government. As this good brother was closing his work prior to retiring from the service, he came to survey Thandaung, a hill twenty-three miles northeast of Tomgoo, the head of the district and a town on the railway. Thandaung had been an experimental garden under the Forestry Department of the Government in the seventies, where cinchona cultivation had been undertaken, also tea and coffee had been planted. A school had been established at Tomgoo, intended to teach the Karens how to grow these products. Later the school was closed, and the cultivation on the hills abandoned. At that time Tomgoo was the military outpost, and the authorities built a road to Thandaung, and experiments with the place as a hill station for their soldiers were made. When Upper Burma was annexed in 1885, there was a great rush to Mandalay, and later to regions beyond, where in the regions of Upper Burma various attempts to open military hill stations were made. Thandaung was abandoned, but not till records had been made very favorable to the place as a sanitarium for Europeans. This record did good service for us when we came to reinspect these hills.
Mr. D. Souza secured the most of the area of the old cantonment and some of the buildings, with a view of making a large coffee plantation. He had begun operations early in 1893, and I visited the place first in June of that year. For four years I made frequent visits during differentmonths of the year to test the climate thoroughly. I found the climate in delightful contrast with the plains at all times, and surprisingly invigorating during most of the year. In this investigation I was much aided by my former sojourn in three of the hill stations of India—Almora, Naini Tal, and Mussoorie. It has the altitude of the first and a cooler temperature during the hottest weather than either of the three, while from November to May there is no fog and no rain.
I was convinced that this most accessible hill in Burma would serve admirably for our double need; a location for our industrial plans, for our Orphanage, and a resort for tired missionaries.
By a vote of the Bengal-Burma Conference, I was instructed to apply for land for the enterprise. This Conference authority was sought because it was a good thing to be “regular” in a new undertaking, and to have the moral support of the Conference when the difficult places in working out the new scheme were reached. I learned afterward that a good-natured brother remarked, “O yes, vote him the authority to go ahead; he can only fail anyway.” The Government gave us a lease of one hundred acres of land for the new undertaking, and preparations were begun to move the Orphanage, together with the superintendent and my own family, to this hill. But positive authority to go to our new location was given at the Conference session in February of 1897. It required much haste to close up affairs in Rangoon connected with the Orphanage, and make the move.
Before we actually took the train we allowed all the children whose relations were unwilling to have them go with us into this new location and untried plan to depart from the school. Nearly a dozen left us. People whose children had been fed and clothed and schooled for years for nothing were entirely unwilling to have them go into the new location, where they were to learn to work as well as to eat, and to a small extent work for what they ate. We yielded to them, being conscious all the time of the ingratitude displayed for years of care of their children. Indeed, it is the legitimate fruit of a system that gives everything to dependent people and requires no service in return, that they should come to take your service and care as a right, without even a grateful acknowledgment for favors. There are cases where recipients of free care have taken the position that they were conferring a favor on the missionaries by remaining under their protection and care.
The experimental cinchona garden had grown up in a young forest during the years since the Forestry Department had abandoned it. The roads were all overgrown with rank jungle. We had a small space cleared and a hut erected, made of bamboo mats, and supported on bamboo poles with split bamboo used as tiles folded over each other for a roof. The floor was two feet from the ground, and consisted of split bamboos spread out flat and laid on bamboo poles. This hut was expected to protect us only during the month of April, at the end of which the rains begin. Wearrived at Thandaung on March 24th, and took up our abode in the primitive domicile. The whole structure cost thirty dollars, and thirty-five people moved into it, Miss Perkins, the principal of the Orphanage, and the writer and his family included. This furnished us house room at a cost of less than a dollar each.
This frail shelter was only intended to serve as a camping-place for five weeks at the longest. I had planned for a better house than this, and a month earlier I had given the contract for the preliminary work of cutting and dragging timber for the framework, thinking it would be possible to secure some kind of permanent shelter early in the rains. It is true this more substantial building would have to be limited to what could be built for three hundred dollars, as that was all we had in sight for this new enterprise.
When we arrived on the mountain I found the Karens, who had agreed to do the work of cutting and dragging timber, had failed us entirely. But the tropical rains did not fail. The monsoon is always on time in Lower Burma. With the first downpour all hope of building operations was at an end.
In consequence we went into the long monsoon in this temporary inclosure, by courtesy called a house. We improved the shelter by laying some sheets of corrugated iron on the roof, and weighting them down with poles. In this house we kept school, had our sleeping apartments, and did the cooking and baking for this large family. At firstboys and girls were rebellious against assisting in household work, and one girl ran away twice, all the twenty-three miles to the railway. The second time we sent her permanently to her relatives. But in good time much advance in orderly housekeeping was made. Had meddlesome people not followed us into even this isolated place, the work of training would have been much easier. Work for the boys was begun also. They cut the wood, carried the water, and milked cows; also cultivated vegetables, and we planted some eight thousand coffee trees the first year. It was the intention to make coffee-growing a basis for self-support. The coffee the forestry officers had planted twenty years before was growing finely, and was of the best quality. As we did our own work, it would seem an easy matter to secure our own support by this coffee cultivation alone. There were other industries projected also.
During all the months of the first rains the health of our little colony was excellent. There was not one but what received a toning up by the cooler atmosphere, mountain air, and healthful work. This was a great cheer to us all, and was the first step toward making Thandaung known favorably for a hill station.
Thandaung itself is a charming locality. The mountain chain, or ranges, “Karen hills,” as they are called, of which the ridge known as “Thandaung” (iron mountain) is a part, cover a very large area, running from the Malay peninsula to China, and from fifty to one hundred and fiftymiles wide. The highest elevations are nine or ten thousand feet, but most of the ridges and plateaus rise no higher than three to five thousand feet. The scenery is magnificent and varied in character. Looking westward from our school, the mountain drops away at an angle of about fifty-five degrees into a deep valley, down which the Pa Thi Chang stream runs in a succession of cataracts. Then the hills rise again, forming a vast amphitheater. Standing on the site of our school, this splendid view is constantly before us. Looking beyond the lower hills, the view widens until the whole of the Sitiang Valley, with its winding river and broad lakes, light up the scenery with life. Beyond this plain rise in succession three ranges of the low Pegu Hills, the intervening valleys but dimly defined, while beyond all these there is a smoky depression indicating the great valley of the Irrawaddy River. Beyond this again, on the farthest horizon, are seen the rounded ridges of the Arracan Hills, about one hundred and twenty miles from Thandaung. In all this vast expanse of mountain, valley, and plain there is not one barren rood of earth. Mountains and plains, where not recently cleared, are covered with a tropical forest. Where there are cultivated fields, they are matted with luxuriant green of growing rice, or yellow with the ripened crop. This stretch of deep-green verdure under a tropical sun throws on the vision a combination of coloring that gives the place a “charm all its own,” as one admiring visitor declared. When the rains have washed theatmosphere clear of dust, the view is very clear. Houses in Tomgoo, twenty-three miles away, are very clearly seen. The great oil-trees on the plains, some specimens of which are left standing where a great forest has been cut away, lift their straight gray trunks a hundred and fifty feet to the first limb, and above this hold a majestic crown. Often have I seen, under the reflected rays of the morning sun, those trunks of trees defined like so many giant pencils. Yet they are twelve to fourteen miles away. To the north and south the view is over well-rounded hills and ridges for sixty to seventy-five miles. But it is to the east we turn for the sublimest scenery. A little over a mile from the school a peak rises above the surrounding heights. It is called Thandaung Ghyi, meaning the greatest Thandaung. Climbing up the forest path, and finally scaling a sharp and rocky height, we stand on the top, only a rod across. From here all the western view, also north and south, is taken. Toward the east an entirely new arrangement of the hills is made. From where you stand there is a precipitous descent of nearly three thousand feet into a basin fifty miles across, rimmed on the east by a great ridge with a culminating peak called Nattaung, or Spirit Mountain, nine thousand feet high. The Bre Hills, where the wild Karens live, join this ridge, and the two curve until they complete the opposite border of the basin. Never have I been able to look on the sublime ranges of mountains and picturesque plains over this sweep of two hundred miles of Burma’s varied surface, withouta profound sense of awe and wonder. It is so wonderful that it grows on one, though seen daily for years.
Miss Perkins and Group of Girls, Thandaung.
Miss Perkins and Group of Girls, Thandaung.
Once I went with a friend to Thandaung early on a January morning. This is the season when fogs hang heavily over the plains and reach high up the mountain valleys; but our mountain heights are above the fogs, in perpetual sunshine. When we reached the top of Thandaung Ghyi an unexpected view delighted our eyes. The great basin to the east was filled with a dense fog, and we were looking down upon it as it floated like a great gray sea three thousand feet below. The lower mountains here and there lifted above the fog, and their wooded tops made beautiful islands in the sea of vapor. The sun was shining from the opposite side, and the full flood of reflected glory fell upon our eyes.
At another time, accompanying a Government official, I went up to get this view. The rains had not yet ceased, but were dying away. We hoped to reach the top before the daily storm came on. We took this chance, as the views are the most glorious after the rains have swept the sky of every speck of dust. But the rains beat us, and we were drenched, while the mountain was buried in the clouds. After two hours we were growing cold, and were about to give up the object for which we came. Lingering a last moment, I thought I saw a rift in the clouds, and then the streak of light broadened, the rain grew less, the darkness lifted, and a field of blue appeared, thesun shone through the falling rain, and suddenly all the basin below, and old Nattaung, rising above, appeared to our entranced vision! All the heightened coloring was intensified by our position under the shadow of the retreating cloud. Eyes may hardly hope to see a more wonderful vision of mountain scenery than we beheld as this vision was slowly borne from the rift in that retreating storm.
Our new enterprise was planted under such conditions and amid such scenes as these. While it was a discouraging task, a daily view of the mountains round about us drove away many an occasion of low spirits. Taken all together, we in time became a happy family, sharing a common task. During this first monsoon our frail house several times gave way in floor, roof, or wall; but we suffered no serious harm. In September, as the sun was occasionally breaking through the clouds, and we were wondering what move we would make for a better habitation, a telegram came from Bishop Thoburn, which read, “God has sent you a thousand dollars for a house.” If the heavens had opened suddenly, and the money had dropped into our upturned hands, it could hardly have been more really a providential gift in our extreme need. No wonder we allrejoiced aloud! Later a letter came, telling us that a good woman who had come from Scotland to India to visit missions, and having brought considerable money with her to give to mission institutions, had been in conference with Bishop and Mrs. Thoburn, andas a result of a canvass of all the many worthy objects in which a great mission is fostering, she chose this Thandaung school as the first to receive her favor. She approved the undertaking, and gave a thousand dollars to erect a building for the school. No wonder the bishop could telegraph that God had sent the help. This was only the beginning of the beneficence of this good woman; and the strange thing was that she had no acquaintance with Methodists, and had been trained in a Church of quite opposite teaching and polity from ours.
The building of our first house deserves mention. The logs were cut from the forest and dragged to a sawpit and sawed by hand by Burmese sawyers, in the old style of one man above and one man under the log. This was slow and crude work; but it was the only way to get building material. The framework was built on posts set in the ground, as has been the universal custom in the construction of wooden houses in Burma. The iron for the roof had to be brought from Rangoon by rail to Tomgoo, and from there to the mountain top, by carts and coolies. This pioneer work took time and the most constant supervision. The number and character of men that the missionary has to work with, as well as the mixed character of the population of Burma, may be understood from the following account: I bought the iron of a Scotchman, who imported it from Germany. It was delivered to a Eurasian station master, aided by a Bengali clerk. The railroadthat carried it is owned by the Government, but managed by the Rothschilds. The iron was delivered at Tomgoo by a Eurasian station master, aided by a Hindu clerk from Madras, and another a Mohammedan from Upper India. A Tamil cart-man carried it to the Sitiang River, where a Bengali Mohammedan carried it over the ferry. A Telegu cart man hauled it to the foot of the hills. Shan coolies carried it up to Thandaung, where Burmese carpenters put it on the house with nails that I bought of a Chinaman, who had imported them from America. The logs of the house had been cut from the forest by Karens, and drawn to the sawpit by a Siamese elephant! The missionary had the simple duty of making all the connections and keeping the iron moving to its destination.
But we were needing the new house badly before we got it. Part of the roof was nailed on, the frame completed, but only a very little of the plank walls begun, when our old hut collapsed entirely. We had often patched the rotting bamboos, but as the monsoon passed away the east wind, as usual on those hills, began to blow with great force, and the frail walls repeatedly gave way before it, and finally one morning the entire roof and sides were blown away. A very wonderful providence was manifested, in that no one of our large family was hurt. Most of the smaller children had been romping on the east side of the house, and the gale of wind was blowing from the east. In their play they suddenly ran down the path fifty yards or so from the house. In thatinstant the roof and poles that held it down were lifted and hurled upon the place where they had been playing the moment before. The loose pieces of corrugated iron cut the air like swords, and some of them were carried far down the mountain side, which falls in precipitous descent from that point. Had the children not been moved away for that moment by the unseen hand of God, they must have been cruelly hurt. As it was they were out of danger, while those of us that were in the collapsed house suffered no harm. This is but one of many indications which we had of the kindly Providence in all our pioneering. For nearly three years from the beginning of this work, there was not a case of serious sickness nor an injury of consequence by any accident suffered by any of our little colony.
But as our old hut was gone beyond repair or reconstruction, and as the wind was now cold, for it was November, the matter of providing shelter became a serious matter. The frame of our new house was completed, and a part of the roof was on, also a few planks nailed upright at one corner. Taking this beginning as a starting, we inclosed a part of the space of the building by bamboo mats, laid a little flooring temporarily, and then, having divided this into two rooms, we moved into our new quarters. The workmen went right on with the construction of the house. We lived in the house while it was being builded. When completed, though built of unseasoned wood, poorly sawed and roughly put together, it was a palacecompared with what we had before, and indeed it continues to this day to do very good service.
First Permanent Building on Thandaung
First Permanent Building on Thandaung
About the time the house was completed, Miss Bellingham, the generous donor of the thousand dollars, came to Burma to see what use we had made of the money. She spent a week on Thandaung, to our great delight and hers. She consented that the building might bear her name, and we have since called it “Bellingham Home.”
Shortly after we began operations on this hill, public interest in the place began to be shown. I wrote some letters to the Rangoon papers, and visitors did likewise. The advantages of the place were laid before the Government. Officials began to come up on tours of inspection. The place grew in favor, and it was planned to give Government sanction to making it into a station. A new road up the mountain, giving a better grade than the old road, and the cart road across the plain was metalled. The old travelers’ bungalow on the hill, that had fallen into decay since the military left the place, was rebuilt. So the improvement goes on till now. The latest plan contemplates a cart road running entirely up the mountain, and the survey of the whole hill into building sites. There is every promise of this becoming the favorite resort in Burma for the people who seek a change from the heat of the plains.
In the meantime the scheme has had a good degree of prosperity, in spite of the fact that it was pioneer in character and location. The irresponsible gossips continue to attack it, the fearfulin heart who love their bondage to the old order still stand agape as they see the school continue on its way. The people who have been beating their way through the world still cry it down. But an increasing number of people who believe in self-dependence, and the character it develops, are in great sympathy with this work. Some who can pay full boarding fees send their children to us. They have adopted with us the theory that this self-help is to be accepted as a necessary part of a well-appointed system of education.
There has been a specially significant growth in usefulness among the girls. They have learned to bake excellent bread, cook and serve a variety of food in a cleanly and orderly manner, and to keep the entire house in good taste and comfort. This is realized as a great accomplishment when one has seen the slovenly, untidy houses commonly found where the woman in the house does not do anything to keep the house in order herself, and counts it impossible that she should do what she chooses to call “coolie’s work.” A woman like this would not know enough even to instruct good servants in keeping the house, much less the worthless servants she can ill afford to keep, whose only qualification is that they are as incompetent as servants as their mistress is as head of the establishment. Yet almost universally such women would prefer to exist in a hovel, and give orders to a miserable servant, rather than have a decent abode, if they had to sweep, scrub, or dust it with their own hands. In contrast tothese are the girls trained in our industrial school. They can do all things necessary to keeping a house, and have almost forgotten that there are any servants in the world. They have done all this, and at the same time they have been in school, doing as good work as girls in other schools, where they depend on servants for even buttoning their clothes.
Our girls are self-respecting young women, far beyond what they could have been had they not received the advantages in character that come from self-help in ordinary daily tasks.
The boys have generally profited by the outdoor work. Having nothing to begin with, it has not been possible as yet to organize the outdoor work as that within doors. Plans are under way, however, to develop this branch of the school, hoping for a large industrial plant.
Enough has been done in these four years greatly to encourage those of us who have sacrificed something in planning and carrying forward this new feature of industrial mission work. There is to-day more material advantage in this plant than can be shown in any institution anywhere that I have been for the money invested. More has been done in direct school work, for the money invested, than in almost all the English schools with which I am acquainted. The effect of the work on the boys and girls under our care has exceeded our highest hopes. I am sure not one of us would be willing to go back to the old order of Orphanages. The boys and girls themselvesdo not want to return to the old order. The school has met with a degree of favor from those whose judgment is counted of the highest value to us, by reason of the fact that they have put money into the plant under the old order and the new also, that we hardly dared to hope for. We have also received a bequest of seventeen hundred dollars with which we have put up a second building. The patronage of the school by people of means and social standing is such as to encourage us much. It reveals the fact that the school meets a want felt most by the people who make a financial success of life, but see that self-help should be taught to every child regardless of financial circumstances. These people believe that indolence, dependence, and slovenly habits are a disgrace, and honest work in all things is honorable.
Miss Perkins, now in the eleventh year of her continuous service on the field, has carried on this work for more than a year, being aided by Miss Rigby, who went to her aid in 1900.
This industrial school was founded to reteach the truth long since forgotten in Asia that all kinds of household and manual toil are respectable. The Lord himself was a carpenter, and washed the feet of his disciples, which many of those who bear his name would be ashamed to do. The school has run four years without a servant, and is stronger than when it began. In this it is the only institution among Europeans in all Asia that is so managed. It is absolutely unique in this. It promises much usefulness and a large growth. But ifit were closed up to-morrow, it would still have proved by four successful years that such a plan is possible of successful operation even in Asia.
While it is not directly a part of mission enterprise, it may be of interest to some reader to have some account of experiences and observations in a Burma forest. Some such experiences came to me in connection with life on and about Thandaung. Nearly the entire distance from Tomgoo to Thandaung is through a forest reserve of the Government. Several miles of this forest are made up of the great trees before mentioned. One variety produces an oil used in Europe for making varnish. The method of extracting this oil is very curious. A deep cut is made in the tree near the ground, and in this cut a fire is built and kept burning until the tree is blackened ten feet or more from the ground. Then the coals are taken out of the cut, which has become a sort of cup, into which the oil oozes from the wound made by the fire on the tender tree. It seems almost cruel to treat the giant trees in this way. It is astonishing that they survive and heal over the great blackened scars left on their sides.
Another remarkable thing observed in these forests is the growth of notable vines and parasites. Here is to be seen a great vine, like half a dozen grape-vines joined together, climbing high round and into these splendid trees. The trunk is usually not large, though so tall. Then high up on this tree a spore of the peepul-tree finds a lodgment, and sprouts, the leaf upward, the root runningdownward, hugging close to the tree as if drawing life from the trunk. Sometimes the young growth starts a hundred feet from the ground. As its main root descends it throws outside roots which encircle the tree, and these roots branch again so the whole trunk is soon inclosed in a great net, ever tightening. Here is seen a very strange thing. These roots do not overlap, but grow right into each other when they come in contact, and the union is made without a trace or scar. As these meshes of the living net grow, they tighten into a hug that kills, first the vine and then the tree. Each in turn is devoured by the great parasite. Its net meantime becomes a solid wooden shell, reaching to the ground and lifting its crown high among the other giants; a tree made great by the death of two others; a tree and vine, each seemingly having as much right to live as this parasite that preys on other forest life.
Another singular circumstance annually occurs in the forest. About the end of January a species of great bees, as large as the American hornet, come from migrations, nobody knows where, and rest upon the under side of the branches in the crowns of these great monarchs of the forest, which sometimes rise two hundred feet from the ground. About this time some varieties of these trees are in heavy bloom, and no doubt it is this which brings the bees. They locate on only one or two kinds of trees, and at once begin to build honeycombs, suspending them from the under side of the limb. They multiply rapidly, and by Marchthere are sometimes as many as twenty to thirty swarms on a tree. The honeycombs are sometimes three feet long, and hang perpendicularly a foot and a half. The study of these bees is very interesting. They build on the same trees from year to year.
But the most impressive fact is to observe the method of collecting the honey. The trees are perfectly smooth, and are often without a limb for one hundred and fifty feet. The Karens usually collect the honey, and the Burmese dealers come to the camps to buy it when first secured, and take much of it away to the towns. How do they get the honey? The Karens climb up these bare trunks. But how? Some of them are seven feet thick, and can not be grasped in a man’s arms so as to enable him to climb. The daring man drives thin bamboo pegs into the bark of the tree, and goes up on these. More, he drives in the pegs as he climbs! They are about eight inches long outside of the small portion imbedded in the bark, and twenty-two inches apart. So the climber, beginning at the ground, can only place two or three pegs before he begins his ascent. In all this perilous climb he never has the use of more than two of these short projections at once. On these he clings with feet and legs while he must use both hands in driving a new one. To get the honey, he must wait till night, and then with material for a torch, a vessel for the honey, and a rope to lower it, he climbs up into the darkness and out onto the great branches, where with lighted torch hedrives the bees away and cuts off the well-filled honeycomb, and lowers it to others on the ground. In this manner he takes all the honey from a tree. A more daring feat for a small return can hardly be imagined. And nerves of steadier poise are required to prevent the destruction of the climber. He receives a dollar and a half for clearing one tree. Surely a life is regarded of little value among these people.