Part 16 (2/2)

Every now and then you meet with an extra big bit of fairyland coming down stream in the shape of a native s.h.i.+p with high crescent stern and a mat house near its low bow; all in various tints of a warm brown teak.

The crew stand and row long oars and sing as they swing, and you think of Vikings, Pirates, and Argosies.... But down in the lower deck beside Denny's engines it feels quite homely, as if you were going ”doon the water” in sunny June--the engines running as smoothly and quietly as if they were muscles and bones instead of hard steel and 900 H.-P.--engineers, engines, and hull all frae Glasgie, all from banks of old Cleutha.

... Now the river widens to nearly a mile, and the tops of ranges of hills appear over the plains. What variety you have in the course of two half days--yesterday amongst crowds and houses and ocean going craft, to-day the calm of the open country with fresh, balmy air, and only river boats.... Here comes difficult navigation though the river is so wide; and we s.h.i.+p a pilot who comes off from a spit of sand in a dug-out canoe.... We surge round hard aport then astarboard, following the channel, through overfalls and eddies like the Dorris More or Corrie Bhriechan in good humour, and there are a few sea swallows to keep us in mind of the sea. It is pleasant to hear the rush, and the calm, of tide race, alternating.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We stop at a village on the river side, and there's a pageant of little boats, a little like Norwegian prams, perhaps sampans is the nearest name for them; they are brightly coloured. The only pa.s.senger besides ourselves, Mr Fielding Hall,[24] leaves our steamer here, which we greatly regret; he has told us a little about Burmah, and something of a book he has now in the press, ”A Nation at School,” and we would very willingly hear more. I gather that its purport is that the Burmans under our rule are really going forward, and that our organisations, hospitals, and factories in Rangoon are proofs of this, though they appear, at the first glance, to be the opposite and that ”_toute est pour le mieux_....” I am painting now in the cabin he vacated, and ought to be inspired! This Java makes a perfect yacht--granted a cabin apiece--but even with two in a cabin it is very A.1.

[24] The author of ”The Soul of a People,” an exquisite description of Burmese life.

The colouring and sandbanks this first day are undoubtedly suggestive of the Nile, but the Irrawaddy is wider; the sand edge falls in the same kind of chunks; the Nile is silvery and blue, with colourless shadows, here everywhere rainbow tints spread out most delicately, and here instead of Egyptians in floppy robes you have refined people exquisitely dressed. As the river is low, we do not see much beyond the edge of the banks. They are topped with high gra.s.s and reeds and low palm ferns, and over these appear cane matting roofs of cottages and fine trees.

Paints feel poor things, and a camera can't get these wide effects, at least mine won't--a cinematograph would be the thing. Every five minutes a new river scene unrolls itself. At present, as I look from my large cabin-window, I see a belt of feathery gra.s.s, and then the blue sky. A flight of white herons rise, and the sand throws yellow reflected light under their wings; a long, dug-out canoe pa.s.ses down with a load of colour, red earthenware pots forward, a copper-faced man amids.h.i.+p, in white jacket and indian-red kilt. He is paddling, behind him are green bananas, and in the stern a lady sits in pink petticoat and white jacket. The clothes of men and women are somewhat similar; the man's coloured ”putsoe,” or kilt, often of tartan, is tied in a knot in front of his waist, and comes down to the middle of his calf. The woman tucks her longer skirt or ”tamaine,” above her bosom, as you might hitch a bath-towel, and it falls rather tightly to her ankles, and both men and women wear a loose white cotton jacket, which just comes to their waist, with wide sleeves that come below the waist. The men wear their hair long, tied up with a bright silk scarf, and the women wear theirs coiled on the top of their heads with a white crescent comb in it, and often a bunch of yellow orchids. I've heard Europeans say there is little to distinguish the men from the women in figure or dress: but, to me, their figures and faces seem very prettily distinguished.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We stop the night at Henzada, and dine on deck, shut off from the night by a gla.s.s part.i.tion. The captain tells us how in 1863 the Company was formed to take over from the Government four river steamers previously used for carrying troops and stores; and how the fleet has steadily grown with the development of the province until it now consists of 360 vessels, of all sorts and sizes.

Captain Terndrup also tells us of the occupation of Upper Burmah. He brought down the last of the Europeans before we attacked Upper Burmah, and took up the Staff of our army. Government hired these Flotilla s.h.i.+ps for the purpose. He also had to do with the beginning of these gold dredgings in Northern tributaries of the Irrawaddy, which are to make mountains of gold!

A new pa.s.senger joins here, a Woods and Forest man. He is full of interesting information about both Lower and Upper Burmah, the Mergui Archipelago and natural history.

We are lying one hundred yards off the sh.o.r.e. From the jungle comes the sound of Burmese music. A Pwe is being held--a theatrical entertainment given by someone to someone in particular, and to anyone else who likes to attend; generally, in the open air, they go on a whole moonlight night.

20th February.--Almost afraid to get up--the last two days so full of beautiful scenes--positively fear a surfeit--sounds nonsense but it is true to the letter.

Cool and sunny in the morning, the river violet, and the sun faint yellow through wisps of rising mist. We are coming to a village on the bank, palms and trees behind it, and a white paG.o.da spire rising from them, and one in gold above the village. The cottage roofs are of s.h.i.+ngle, buff-coloured and grey, with a silvery sheen. People are coming down the dried mud-bank and across the sand to meet us, red lacquered trays of fruit and vegetables on their heads, and some with their baggage on their heads--their clothes of most joyous colours--

”The world is so full of such beautiful things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

to quote Robert Louis Stevenson, and so these cheery villagers, with their flowers and pretty garments, seem to think. Here is one nation in the world that has attained peace if not happiness: that has preserved the happy belief of the Druids and all primitive peoples, of the relations.h.i.+p of the inorganic to the organic, which scientists now accept and divines begin to consider. Mr Fielding Hall[25] said the other evening ”their ideal is untenable in a world of strenuous endeavour and capitalism”--they, of course, do not believe in strenuous endeavour or capitalism, and laugh at ”work for work's sake.” But we have brought the great ”law of necessity” to them, and they must come out of their untenable happiness and fall in line with the advance of civilisation, and give up flowers and silks and simple beauty and cultivate smoke stacks. Our occupation of Burmah really does these people good; witness the hospitals in Rangoon, and the veil of soot from its factories!

[25] But see this author's latest book ”The Inward Light”--a most exquisite description of what the Burman believes is the teaching of Buddha.

Within a hundred years I can see a few odd Burmans going about with hair long and some little suggestion of the old times, a red silk tie perhaps, and a low collar. Foolish fellows, with quaint ideas about simplicity of life, fraternity, and jollity, and old world ideals of beauty. They will be called artists, or Bohemians, men without any firm belief in the doctrine of necessity, or of the beauty of work for work's sake; men who, when they get to heaven, will say, ”First rate, for any sake don't spoil it--don't make it strenuous at any price!”

We go ash.o.r.e, the Captain and I, and Mr Buchanan, the Woods and Forest man. The air is brisk and the sun hot--such a change from Rangoon. We climb the clay steps and walk along the tiny village to the native (Indian) store, to buy a famous headache medicine for G. It is the princ.i.p.al thing they sell. The owner of the store got the recipe from a British Medico, and sells it now all over Burmah, to the tune of 1,300 rupees profit per month--if I may believe my informant! Burmese suffer a great deal from headaches; the sun is strong, and they don't wear hats. There were six native clerks occupied with the sale of this nostrum. I deposited my half rupee for six doses--I'd have taken a ton with hope some years ago.

Then Mr B. showed us his teak logs tethered alongside the banks, waiting for high water to take them on their road south. Some logs are said to take nine years to come down from the upper reaches to Rangoon. Then he rode away on a pretty white pony, first asking me to come and stay in the jungle with him, and don't I wish I could. You feel inclined to stop at Henzada for ever, it is so picturesque and fresh, and the walks by the river under the high trees are very pretty, and there's no dustiness or towniness.

I am sorry Mr Buchanan went; there's much to ask, about what he knew; of trees and beasts and people, or of the geology of these mountains that are beginning to appear to our left and right: to the west, the southern spine of the Arrakan Mountains, and to the east, the ranges of the Shan Highlands, which divide the Irrawaddy valley from the valley of the Salwin river.[26]

[26] For short concentrated descriptions of Burmah and Shan States, _see_ Holdich's ”India.”

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