Part 19 (1/2)
There are curtains round the bows to drop if there is too much draught, and thick handsome carpets on deck. To compare price, comfort, and beauty of scenery with a Nile trip would be hard luck on Old Nile and its steamers. I should say this is a third cheaper and six times more comfortable, and many times more interesting. With regard to mosquitoes there are more at this present moment of writing than I have had the misfortune of meeting elsewhere, but it isn't so all the road. I still think, however, that those mosquitoes of the Ba.s.sein Creek are incomparable.
We (that is merely ”I” this time) went to-day with a very European party of Mandalay residents up and across the river to Mingun in a sort of large picnic on a Government launch. We went to see the second biggest bell in the world and a paG.o.da that would have been one of the biggest buildings, if it had ever been finished! Both are great _draws_, and neither is of any account. The view of the winding river from the top of the ruins of the paG.o.da is certainly exquisite, and for ever to be remembered. But it's a pretty stiff climb to get there, and you should let your enemy go behind, for the loose bricks sometimes go down through the shrubs like bolting rabbits.
The trees too are splendid, and the distant ruby mountains are very exquisite, but as for dancing on a Government boat's deck, and tea and small talk--such things may be had at home, and bra.s.s bands too--_mo thruaigh_!
The big bell weighs about ninety tons; it is hung on modern girders, far enough off the ground to let you crawl inside, and it has a poor tone.
The diameter of the lip is sixteen feet. The masonry, otherwise the base for the proposed paG.o.da, contains 8,000,000 cubic feet, is 165 feet high and 230 feet square, and is cracked through the middle and tumbling to pieces owing, some say, to an earthquake and thunderbolts--I think from bad building and the natural inclination of loose bricks to find their angle of repose.
To-night we gharried to the Grahams to dinner, over the ups and downs and deep sand and ruts of the sh.o.r.e, over cables and round timber heads and teak logs till we got to the hard, a man on each side holding up the conveyance, and two men with lanterns.
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There were splendid roses on the dinner-table and strawberries down from the Shan Highlands, as fine as any I have seen. Then after dinner we saw collections of the most recherche Burmese and Chinese art, in which Mr Graham evidently has a very critical taste. There was exquisite silver work and bra.s.s, gold, and amber carvings, dahs or swords in silver and velvet sheaths with ivory handles, long shaped books of papyrus with the heavy black print on lacquered gilded leaves, and Buddhas in gold and marble, and a little Chinese box carved in root amber, which I coveted--it suggested a picture by Monticelli--besides wonders of Burmese carvings in wood and ivory: then music, and good voices, and the piano sounding so well in the large teak drawing-room--and home again, rattling in the gharry over the hard macadam and the soft ups and downs and ruts along the sand, as here depicted in black and white, to our new quarters on the sh.o.r.es of Mandalay where the big mosquitoes play and sing us to sleep--”only a temporary plague,” they say here, and we hope so! G. invented a plan of slaying them. When you are under the net, you can't bang them against the swaying muslin--this plan obviated that difficulty, and is effective, only it needs a candle and matches inside the net, and might, at any moment, set the s.h.i.+p and Mandalay in a blaze: I mentioned this dire possibility, and G. said she would not do it if I were not near!
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26th, Friday.--Still aboard the S.S. ”Mandalay,” turned out bright and early--a delicious morning, dew lying on the short gra.s.s above the sh.o.r.e. Went to the bazaar with my native boy--wish I had a Burmese servant, as neither of us can speak a word of Burmese. I'd advise any tourist to try and get a Burmese servant for guide and councillor. It is horrid being tongue-tied amongst such kindly-looking people. There does not seem to be much love lost between the Burmans and the natives of India, and I think the foolish Indian natives actually fancy themselves superior!
I have never seen, no, not in India, so much paintable ”stuff” in so small a s.p.a.ce. The stalls were sheltered by tall umbrellas made of sun-bleached sacks, over them the blue sky, and under them ma.s.ses of colour in light and shade, heaps of oranges, green bananas, red chillies, and the girls and women sitting selling them, puffing blue smoke from white cheroots big as Roman candles, or moving about from shade to light like the brightest of flowers, no hurry, no bustle; a chatter of happy voices, nothing raucous in sound or colour, and all the faces good and kind to look at, except when a foxy Indian came across the scene. There is also near this open-air bazaar an immense market under cover. The light is not so picturesque in it, but the women are of a better cla.s.s. There's much colour at the stalls where they sell silks, and talk to the pa.s.ser-by, and brush their black hair, and powder their faces between times. If you could talk to them it would be fun, for they are as jolly and witty as can be. I understand Burmese girls of almost all families keep stalls at the bazaars when they ”come out,” which accounts for the Burmese women's great intelligence in business affairs.
Then to the Arrakan PaG.o.da, and felt inclined to stay all day listening to the sonorous recitations of the kneeling people.
Back in a tram-car, an excellent place to sketch faces, your topee over your eyes, and sketch book behind a newspaper--no one knows you are drawing. The following tram-car notes are of Burmese faces, except the face behind, with a look of cankered care on it; he is some kind of an Indian.
After lunch to the palace--a longish drive inland from the river. Thebaw not at home, and Supayalat out too, so we called on the Britishers, resting on long deck chairs in the golden rooms now used as a club. What a rude contrast Western chairs and tables and newspapers were to the surroundings! I believe Lord Curzon has arranged that this aesthetic immorality shall be put right, and a proper place appointed for the Club, and Divine service.
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I'd like to have been here at the looting of this particular palace, you hear such fascinating descriptions of Thebaw's barrels of jewels--emeralds and rubies to be had by the handful. How angry the soldier man is when you speak of it. He will explain to you, with the deepest feeling, that military men were put on their parole not to bag anything, and they did not; but the men in the Civils came on ponies, and went away with carts.
The palace grounds are surrounded by four crenellated walls, each a mile long; each wall has three seven-roofed gates in it, and each gate has a bridge across the wide moat. The palace rooms are nearly splendid; they are supported on many teak pillars, low at the sides of the rooms, and up to sixty feet in the middle. These are all gilt, and show ”architectural refinements,” for the teak trees they are made of are not absolutely straight, and they have an entasis that is quite natural where they taper away into the golden gloom of the sloping timber roofs.
The rooms are lofty, and all on one floor, because the Burmese do not like to live in rooms with people above. There are infinite intricacies of gilded teak carving, and some rooms glitter like herring shoals with silvery gla.s.s mosaics and mirrors and crystals. How delightful it must have been to see these courts, and gardens, and palaces, and throne-rooms in their full brilliancy before our ”occupation,” but I suppose one would have had to crawl on all fours or lose one's head at the nod of Supayalat. She and Thebaw and their parents were very much in-bred, and, though she was otherwise particularly charming, she had a strongly-developed homicidal mania. However, the people wept when they saw their king and queen being so unexpectedly hurried away in a gharry to go ”Doon the Water” in Denny's steamer, in November 1885. They had far more fun, they say, before we came; a rupee went farther, and so on; and I quite believe it--we did not grab the country to amuse them!
27th.--Painted till 2 from 8 in half-hearted way. To the Grahams, then to the Arrakan PaG.o.da again, too tired and mosquito-bitten to do much after getting there--a nostalgia of colour these last few days--but saw the golden Buddha. The florid iron gates were open, and an immense light shone on the seated and kneeling wors.h.i.+ppers in front. It is the most effective scene in the world for the amount of staging. A glare of golden light from unseen lamps--electric, I believe--gleams all over the calm golden figure. It is raised so that the arch in front just allows you to see up to the top of the statue; it is over twelve feet high, and the base is about six feet off the ground.
I must come back; on this journey I have already seen so much on the way here--some day I will come out direct and paint this one scene, and perhaps one or two in the Shwey Dagon PaG.o.da--”if I'm spaired,” as they say in the lowlands, instead of knocking under the table.
... On board to-night; Burmans and natives are making up their booths and stalls on the flats alongside, and on the after-decks of this boat, so there is a good deal of hammering during dinner-time. Afterwards we sit round the table on the fore-deck and tolerate the mosquitoes, and tell yarns, and I turn in with a picture in my mind, from a story of the captain's, of an East African coast, and a tramp steamer on a bar, the surf coming over her stern, and the sh.o.r.e lined with drunk n.i.g.g.e.rs, and green boxes of square-faced Dutch gin--at four s.h.i.+llings and sixpence the dozen, box included.
CHAPTER XXIX
”Away to Bhamo, Then fare ye well You Mandalay girl We're away---- To the Bhamo Strand.”
_New verse to old Chantie_.
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Sunday, 28th.--The steamer blows a second time, and the friends and relations of our traders, sisters, cousins, and aunts get ash.o.r.e across the flat or barge alongside, and the crowd of gharries, ox-carts, and fruit and food sellers begins to disperse up the sandbank. I see the tall beauty in green kirtle get a friend to raise her flat basket of oranges on plaintain leaves on to her head, a slow elegant movement she may have learned in dancing. Here, when the women dance, there is little movement of the feet, but the angular movements of the body, arms, and hands and fingers are very subtle and studied, and are done very slowly; they have time!--in fact, they have to look forward to so many re-incarnations before they even become men, that they must feel entirely superior to Time!