Part 20 (1/2)
Sabendigo for the night. In afternoon, stopped painting with reluctance, and if I'd stopped sooner might have beaten my small records at snipe.
The ladies elected to walk with me on sh.o.r.e, so, to give a sense of security, I took my gun! and as we went across the gangway, picked up a Burman, who I was told knew where there was game of some description, and the captain sent one of the Chittangong crew, and other two Burmans joined unofficially, so we made quite a party. The ladies shortly began to collect flowers, and not being so keen about sauntering as the second Charles, I set off at a mighty quick walk, the Burmans following at a dog-trot, whither, I'd no idea; but it was nice going, through lanes at first, past an occasional transparent house of cane and matting, past cow-byres and cattle feeding, then into a sandy track through jungle of tall trees and thick undergrowth. Then the bamboo clumps got thicker and met overhead, and the afternoon sun came through in golden threads and patches on the whitey-grey sand of the path. We hoped to see jungle-fowl in some of the more open places, and for an hour we dog-trotted, till we got a trifle warm--but never a sign of any really open snipe ground, and I almost turned back; but my Burmans pointed on and we soon turned to the left, crawled under thick bamboos and came on a clearing with water and paddy fields, and hope revived. But we walked round the edges of two or three fields without seeing anything, then just as the sun went down, the first snipe got up and flew straight at a Burman behind me, so it got away, and in five minutes--no, one minute--we were in ground absolutely alive with snipe, thick as midges and about as visible. I saw faintly a wisp get up, fired at one and it dropped somewhere, and heard the old familiar scraik, scraik on all sides as snipe got up at the shot, but it was hopelessly dark. It was a horrid sell, barring the satisfaction there always is in finding your game--I am not sure that killing it adds much--then we dog-trotted home to the river, along the soft sand track; it was very dark under the bamboos, but a new moon helped in the more open land. It was pretty going, all afternoon, with scenes like pictures by Rousseau and Daubigny, and twice, in the shadows of bamboo groves I saw veritable Monticelli's, when we met people and ox carts labouring through the sand; when forms and colours were all soft and blended, and the glow of day changed to night--Art is consoling when the bag is empty, even the purse sometimes!
Had a cast before we left with fly in the morning; fish were rising, had one on for a moment--saw a fish taken from a balance net on sh.o.r.e, seemed about seven to ten pounds, bright and silvery as a salmon, with a rather forked tail, should think said fish might be taken on a blue phantom or Devon. I have both here, and, granted a stay of any time, will try harling.
The sh.o.r.es of the river now are closer together, wooded and steep, showing here and there boulders through the sand rather like the lower reaches of Namsen in Norway, which perhaps only describes the appearance to rather a restricted number of fortunates.
We saw two elephants grazing by the river-side; I believe they were wild.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Priests' Bathing Pool]
CHAPTER x.x.x
30th January 1906.--Fog--6 o'clock A.M.--half daylight, and the anchor chain comes clanking on board--a cheery sound, the steady clink clank of the pall-pin in the winch--a comforting sound, and bit of machinery to anyone who has hauled in anchor overhand--what say you Baldy--or Mclntyre, do you remember Rue Breichnich or Lowlandman's Bay, before we got a winch, and the last three fathoms out of green mud?--and the kink in the back before breakfast, and the feeling you'd never stand straight again in your life?
We barely have the anchor up and fast and have steamed less than ten minutes when we run into a fog bank set cunningly across the stream by some river Nat. The bell rings, ”Stop her”--and plunge goes the anchor with the chain rattling out behind it, and we lie still again in the silence of the fog. Sea swallows come out of the mist and give their gentle call and flit out of sight, they give a regular flavour of the sea; the mist hangs on our clothes and drips from the corrugated iron roof of the flat, and our iron lower decks are s.h.i.+ning wet.
9 o'clock.--The mist very gently rises off the river and wanders away in the tree-tops and climbs the distant mountains slowly, and the warm sun comes out to dry everything. The anchor is up again and its ”paddle and go,”--the leadsman is at his chant again. All the way up from Rangoon to Mandalay and from Mandalay here, two of the crew, one on either side of the bows, takes sounding with a bamboo, alternately singing out the feet in a sing-song melancholy cadence that briskens and changes a little when the water suddenly shoals.
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We draw four feet, and yesterday went over a bar covered by three feet nine inches only,--went towards it, backed, and went over it on our own following wave!
Kyankyet--We take on more wood f.a.ggots here to fill our bunkers. The wood smoke gives rather a pleasant scent in the air--pretty much like last halting place, same sunny dusty banks, plus a few rocks, and similar village of dainty cottages and of weather-bleached cane and teak showing out of green jungle. Above the place we stop at, a spit of sand runs into the river with a hillock and on it, there is a little golden paG.o.da amongst a few trees and palms: a flight of narrow white steps leads up to it, and below in the swirl of the stream are wavering reflections of gold, and white, and green foliage. And as usual there are figures coming to the s.h.i.+p along the sh.o.r.e, each a harmony of colours, each with a sharp shadow on the sand.
Whilst the wood goes on board we wander through the village and look at people weaving fringes of gra.s.s for thatch, much as grooms weave straw for the edges of stalls; then to the paG.o.da on the hillock, and up the narrow flight of steps. It is not in very first-cla.s.s repair, the river is eating away its base. To obtain merit the Burman prefers to build anew rather than to restore, and this one has done its turn. We saw several bronze and marble Buddhas under a carved teak shed; some fading orchids lay before them. Two men were making wood carvings very freely and easily in teak. Miss B. and G. coveted a little piece of furniture in brown teak, covered with lozenges of greeny-blue stone. It looked like a half-grown bedstead, the colour very pretty. If we had had an interpreter, we might have saved it from the ruin. What I carried away was a memory of the blue above, the gliding river below, hot sun and stillness, and the hum of a large, irridescent black beetle that went blundering through scarlet poinsettia leaves into the white, scented blossoms of a leafless, grey-stemmed champak tree.
I am told there are barking deer and jungle fowl within an hour of the s.h.i.+p, elephant, rhinoceros, sambhur, and much big game within thirty miles, but we are on the move again, and my heart bleeds.--I cannot try for these for I have neither battery, guides, nor camp equipment.
At Tagaung, stopping-place for the ruby mines, we tie up for the night--a charmingly wooded country.
In ”Wild Sports of Burmah and a.s.sam,” by Col. Pollock and W. S. Thom, published in 1900, you read that ”some of the best big game shooting in the world, with the least possible trouble and expenditure, can be had in Upper Burmah,” and this is the place to set out for it--from Mandalay, some seventy-seven miles. Mercifully, I did not read this till after we had left Burmah, or I'd have felt frightfully unhappy pa.s.sing it all. Even now, as I read their descriptions, I feel vexed, to a degree, that I did not know more about the possibilities of sport in Upper Burmah before starting North. The above book must be invaluable to any keen sportsman who goes to Burmah; but keen he must be, and prepared to _hunt_ for his quarry; game is not driven up to him, the jungle is too dense.
I will now proceed to write about fish. As the sun set they were rising beside us, making rings in the golden flood, and the reflected woods of the far side of the river, so I put on a Loch Leven fly cast, and got a beauty right away, of about one pound; a s.h.i.+mmering, silvery fish, between a sea-trout and a whiting as to colour, and I missed other rises. A Woods and Forests' man on board told me he had recently caught a similar fish on a small fly rod; it weighed five pounds and leapt like a sea-trout, but no one apparently knows much about the possibilities of fis.h.i.+ng here with rod and modern tackle. We then got a hand-line and a cod-hook from the engineer, and baited with squeezed bread, the size of a pigeon's egg, and fished on the bottom, and almost at once had on a heavy fish. It pulled tremendously and got a lot of line out, and wandered up and down the middle of the river; on a salmon rod it would have played long and heavily. We got it hand over hand alongside, aft the paddle-box, and a Burman in a canoe hitched a noose over its tail, and we hoisted it on board. I couldn't see the beast very clearly, as it was growing dusk, and all hands crowded round us to give advice. It looked rather like a cod, and weighed thirty-five lbs. I'd have guessed it to be eighteen lbs., but its weight was quite out of proportion to its measurements. Shortly after we got another--twenty lbs. They have red firm flesh, and to eat are like sturgeon, they say. The sporting silvery fish was called Mein and b.u.t.ter fish, and they are said to be very good to eat, but they have a beard, which doesn't answer to my standard of a game fish. I got about a dozen of these smaller fellows of about one lb. each, not a bad way of putting in an hour or so, when the time does not allow of gunning ash.o.r.e.
31st--Tegine.--This morning we pa.s.sed on our right the elephant Kedar Camp, where natives are preparing to rope in wild elephants as they do in Mysore. The bank was steep, about level with the top of our funnel.
The low jungle had been cleared, and we saw screens and houses of green thatch and palm leaves. A very brown Britisher came out of his tent as we pa.s.sed, his face half white with soap lather, and his s.h.i.+rt sleeves rolled up; he did unintelligible semaph.o.r.e signalling with both arms, a razor in one hand, paper in the other. He likewise spoke to us in words that were barely audible for the sound of the rush of the water. When we pieced together what each had heard, it came to ”what the blankety blank has come over your--tut tut-down-stream cargo boat? She was to bring me tea and sugar! And I've no whiskey, and--” but there was a stiff turning just at this part of the river, and the skipper and pilot and everyone on board gave it all their attention, or we'd have been ash.o.r.e. Soon after we met the dilatory down-river cargo boat, and waited where the channel was wide and she pa.s.sed, its master shouting to us that the channel somewhere further up was ”only four feet six, and very difficult.” She had stranded somewhere for twenty-four hours or so.
There were apparently only two pa.s.sengers on board! I don't think these good days for pa.s.sengers can last, the crowd is bound to come.
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Next small item in to-day's entertainment. An otter, rather larger than any I've seen at home, performed to us on a sandbank, danced, and rolled over its own shadow, or possibly a fish, in apparent exuberance of spirit. It was a very pretty sight through the gla.s.s, and I think I could have got him with a rifle, but it was rather far to risk a shot and wounding with my Browning's colt pistol--the Woods and Forest man, by the way, had a Browning colt, and rather fancied himself as a shot.
He told me his terrier puts up otters pretty often in the streams in the jungle, in family parties, greatly to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the otters. So there's another heading for a game book here; that might begin with elephant and finish up with mouse-deer and b.u.t.ton-quail. What a list of water-fowl there would be, and where would turtle go?--under Game or Fish? They lay their eggs on the sandbanks in numbers, and these fetch quite a big price, four annas each. I'd willingly sacrifice a night's sleep to see one come out of the water up the sand, and to ”turn it”
would make me feel at the Ultima Thule of the world abroad.
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