Part 25 (1/2)
... 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 pa.s.s 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 roses and 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 pa.s.sing astern.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Girl of Upper Burmah]
At Tayoung in the evening we swing round, head up stream, and lie along the sh.o.r.e--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 fis.h.i.+ng. These were all silvery, ”b.u.t.ter 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 s.h.i.+ning, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 seeds and 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 ma.s.s of blossom. One high tree had dropped a mat of purple flowers, as large as tulips, across the dried gra.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 gra.s.s in a clearing, with an astonis.h.i.+ngly familiar whirr, and went clear away, and I'd barely loaded when a b.u.t.ton 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sing resemblance to pheasants. The next open s.p.a.ce 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 gra.s.s. 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.
It was dark when we made for the river and the soft, dusty track through the green gra.s.s at its edge. Big beetles pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sengers 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+p across the wide sea.
... 23rd February.--Kyonkmyoung--not p.r.o.nounced as spelt, and spelling not guaranteed. We spent the night at above village. Now we are pa.s.sing a wooded sh.o.r.e, and two remarkable paG.o.das 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 paG.o.da 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 pa.s.sed us, it had been delayed on a sandbank; we s.h.i.+p 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 ash.o.r.e and away like a bullet, with a ricochet and a tw.a.n.g behind; a Silver king, they say, and a future president!--How rapidly Americans travel, and a.s.similate facts, and what extraordinary conclusions some of them make.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
We slow-going Scots hang on at Mandalay for a little. We have not half seen the place, and wish to spend hours and hours at the paG.o.da, watching the wors.h.i.+ppers there, and trying, if possible, to remember enough expressions and forms and colours to use at home. Our fellow pa.s.sengers, Mr and Mrs S., elect to stay on board. They have some days to spare, waiting for a down-river steamboat, wisely preferring that, to the bustle through to Rangoon in the train.
... Mr S. is playing the piano, G. and I are painting, Mrs S. sewing, and all the morning, from the lower deck, there comes the continual c.h.i.n.k of silver rupees, where Captain Robinson and his mate are settling the trade accounts of the trip, blessing the Burmese clerk for having half a rupee too much; funny work for men brought up to ”handle reef and steer.”
Three steamers, similar to our own, with flats, lie alongside the sandbank, all in black and white, with black and red funnels and corrugated iron roofs, and ”Glasgow” painted astern. Bullock-carts b.u.mp along the sh.o.r.e in clouds of dust, and the bales come and go, and trade here is still really picturesque; there are no ugly warehouses or stores, and everything is open and above board--just, I suppose, as trade went on in the days of Adam or Solomon.