It was about February 1891, and on the left or eastern bank of the
Sittang River in Toungoo district, Lower Burma, that an inspector of
police was riding northwards along a cart-road, through the woods, as
the daylight was quitting the sky, and "suddenly," to use his own
words, "I seemed, at one and the same instant, to get a terrific blow
in the small of the back, and to feel the pony under me springing
upwards, as if it were jumping to the sky." He completed his
description by gestures.