"Away to Bhamo,
Then fare ye well
You Mandalay girl
We're away----
To the Bhamo Strand."
_New verse to old Chantie_.
[Illustration]
Sunday, 28th.--The steamer blows a second time, and the friends and
relations of our traders, sisters, cousins, and aunts get ashore 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!
We had a quieter night, leastwise quieter than we expected. A child
cried, and a Burman built his booth a little aft of our cabin, with box
lids and French nails, and the hammering went on till about two. Then
all was quiet, and traders and passengers and their families were
asleep, stretched round the deck aft of our portion--Burmans, Phunghis,
Shans, Karens, Chinese, Sikhs, wrapped in various coloured sheets, in
lines fore and aft and from side to side, dimly lit from above by
lamps--the same in the two decks of the flat which we are to take up the
river with us alongside.
These cargo steamers usually take up two flats,[31] one on each side,
and the amount of trade done on these each voyage up and down, I am
told, is considerable, and must annually give great profit to the
countries whose goods we carry; two-thirds of these goods are
Continental--German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, and some are Japanese.
The deduction to be drawn from this will be equally clear to
Protectionist or Free Trader.
[31] I am told this steamer is 250 feet, beam 48, flats 96, beam 24, and
the mail steamer was 325, beam 62.
We made a false start; the mail steamer from the south we had been
waiting for appeared just as we had cleared off the shore. She had been
delayed by fog, so we anchored for an hour or so to tranship the mails
and Burmese passengers. Meantime I took a spell of painting, then
Krishna and I hunted up a bamboo, got out snake-rings, fishing book, and
reel, and had a rod fixed up in no time. What with gun, cartridges,[32]
and painting things, my cabin looks quite interesting--to my mind. We
have but one other passenger, so we may utilise two cabins, one as
sleeping-room, the other as sitting-room, gun-room, and studio combined.
As such it might be even bigger with advantage, but for situation it
would be impossible to beat--for changing views from the window or
swirling tide and passing boats with people in them, like bunches of
flowers flaring in the sun, and then all soft and delicate as they float
past in our shadow. The priests in these boats, with their yellow robes
and round palm leaf fans have a decorative effect of repetition, and we
are told these fans keep their thoughts from wandering from
righteousness to pretty girls. Palm leaves, robes, and their bare right
shoulders and arms are all in harmonious browns and yellows; the water
is bluish mother-of-pearl. The men row their boats as all Southerners
do, Italians, and the rest, standing and backing them like gondolas;
only the Burman uses two oars.
[32] Telegraphed to Cook, Rangoon, who sent them to Mandalay by train.
But to the fishing rod and line; we started with bait and did underhand
casting from lower deck up and down the ship's side. The rod was
excellent, a split new cane, if not exactly the "Hardy split," and it
did not lie wholly between two points--it meandered a little, but I've
got salmon on worse. We got nothing, and yet I saw a Burman in a dug-out
log, with a no whit better rod, pull up a beauty like a sea trout of two
pounds, as he drifted past; so next stopping place I hope you will hear
of fish "grassed" or "creeled," as they say in the papers.
We pass Mingun, half-an-hour up the river from Mandalay. I've mentioned
this place before and its bell. The bell is big, so the traveller is
expected to make every effort to see it. To me, the size of a bell is
not very interesting, and one heap of stone (pyramids included) seems as
interesting as another. It's the design that counts.
The Flotilla steamer does not always stop at Mingun; we went steaming
past it on our left. The reflections of the trees and ruin in the
smoothly running stream were crossed by rippling bands of lavender,
where a breeze touched the water: and sea swallows poised and dipped,
screaming and flashing after each other. On the far side of the river
were level white sands, green sward, and distant blue mountains.
[Illustration]
There's a pleasant sense of swelling fullness about the river; it may be
an optical delusion, but I am inclined to believe it is a fact that the
surface is slightly convex, like an old-fashioned mirror, perhaps an
inch or two higher in the middle than at the sides. There is not much
depth to spare, already we have touched bottom. It was a curious and
almost incredible statement made to me that we draw four and a half
feet, and can go over sand bars only covered four feet. It is true,
however; the steamer after touching is backed astern a yard or two, and
when her own following swell comes up to her, she goes ahead over the
bar, on the swell.
At lunch we pass a great number of geese on the edge of a sandbank--our
table is right in the bows, and we have a clear view of the banks on
either side as we go along, even at meal times we have the field-glasses
handy to pry into the scenes of animal life on river side--the captain,
who generally has his gun handy, said, "Yes, certainly we must have a
shot at them," and for a moment I hoped he would drop anchor, and that
we would go off in a boat and stalk them, but I gathered sadly the
"shot" was to be underway at 150 yards--and I'd rather not--another lost
opportunity!
Now we pass a regular regiment of birds I do not know--cranes, I
think--some four feet high, the colour of oyster catchers, long red
bills and legs, and black and white plumage.
The Irrawaddy valley is here a little like the valley of the Forth.
There is a centre hill for a Wallace monument, and the distant hills are
like those in Perthshire, but both the valley and the river are wider;
and the delicious summery sun and air are too ideal--we only had such
summer weather when we were children.
Painted all afternoon, passing scenes. G. did a broad daylight effect of
blue sky and distance, and the blue Ruby mountains and flecks of white
cumuli and calm water, an effect in much too high a key for me to
attempt; and I did a Punghis' bathing pool, in lower tones, a more
getatable effect for my brush....
We have to drop anchor at sunset in mid-stream, somewhere below
Kyonkmyoung, to wait for the mail, and because we have no searchlight we
cannot go on at night. The mountains are closer now, and towards evening
they are reflected in voilet and rose in the wide river.
... The lights go on, and I assure you our open air saloon, with its
table set for dinner with silver, white waxy champak flowers, and white
roses in silver bowls are delightful against the blue night outside. The
scent of the champak would be too heavy, but for a pleasant air from
up-stream, which we hope will help to clear out the piratical longshore
crew of Mandalay mosquitoes which we brought with us. We are only a few
miles short of our proper destination for the night, but no matter, _we_
are not in a hurry; the Burmans up-stream, waiting for their market,
are not either, they will just have to camp out for the night.
[Illustration: Mid-day on the Irrawaddy, distant Ruby Mountains]
Before bedtime, G. and I and Miss Blunt, the only other passenger, go
round the booths and make small purchases, and try to make ourselves
understood by the jolly Burmese shopkeepers: the Indian shopkeepers
speak English. A little later the family groups go to sleep in their
stalls, their merchandise round them. A father and mother and child I
saw, in pretty colours under a lamp, curled up in the space a European
could barely sit on. And near our cabins there is a couple asleep on the
deck, a dainty Burmese woman, her figure so neat, with narrow waist and
rounded hip, and her hand and cheek on a dainty pillow, her husband lies
opposite, and between them, also asleep, on the deck their mite of a
child. Almost touching them is a priest still sitting up, his thoughts
his company--possibly they are of Paternity. They all keep pretty quiet,
they are not like those beasts on the B.I. boat; I daresay the quiet
here is also due to better management. Now as I write the electric light
goes out, and we light our candles--the ship is quiet fore and aft, the
only sound the rippling of the Irrawaddy against our anchor chain and
plates.
29th.--Second day from Mandalay. We have stopped three times at the
river-side to-day. At each place a cascade of elegant people in heavenly
colours came smiling down to our gangway planks, and when these were
fixed, trooped on board; to buy purple velvet sandals, strips of silk,
seeds, German hardware, American cigarettes, and goodness knows what
else. I suppose I shall forget all these groups--and, colours, and
expressions, in time--that is the gall and the wormwood of seeing
beauty; I'd fain remember them longer and more vividly than I do.
At the first place we stopped two hours, so I went on shore, got a
Burman as guide, and in a half-hour's run, got seven snipe and twelve
pigeon. Pigeons, I was told, would help the larder; they were very
tame, otherwise I'd hardly have cared to have let off at them.
[Illustration]
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 shore, 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 shore,
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 shores 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.
[Illustration: A Priests' Bathing Pool]