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 shining 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.
[Illustration]
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 faggots 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
pagoda 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 ship along the shore, 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 grass for thatch, much as grooms weave straw
for the edges of stalls; then to the pagoda on the hillock, and up the
narrow flight of steps. It is not in very first-class 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
ship, 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 Assam," 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 passing
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 shimmering, 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
fishing 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 Butter 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 ashore.
31st--Tegine.--This morning we passed 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 passed, his face half white with soap lather, and his shirt sleeves
rolled up; he did unintelligible semaphore 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 ashore. Soon
after we met the dilatory down-river cargo boat, and waited where the
channel was wide and she passed, 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 passengers on board! I don't think these
good days for passengers can last, the crowd is bound to come.
[Illustration]
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 glass, 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 amusement 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 button-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.
[Illustration]
All the way along the edge of the river, where there are not trees,
there is Kaing or elephant grass--grass that waves some eighteen feet
high and runs far inland, and here and there are bits of tree jungle.
Every now and then we see some bird or beast which we have not seen
before outside of a Zoo; a grand eagle is in sight just now, no vulture
this fellow; he looks twice the size of our golden eagle, and sits
motionless on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a sandbank. I can
only just make out his or her mate soaring against the woods on the
hills behind. On a bank to our right there's a whole crowd of large
birds--as we get closer I can count their feathers with my glasses; they
are not beauties--vultures of some kind, and gorged at that, to judge
from their lazy movements; their plumage is a grey, chocolate colour;
their lean bare neck and heads are black or deep plum colour. On the
very edge of the sandbank there's a string of white sea-swallows,
sitting each on its own reflection. There are several kinds, and they
rise as we pass, and I see, for the first time, the Roseate Tern, a
sea-swallow with deep lavender and black feathers, rather telling with
its scarlet bill. To complete this menagerie's inventory we pass four
elephants bathing; two on the bank are dry, and blow sand over
themselves from their trunks, and are the same dry khaki colour as the
banks; the other two lie in the water, their great tubby sides, big as a
whale's back, are black as sloes. Through the glass we see them rise
slowly and stalk up the bank, getting their little feet all sandy again.
We went aground about five or six P.M., and are aground, and will
probably take root here. The Chittagong crew are _talking_ and working
like niggers to kedge her off, and she won't budge. I'm sorry for the
Captain; it seems running things rather fine to expect him to take his
ship drawing four feet, over a bar only covered three feet.
In the pause, with the glasses I spy geese on a distant point, so with
the steward as interpreter, engage a dug-out that came alongside to
trade to take me in pursuit, but as I get out the gun, a Burman's boat
comes down and passes within a few yards of them and they shift. The
boatman tells me there are deer about--points to woods and jungle within
a mile on the river's right bank, but time will not allow us to go after
them. So we make a shooting engagement for the "morn's morn" if we are
still on the sandbank.
The crew struck work and singing at ten and left things to Providence;
the captain didn't believe in this; he remarked "All things come to
those who wait, but I know a plan much slicker; for he who bustles for
what he wants, gets things a d----d sight quicker!"--and called on them
in their quarters--he had a whole stick when he went in--and they got to
work again. He believes that if the river was buoyed by a white man
instead of a native we wouldn't be fast now. I should think it is just
the sort of work that would need a European, but I rather think after
watching the soundings we made, that there was no deeper channel over
the sand anywhere--at any rate none could be found from our small boat.
They kept at this kedging till midnight, and later, dropping the anchor
ahead from the small boat, then hauling the ship up to it by the chain
and steam windlass--with the variations splendid exercise for all hands.
At first the flat, as it drew less than we did, was left behind a
little, and our ship did this fighting with sand and water alone. They
started again to the work early in the morning and by breakfast time, by
constant steaming ahead and backing, had burrowed a channel in the sand;
then went back and clawed on to the flat and steamed away for Chittagong
distant a mile or two. As we went the anchor chains were unshackled and
overhauled to get the twists out of them; and both anchors and chains
were bright as silver from their rude polishing in the sand.
It is perishingly cold at Chittagong, _i.e._, in shade in the early
morning, but it is bracing, A.1. weather for doing things. Last night I
had three blankets and two sleeping suits and felt cold at that. The
sides and windows of our cabin being made of open lattice woodwork we
fix up some newspapers and a mat or two we have over these, which makes
all the difference.
We had only half-an-hour for the bazaar at Chittagong. By the way I
can't vouch for the spelling of this or any other names of places en
route, but this is the way our First Mate spells it. We have no good map
on board to give the names, but there are a number of books, and a
piano, and many other comforts that one would hardly expect on a cargo
steamer, so I think the Company, having done so well for their
passengers, might run to a framed map of Upper and Lower Burmah.
At Kalone the people stood in splendid groups at the jungle edge
waiting for the arrival of the market. It was absolutely a Fete
Champetre, but more brilliant and classic than Watteau ever can have
seen. There were no houses visible, just the steep sandy bank with roots
dangling out of it, and splendid trees above like sycamores and ash,
some with creepers pouring from their highest branches. Against the
green depths were these groups of happy people in delightful colours,
some sitting and others standing, some in the full sunlight, others
further in the jungle amongst the shadowy trunks and fern palms.
[Illustration]
My Conscience pricked me and said "draw," but I said, "I'm bothered if I
do, let's get into the jungle, if it's only for an hour, and see more
new things, close," so we did, got a guide, and arranged to return at
first blast of the steamer's horn, and away we went _ventre a terre_ to
a jheel said to be near, and had not more than enjoyed a glance at this
pretty watery opening in the woods when up got a snipe with its old
sweet song, and along with the snipe were any number of other
waders--what a place for a naturalist! The first wisp went straight
towards some paddy workers so I only got one flanker, and just as I was
in the middle of them, beginning a record bag the horn sounded--the
vexation of it! We turned and hoofed it back; under shadows of grand
trees, over brown fallen leaves, past sunbeam lit girls in velvet
sandals, coming from the ship, with bundles of purchases poised on their
heads, and on board by the last plank of the gangway, muddy and hot and
desperately annoyed at having to cut short a good morning's shooting.
Some of the snipe were larger and deeper in colour than those I am
familiar with--Painted snipe I believe.
A delightful country this would be for a holiday in a native river boat.
What a pity it is so far from home; with a party and a boat I believe
one could have a splendid time drifting down, there would be fishing,
walks, rowing, sailing, shooting, sketching, and all in a delicious
climate, and all the sport bar elephants free, and amongst courteous
people with all the supplies of "the saut market" at arm's length from
the Flotilla Company's steamers. Why not charter a big native dug-out up
the river at Bhamo--sink it for a day or two--for reasons--then drift
and row down. You could get up to Bhamo in a week or less, or in two or
three days shortly, when there's a railway, and take, say three weeks
down to Mandalay.
Kalone to Katha is interesting all the way. At Katha the mountains on
the west come closer to the river. There is a short railway branch from
this place to the line to Mandalay. I hardly like to mention a railway
up here, it sounds so prosaic and so unassociated with any of the wild
surroundings; but there--it's a solid fact, you can come up here from
Rangoon in next to no time and see nothing on the way, by train. We walk
past the little station, the first piece of blackened ground we have
seen for many a day--a ballast truck, ashes, and coals--impossible! From
the wire fence round the station-house and from its wooden eaves hang
numbers of orchids, nameless and priceless--impossible again!
It is a pleasant country round Katha, once you get away from the line.
There is low ground cleared for crops then knolly wooded hills within
easy reach, and higher hills beyond. The air was still and wisps of
wood-smoke from distant village fires hung in level bands above the
plain. Miss B. and G. went to see the pagoda, I did the same, and also
took my gun in case of a wet place and snipe. They saw a procession to a
priest's funeral--one of the regular shows of Burmah, I only saw jungle,
and brakes of white roses with rather larger blossoms than our sweet
briar, growing to about twenty feet high. These grew many feet below the
level of the river in the wet season, so I gather they spend several
months in the rains under water: I also saw vultures, eagles, hawks, and
a big kind of lapwing and snipe; but the snipe here were cunning, and
got up wild and flew far, so I only got a small bag. But putting the
afternoon's stravaig and the morning's ramble together made quite a
decent day's exercise; and I believe the two or three hours in the
jungle with its strange sights and sounds, flowers, birds, and beasts,
were as interesting as a Phoungies' funerals.