Kalychet, 10th February.--It seems quite a long time since we were last
night in the plains, in mist and haze and moonlight. It rained, and was
very damp indeed during the night. Our slumbers were disturbed by a
groaning, creaking, wooden-wheeled lowland train of carts, that seemed
to suffer agony for ages--it went so slowly past and out of hearing;
perhaps it was the squeaking of the wheels that set all the cocks
a-crowing. The more the wheels creak the better, for the Burman believes
this creaking and whistling keeps away the "Nats" or spirits of things.
The night seemed long and unrefreshing, and in the grey of the morning
we found our blankets were wet with fog. But that was down below, now we
are up on higher ground, and the air is drier and pleasant.
In early morning we drove in the pony cart half the way from Momouk to
this Kalychet, the sowars riding behind with the four ponies. The road
lay through green aisles of bamboo that met overhead, and it was cold
and wet under them for some hours.
At mid-day we stopped and the syce went back with the pony cart, and I
unpacked some fishing tackle to have a try for Mahseer on a river some
distance beyond our halting place. I selected a rod from the million of
bamboos round us, one of decent growth, not the longest, they ran to
ninty feet at a guess, and fastened snake rings on with adhesive plaster
from our medical stores, the stuff you get in rolls, an adaptation of a
valuable tip from _The Field_;[35] the tip was for mending rods, but it
does as well, or better, for putting on temporary rings.
[35] An improvement on the splendid tip is to use the gummy tape used
for insulating electric wire.
It was a grand river, what I'd call a small salmon river, tumbling into
pools over great water-worn boulders, with a tangle of reeds and bamboos
above flood mark. It was piping hot fishing, and the water seemed rather
clear for the phantom I tried. I had two on for a second, and had a
number of touches from small Mahseer that I saw following the minnow,
but failed to land anything, so alas!--I can't swear I've caught a
Mahseer yet or killed a jungle fowl--my two small ambitions just now. G.
collected seeds and roots of wild plants to send home, so she had a
better bag than I had. We rode back to our halting place to lunch--or
tiffen, or whatever it's called in these parts--a sort of solid
breakfast at one o'clock,--on the side of the pony track; the Chinese
pack-ponies wandered round eating bamboo leaves and tough looking reeds.
Along the road we passed many groups of Kachins, all with swords and
mild wondering eyes. This halt was rather a business I thought,--all the
packages unladened, pots and pans and fires, and a complicated lunch. I
incline to our home fashion when living out of doors, of a crust and a
drink at mid-day and a square meal after the day's outing.
As we were getting our cavalcade started, along came Captain Kirke and
Carter in shirt-sleeves, riding back hard to Headquarters. They are hard
as nails but looked just the least thing tired, having ridden a great
distance since yesterday on an inspecting tour from some hill village.
They hoped to get to Bhamo by night _if_ their steeds held out.
For the rest of the day we rode, at first with our whole crew, latterly
by ourselves and the two Sepoys:--cantered a hundred yards or so and
jog-trotted, ambled, walked, cantered again and climbed slowly up
hillside paths; through damp hollows, between brakes of high reeds with
beautiful fluffy seeds, under tall trees festooned with creepers with
lilac flowers, and over hard sunny bits of the path with butterflies
floating up against us, and overhead, orchids and pendant air roots and
wild fruits. I suppose it was the beautiful surroundings that made the
ride so enjoyable, and the change from the plain to the hill air.
[Illustration]
Towards evening we rode up a saddle ridge that crossed the valley along
which we had been riding, and came out of trees and bamboos into the
open. Here we found another pretty public-work's dak bungalow of dark
teak uprights and cross beams, with white-washed cane matting between
and neat grass thatch laid over bamboos, with wide views up and down the
valley of rolling woods and distant hills. To the north-east a distant
range of blue hills cut across the valley, touches of sunlight showed
they were covered with forest; below us the path led zigzagging into the
yellow and green bamboos. Looking back to the south down the valley we
had come up, the Chin hills bounded the horizon, but between us and them
lay miles and miles of rolling woods, and a haze at the foot of the
hills over the plain of the Irrawaddy. The air was delicious, the views
enthralling, the lodging comfortable, the country we might call our own,
with no one about, except the native Durwan, or caretaker, and his
Kachin women folk, only in the distance on a hillside were two Kachins
clearing a patch of jungle--otherwise solitude and peace. Our ponies and
baggage arrived all right but some time after us; it ought to have been
looted if what recent writers say about the Kachins is right--that "they
do no honest labour, but live by lifting cattle, looting caravans, and
stealing anything upon which they can lay their hands." Krishna and all
the others set at once to unpack and get ready our meal, which felt
rather late--I should have timed them to arrive before us. It grew
chilly in the evening, and our red blankets soon seemed uncommonly
attractive.
Sunday forenoon.--You might, if of a contemplative mind, and not
harassed by desire for sport, or movement, or travel, stay for many
hours, even days, with great content at this Kalychet bungalow, looking
out over forest and glen, inhaling the pure air, and even run to poetry
were you of the age.
"Watching shadows, shadows chasing,"
--over the forest-clad mountains which have only cleared patches here
and there, where Kachins have cut the bamboos, taken a crop or two and
then moved on, leaving the ground to lie fallow and grow over weeds
again. On the hillside there are two of these clearings across the track
above us, some two acres or so in extent, with the bamboos cut and
stumps of trees projecting, and in the middle of one of these there is a
native hut, like a fragile boat-house, projecting from the slope of the
hill. Narrow footpaths through the bamboos lead from our cleared space
up to them. Two little Kachin women are climbing up these paths, their
cattle in front of them; each has a basket on her back, and she spins as
she goes--now they are followed by a sprightly boy and his sister, the
boy straight as a dart, with a sword slung across his back, and his gay
red-tasselled satchel on his left side; both have bare feet, and neither
of them seem to heed the thorns. The girl has a loose bundle of thin
hoops of brass and black cane round her hips, under her short black
jacket, and two great silver torques round her neck and breast; her
clothes are dark blue, black, and red.
[Illustration]
... There is the quiet of the mountains; only slightly broken at
intervals of an hour or so when a caravan passes, but sometimes these
pass perfectly silently without stopping; barefooted carriers with their
merchandise slung across the shoulder on bamboos, and sometimes with
ponies, and bells jingling cheerily. Just now, one has come from the
China frontier, some ten carriers wearing pointed straw hats several
feet wide. They unlimber and drink a little water from a spring that
spouts out of the side of a hill through a bamboo; they are quiet
people--their voices and the gurgling of the spring just reach us. Then
from Burmah side come women carriers, Shans, I think, old and young, in
dark blue clothes, short petticoats and tall turbans; they come sturdily
up the hill and joke with the Chinese coolies as they pass without
stopping down the zigzag path into the bamboos, by the path our ponies
and people have already followed. But here is movement! and a cheery
jingling!--a whole string of Chinese pack ponies, eighty at least,
coming up from Bhamo, each laden with bales, a Chinaman to every three
ponies. At the end stalks a lean Indian. I suppose he owns the show--his
wife follows, a very black thing, a Madrassee, to judge by her not very
white and inelegant hangings. They drink and spit at the spring, and he
sees us and salaams, and looks in to see the durwan, who is one of his
countrymen.
[Illustration]
But now we must be jogging too, though it is pleasant here. We leave one
sowar behind, in pain he says, but I doubt if he's very ill. So we get
on to our rather big polo ponies, one black, the other white, and go
down the valley on the path to China--said bridle path quite dry now
excepting under bamboo clumps, though it rained hard in the night.
7 P.M.--Kulong Cha--"There's no place like home" they say, and I thought
so; now I think there is, perhaps even better. Our own highlands must
have been like this before General Wade and Sir Walter Scott opened them
to the tourist; the Pass of Leny or where Bran meets Tay, when there was
more forest, and only bridle tracks, and men going armed, must have been
like this, even to the free fishing and shooting.
We are in a cup-shaped wooden glen, our rest-house eighty feet up the
hillside above the track, and a brawling burn that meets the Taiping a
few hundred yards beyond our halting place. The burn suggests good
fishing, and the Taiping looks like a magnificent salmon river. It is 7
P.M. and Krishna busy setting dinner, and your servant writing these
notes to the sound of many waters and by a candle dimly burning, for the
sun has gone below the wooded hills and left us in a soft gloom. Several
camp fires begin to twinkle along the road where the caravans we
overtook, and others from the east, are preparing for the night. Our
Chinese coolies too have their fires going near us, the smoke helping to
soften the already blurred evening effect. We have had, for us, a long
afternoon's ride--a little tiring and hot in the bottom of the valley
when the path came down to the Taiping river,--a winding and twisting
path, round little glens to cross foaming burns, level enough for a
hundred yards canter, then down, and up, hill sides in zigzags, here and
there wet and muddy with uncertain footing, through groves of bamboos
and under splendid forest trees, some creepers hanging a hundred feet
straight as plumb lines, others twisted like wrecked ships' cables, and
flowering trees, with delicious scent every hundred yards or so. We felt
inclined to stop and look, and sketch vistas of sunlit foliage through
shadowy aisles of feathery bamboos, or splendid open forest views with
mighty trees, and the river and its great salmon pools. There were
splendid butterflies, some large and black as velvet, with a patch of
vivid ultramarine, others yellow with cerulean, and another deep fig
green with a blazing spot of primrose, and pigeons, and of course jungle
fowl, because I had not my gun!
[Illustration]
Our caravan arriving here was picturesque. They came round the corner
over the burn bridge, walking briskly, the sick sowar riding in the
rear, the cook and his Burmese wife leading--she so neat, with a pink
scarf, green jacket, and plum-coloured silk skirt, her belongings in a
handkerchief slung over her shoulder from a black cotton parasol, and in
her left hand, carried straight as a saint's lilies, a branch of white
flowers for G.; then came the Burman youth, also with some bright
colour, a red scarf round his black hair and tartan kilt; he carried my
gun, and the Chinamen in weather-worn blue dungarees, loose tunics and
shorts, and wide yellow umbrella hats slung on their backs, with their
shaggy brown and white ponies. We arrived at five, the mules and baggage
at six, and already dinner is almost cooked, our belongings in place,
beds made, mosquito curtains up,--and this day's journal done!
... Wish somebody would write this day's log for me--I must fish! The
burn in front is in grand spate, so is the Taiping river, roaring down
discoloured. If I know aught of Highland spates, they will both be down
in the hour and fishable. The glen is full of sun from behind us, and
the mist is rising in lumps. It rained in the night; when we turned in,
the mist had come down in ridges on us, and it felt stuffy and warm
under blankets, and the sound of the waters was muffled by the mist. I
awoke with a world of vivid white light in my eyes, the glen was
quivering with lightning, and the gods played awful bowls overhead!
Green trees up the hillsides and contorted mist wreaths showed as in
daylight, and then were buried in blackness and thunder. Then the rain
came! to put it intil Scottis--a snell showir' dirlin' on the thatch.
There was the bleezin cairn, and the craig that lowped and dinnled i'
the dead-mirk dail, the burn in spate and the rowin flood o' the Taiping
dinging their looves thegither at their tryst i' the glen--ane gran' an'
awesome melee. But I don't like these effects, so I buried myself in red
blankets, and as the rain thundered down, thought of our coolies; I
expect they got from under their hats and went below the floor of our
bungalow. The atmosphere, after an hour, grew suddenly pleasant and
cool--a breeze rose--there was light in the left, and the glint of many
stars--and I pulled on another blanket and slept at last refreshingly.
What a night the Chinese up the road must have had. No jungle however
thick could have kept out that rain, and it is thin where they are, for
many campers have cut down the branches and bamboos for fodder and
firewood. They sleep with only a piece of matting over their bodies, the
wide straw hat over their head and shoulders; and their fires, of
course, were extinguished. The sort of thing our Volunteers enjoyed in
S.A., and for which they got rheumatism and experience, and a medal, and
no opportunity to wear it.
One of the sepoys has cut me a bamboo, so it's time to be off to put on
snake-rings, and get out tackle and try somehow to hang on to one of
these Mahseer that I have heard of so much and of which I know so
little. Local information there is none, but I have spoons and phantoms,
and so--who knows!