[Illustration]
The above notes and remarks, full of hope, were written with a little
impatience to be "on the water." Now, after two hours scrambling through
jungle to and from the river, I've less hope and an empty basket. It was
hot and still down in the glen, like the vale wherein sat grey-haired
Saturn, and--
"Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest."
and fruit and flowers too lay sodden under foot. It was tough work
getting through the few hundred yards of jungle of creeper thorns and
boulders to the river's edge. I fished two or three sheltered runs, and
came back soaking from within and without from the heat and wet foliage,
scratched by thorns, with ears drumming from the noise of many waters,
and no basket, and the river not down two inches and muddy as could be!
We must be off again now--or at least let the pack ponies and servants
go.
12th, Monday.--Nampoung, after two hours on our little gees, two hours
that seemed days! Hot and stuffy down in the glens in the din and roar
of the Taiping in spate, climbing up for a thousand feet, a hundred
yards on the level, twisting round corries--such fascinating corries,
stuffed with every sort of tropic growth, like the pictures one saw in
stories of Jules Verne, but in such rich varied colouring! I vow I saw
creepers of two hundred feet, wild plantains with fruit, and great
ferns, heavy-leaved dark foliage and feathery bamboos, the leaves yellow
and dropping and covering our path with a crisp brown carpet.
[Illustration]
We rode generally in single file, our right sides against rocks or
cuttings in the yellow earth bank, and every here and there were views
through the foliage, sometimes almost straight down below us a thousand
feet, where we could catch a glimpse of foaming river and hear its roar
coming up to us.
[Illustration]
The sowars cut branches for us to hold over our shoulders to keep the
heat of the afternoon sun off neck and back--Birnam woods _a deux_, and
Nampoung fort instead of Macbeth's castle.
Nampoung--the edge of the Empire!--We are now well into the Kachin
Highlands, 6000 to 7000 feet above the sea, and the air is delicious.
The last part of our ride here was very steep. G. and her pony were only
just able to scrape up together. I and the sepoys had to walk. Almost in
the steepest part some sixty Chinese mules and ponies came down, and we
pulled aside at a bit of the path where two could barely pass. It was a
cheery sight, the long line of ponies and the blue coats and mushroom
hats, jogging, slipping, and jangling down the zigzag path, with an
occasional cheery shout to the beasts as they disappeared round
corners, appeared again, and finally showed a mile below, when only the
sound of their bells came up to us faintly from the tropic woods in the
bottom of the Nampoung Valley.
I am not sure that having reached a point within pistol-shot of the back
of China fills one with any enormous sense of accomplished endeavour.
What strikes me mildly is the feeling of being at the present extremity
of British possessions, and we speculate where the March may be in years
to come--East or West? The tiny little frontier fort we have arrived at
is on a saddle-back hill, and overlooks the angle of China between two
valleys, that of the Taiping and its tributary, the Nampoung. As we
passed through the wire entanglements on the summit, after our climb up,
the Indian sentinel facing China across the glen struck me as being
rather a suggestive figure, so here he is.
[Illustration]
"Capin Kurruk" was our effective password. Kirke I suppose, had
heliographed our arrival, and the Subadar and the native doctor met us.
The Subadar, a Sikh, I think, had almost the only Indian face I have
seen so far that I liked--big, potent, and with the appearance of a
sportsman and gentleman. The doctor was of rather an opposite type,
though clever-looking, and spoke a little English.
The dark bungalow was a few hundred yards down the hill from the fort
looking down the valley we had come up into the sunset. On these higher
hills I see more Kachin clearings, and with the glass make out their
sturdy little figures in the tracks leading from one clearing to the
other, interminable bamboo jungle above and below them. They certainly
have a splendid country to hold. They are said to have come into Burmah
with the great Mogul invasion; and when the Northerners retreated, the
Kachins stayed and took up their quarters in the hill tops, and have
raided the low countries since.
The cut of their women's dress resembles the reindeer skin dress of the
Laps in north of Norway, and the geometric ornaments are similar, and
the torque or heavy penanular necklet of silver has ends like the
druidical serpents head.
12th February.--Down at Kulong Cha the night was warm and stuffy! last
night up here at Nampoung it was precious cold. We could hardly sleep,
though we had on our whole wardrobe. The weak point was our having only
two thin quilts underneath on the charpoys. As these bungalows are all
made after one design on the principle of a meat-safe, to keep you cool
in the low hot levels, they are only too effective up here. So we turned
out very early to find a spot where the sun shone hot on the Empire's
wall. In an hour or two we will be down to the Nampoung River, and it
will be hot there as an oven.