Lives there a man who has sat by the riverside at mid-day in the glen,
with a pipe and a cup, and a fish in the bag, the air hot and full of
the sound of running waters, and the sun laughing in the spirals of the
mountain dew, who has not felt that beautiful life could offer nothing
better than another fish? (I'd have brought a "man or woman" into this
already involved interrogatory sentence, but for the pipe!) So we feel,
as we rest by the side of Nampoung River, between China and Upper
Burmah, after a morning's ride and an hour's fishing. There is a
delicious blend of wood, and hill, and running water, and we have a good
Mahseer in the bag--or pot rather--a perfect beauty, though not quite up
to the record weights we read of; but it played handsomely, and it comes
in handily for lunch. I got it at the tail of a lovely clear running
pool,[36] just above the ford where the caravans cross from China. The
river must be much netted by the coolies who camp for the night here; as
I wound up before lunch one of these, a Chinaman, with a boy came and
cast a circular net with great skill over half the pool in which I'd
landed the Mahseer, but they didn't get anything, as I expect I'd driven
the Mahseer into the rough water at the top of the pool. Down the river
where it meets the Taiping I am told there is splendid fishing, but I
must content myself with the hope that "a time will come." It is
pleasant in the meantime; there are sweet scents in the air, and
pleasant colours. Our little camp kitchen, one hundred yards down the
river, wreaths the trees with wisps of blue smoke. The Burmese girl and
her brother wear bright red and white, and near us there are wild
capsicums and lemon trees dangling all over with yellow fruit and
sweet-scented blossoms. The fruit has rather a coarse skin, but the
juice is pleasant enough under the circumstances.
[36] Fresh food a treat, as larder is becoming "tinny."
How good the Mahseer was fried, with a touch of lemon! I daresay if it
had been big enough to feed all hands it would not have had such a
delicate flavour; it was rather like fresh herring. If our servants
hadn't much fish, I at least, helped their larder to a crow from a
swaying bough above us some forty odd yards--brought it down with a
four-inch barrelled Browning's colt. It and its comrades made a racket
above us, and disturbed a nap G. and I were having on the bank up the
river from our camp, so I drew as I lay and fired, and was fairly well
pleased with the shot; but the smiles and astonishment of some Chinese
and Kachins, who had gathered from I don't know where, and were very
unexpectedly showing their heads round us, were truly delightful, and
the feathers were off in a twinkling. I liked these aborigines'
expressions after the shot a good deal better than before.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Then we got up and went on to China, G. on her white pony, the writer on
foot, and when we came to the ford the pony wouldn't face the stream for
love or a stick, so I'd to carry G. pick-a-back, and it took me to the
thick of the thigh and G. well over her ankles. We walked three steps on
Chinese ground and stopped, and looked at the Chinese riffraff soldiery
that turned out from a cane house, and they likewise looked at us. As
they offered no signs of welcome, we began our homeward journey, took a
breath, said a prayer, and "hold tight," and waded back. These guards, I
am told, lose their heads if they allow anyone to pass without a permit;
we did not have one, so I can quite well understand their expressions.
G. knew this before we crossed, but I did not, so I reflect. I do not
suppose we could have forded sooner as the river was falling; a few
hours later, it could have been crossed with less difficulty.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So we got back to our ponies again, and followed our baggage jogging
back down from China, in and out, and up and down the valleys; and it
was just as nice as jogging up: we were glad to see the scenes of wood
and valley and foaming rivers over again from new points of view.
At Kulong Cha, we stopped the night in the Glen of the Sound of Many
Waters. A leopard called on us in the night--came into the back verandah
with a velvety thud, and so we each turned out with our Browning
revolvers, and when we met with candles dimly burning, each said we
"heard a rat!" It probably was in search of the terrier of the Burmese
wife of our native cook; but it did not succeed in the quest. Terriers'
lives here are short and full of sport, and leopards love them. What an
adventuresome day--Bag one crow--one Mahseer.
The desperate play of the Mahseer and our adventure into China had tired
us, so that we left Kulong Cha late, after a "European breakfast"; which
is to say, a breakfast at or about nine, and rode with much pleasure
till lunch time. Then fell in with our servants, camped in flickering
shadows under bamboos beside the yellow surging Taiping, the fire going
and the air redolent with an appetising smell of roast duck; our last
dear duck, whose fellow ducks and hens had accompanied us in the baskets
at either end of a pole across a coolie's back from Bhamo.
In less than fifteen minutes by the watch, we had a rod cut, salmon reel
attached and rings put on with the invaluable plaster, and all ready for
underhand casting. I fished the most magnificent-looking salmon pool;
there were fresh leopard tracks on a bank of sand beside it, and G. and
the Burmese woman made a great collection of orchids and bulbs, and ants
and stinging beasts as they climbed the trees. But alas, I got only one
fish, and it was no beauty! I rather think the Taiping water is too
discoloured and sandy for Mahseer.
If the ride in the morning was pleasant, that in the afternoon and
evening was even more so. As we came down the glens to Kalychet,--the
gold of the evening faded in front of us, and left us in soft
sweetly-scented darkness. The fire-flies lit up, and their little golden
lamps flickering alongside through the intricacies of the dark bamboo
stems helped to show us the track.
[Illustration]
... How tired we were when we at last reached the rest-house: tired of
the delight of the day and the difficulty of riding in the dark. It blew
a little during the night and grew cold, but we thought of the heat of
the day and made belief that we were very snug, though the wind did play
freely through the open floor and cane walls.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From Kalychet to Momouk in the sun in the morning was perhaps our most
enjoyable ride, such heat, and light, and exhilarating air, the air of
Norway with southern colour. Butterflies, huge black fellows with
dazzling blue patches, fluttered off the sandy bits of road, their
shadows blacker than themselves, the ponies' feet crackled the great
hard teak leaves. Out of forest and creepers into bamboo thickets; then
into glades with flowering kaing grass and wild fruit, redder than
tomatoes, hanging from creeping plants; across slender wooden bridges,
over roaring streams, always getting lower till the path came out on the
plains again on the wide macadamised road.
... It was rather sad getting on to the plain again. We left our hearts
in the Kachin Highlands, and thought, with a little melancholy, how long
it would be before we breathed clean hill air again.
Our train got a little disorganised getting into Momouk, the
pack-ponies' backs were the worse of wear, and our Boy had fallen out
with sore feet--the poor fellow had been working up to his collar. He
crept in hours after the others and collapsed, his bare soles cracked
and legs in pain. Silly fellow won't wear shoes for some caste or
religious superstition; he is more fitted for his clerks work than for
tramping. I held his pulse and tried to look as if I knew what to do
with a sick Hindoo, tucked him up in his blanket under the bungalow and
left him in charge of the native Durwan, and arranged to send out a
conveyance for him on the morrow from Bhamo.
Then we took the hard high road again in the pony cart, and it felt very
hum-drum trundling along on wheels on the straight level road across the
plain. Groups of Kachins passed us going homewards to the high ground we
had left, and we envied them; for hills are elevating and plains
depressing, whatever Shopenhaur or the Fleet Street philosopher may have
said to the contrary.
As the evening came on, we passed the Mission House, and the cemetery,
and the Dak bungalow and the Club, pretty nearly all there is of
European interest in Bhamo, excepting the Fort, and pulled up at the
Deputy-Commissioner's Bungalow. The D.C., Mr Leveson, was at home this
time, and gave us a very hospitable welcome.
... The military police officers to dinner. The conversation mostly on
sport; what constitutes a "good snipe shot," what may be called a "good
bag of snipe," and the many ramifications of these subjects. Then
music, our host singing, "When Sparrows Build," and Kirke sang and
played his own "Farewell to Burmah," of which both music and words
expressed the very essence of the charm of this country, and a little of
the sweet sadness there is in glens and rivers, and of the peace of
evening when the kaing grass is still and the white ibis and crows
flight home across the broad river into the sunset. You who know the
song of Dierdre of Naoise, fairest of the sons of Uisneach, and the
charms of each glen she sings of in Alba--you will know the quality I
mean....
"Beloved, the water o'er pure sand,
Oh, that I might not part from the East,
But that I go with my Beloved."
[Illustration]
I think Percy Smith was strongest at coon songs, and Trail sang all
sorts, and G. and Kirke played accompaniments, whilst the writer picked
out his own to a chantie respecting the procedure to be taken with an
inebriated mariner--such a merry evening!--the best of which, to me,
was the jolly rattle of witty talk of these youthful administrators, the
oldest, if you please, well under thirty, talking of the other soldier
men as boys. We finished our concert at one, and the young soldiers had
to get home, and start up the river before daybreak for warlike
manoeuvres--(or polo?) at Myitkyna, 140 miles north-west of Bhamo;
there will be a jolly reunion I gather, of men who have been for long
months keeping watch and ward from their lonely mountain eyries o'er the
furthest marches of the British Empire!
[Illustration]
17th February.--I vow that there is this morning, at the same time, a
suggestion in the air of both spring and autumn. There is a touch of
autumn grey, and the plants in the garden droop a little as they do at
home before or after frost. A level line of cloud rests half-way up the
steel blue hills, it has hung there motionless for hours since the sun
rose, and the air is very pure, with a sweet scent of stephanotis and
wood-smoke and roses. Possibly it is the stephanotis and the wood-smoke
combined that makes me think of spring--spring in Paris; but more
probably Paris is brought to my mind this morning by the interview we
had yesterday with M. Ava about our berths on the cargo boat down to
Mandalay; he is the Bhamo Agent for the Flotilla Company. M. Ava left
Paris at the time of the birth of the Prince Imperial, and came to
Burmah with his own yacht, and has stayed here ever since. I wish he
would write a book on the changes of life he has seen; about the court
life of the Empire, and his semi-official yachting tour, and of his long
residence with Thebaw and his queens, of the intrigue and ceremonies in
their golden palaces, the thrilling episodes of which he was witness,
and of the many changes of fortune he has himself experienced.
... Someone said last night, "How interesting it would be if an artist
were to paint the various types of the tribes here," and my conscience
smote me for not seizing the occasion. So to-day I got my Boy to ask the
native cook, to ask his Burmese wife, to ask her Kachin female assistant
to pose for me, and here she is. Isn't she sweet?--and seventeen, she
says, and she is so shy!--and has a queer, queer look in the back of her
narrow eyes that I'd fain be able to translate; perhaps there's a little
pride of race, and perhaps a little of the timidity of a wild thing from
the jungle--perhaps all the histories of old Mongol invasions and
retreats if we could but read! Her dress is rather rich, jacket black
velvet, edged with red, tall turban of blue frieze cloth, and kilt and
putties of the colours of low-toned tartan made of hand-woven cloth, in
diced and herring-boned patterns. She has a silver torque round her neck
of the druidical shape, the ends of the circle almost meeting, and bent
back with two shapes like flat serpents' heads. In her ears are silver
ornaments the size and shape of Manilla cheroots, enamelled and
tasselled with red silk. As I drew her, the rest of Mr Leveson's
domestics, Burmese and native, sat round on the lawn and helped by
looking on, and were greatly delighted in seeing the buxom beauty
reproduced in colour on paper.
[Illustration: A Kachin Girl]
A Burmese matron then came along with her daughter to sell two silver
swords with ivory handles, and I got the swords, and a sitting of a few
minutes from the daughter, and here she is: a fairly average Burmese
girl, but not nearly one of the prettiest. The green broadcloth jacket
you see up here frequently, but further south the girls all wore thin
white jackets. As I painted, G. and the servants packed orchids, box
after box--I must be at my packing too; leopards' skins, and Kachin and
silver-mounted Shan dahs are my most interesting trophies.
Dined with the Algys of the Civil Police force--Captain Massey there, a
pleasant bungalow, a wealth of roses on the table, heavy red curtains
against white and pale blue plastered walls; a wood fire and lots of
open air and music, and talk of sport and big game. I am asked to a
great drive of geese, sambhur, and syn, but cannot accept for want of
time--was there ever anything more annoying!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19th February.--Good-bye, sweet Bhamo. You weep, and we weep; but we go
with a hope we may return.
How it pours! The Chinese ponies on the sandbank huddle together. A
Burmese lady goes up the bank to loosen the painter of her canoe; she
wears a pink silk skirt and white jacket, and carries a yellow paper
umbrella and apparently thinks little of the downpour. I've noticed
heaps of these pretty oiled paper umbrellas in the bazaars, I suppose
being prepared for this kind of weather. Even in pouring wet, Bhamo is
beautiful. Good-bye again; we will tell our friends at home that there
is such a desirable quiet country on this side of Heaven, where the
mansions truly are few, but the hosts are very kind.
Now we let go our wire rope from the red and black timber head in the
sand, slip away quietly into the current and leave the sandbank to the
Chinese ponies and a few bales of cotton, all in the dripping rain.
The kaing grass is drooping with the downpour, but it will be dry as
tinder in an hour or two, dry on the top at least.
Now, great Irrawaddy--take us safely down your length, and preserve us
from sandbanks and let us spend some more hours on your lovely banks;
and we will go down with your rafts of bamboos, and teak, and pottery,
and canoes, and we will avoid all trains till you fraternise with old
ocean again in Rangoon river. Then we will bid you good-bye, it may be
for years, but we hope not for ever.
... At Katha again. The wet pigeon-grey sky lifting, the river the
colour of the Seine. The decorative fig and cotton trees have leaves
just budding, and through the grey stems of the leafless Champaks with
wax white flowers we see groups of figures in dainty colours in the
quiet light, and of course there is the glint of white and gold of a
pagoda.
... In the morning we woke early and drank in the beauty of the clouds
lifting off the river and floating up the corries in the distant hills.
We did not awake early intentionally; the wet mist in the night tautened
the cord of the fog horn, and when the steam pressure rose, off it went
loud and long enough to waken seventy sleepers.
... We pass villages quickly on our way down. We have a flat on either
side, but there is only a half-hearted bazaar in one, and the other is
empty, so we can use it as our promenade.
By lunch time the sky had all cleared into a froth of sunshine and blue
and white clouds. The sand and distant forest and hills became well nigh
invisible in the bright light, and the river seemed a shield of some
fine metal, that took all the sky and smoothed it and reflected it with
concentrated glitter. For our foreground we have the white table on deck
in shade, with a heap of roses and white orchids in a silver bowl;
the fallen petals blend into the half-tone of the table cloth, and
there's peace and quiet and sleep, to the pulsation of the paddles and
the hissing of the foaming water passing astern.
[Illustration: A Girl of Upper Burmah]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
At Tayoung in the evening we swing round, head up stream, and lie along
the shore--too late to go shooting, so we put on a cast of flies and
cast over rising fish, and get a dozen very pretty fish in half-an-hour.
I confess I put a tiny piece of meat on each fly, but hardly enough to
call it bait fishing. These were all silvery, "butter fish," excepting
one, which was rather like a herring. Meantime we had the heavy sunk
line baited with dough, and by and bye it began to go out into the
stream, and we paid out line rapidly, and then suddenly hauled taut and
were fast to a "big un." It was pull devil, pull baker for about five to
ten minutes, when the big fish came alongside, and we got a noose round
its tail and hauled it on board. It weighed twenty-eight lbs!
... The 22nd.--I think, but who can tell?--for each glorious hot day is
as monotonously beautiful as the day before; all bright and shining, the
blue and white sky reflected in the endless silky riband of the river
down which we steadily paddle, between silver strands and bowery woods,
stopping only for the night, and possibly for an hour or two in the day,
when we go ashore to sketch, or sometimes to shoot.
I have been trying to make up my mind which of two perfect days'
shooting was the best. This afternoon's shoot and tramp through the
jungle--Bag, my first brace francolin, to my own gun, or a day last year
in stubble and turnips, and twenty-five brace partridges to my own gun
and black pointer. I think the jungle day has it, though the bag was so
small, by virtue of its beauty, as against the trim fields of the
Lothians.
We started together, G. and her maid to collect seeds and roots and
orchids, and I wandered on to shoot with a Burmese guide.
Some of the tall trees have shed their leaves, and are now a mass of
blossom. One high tree had dropped a mat of purple flowers, as large as
tulips, across the dried grass and brown leaves at its foot. Another
tree with silvery bark had every leafless branch ablaze with orange
vermilion flowers. "Fire of the Forest," or "Flame of Forest," I heard
it called in India,--its colour so dazzling, you see everything grey for
seconds after looking at it. Then there were brakes of flowering shrubs
like tobacco plants with star like white flowers, and the scent of
orange blossom; and others with velvety petals of heliotrope tint, and
masses of creepers with flowers like myrtle, and a fresh scent of
violets and daisies--the air so pure and pleasant that each scent came
to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just
now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly
the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground
shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and
the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way,
being free to you or your neighbour.
With a shade of luck, I'd have had quite a decent bag; but you know how
some days things just miss the bag--you can't exactly tell why--so it
was this afternoon; there should have been two hares, and two quail, and
two birds that seemed very like pheasants. One fell in impenetrable
thorns, and we could not get nearer than about ten yards, and I missed
another sitting. To restore my reputation with the Burmese boy, I had to
claw down some high pigeons from untold heights on their way home to
roost. After this, as I was loading, a partridge got up from some
stubbly grass in a clearing, with an astonishingly familiar whirr, and
went clear away, and I'd barely loaded when a Button quail whipped over
some bushes, and it dropped, but in impenetrable thorns! I'd not heard
of Burmese partridges, but the flight and whirr were unmistakeable,
though the bird was larger than those at home. So we went on, longing
for the company of my silky, black-coated pointer Flo, and a couple of
hardy mongrel spaniels--together we would soon have filled the bag!...
It is such fun going through new country, without a ghost of an idea
which direction to take or what method to pursue, or what game to
expect.
At the next cleared space we came to, two birds, mightily like
pheasants, were feeding on some ground that had once been tilled, so, by
signs to the Burmese boy (he cleans the knives on board) I easily made
him understand he was to drive them over me, and we each made a circuit,
he round the open, the gun behind a brake of dog roses and plantains,
and the birds came over with rather too uncertain flight for pheasants.
I got one, and the other fell far into thorns, but they were, after all,
only a large kind of magpie, but with regular gamey-brown wings,
blue-black heads, and long tails that gave them on the ground a passing
resemblance to pheasants. The next open space seemed absolutely suited
for partridges, and, as we walked into the middle, up got two and came
down to quite a conventional right and left, and our glee was unbounded
when we found them in the dried grass. The colours of their plumage was
handsome, not quite so sober as that of our partridge at home, and their
size and shape was almost between that of a grouse and a partridge;
Francolin,[37] I've since heard they were. Two hares I just got a
glimpse of, greyish in colour, and very thin-looking beasts. Then the
sun got low, and we heard deer barking in knolly ground, and would fain
have sat the evening out quietly, and waited, and watched the night life
of the jungle.
[37] There is not a specimen quite like them in S. Kensington.
It was dark when we made for the river and the soft, dusty track through
the green grass at its edge. Big beetles passed us humming, and we met
some children with lamps swinging, and they sang as they went, to keep
away the Nats or spirits of things.
Our steamer looked pleasantly homelike, lying a yard from the shore. The
purdahs were up and showed the lamp-lit table on deck, set for dinner,
and flowers, books and chairs, a cosy picture. The light was reflected
in the grey river, and waved slightly in the ripple of the current from
the anchor chain. A cargo steamer, forsooth! a private yacht is the
feeling it gave.
There are only two passengers besides ourselves, a Mr and Mrs S. With
the master and mate we make six at dinner, and the concert after, in
which the first mate plays piano accompaniments to all the chanties we
can scrape together--"Stormy Long,"--"Run, let the Bulgine Run,"--"Away
Rio:" cheerful chanties like "The Anchor's Weighed," with its "Fare ye
well, Polly, and farewell Sue," and sad, sad songs of ocean's distress,
like "Leave her, Johnnie; Its time to leave her." Neither the master nor
mate have seen salt water for many a day, but I know their hearts yearn
for the wide ocean and tall ships a-sailing; for all the beauties of all
the rivers in the world pale beside the tower of white canvas above you,
and the surge and send of a ship across the wide sea.
... 23rd February.--Kyonkmyoung--not pronounced as spelt, and spelling
not guaranteed. We spent the night at above village. Now we are passing
a wooded shore, and two remarkable pagodas side by side, like two
Italian villas, with flat roofs and windows of western design, each has
a white terrace in front with a small pagoda spire, and in the trees
there are many white terraces and steps up to them from the river's
edge.
... The up-river mail has passed us, it had been delayed on a sandbank;
we ship an American family party from it. Having lost some hours on the
sandbank, they cannot now proceed up the river to Bhamo, as they had
intended, so they returned with us to Mandalay. The first gangway plank
was hardly down when they were ashore and away like a bullet, with a
ricochet and a twang behind; a Silver king, they say, and a future
president!--How rapidly Americans travel, and assimilate facts, and
what extraordinary conclusions some of them make.
[Illustration]
We slow-going Scots hang on at Mandalay for a little. We have not half
seen the place, and wish to spend hours and hours at the pagoda,
watching the worshippers there, and trying, if possible, to remember
enough expressions and forms and colours to use at home. Our fellow
passengers, Mr and Mrs S., elect to stay on board. They have some days
to spare, waiting for a down-river steamboat, wisely preferring that, to
the bustle through to Rangoon in the train.
... Mr S. is playing the piano, G. and I are painting, Mrs S. sewing,
and all the morning, from the lower deck, there comes the continual
chink of silver rupees, where Captain Robinson and his mate are settling
the trade accounts of the trip, blessing the Burmese clerk for having
half a rupee too much; funny work for men brought up to "handle reef and
steer."
Three steamers, similar to our own, with flats, lie alongside the
sandbank, all in black and white, with black and red funnels and
corrugated iron roofs, and "Glasgow" painted astern. Bullock-carts bump
along the shore in clouds of dust, and the bales come and go, and trade
here is still really picturesque; there are no ugly warehouses or
stores, and everything is open and above board--just, I suppose, as
trade went on in the days of Adam or Solomon.
Went to the railway station, we were obliged to do so. We must leave the
river to get down to Rangoon and Western India, to catch our return P. &
O. from Bombay. We have decided to return by the north of India, and not
by Ceylon, though we are drawn both ways. Ceylon route by steamer all
the way, seems so much easier for tired travellers, than going overland
in trains; but what would friends at home say if we missed Benares,
Agra, and Delhi.
[Illustration]
... A native stationmaster, in a perfunctory manner, points out the kind
of 1st class carriage we have to travel in. It is not inviting, and we
get back to the river, and make a jotting of our steamer and the shore
against the evening sky, and the bullock-carts slowly stirring the dust
into a golden haze.... Then we go to live on shore with friends for a
day or two.
I despair of making anything, in the meantime, of the Arrakan Pagoda,
and the great golden Buddha with the wonderful light on it, and the
kneeling tribesmen and women from over Asia. It is one of the finest, if
not _the_ finest, subject for painting I have ever seen, and yet I can't
see one telling composition. Looking at the people kneeling, from the
side, you can't see the Buddha, and, looking at the Buddha, you only see
the peoples' backs.