TRAMPING THROUGH BURMA
At the time we reached Rangoon, that town was filled with sailors who
had been looking for a chance to “sign on” for months past, with no
success. Moreover, they assured me that there was no work ashore, that
the city was suffering from the plague, and that we had fallen upon the
most unlucky port in the Orient.
Nevertheless, we were there, and we had to make the best of it. We
struck off through the city to see the sights. The native town,
squatting on the flat plain along the river, had streets as wide and
straight as those of Western cities. There were no sidewalks, of course.
People on foot walked among the wagons and carts, and disputed the way
with donkeys and human beasts of burden. A flat city it was, with small
two-story huts built on stilts. Above it gleamed a few golden pagodas,
and high above all else soared the pride of Burma, the Shwe Dagón
pagoda.
There are probably as many pagodas in East India and China as there are
churches in our own country. A pagoda is a temple containing idols or
statues of gods which the people worship. We climbed the endless
stairway up into the great Shwe Dagón in company with hundreds of
natives carrying their shoes in their hands. We watched them wandering
among the glittering statues, setting up lighted candles or spreading
out blossoms before them, bowing until their faces touched the floor,
but puffing all the time at long cigars. While we gazed, a breathless
woman with closely cropped hair pushed past us, and laid before an idol
a braid of oily jet-black hair.
Outside once more, we stood looking up until our necks ached at the
towering Shwe Dagón, which was covered from peak to swollen base with
brightest gold. It was all too brilliant in the blazing sunlight. When
we turned aside and looked into the shadows to rest our eyes, tiny
pagodas floated before our vision for a long time afterward.
“Mate,” said James, later in the day, as we stood before a world map in
the Sailors’ Home, “it looks to me as if we’d come here to stay. There’s
nothing doing in the shipping line here, and not a chance to earn the
price of a deck passage to Singapore. And, if we could, it’s a long jump
from there to Hong-Kong.”
“Aye,” put in a grizzled seaman, limping forward; “ye’ll be lucky lads
if ye make yer get-away from Rangoon. But once ye get on the beach in
Singapore, ye’ll die of ould age afore iver ye see ’Ong-Kong, if that’s
’ow yer ’eaded. Why, mates, that place is alive with sailors that’s been
’ung up there so long they’d not know ’ow to eat with a knife if iver
they got back to a civilized country. Take my word for it, and keep away
from Singapore.”
“It would seem foolish, anyway,” I remarked to James, “to go to
Singapore. It’s a good nine hundred miles from here, a week of loafing
around in some old tub to get there, and a longer jump back up
north—even if we don’t get stuck there.”
“But what else is there for us to do?” objected James.
“See how narrow the Malay Peninsula is,” I went on, pointing to the map.
“Bangkok is almost directly east of here. We’d save miles of travel by
going overland, and run no risk of being tied up for months in
Singapore.”
“But how?” demanded the Australian.
“Walk, of course.”
The sailors grouped about us burst out in a roar of laughter.
“Aye; ye’d walk across the Peninsula like ye’d swim to Madras,” chuckled
one of them. “It’s bats ye have in yer belfry from a touch o’ the sun.”
“But Hong-Kong—” I began.
“If it’s ’Ong-Kong, ye’ll go to Singapore,” continued the seaman, “or
back the other way. There’s no man goes round the world in the north
’emisphere without touching Singapore. Put that down in yer log.”
“If we walk across the Peninsula,” I went on, still addressing James,
“it would—”
“Yes,” put in an old fellow, “it would be a new and onusual way of
committin’ suicide—original, interestin’, maybe slow, but blamed sure.”
“Now look ’ere, lads,” said the old seaman, almost in tears, “d’ye know
anything about that country? There’s no wilder savages nowhere than the
Siamese. I know ’em. When I was sailin’ from Singapore to China, that’s
fourt—fifteen year gone, we was blowed into the bay, an’ put ashore fer
water. We rowed by thousands o’ dead babies floatin’ down the river. We
’adn’t no more’n stepped ashore when down come a yelpin’ bunch o’
Siamese, with knives as long as yer arm, an’ afore we could shove off
they’d kilt my mate an’ another and—chopped ’em all to pieces. Them’s
the Siamese, an’ the wild men in the mountains is worse.”
In short, the “boys” had so much to say against such a trip that we were
forced to go out into the street to continue our planning. For, in spite
of their jeers, I still believed the overland trip was possible, and it
would be more interesting to travel through a wilderness that had never
before been explored.
James told me he was “game for anything,” and we began studying maps for
trails and rivers. Natives who had lived in Rangoon all their lives
could tell us nothing whatever of the wilds seven miles east of the
city.
Late one afternoon, as we were lounging in the Home talking it over, an
Englishman in khaki uniform burst in upon us.
“Are you the chaps,” he began, “who are talking of starting for Bangkok
on foot?”
“We’ve been asking the way,” I answered.
“Well, save yourselves the trouble,” returned the officer. “There _is_
no way. The trip can’t be made. You’d be killed, and your government
would come back at us for letting you go. I have orders from the chief
of police that you are not to leave Rangoon except by sea, and I have
warned the police on the east side of the city to head you off. Thought
I’d tell you.”
“Thanks,” muttered James; “but we’ll hold down Rangoon for a while yet,
anyway.”
But of course we could not give up the plan. One afternoon, as the
manager of the Home was sleeping, we laid hold on the knapsack we had
left in his keeping, and struck off through the crowded native town.
“This is no good,” objected James. “All the streets leading east are
guarded.”
“The railroad to Mandalay isn’t,” I replied. “We’ll run up the line out
of danger, and strike out from there.”
The Australian halted at a tiny drug-store, and, awakening the
bare-legged clerk, bought twenty grains of quinine. “For jungle fever,”
he muttered as he tucked the package away in his helmet. That was our
“outfit” for a journey that might last one month or six. In the knapsack
were two cotton suits and a few ragged shirts. As for weapons, we had
not even a penknife.
A mile from the Home we entered a small station, bought tickets to the
first important town, and a few minutes later were hurrying northward.
James settled back in a corner, and fell to singing to himself:
“On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flying-fishes play—”
About us lay low rolling hills, deep green with tropical vegetation.
Behind sparkled the golden tower of the Shwe Dagón pagoda, growing
smaller and ever smaller, until the night, falling quickly, blotted it
out. We fell asleep, and, awakening as the train pulled into Pegu, spent
the rest of the night in two willow rockers in the waiting-room.
Dawn found us already astir. A fruit-seller in the bazaars, given to
early rising, served us breakfast. We did not know the directions,
however, and had to wait for the rising sun to show us which way was
east. When we saw it peering boldly over the horizon, we were off.
A sandy highway led forth from the village, but soon swung northward;
and we struck across an untracked plain. Far away to the eastward were
rocky hills, deep blue in color, foot-hills of wild mountain chains that
we would have to cross later. But around us lay a stretch of sandy
lowlands, dull and flat, with never a hut or a human being in sight.
Ten miles of plodding, without even a mud-hole in which to quench our
thirst, brought us to a crowded village of bamboo huts hidden away in a
tangled wood. A pack of dogs came leaping toward us, barking noisily. We
drove them off and drank our fill, while the natives stood about us,
staring curiously. As we started on again, a _babu_ pushed his way
through the group and invited us to his bungalow. He was employed on the
new railway line that was being built from Pegu to Moulmein, and which
when it was completed was to bring him the title of station-master in
his own town. In honor of his future position he was already wearing a
brilliant uniform, designed by himself, which made his fellow townsmen
gaze in wonder.
We squatted with him on the floor of his open hut, and made away with a
dinner of rice, fruit, bread-cakes, and—red ants. No Burmese lunch would
be complete without the last. When we offered to pay for the meal, the
_babu_ rose, chattering with anger, and would not pardon us until we had
patted him on the back and put our thin pocket-books out of sight.
A few miles beyond the village we came upon a gang of men and women at
work on the new railroad. There were at least three hundred of them, all
Hindus, for the Burman scorns coolie labor. There was no machinery. A
few scooped up the earth with shovels in the shallow trenches; the
others swarmed up the embankment in endless line, carrying flat baskets
of earth on their heads.
Nightfall found us still plodding on in a lonely jungle. We had heard
that a division engineer lived just across the Sittang River, and we
were determined to reach his bungalow before midnight. Not long
afterward we were brought to a sudden halt at the bank of the river.
Under the moon’s rays the broad sheet of water showed dark and
dangerously rough, racing by with the swiftness of a mountain stream. A
light twinkled high up above the opposite shore nearly half a mile
away—too far to swim in that rushing flood. I tore myself free from the
entangling bushes, and, making a trumpet of my hands, bellowed across
the water.
For a time only the echo answered. Then a faint cry was borne to our
ears, and we caught the Hindustanee words, “Quam hai?” (“Who is it?”)
I took a deep breath and shouted into the night:
“Do sahib hai! Engineer sampan, key sampan key derah?”
A moment of silence. Then the answer came back, soft, yet distinct, like
a near-by whisper:
“Acha, sahib” (“All right”). Even at that distance, we could tell that
it was the humble voice of a timid Hindu coolie.
A speck of light moved down to the level of the river; then, rising and
falling in regular time as if someone were carrying a torch, it came
steadily nearer. We waited eagerly; yet half an hour passed before there
appeared a flat-bottomed sampan rowed by three struggling Hindus whose
brown skins gleamed in the light of a dickering lantern. Evidently they
thought we were railway officials. While two wound their arms around the
bushes to hold the boat steady, the third sprang ashore with a
respectful greeting, and, picking up our knapsack, dropped into the boat
behind us.
With a shout the others let go of the bushes, and the three grasped
their oars and pulled with all their strength. The racing current
carried us far down the river; but we swung at last into more quiet
water under the shadow of a bluff, and, creeping slowly up the stream,
reached the other side. A boatman stepped out with our bundle, and,
zigzagging up the side of the hill, dropped the bag on the veranda of a
bungalow at the top, shouted a “sahib hai,” and fled into the night.
The next moment an Englishman flung open the door with a bellow of
delight. He was a noisy, good-hearted giant, who insisted on our
stopping at his bungalow for the night. I dropped my bespattered
knapsack on the top step and followed my companion inside. When our
thirst had been quenched, we followed the Englishman to the bath-room,
where we plunged our heads and arms into great bowls of cool water, and,
greatly refreshed, took our places at the table.
We learned that our host was an engineer of the new line, a soldier of
fortune who had “mixed” in everything from railway building to battles
and wars on three continents, and who knew more geography than can be
found in an atlas. His bungalow was a palace in the wilderness; he said
that he earned his money to spend, and that he paid four rupees a pound
for Danish butter without wasting a thought on it.
We slept on the veranda high above the river, and, in spite of the
thirty-two miles in our legs and the fever that fell upon James during
the night, we rose with the dawn, eager to be off. As we took our leave
the engineer held out to us a handful of rupees.
“Just to buy your chow on the way, lads,” he smiled.
“No, no!” protested James, edging away. “We’ve taken enough from you
already.”
“Nonsense!” cried the adventurer. “Don’t be a dunce. We’ve all been in
the same boat, and I’m only paying back a little of what’s fallen to
me.”
When we still refused to take it, he called us cranks and no true
soldiers of fortune, and took leave of us at the edge of the veranda.
Sittang was a mere bamboo village with a few grass-grown streets that
faded away in the surrounding wilderness. At one time we lost the path
and plunged on aimlessly for hours through a tropical forest. Noonday
had passed before we broke out upon an open plain where the railway
embankment began again, and satisfied our screaming thirst in the hut of
a _babu_ employed by the railway company.
Beyond, walking was less difficult. The wildly scrambling jungle had
been laid open for the railroad that was to be built; and where the
tangled vegetation pressed upon us, we had only to climb to the top of
the newly made bank and plod on. The country was not the lonely waste of
the day before. Where bananas and cocoanuts and jack-fruits grow, there
are human beings to eat them, and now and then a howling of dogs told us
that we were near a cluster of native huts tucked away in a fruitful
grove.
Every few miles we came upon gangs of coolies, who fell to chattering
excitedly when we came into view, and, dropping shovels and baskets,
squatted on their heels, staring until we had passed, paying no
attention to the maddened screaming of their high-caste bosses. Good
bungalows for engineers were being built on high places along the way.
The carpenters were Chinamen, who seemed to work faster than the Hindus.
We saw more and more of these wearers of the pig-tail as we continued
our travels on into Burma. Many of them kept stores. They were shrewd,
grasping fellows.
We came to the end of the embankment for the new railroad, and tramped
on into an open country where there were many streams through which we
had to wade or swim. We were knee-deep in one of these when there
sounded close at hand a snort like the spouting of a whale. I glanced in
fright at the weeds growing in the river about us. From the muddy water
were thrust a dozen ugly black snouts.
“Crocodiles!” screamed James, turning tail and splashing by me.
“But hold on!” I cried, before we had reached the bank. “These things
seem to have horns.”
The creatures that had so startled us were harmless water-buffaloes,
which, being freed from their day’s labor, had plunged into the muddy
stream to escape from flies and the blazing sun.
From there the route turned southward, and the red sunshine beat in our
faces throughout the third day’s tramp. We passed several villages of
brown-skinned natives, and the jungle was broken here and there by
thirsty rice-fields.
As the day was dying, however, we tramped along a railway embankment
between two dark and unpeopled forests. We were almost ready to lie down
and sleep out of doors, when we came upon a path leading into the
forest. Hoping to find some empty shack left by a railway gang, we
turned aside and tumbled down the bank. The trail wound away through the
jungle, and brought us, a mile from the line, to a grassy clearing in
the center of which stood a bungalow.
It was one of the public rest houses kept by the British government for
_sahibs_ traveling through the wilds. This one seemed to be deserted,
for there were no servants about. We climbed the steps, and, settling
ourselves in veranda chairs, stretched our weary legs and listened to
the humming of countless insects. We might have fallen asleep where we
were, had we not been hungry and choking with thirst.
Like every house in British India, the bungalow stood wide open. I rose
and wandered through the building, lighting my way with matches and
peering into every corner for a bottle of water or a sleeping servant.
In each of the two bedrooms there were two canvas _charpoys_; in the
main room a table littered with tattered books and magazine leaves in
English; in the back room several pots and kettles. There was plenty of
water also—a tubful of it in a closet opening out of one of the
bedrooms. But who could say how many travel-stained _sahibs_ had bathed
in it?
I returned to the veranda, and we took to shouting our wants into the
jungle. Only the jungle replied, and we climbed down the steps and went
around the building, less in the hope of finding any one than to escape
the temptation of the bath-tub. Behind the bungalow stood three ragged
huts. The first was empty. In the second we found a snoring Hindu
stretched on his back on the dirt floor, close to a dying fire of
sticks.
We woke him. He sprang to his feet with a frightened “Acha sahib, pawnee
hai,” and ran to fetch a _chettie_ of water—not because we had asked for
it, but because he well knew the first need of travelers in the tropics.
“Now we would eat, O chowkee dar,” said James in Hindustanee. “Julty
karow” (“Hurry up”).
“Acha, sahib,” repeated the cook.
He tossed a few sticks on the fire, set a kettle over them, emptied into
it the water from another _chettie_, and, catching up a blazing stick,
trotted with a loose-kneed wabble to the third hut. There sounded one
long-drawn squawk, a muffled cackling of hens, and the Hindu returned,
holding a chicken by the head and swinging it round and round as he ran.
Catching up a knife, he slashed the fowl from throat to tail, snatched
off skin and feathers with a few skilful jerks, and in less than three
minutes after his awakening our supper was cooking.
We returned to the veranda, followed by the _chowkee dar_, who lighted a
crippled-looking lamp on the table within and trotted away. He came back
soon after to clear away the plates and chicken-bones. After paying him
the last of our coppers, we rolled our jackets and shoes into pillows,
and turned in.
We slept an hour, perhaps, during the night. A flock of roosters crowed
every time they saw a new-born star, and dozens of lizards made the
night miserable. There must have been a whole army of these pests in the
bungalow. They were great, green-eyed reptiles from six inches to a foot
long. Almost before the light was blown out, one on the ceiling struck
up his song; another on the wall beside me joined in; two more in a
corner gave answering cry, and the night concert had begun:
_She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!_
Don’t fancy for a moment that the cry of the Indian lizard is the gentle
murmur of the cricket or the tree-toad. It sounds more like the
squawking of an ungreased bullock-cart:
_She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!_
To try to drive them off was worse than useless. The walls and ceiling,
being made of grasses and reeds, offered more hiding-places for creeping
things than a hay-stack. When I fired a shoe at the nearest, a shower of
branches and rubbish rattled to the floor; and, after a moment of
silence, the song was resumed, louder than before. Either the creatures
were clever dodgers or they could not be wounded; and there was always
the danger that anything thrown swiftly might bring down half the roof
on our heads.
_She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!_
Wherever there are dwellings in British India, there are croaking
lizards. I have listened to their shriek from Colombo to Delhi; I have
seen them darting across the carpeted floor in the bungalows of
commissioners; I have awakened many a time to find one dragging its
clammy way across my face. But nowhere are they in greater numbers or
more loud-voiced than in the jungle of the Malay Peninsula. There came a
day when we were glad they had not been driven out—but I will tell of
that later.
Early the next morning we came to a broad pathway that led us every half
hour through a grinning village, between which were many lonely huts. We
stopped at all of them for water. The natives showed us marked kindness,
often waiting for us with a _chettie_ of water in hand, or running out
into the road at our shout of “Yee sheedela?”
This Burmese word for water (_yee_) gave James a great deal of
amusement. Ever and again he would pause before a hut, to call out in
the voice of a court crier: “Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! We’re thirsty as
Hottentots!” Householders young and old understood. At least, they
fetched us water in abundance.
The fourth day afoot brought us two misfortunes. The rainy season burst
upon us in fury not an hour after we had spent our last copper for
breakfast. Where dinner would come from we had not the least idea; but
we did not waste our strength in worry.
The first shower came suddenly. One sullen roar of thunder, the heavens
opened, and the water poured. After that they came often. At times we
found shelter under some long-legged hovel. Even when we scrambled up
the bamboo ladders into the huts, the squatting family showed no anger.
Often they gave us fruit; once they forced upon us two native cigars. It
was these that made James forever after a firm friend of the Burmese.
Frequently we plodded on in a blinding down-pour that, in the twinkling
of an eye, drenched us to the skin. The storm lasted only about five
minutes. With the last dull growl of thunder the sun burst out, hotter
than before, sopping up the pools in the highway as if with a giant’s
sponge, and drying our dripping garments before we had time to grumble
at the wetting. The gorgeous beauties of the surroundings gave us so
much to look at that the ducking we had received was quickly forgotten,
and the next down-pour took us as completely by surprise as if it were
the first of the season.
It was still early in the morning when, down the green-framed roadway,
came a funeral procession on its way to the place where the body was to
be burned. There came, first of all, dozens of girls dressed as if for a
holiday. About their necks were garlands of flowers; in their jet-black
hair, red and white blossoms. Each carried a flat basket heaped high
with bananas of the brightest yellow, with golden mangoes and great
plump pineapples, for the dead. The girls held the baskets high above
their heads, swinging their bodies from side to side and tripping
lightly back and forth across the road, the long line performing a
snake-dance as they came. The strange music that rose and fell in time
with their movements sounded like a song of victory; now and again a
singer broke out in merry laughter.
The coffin was a wooden box gayly decked with flowers and trinkets, and
three of the eight men who carried it on their shoulders were puffing at
long native cigars. Behind them more men, led by two yellow-robed
priests, pattered through the dust, chattering like schoolgirls, or now
and then adding their harsh voices to the singing.
We reached the village of Moulmein late at night, and went home with a
Eurasian youth who had invited us to sleep on his veranda. There we
threw ourselves down on the floor, and, drenched and mud-caked as we
were, sank into corpse-like slumber.