is the event of the week, and rustic barges thread the narrow defile
above Bhamo, bringing their contingent of produce and passengers from
distant villages on the confines of civilization. One of the great
“flats” is a floating market, where Burman and Kachin, Shan and Chin,
display their varied merchandise to the motley throng of customers.
Gaudy silks and cottons, rude pottery and quaint lacquer-work, barbaric
toys and trinkets, fruit, vegetables, and sweetmeats, with household
utensils of every kind, fill the dusky space of the covered deck with
brilliant colour. Indolent Burmese doze and smoke on gaily-striped
quilts, while their wives chaffer and barter with business-like aplomb;
for the Burmese woman is the breadwinner of the family, and retains
most of the commercial transactions of the country in her capable
hands. A pretty girl in white jacket and apple-green skirt, with a pink
_pawa_ floating on her shoulders, sits on a pile of yellow cushions
and smokes her big cheroot of chopped wood and tobacco in meditative
calm. Diamonds glitter in her ears, and ruby studs fasten her muslin
bodice, for she goes as a bride to some distant riverside town, and
carries her “dot” on her back. Strings of onions and scarlet chillies
hang from the rafters above bales of fur from China. Children flit up
and down, like many-coloured butterflies, in quaint costumes brightened
with pink scarfs and tiny turban, miniature replicas of their elders,
for no special garb of childhood exists in Burma, and the general
effect suggests an assemblage of gaily-dressed dolls. Shan women in
tall black turbans stand round a harper as he twangs the silken strings
of a black and gold lyre with sounding-board of varnished deerskin.
The weird fractional tones of native music, discordant to European
ears, harmonize with the semi-barbaric environment as the musician
chants some heroic legend of the mythical past. Presently he approaches
a mattress of white and scarlet, occupied by a woman whose brown
Mongolian face is blanched to the pallor of age-worn marble by chronic
pain, and sings a wild incantation over the sufferer, who by the advice
of a fortune-teller undertakes the weary journey to pray for healing
at the Golden Pagoda of Rangoon. The charm apparently succeeds, for
the tired eyes close, and as the song dies off in a whispering cadence
a peaceful slumber smoothes the lines of pain in the troubled face.
Family parties sit round iron tea-kettles, and girls bring bowls of
steaming rice from the rude galley where native passengers cook their
food.
Past green islets in sandy reaches, hemmed in by bold cliffs conveying
vague suggestions of Nile scenery, the great steamer pursues her way.
Above dark clumps of banyan and tamarind, the golden spires of Buddhist
monasteries, or the shining _tee_ of village pagodas, invest the
changing landscape with the unique individuality of Burma, distinct in
character from the Indian Empire, though politically comprised within
it. A magical peace and purity, suggesting a world fresh from the
Creator’s hand, transfigures hill and dale with ineffable lucidity of
atmosphere and delicacy of colour. The solemnity of the deep gorges
piercing the profound gloom of virgin forest supplies a contrasting
note of haunting mystery, the loneliness of these upper reaches merely
accentuated by occasional signs of human life and activity in the vast
solitudes through which the river flows. As the steamer swings round
a projecting rock, the grotesque forms of two colossal leographs--the
hybrid lion and gryphon of Burmese mythology--rear their white bulk
against a green tuft of towering palms at the gate of a Buddhist temple
flanking the grey cone of a tall pagoda. Yellow-robed monks lean on
the balustrade of an island monastery hidden like a bird’s nest amid
the thick foliage, and beautiful even in decay. The broad-eaved roofs,
with their carved and gilded pinnacles, are miracles of art, for the
historic foundation was formerly renowned throughout Upper Burma,
and on festivals even the dog-fish, for which this reach of water is
famous, were decorated with strips of gold-leaf, and tamed to come at
the call of the monks. Farther on a yellow procession descends a long
flight of rocky steps cut in the face of a steep cliff crowned by a
monastic pile bristling with gilt finials and vermilion spires. At
the foot of the mountain stairway a huge funeral pyre of forest trees
attracts groups of villagers, who land from a fleet of carved and
decorated boats in festal array, for a monk is to be cremated after the
invariable custom of Buddhist orders, and the ceremony is observed as a
general holiday. The light-hearted Burmese only extract pleasure from
the gruesome spectacle, for what matters this little incident in the
manifold cycles of progressive existence reserved for the reincarnating
soul?
Stockaded villages line the foreshore, and hilltops glitter with the
golden _tee_ of clustering shrines. The sublime defiles of the glorious
river, with their frowning cliffs and toppling crags, widen into the
dreamy calm of land-locked reaches, where pagodas multiply on every
point of vantage, in monumental testimony to the zeal and devotion of
the Burmese past. The nomadic races of Burma impressed their character
on the multitude of ruined cities and deserted capitals buried under
the veil of verdure in the tropical jungle, or covering hill and plain
with decaying splendour. In a shadowy channel beneath overhanging rocks
the wrecked yacht of the luckless King Theebaw lies overturned, the
lapsing water rippling against red funnel and gilded poop. No effort
is made to raise the melancholy derelict, a fitting emblem of past
sovereignty. At the sacred heights of Sagaing, transformed by the
white and golden spires of graceful pagodas into ideal loveliness, a
_pothoodaw_, or “man of both worlds,” in semi-monastic garb with yellow
parasol, awaits the arrival of the steamer.
The gentle humility of this old _pothoodaw_ contrasts favourably
with the aggressive importance of a village “head-man,” or local
magistrate, who pushes him aside, and struts along the narrow wharf
in tartan silk and spotless muslin, an obsequious attendant carrying
his master’s red umbrella and silver betel-box. Yellow-robed brethren
dismount from creaking bullock-wagons lined with hay, and await the
coming steamer to bear them to the cremation ceremony up-stream.
Palm-leaf fans are raised to the brown faces, but two youthful novices
satisfy their curiosity concerning European womankind by peeping
through the interstices of the sun-dried fronds. Other waiting
passengers set out the huge pieces of a clumsy chessboard on a pile
of flour bags; for time is no account on these dreamy shores, and two
hours must elapse before the Bhamo boat swings in sight.
Evening turns the noble river into a sheet of flaming gold; pink clouds
lie like scattered rose-leaves in the path of the sinking sun, and
through the deepening veil of twilight the red fires twinkling outside
reed-thatched huts of tiny villages supply local colour to riverside
life. Jungle-grown Ava and ruined Amapura lie on the water’s brink;
the Pagan, grandest of ancient capitals, covers a wide plain with the
imposing architecture of a thousand pagodas, the colossal Ananda Dagon
soaring like a huge cathedral above multitudinous domes and spires,
gold and crimson, white and grey, of the deserted metropolis; for the
tide of life swept away from royal Pagan seven hundred years ago. The
white tents of the Government elephant camp cover a stretch of sand
above the bathing place of the herd, and the officer in charge gives
a fascinating account of his adventurous life; though many perils
attend the capture of the three hundred elephants annually required by
authority, and in the past year fifteen hunters have fallen victims to
the dangers which beset horse and rider from sharp tusks, trampling
feet, falling trees, and tangling creepers in the dark recesses of
primeval forest. The typical denizen of Burmese woods possesses a
sacred character in popular estimation, and carven elephants loom
through the tropical greenery of the shores, supporting tapering pagoda
or pillared portico.
The steamer stops before the unfinished temple and colossal Bell of
Mingoon, cracked by earthquake, but the second largest in the world,
the grandeur of the uncompleted design memorializing the frustrated
ambition of a Burmese king who desired to be immortalized as a
_Phaya-Taga_, or “Pagoda-Builder,” rather than by memories of war and
conquest. The spiritual idealism which colours Burmese idiosyncrasy
tinges the story of the past, and a modern writer aptly epitomizes one
aspect of British rule as “an attempt to turn poetic philosophers into
efficient policemen.” The charm of this freshwater cruise is enhanced
by frequent opportunities of landing at riverside villages, visits to
Burmese farms, and strolls through picturesque markets or beneath the
palms and tamarinds of country roads leading to mouldering pagodas
and forgotten shrines. The inhabitants of these verdant shores are
true “children of the river”--the mystic flood which supplies their
wants and moulds their character, affording them an “education of
contact” with the outside world to soften the crude asperity of mental
isolation. The mother plunges her little ones into the eddying waters
so early that even in helpless infancy they become amphibious as the
croaking frogs in the iris beds at the river’s edge. Merry bathing
parties display their skill in diving, swimming, or fishing by hand in
the crystal depths; and graceful girls, like brown Naïads, disport
themselves beneath the drooping boughs which kiss the ripples of some
sheltered creek fit for a fairy’s haunt. Parrots call from the trees,
and kingfishers flit across the shallows in flashes of emerald light.
Luxuriance of vegetation and depth of colour increase with every hour
of the downward voyage. Gold mohur and scarlet cotton-tree dazzle the
eye as they tower up into the burning blue of the tropical sky, and
when the crescent moon sinks beneath the horizon myriads of glittering
fireflies suggest, in the beautiful words of an Oriental poet, that
“the night is adrift with her stream of stars.”
Thabetkein, the busy port of the ruby mines sixty miles away; Yandoon,
the malodorous fish-curing town _à la mode de Burma_, which buries the
native _hors d’œuvre_ to eat it in decay; and beautiful Prome, asleep
in the moonlight, are visited in turn, the character of the scenery
changing as the wide Delta opens up before the advancing steamer in
branching channels, like numerous rivers springing from the parent
Irrawaddy. Above us rises the sacred cliff of Guadama, an ancient
resort of religious pilgrimage, with countless statues of Buddha carved
to inaccessible heights in the living rock. The romance of this watery
world turns over a new page on entering the great Bassein Creek, the
last stage of the thousand mile course. Elephants feeding in the
Jungle, and requiring a whole day for a full meal, crash through the
canes regardless of the passing steamer. Peacocks drag their gorgeous
trains over pink river-grass and golden sands. Grey egrets preen
their soft plumage at the water’s edge, and purple hornbills rest on
swaying palms. The Delta is alive with craft--rice boats and launches,
cargo-boats and steamers. The barbaric _fenaw_, with swelling sails
and twenty oars; the curving native barge, and the graceful Sampans,
flitting like brown-winged moths across the stream. Boys, tattooed from
head to foot in elaborate patterns, descend side-creek and canal in a
rude _dug-out_--the hollow tree which forms the primitive boat--and the
green tunnels of foliage show houses of plaited mats, raised on piles
and reached by ladders.
Miles of malarious marsh have been reclaimed by Government from the
new land ever silting up above the level of the water, and forming the
rich rice-fields of this alluvial soil. Riverside towns and villages
become more frequent in the lower reaches, and miniature markets of
country produce make patches of brilliant colour on the sandy shore.
Silken-clad girls, with flower-decked heads, sit beneath pink and green
umbrellas, shading piles of golden plantains and pineapples. Bamboo
stalls of curious lacquer-ware and trays of clay Buddhas, packets
of gold-leaf, and sheaves of incense-sticks appeal to the religious
instincts of pilgrims bound for the Golden Pagoda of distant Rangoon.
The trade here, as elsewhere, is monopolized by the Burmese women,
though many pink-turbaned admirers lie on the sand, smoking, flirting,
and singing with the characteristic _dolce far niente_ of masculine
life. The long fresh-water cruise floats us from wilderness to the sea,
from dreamland to reality. Rice-mills line the shores, ocean-going
ships rush towards the forest of masts encircling busy Rangoon, and
huge teak-rafts, floated down from distant woods, and sometimes two
years on the way, reach their moorings at the Ahlone timber-yards.
Elephants, working with military precision, drag the giant trunks
by chains from the river’s brink and pile them up with mathematical
exactness, pushing them with their heads until perfectly level. Even
commercial Burma can never be commonplace, for beyond the motley
throngs of the cosmopolitan port, the golden spire of the Shway Dagon,
queen of pagodas and goal of the Irrawaddy voyager, idealizes the city
clustering round the sacred hill, and created by the central sanctuary
of Burma’s ancient faith.
THE CLYDE
ROBERT WALKER
Glasgow and its river have acted and reacted the one upon the other;
and the conditions of the city’s prosperity and well-being are
indissolubly linked with the stream that wanders down from the upland
moors of Lanarkshire, tumbling over precipices, meandering through
rich orchard grounds, flowing through the busy haunts of men, until it
widens into the noble estuary whose waves reflect the peaks of Arran
and wash round the rugged steeps of Ailsa Craig. In its course the
Clyde runs amid all variety of scenery: moorland, pastoral, woodland.
It is, at one time, a shallow stream, humming over a pebbly bed and
glittering in the clear sunshine; at another, a foul and sullen mass
of water, which the energy of man has turned to good account in
his commercial enterprises; and then again, a restless sea, whose
white-crested waves break upon the base of Highland hills. Through all
its changes, it is dear to the heart of every true Glasgovian. It has
been a source of untold wealth to the place of his birth, and most of
his happiest memories are connected with the sunny days of leisure he
has spent among its lochs and by its sand-edged bays. Glasgow looks
upon the Clyde as its own special glory and possession; it is proud of
the manner in which the resources of the river have been developed; it
is prouder still of its many natural beauties familiar to its citizens
from their earliest youth, and an all-powerful attraction for the
strangers who are led to our shores by the fame of its charms.
Glasgow, although it has many picturesque vistas within its bounds
which the ordinary business man, engrossed with the cares of the
Exchange, recks nothing of, is not, in itself, a magnet to draw
tourists who are simply in search of the picturesque. Edinburgh,
among Scottish cities, is, from its own natural beauty, the cynosure
of neighbouring and far-away eyes. But Glasgow has the Clyde; and
the Clyde, notwithstanding the advantages of the Callander and Oban
Railway, is still the pleasantest and most picturesque gateway and
avenue to the West Highlands, where tourists rightly love to congregate.
The practical energy and shrewdness of the Glasgow people early turned
to the best advantage the inducements the Frith of Clyde offered to the
thousands who were anxious for “change of air,” and on the outlook for
summer resorts. In no district of our island are travelling facilities
greater and travelling cheaper than on the Clyde. A wonderful change
has taken place since 1812, when the _Comet_, the pioneer boat of a
vast fleet of steamers, began to sail between Glasgow, Greenock and
Helensburgh. Out of the _Comet_, with its forty-two feet of length,
has been evolved what is generally regarded as the premier boat on the
river, Mr. MacBrayne’s _Columba_, which carries the tourist-flocks from
Glasgow to Ardrishaig, whence Mr. MacBrayne’s West Highland service is
continued through the Crinan Canal.
[Illustration: THE CLYDE]
The _Columba_ starts on her journey at seven o’clock in the morning,
and as she threads her way down the busy river-channel, the passengers
can note the stir and bustle of the wharves, and the evidences in
ever-extending docks and quayage, the dredgers and divers, of the
indefatigable energy and well-directed skill of the Clyde Trustees,
that have turned a shallow meandering stream into a highway for the
largest ships that float. Down past the building yards with their
clanging hammers and great ships “of iron framed,” past what were once
the cheerful rural villages of Govan and Partick, now the grimy hives
of busy human bees, we steam, leaving behind us the ancient royal burgh
of Renfrew and the mouth of the Cart, and come in view of Bowling and
the Kilpatrick Hills, among which the patron saint of Ireland is said
to have first seen the light. The river here broadens into something
like an inland lake and the landscape grows decidedly picturesque.
This has been a favourite subject for many Scottish landscape
painters--Nasmyth, McCulloch and Bough among the rest. There is a wide
stretch of view and the hills near and distant--the first glimpse we
have yet had of the beginning of the Highlands--give to it dignity
and variety. To the water, studded with craft of all rigs, Dalnottar
Hill, Dunglass (where stands the monument to Bell, who introduced
steam navigation to the Clyde), Dumbuck Hill and the mass of Dumbarton
Castle, are effective background and setting.
At the Tail of the Bank, as the anchorage off Greenock is called, lie
a motley crowd of craft: bluff-bowed timber ships, smart Australian
clippers, handsome steam vessels of the various lines to America,
gaily-painted foreign ships, and in the midst of them, an embodiment of
power and authority, rides the guardship, a formidable ironclad.
The steamer at Greenock gathers passengers who have come down from
Glasgow by rail, and she takes in more at Gourock, to which the
Caledonian Company now run trains. The old Gourock pier, dear from
its fishing associations to the hearts of many generations of Glasgow
boys, is now completely altered; a fine quay front has been put up
and a handsome station erected. Gourock is one of the oldest of the
Clyde watering-places; in its day it was fashionable and thought to be
pretty far removed from the giddy world; now it is the resort of the
cheap-tripper, and has about its houses something of a second-rate look.
The view of the Frith from both Greenock and Gourock piers is one of
great extent and beauty. Opposite, rise in the background range after
range of hills, the fantastic ridges of “Argyle’s Bowling-green,” the
Cobbler, the Black Hill of Kilmun, the steeps around Glen Messan, and
stealing between these mountain masses are the lochs that are among
the chief charms of the district. We have fronting us the entrances to
the Gareloch, Loch Long and the Holy Loch, with wooded Roseneath and
a white stretch along the shore of cottages and little towns. If we
can only secure a day when the waves glitter in the sun and the fleecy
clouds fleck the hillsides with alternate lights and shadows, then we
need scarcely wish for a fairer scene.
Glasgow men are enthusiastic yachtsmen, and the regattas, the opening
cruises and closing cruises of the various clubs are among the chief
galas of the westcoast season. Our yachts and their builders--such as
Watson and Fife--our skippers and our crews, are famous all the world
over. The “white wings” spot the Frith at every turn, and there are few
prettier sights than one of these Clyde greyhounds, bursting through
the water under a cloud of canvas, with her lee-rail well buried in the
sea.
Down the Cowal shore the steamer slips and the long belt of houses and
villas that extends from Hunter’s Quay to Innellan--once all a lonely
shore--is left behind, and we round Toward Point and its lighthouse
into Rothsay Bay. This bay, with its environment of hills, is one of
the choice bits on the Clyde; the natives all declare it to be finer
than the Bay of Naples. Few Rothsay men have been at Naples. When a
yacht club holds a regatta here, and the boats cluster at anchor off
Rothsay and there are fireworks and illuminations, there is no livelier
place than this same bay.
The town itself is beautifully situated, but looks best at a distance.
From Barone Hill, at the back, a fine view can be obtained of the
panorama of the bay. Rothsay has a long history: it is a royal burgh,
and like Renfrew, gives a title to the Prince of Wales. Its chief
glory is its ruined castle, over which Norsemen and Scots, Bruces
and Baliols, have fought and murdered one another. Old memories and
traditions cluster as thick round it as the ivy on its walls.
Leaving Rothsay, we sail into the Kyles of Bute, a narrow passage
between the island and the mainland. The wonder is how the steamer can
thread its way through the twisting, twining channel, that appears
hardly broad enough for the _Columba’s_ paddle-wheels. Now and again
it almost seems as if we should run ashore from the sharpness of the
turns. The Kyles are full of quiet beauty. As we look at the little
hamlets sheltered under the wooded hills, they seem so out of the
world and so remote from the common cares that burden humanity, that
we wonder can ordinary sins and sorrows ever disturb there the calm
routine of life. The evening hour is the hour of enchantment, when
your boat gently drifts on the slow heaving water. The voices on the
shore seem to reach you through a muffled and mysterious air; the
opalescent light in the sky is reflected from the waves that lap
against the boat; sweet scents are wafted from the hillsides that loom
solemn in the gathering darkness; earth’s uneasy passions are at rest;
for the young, it is a pleasant pause in the hurly-burly; for those who
are growing old, it is the time of memories and regrets.
It is the garish light of day now, and with a long gaze at the rugged
mist-wreathed peaks of Arran, we round Ardlamont Point and, away to the
left, meet the sparkling waters and fresh breezes of Loch Fyne.
Tarbert, our first stoppage after the ferry at Ardlamont, is one of
the most noted fishing-villages in the west of Scotland. The entrance
to East Loch Tarbert, at which the steamer calls, is exceedingly
picturesque, and the district, with its brown sails and its brawny
fishermen, is one much beloved of artists. Henry Moore, Colin Hunter,
David Murray, among the rest, have turned its beauties to great use.
Tarbert is the great centre of the trawl (or seine) net fishing,
which in Loch Fyne, after much discussion and many bickerings, has
practically superseded in the Loch the old drift-net method. Trawl
boats work in pairs with four men and a boy in each boat. Tarbert
sends out between eighty and ninety boats, and an exceptionally good
night’s catch for a pair of trawls is about four or five hundred
boxes--each box containing, depending on the size of the herring,
from three to five hundred fish. The men are sturdy, fine-looking
fellows--and are fishermen proper, as distinguished from the half
crofter, half-fishermen of the farther North-west Highlands. The
fishing-fleet going out before sundown is, on a good evening, the
sight of Tarbert, the brown sails and the yellow-brown boats glancing
in the golden light, as they rush and hum through the clear blue-grey
water. Tarbert itself, which lies principally round the inner harbour,
is not a particularly inviting place--it smells generally strongly of
herrings--but the hills around it are very pleasant to ramble over,
and the walk to West Loch Tarbert leads through delightful highland
country. There is a ruined castle here, which dominates the harbour and
is redolent of memories of Robert the Bruce, the builder of the castle
in 1325. The narrow isthmus that separates the East from the West Loch
has been more than once surmounted by invading Norsemen and other bold
buccaneers, who dragged their boats overland. Sir Walter Scott makes
use of this fact in _The Lord of the Isles_.
At Ardrishaig, six miles beyond Tarbert and on the west side of Loch
Gilp, the outward run of the _Columba_ ends, and passengers for the
West Highlands tranship to the _Linnet_, in order to be conveyed
through the Crinan Canal.
THE VOLGA
ELISÉE RECLUS