[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: The Moat, Fort Dufferin, Mandalay.]
[Illustration: Title page]
THROUGH
INDIA AND BURMAH
WITH PEN AND BRUSH
BY
A. HUGH FISHER
"The beauty of the world is simple like a looking-glass."
LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE
CLIFFORD'S INN
TO MY FRIENDS IN ENGLAND
PREFACE
The following series of "Travel Pictures" is an endeavour to embody
some of my impressions and experiences in India and Burmah.
For kind permission to reproduce among the illustrations eight of the
painted sketches I made for them, my thanks are due to the Visual
Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office who sent me out to the
East as their artist.
The two chapters "The Moharam Festival" and "Rakhykash" are included
in this book by the courtesy of the Editor of _The Fortnightly
Review_, in which publication they have already appeared.
A. HUGH FISHER.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. RANGOON
II. HIS HIGHNESS THE SAWBWA OF HSIPAW
III. UP THE IRRAWADDY TO BHAMO
IV. THE DEAD HEART OF A KINGDOM
V. MANDALAY
VI. SOUTHERN INDIA, THE LAND OF HINDOO TEMPLES
VII. CALCUTTA
VIII. MY FIRST SIGHT OF THE HIMALAYAS
IX. BENARES
X. LUCKNOW
XI. CAWNPORE
XII. THE HOUSE OF DREAM
XIII. DELHI
XIV. DEHRA DUN AND LANDOUR
XV. AN EVENING OF GOLD
XVI. "GUARD YOUR SHOES"
XVII. "A GATE OF EMPIRE"
XVIII. THE CAPITAL OF THE PUNJAB
XIX. AT THE COURT OF HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHA
XX. IN SIGHT OF AFGHANISTAN
XXI. RAJPUTANA
XXII. SIR PRATAP SINGH
XXIII. THE MOHARAM FESTIVAL
XXIV. RAKHYKASH
XXV. POLITICAL
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE MOAT, FORT DUFFERIN, MANDALAY ... Frontispiece
"THEY COULD NOT LIE DOWN WITHOUT OVERLAPPING"
MONGOLIAN TYPE OF MOHAMMEDAN
MUTAMA, A HINDOO BABY
HINDOO GIRL, SHOWING ELABORATE JEWELLERY
ALTAR TABLE AT A BUDDHIST SOCIETY'S CELEBRATION
BOY SHOWING TATOOING CUSTOMARY WITH ALL BURMESE MALES
IN THE SHAN STATES: GUARD AND POLICEMAN
KATHA
AT A BURMESE PWE
BURMESE ACTORS AT BHAMO
A VILLAGE ON THE IRRAWADDY
BURMESE MURDERERS
PAGAN
BURMESE DWARF (3 ft. 5 in. high) SUFFERING FROM CATARACT
BURMESE PRIEST AND HIS BETEL Box
BURMESE MOTHER AND CHILD
THE SACRED TANK AND THE ROCK, TRICHINOPOLY
THE MAIN BAZAAR, TRICHINOPOLY
KARAPANASAMI, THE BLACK GOD
HINDOO MOTHER AND CHILD
BENGAL GOVERNMENT OFFICES, CALCUTTA
BENGALEE ACTRESS, MISS TIN CORRY DASS THE YOUNGER
"A CHARMING OLD GENTLEMAN FROM DELHI"
AVENUE OF OREODOXA PALMS, BOTANICAL GARDENS, CALCUTTA
THE KUTAB MINAR AND THE IRON PILLAR, FATEHPUR SIKRI
THE FORT OF ALI MASJID, IN THE KHYBER PASS
HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHA
THE PALACE OF THE MAHARAJAH OF UDAIPUR (DRYPOINT ETCHING)
THE MOHARAM FESTIVAL AT AGRA
{1}
THROUGH INDIA AND BURMAH
CHAPTER I
RANGOON
Down came the rain, sudden, heavy and terrible, seeming to quell even
the sea's rage and whelming those defenceless hundreds of
dark-skinned voyagers in new and more dreadful misery.
Terrors were upon them, and in abject wretchedness and hopeless
struggle men, women and children spread every strip of their
belongings over their bodies and even used for shelter the very mats
upon which they had been lying.
What trouble a Hindoo will take to keep his body from the rain!
Extremely cleanly and fond of unlimited ablutions he yet detests
nothing so much as a wetting from the sky, and now, wholly at the
mercy of the elements, do what they would, no human ingenuity availed
to keep these wretched people dry.
It was the season of the rice harvest, when {2} South India coolies
swarm over to Burmah much as the peasantry of Mayo and Connemara used
to crowd to England every summer.
If anybody is really anxious to remember that there are paddy fields
in Burmah he should cross the Bay of Bengal in December.
Somebody said that our ship was an unlucky one--that it ran down the
_Mecca_ on her last trip and killed her third officer; but we got
through safely enough, though that crossing was one of the most
disagreeable as well as the most weird I ever made--disagreeable
because of the bad weather, and weird because of the passengers.
The deck and the lower deck were tanks of live humanity, and when it
began to get rough, as it did the morning after we left Madras,
catching the end of a strayed cyclone, it was worse than a Chinese
puzzle to cross from the saloon to the spar deck, and ten chances to
one that even if you did manage to avoid stepping on a body you
slipped and shot into seven sick Hindoo ladies and a family of
children.
There were six first-class passengers, all Europeans, and 1700 deck
passengers, all Asiatics, and the latter paid twelve rupees each for
the four days' passage, bringing with them their own food.
[Illustration: "THEY COULD NOT LIE DOWN WITHOUT OVERLAPPING."]
The first evening all six of the Europeans appeared at dinner--a
Trichinopoly collector, a Madras tanning manager and his wife (who
told {3} me that half your American boots and shoes are made from
buffalo skins shipped from Madras to the United States), a young
lieutenant going to take charge of a mountain battery of Punjabis at
Maimyo in Upper Burmah, and a young Armenian, son of a merchant at
Rangoon, who had been to Europe about his eyes.
After coffee the man next to me suddenly leapt from his chair with a
yell. He thought he had been bitten by a centipede. The centipede
was there right enough, but as the pain passed off the next day we
supposed the brute had only fastened his legs in and had not really
bitten.
The nights were sultry and the ship rolled worse every watch. I
think, however, that I never saw people try harder than those natives
did to keep clean. They had all brought new palm-leaf mats to lie
upon, but they could not lie down without overlapping. I asked the
captain what he did about scrubbing decks, and he said it was always
done at the end of the voyage! Next morning the downpour, already
referred to, began and did the business with cruel effectiveness.
As we neared Burmah the sea grew calm again and the rain abated. The
sun dried sick bodies and cheered despondent hearts. I spoke to a
woman crouching by some sacks and tin cans, with an old yellow cloth
round her head and shoulders, and another cloth swathing her loins.
{4} She had very dark brown eyes, and her fingernails were bright red
and also the palms of her hands from the "maradelli" tied round the
nails at night. She was the wife of a man the other side of fourteen
people, some four yards away. I asked his name, not knowing that a
Hindoo woman may not pronounce her husband's name. She called him
"Veetkar," which means uncle or houseman: the man was of the Palla
caste, which is just a little higher than the Pariah, and they had
been married five years but had no children. This was the man's
second marriage, his first wife having died of some liver complaint
he said. Like most of the passengers they were going out for
paddy-field work, but unlike so many others, they were "on their own"
not being taken over by a labour contractor. The man said he should
get work at Kisshoor village, about eight miles from Rangoon. Every
year for seven years he had been over.
Altogether, this man had saved, according to his own statement, two
hundred rupees in the seven years' work, and had invested this in
bullocks and a little field near his village, which was named
Verloocooli. He had left the son of his first wife to look after the
house and the field.
[Illustration: MONGOLIAN TYPE OF MOHAMMEDAN.]
Under a thin muslin an ayah was watching our talk. She said she was
a Christian and came from Lazarus Church. Her husband ran away,
leaving her with three children in Madras, so she {5} works now as an
ayah to an Eurasian lady, while her mother looks after the children
in Madras.
About twenty people round one corner of the open hatch seemed to
belong to one another. They came from the Soutakar district and were
drinking rice-water--that is the water poured off when rice is
boiled. A Mohammedan with two sons was going to sell things. The
boys would watch the goods, he told me. He was returning to Upper
Burmah, where he had lived twenty-four years, and he had only been
over to Madras to visit his mother and father. He has "just a little
shop" for the sale of such goods as dal, chili, salt, onions, coconut
oil, sweet oil, tamarind, matches and candles.
Then there was the Mongolian type of Mohammedan. He was very fat and
greasy, and had one of his dog teeth long like a tusk. He was a
tin-worker and made large cans in his shop in Rangoon.
I went down between decks and never saw people packed so closely
before except on Coronation Day. Even "marked" men discarded all
clothing but a small loin cloth: most of them could not move hand or
foot without their neighbours feeling the change of position; and as
upon the deck above, they often lay partly over each other. Yet in
spite of the general overcrowding, I noticed a woman of the Brahmin
caste lying at her ease in a small open space {6} marked out by boxes
and tin trunks. There was a large lamp in a white reflector hanging
by the companion-way, and some of those lying nearest to it held leaf
fans over their faces to keep the light from their eyes.
The next day was brighter. There was a light wind and the whole
sunlit crowd was a babel of excited talk. A little naked Hindoo
baby, just able to walk, was playing mischievously with me. I had
been nursing her for a while and now she was laughing, and with palms
up-turned was moving her hands like a Nautch dancer as her eyes
twinkled with merriment. She was called Mutama, and the poor mite's
ears had had a big cut made in them and the lobes were already pulled
out more than two inches by the bunches of metal rings fastened in
for this purpose.
A purple shawl, tied up to dry, bellied out in the wind over the side
of the ship in a patch of vivid colour. It had a border of gold
thread and was of native make. Not that the gold thread itself is
made in Madras. It is curious that English manufacturers have tried
in vain to make these shawls so that their gold thread shall not
tarnish, whereas the gold thread obtained from France does not do so.
On a box in the midst of hubbub, a Mohammedan was praying, bending
his body up and down and looking toward the sun.
[Illustration: MUTAMA, A HINDOO BABY.]
{7}
The following morning we reached very turbid water, thick and yellow,
with blue reflections of the sky in the ripples. We could just see
the coast of Burmah and about noon caught sight of the pilot brig,
and entering the wide Rangoon river, passed a Chinese junk with all
sails spread. Now the mats began to go overboard and gulls swooped
round the ship. We had passed the obelisk at the mouth of the river
when, above a green strip of coast on a little blue hill, the sun
shone upon something golden.
"The Pagoda!" I cried, and a pagoda it was, but only one at Siriam
where there is a garrison detachment. The Golden Pagoda--the Shwe
Dagon--appeared at first grey and more to the north. The water was
now as thick and muddy as the Thames at the Tower Bridge. It was
full of undercurrents too, and there was a poor chance for anyone who
fell in.
Over went the mats, scores and scores and scores of them!
There is a bar a little further on called the Hastings, and it was a
question whether we'd get over it that afternoon. A line of yellow
sand detached itself from the green, and then the water became like
shot silk, showing a pale flood of cerulean slowly spreading over its
turbid golden brown. On the low bank were green bushes and
undergrowth, and beyond--flat levels of tawny-yellow and low
tree-clad rising {8} ground that reminded me of the Thames above
Godstow.
Beyond the green point of Siriam, just after the Pegu River branches
off to the right, the Rangoon River sweeps round in a great curve, at
the far end of which stretches the city. It was pale violet in the
afternoon light, with smoke streaming from vessels in the harbour,
and on the highest point the Shwe Dagon just showing on one edge that
it was gold. Far to the right were some twenty tall chimney-stacks
of the Burmah Oil Works, but their colour, instead of being sooty and
unclean, was all blue and amethyst under a citron sky.
The Customs Officer came out in a long boat, pulled by four men in
red turbans, and in his launch the medical officer of the port with a
lady doctor. There is a constant but ineffectual struggle to keep
plague out of Burmah, and every one of our 1700 deck passengers had
to be thoroughly examined--stripped to the waist with arms up, while
the doctor passed his hands down each side of the body.
The same night, on shore, I drove to the Shwe Dagon past the
race-ground, where a military tattoo was going on by torchlight.
Two gigantic leogryphs of plaster-faced brick stand one on each side
of the long series of steps which lead under carved teak roofs and
between {9} rows of pillars up to the open flagged space on which the
Pagoda stands.
I left the "tikka gharry" on the roadway and went up the steps of the
entrance alone. It was a weird experience, walking up those gloomy
stairs at night. Alone? At first it seemed so--the stalls at the
sides of each landing or wide level space between the flights of
steps were deserted; but, as I walked on, a Pariah dog came snarling
viciously towards me and another joined him, and then like jackals,
their eyes glowing in the darkness, more and more of them came. I
had no stick with me, and as I meant going on it was a relief to find
that among the shadows of the pillars, to right and left, men were
sleeping. One stirred himself to call off the dogs and I walked up
another flight of steps, which gleamed a little beneath a hidden lamp.
Between great pillars, faced with plaster, red on the lower portion
and white above, I walked on while more dogs came yelping and
snarling angrily. I heard a low human wail which changed to a louder
note and died away--someone praying perhaps. Then all was quite
still except for the crickets. Now I was in a hall of larger columns
and walked under a series of carved screens--arches of wood set
between pairs of them. Half-way up these columns hung branches of
strange temple offerings, things made in coloured papers with gold
sticks hanging from them.
{10}
At last I came out upon the upper platform on which stands the Pagoda
itself. Facing the top of the last flight of steps at the back of a
large many-pillared porch, reeking with the odour of burnt wax, I saw
a cavernous hollow, and set within it, behind lighted candles, dimly
a golden Buddha in the dusk. Outside, a strip of matting was laid
over the flagged pavement all round the platform, and in the stones
little channels cut transversely for drainage in the time of the
rains lay in wait to trip careless feet.
Some years ago when the great "Hti" was brought down from the summit
of the Pagoda, after an earthquake, to be restored and further
embellished, people of all classes brought offerings of money and
jewellery through the turnstiles on to this platform. What a sight
it must have been to see the lines of Burmese people crowding up
through these two turnstiles, one for silver and one for gold--one
woman giving two jewelled bracelets and the next a bangle; a receipt
would be given to each donor and then bangle and bracelets thrown
into the melting-pot after their jewels had been taken out for adding
to the "Hti."
[Illustration: HINDOO GIRL, SHOWING ELABORATE JEWELLERY.]
Glittering metal drops quivered from the edges of richly-decorated
umbrellas; columns, covered as in a kind of mosaic with jewels and
bright glass, shone and sparkled; colossal figures cast grim shadows,
and over all the vast {11} mass of the Shwe Dagon rose in its strange
curved grandeur of worn and faded gold far up into the night sky with
a compelling loveliness, and from the air above came floating down
the sweet silvery tinkle of jewelled bells shaken by the breeze.
Night had driven unscourged the money-changers from the temple, and
the magic light of the moon weaving silver threads through every
garish tint of paint had changed crude colours to ideal harmonies.
Not colour alone but form also was glorified. The grotesque had
become dramatic, confusion had changed to dignity, all surrounding
detraction was subdued and the great ascending curves of the Pagoda
rose in simple, uncontested beauty. Nature adored, acknowledging
conquest, and the sound of those far wind-caught bells was like that
of the voices of angels and fairies singing about the cradle of a
child.
I had seen no building of such emotional appeal nor any that seems so
perfectly designed to wed the air and light that bathe it and caress
it. But imagine the Shwe Dagon transplanted to the cold light of
some gargantuan museum near the Cromwell Road; the nicest taste, the
most steadfast determination, could not unlock its charm. Here, upon
easy hinge, the door swings back at every raising of the eyes, and
illumination is for all beholders.
{12}
The following afternoon I was again at the Shwe Dagon, and to watch
its beauty under the glory of the setting sun was a further
revelation. It seemed to show fresh and delicate charm at each part
of the day, and after burning at sunset, like a man filled with
impetuous passion, shone in the after-glow with the diviner
loveliness of the woman who gives her heart.
The river front of Rangoon is a wide, busy and dusty thoroughfare, on
to which wide streets open--Phayre Street, Bark Street and the rest,
and great piles of office buildings face the water--buildings with
Corinthian porticoes and columns with great drums like those of the
Temple of Diana at Ephesus without their sculptures. A line of white
stucco houses curves round the bend of the Sule Pagoda Street, wide
and tree-bordered, like a road at Dorchester or a Paris boulevard,
making a handsome vista with its Pagoda surmounting a flight of steps
at the far end.
Building proceeds at such a rate that the big city seems to be
growing while you look at it, but there are plenty of open spaces.
Government House, in red brick and white stone, with an old bronze
bell hung in front of the portico between two brass cannon, stands in
a goodly park with fine trees and wide lawns and the Royal Lakes,
across which there is a beautiful view of the Shwe Dagon, are
surrounded by large grounds with {13} trim, well-kept walks and
drives. While I was painting by one of the lakes a water-snake every
now and then lifted its head above the surface, sometimes a foot and
a half out of the water like some long-necked bird.
I was driving back towards the hotel along the Calvert Road when I
noticed a temporary wood-framed structure, covered with coloured
papers and painted trellis-work. On inquiry I found it had been
erected by a Buddhist Society of that quarter of the city, and that
the same night upon a stage close to it in the open air a "Pwe" would
be given, to which I was bidden welcome about nine o'clock.
At my hotel two people had been poisoned by tinned food a few weeks
earlier, but whatever the table lacked in quality it made up in
pretentiousness. I quote that day's menu for comparison with the
items of another repast the same evening:--
Canapes aux anchois.
Potage à la Livonienne,
Barfurt--sauce Ravigotte.
Inlets mignons à la Parisienne.
Civets de lièvre à la St Hubert.
Cannetons faits aux petits pois--salade.
Fanchonettes au confiture.
Glace--crême au chocolat.
Dessert.
Café.
It was after an early and somewhat abridged {14} version of the above
that I drove in the cheerless discomfort of a "tikka gharry" through
Rangoon again in the moonlight. After twenty minutes I saw once more
the paper temple. There were two long lines of lanterns high in the
air in the shape of a horizontal V, and under them a great crowd of
people. The trellised temple itself was also charmingly decorated
with lanterns.
[Illustration: ALTAR TABLE AT A BUDDHIST SOCIETY'S CELEBRATION.]
Inside I was effusively welcomed. A chair was placed for me on
gay-coloured carpets at one side of a raised altar platform, at the
back of which was a glass-fronted shrine containing an alabaster
Buddha and strange lamps in front, with two large kneeling figures
and a pair of bronze birds. The whole raised space before the
shrine, some ten yards long by four yards deep, was covered with
white cloths, on which was placed close together a multitude of
dishes and plates of rich cakes, fruits and dainties. There were
green coconuts, piles of oranges, melons with patterns cut upon them,
leaving the outer green rind in curves and spirals, while the incised
pattern was stained with red and green pigment, and a mighty pumpkin
with a kind of "Christmas tree" planted in it, decked with packets of
dried durian pickle pinched in at a little distance from each end so
that they looked like Tom Smith's crackers. Now refreshment was
brought to me in the shape of dried prawns {15} and, upon a large
plate in neat little separate heaps, the following delicacies:--
Green ginger, minced.
Sweet potatoes, shredded.
Fried coconut.
Sesamum seeds in oil.
Dried seed potatoes.
Tea leaves.
Fried ground nuts.
The president of this Buddhist Society, a stout Burman, with a
rose-pink silk kerchief rolled loosely round his head, came and bowed
to me, raising his hands and then sat upon another chair at my side,
while a young Burman stood behind to interpret our mutual
felicitations.
Four silver dishes were now brought to me on a lacquered box, and
these contained Burmah cheroots, betel leaves and areca nut, tobacco
leaves and chunam (lime). Chilis were also brought, which made me
long in vain for a cool drink.
Outside, beyond the walls of pale green trellis, glowed the lanterns,
and faces peered at us between the strips of wood. Cloth of red and
white stripes lined the roof, and countless flags, quite tiny ones,
were fastened along the outer green railing.
In front of the Buddha had now been placed some beautiful gold
chalices. The white {16} alabaster figure of Gautama was half as
high as a man, and a band covered with gems glittered across its
breast.
The interpreter informed me that the whole gathering was a festival
of the Buddha Kaitsa Wut Society, and he added:--"We are the people
in Burmah always polite to everybody--do please whatever you like
here." He spoke English with assurance, but to me his meaning was
not always clear. Here are some of his actual words in answer to my
request for further information:--"In time long past the monies of
the members were according to the orders of the chief here, but they
always used to pray every night with white dress, not any sort of
fancy dress. Whenever we pray in order yearly we used to give
charity to everybody."
About ten o'clock I moved outside, where another arm-chair had been
placed for me, this time in the midst of a great crowd of people.
In front of me rose a staging of bamboo framework, with seven oil
lamps hanging before it. Immediately below this staging a native
orchestra played strange instruments by candle-light and upon the
ground, which sloped conveniently, were ranged considerably over a
thousand people. I counted thirty-six rows of over twenty-five each,
and ever-increasing crowds thronged back and sides. Most of the {17}
seated audience were on mats or low bedsteads, and many were smoking
the large light-coloured cheroots.
My interpreter had now gone to join some ladies, and I was left to
make the best I could of this, my first, Burmese "Pwe."
Two characters were dancing on the stage when I took my seat.
Perhaps they were a prince and princess--at any rate they were
dressed in old Burmese court style, in very narrow skirts similar to
the "hobble," and strange short jackets cut with curled bases like
horned moons stretched and held in shape by bamboo frames. There was
much swaying and posturing of the body, combined with quick, jerky
movements, the arms were moved a great deal with bent elbows and the
hands with fingers straight and the palms bent back sharply at the
wrists. When these dancers left the stage two men entered in long
white gowns, with broad white bands tied round the head in big bows.
They turned their backs upon the audience at first, and then turning
round squatted upon the floor. Two more similarly dressed came in in
the same manner, and after they had squatted beside the others two
quite astounding figures came on the scene with long bare swords.
The music all this while kept up an accompaniment of jingle and
clapper and tum, tum, tum--jingle and clapper and tum, tum, tum, {18}
with a particularly squeaky wind instrument going ahead at the same
time like a cork being drawn backward and forward over a pane of wet
glass.
I discovered now that on turning their backs to the audience on first
entering, the performers made obeisance to a draped bench at the back
of the stage. Two more sword-bearing figures came in and two
lance-bearers in very lovely bejewelled dresses of old gold. There
was a long shrill speech now--then a loud bang, at which all the
actors fell to the ground, and a figure entered bearing a
short-pointed mace and sat at once on the draped bench.
It was the beginning of a long drama of old Burmese court-life which
would go on all night long. The sword and lance-bearers went out,
leaving the gentleman with the mace talking to the four white-gowned
men (they were probably a king and his ministers), and he went on
talking to them for a long half-hour, during which, at rare
intervals, one of them sat up and made some remarks. At last a
curtain came down, leaving two of the white-gowned ones outside it.
These were joined by a manifestly "comic" character, a man with bare
chest and a dark blue skirt, who kept the audience in continual
merriment while he was on the scene.
Every now and then I turned my head to look up at the great V-shaped
line of lanterns {19} hanging high in the air overhead from tall
bamboo poles, and the stars shining over all from the night sky. A
number of the children were sleeping, though their elders made a good
deal of noise, laughing heartily at the comic actor as the play went
on and on and on. I should like to have stayed longer, but an
appointment with some elephants at an early hour the next morning
made me reluctantly leave the "Pwe" at midnight and hunt among the
back rows of the audience for the driver of that "tikka gharry."
Everyone has heard of the Burmese elephants piling timber. The
largest of the timber companies employing elephants is the Bombay
Burmah Trading Corporation, Limited. The logs, floated down the
river from forest-lands, eight hundred or a thousand miles upstream,
are stranded at high rain-tides at Poozoondoung, a tract of lowland
to which I drove in the early morning.
I reached there just after sunrise, before the dew of the night was
yet evaporated, and the logs, on which one had to walk to avoid the
mud, were very slippery and more difficult to negotiate with boots
than without.
The work of the elephants is to push, drag or pile the teak logs, and
on the morning of my visit there were three of the great quadrupeds
at work:--Hpo Chem, aged fifty, a fine tusker who {20} had been
twenty years at the work, and two female elephants, Mee Cyan, seventy
years of age, and Mee Poo, thirty. The male elephant has, of course,
tremendous strength in his tusks and uses them for carrying, holding
the log firmly with his trunk as he gravely walks up the pile of logs
to place his burden on the top. Female elephants can only pile by a
combined lift and drag, and do not raise the log entirely from the
ground. Pushing with the head is called "ounging."
Most of the elephants in use in Burmah have been got by Kheddah
operations, the Kheddah being a big stockade built under Government
direction in a similar way to the Kraals of Ceylon. At the last
Kheddah many elephants died suddenly of anthrax (some two hundred in
about three days), and a number of the trained animals were lost as
well as those newly captured.
The hours of elephant labour at Poozoondoung are strictly limited,
being from six to nine in the morning and from three to six in the
afternoon.
At Poozoondoung, not far from the timber-yards, the chief rice-mills
are situated. They were idle now, but when I saw them again after
the harvest their big chimneys were belching forth black smoke from
the burning husk. The husk obtained from the milled grain is not
only {21} sufficient for all fuel requirements, but much has to be
shot into the creek for waste.
The engine staffs are, as upon most of the flotilla steamers,
Chittagonians, Burmese being employed chiefly as clerks.
Native boats called "Loungoes" brought such of the "paddy" from the
country as did not come by rail.
"Hulling" the rice is the operation of breaking off the husk. There
were rows of pairs of round flat stones, the under ones stationary,
the upper ones revolving, not grinding but merely breaking off the
husk. Both grain and husk fell from these stones together to the
floor below, and were carried by bucket-elevators to a fanning-room,
where the husk was blown off. After leaving the fans the grain had
its remaining inner skin taken off in "cones"--cement-faced stones
made to press the grain against an outer jacket of perforated wire.
At the base of the cone a cloth hung round an opening in the floor,
through which the rice dropped, while the white skin fell upon the
floor outside to be called "bran," and shipped to Europe for use in
the manufacture of cattle cakes.
In the process of "whitening" much of the grain is broken and sorted
by graduated sieves, into four or five degrees of size. Finally the
rice bags are shipped on to a cargo boat in the creek, for despatch
by steamer to India or Europe.
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When the rice-mills are in full work the smoke of their chimneys
hangs above Rangoon, but overhead every evening the flying foxes pass
as usual, and the beautiful Pagoda is far enough away to remain
untarnished upon its little hill.
[Illustration: BOY SHOWING TATOOING CUSTOMARY WITH ALL BURMESE MALES.]
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