From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 17

I ought to be painting these boats that pa.s.s--but there's breakfast-bell--boats my friends, with the colours of Loch Fyne skiffs, as to their sails and woodwork, a little deeper in colour, perhaps, and set off with brighter figures, with here and there a rose pink turban or white jacket. The hulls have a quaint dignity about them, and the carvings on their sterns are as rich as the woodwork in a Belgian cathedral.

Prome.--The sandbanks withdraw, and the wooded ranges of blue hills show more firmly in the background. It is as if we were at the beginning of a very wide Norwegian valley. Fishermen's mat shelters break the monotony of some long sandbanks--isolated signs of life, each on its sharply-cast purple shadow; a naked boy and his sister run along the freshly broken edge of a sandbank, and wave to us.

Round, bend after bend, each a splendid delight to the eye--till two o'clock we look, and look, loath to leave the deck, though our eyes are sore and appet.i.tes keen--then lunch, watching the pa.s.sing scenes--and Prome.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Looking out of our windows, to our left across the river, the scenery reminds me of loch Suinnart or loch Swene in Argyll: there are knolly hills, with woodc.o.c.k scrub, and terns, or sea-swallows, dipping in the current. To the right the sh.o.r.e is flat, then rises steeply to the road on the bundar, above which we see the tops of brown teak bungalows, set amongst rich green trees like planes, and beyond these again, stand grey stemmed teak trees, and over all, the deep blue sky, and the Shwe Sandaw PaG.o.da spire glittering with gold, with lower spires of marble whiteness.

PaG.o.da spires are all along the river side every mile or two, but they do not bespeak a population; most of them are in ruins, they are simply built with sun-dried bricks, some are white-washed, others gilt, only the famous paG.o.das are ever repaired, for a Burman obtains more evident merit by building a new one. To judge by their number, one might think there must be so many people that game could not abound, but this is not the case at all.

We go ash.o.r.e by the gangways (two broad planks) past Indian coolies and Burmese laden with bales and boxes slung from either end of bamboos balanced across their shoulders, through ramparts of bales and sacks piled on the sand and gravel sh.o.r.e. On either side of the path there are women sitting with snacks of Burmese food to sell to travellers, sugar-cane, sweet cakes, cheroots, soda-water, and ngapi; this is a great Burmese delicacy and has a peculiar smell! It is composed of pounded putrid fish--as unpleasant to us as a lively old Stilton-cheese would be to a Burman.

Up the bank some forty feet we find we are again in the track of the Royal Procession! There are tiny decorations going up amongst the trees.

A triumphal arch, quite twenty feet high, is being covered with coloured paper and tinsel, and a line of flags and freshly cut palm leaves leads to the little siding on the line that goes to Rangoon. The place is so pretty that you feel it is a pity that its natural features should be disturbed by ornament however well intentioned.

We go to the paG.o.da and climb slowly up the steps, for they are high and steep, and at every flight there are exquisite views out over the jungle of trees, palms, and bamboo, and knolly "Argyll hills," and looking up or down the stairs are more pictures; on both sides are double rows of red and gold pillars, supporting an elaborately panelled teak roof, with carvings in teak picked out with gold and colour. Groups of people with sweet expressions, priests, men, women, and children pa.s.s up and down.

On the platform there is heat and a feeling of great peace, the subdued chant of one or two people praying, the cluck of a hen, the fragrance of incense, and now and then the deep soft throb of one of the great bells, touched by a pa.s.sing worshipper with the crown of a stag's horn. There are s.p.a.ces of intense light, and cool shadows and shrines of gla.s.s mosaic, inside them Buddhas in marble or bronze--the bronzes are beautiful pieces of _cire perdu_ castings--flowers droop before them, and candles are melting, their flame almost invisible in the sunlight, and two little children play with the guttering wax.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

As we come down the stairs we meet khaki-clad Indian soldiers, with high khaki turbans, and indecently thin shanks in blue putties. They do not fit their uniforms or boots, or the surroundings, and only the sergeants seem to feel their rifles less than a burden. They are told off to posts in the jungle at each stage of the ascent, and we feel our retreat is menaced, but it is only a rehearsal for the Royal Visit to-morrow.

Little Prome is all agog! for the Prince comes down the river and is to land here and train to Rangoon.

Before we go aboard we walk through the marketplace by the side of the river; it is lit with a yellow sunset from over the river, the umbrellas stand out brown against the sky, and the burning tobacco of the girls white cheroots begins to show red, and the oranges have a very deep colour, the blue smoke hangs in level wisps in the warm dusty air--and you could lean up against the smell of the ngapi. It is in heaps, and of finest quality they say. Here is a jotting from a sketch in colour; I made also one in line to immortalise the Prome triumphal arch.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

There are more than a dozen flags on it now, and you see two natives putting up two lamps; and the governor, you can imagine--he is training his pair of carriage ponies to stand this unusual display. They go up and down the mile of high road on the bundar in such a lather, one nearly out of its skin with excitement. What would be better than an arch, and would please every one, would be to collect all the Burmese residents in the district in their best dresses, and allow them to group themselves as their artistic minds would suggest; their grouping and posing would be something to remember. Burmese woman study movement from childhood, and nothing more beautiful could be conceived than their colour schemes; I've seen arrangement of colours to-day in dresses, delicate as harmonies in Polar ice, and others rich and strong as the colours of a tropical sunset.

But one line more about the town.--Before the Christian era, Prome was within six miles east of being one of Burmah's many ancient capitals; it marked the ancient boundary between Ava and Pegu, otherwise Upper and Lower Burmah. It is seventy five miles above Rangoon, and has 27,000 inhabitants, and has streets here, and a law court there, and an Anglican church, so it is moving--one way or the other.

CHAPTER XXVII

Thayet Myo, January 20th.--After leaving Prome we have a good long wait here; we have the Prince's mails on board. Their Royal Highnesses are coming down river from Mandalay, so we wait their steamer. As we lunch on deck we watch the villagers collecting, coming in bullock carts and canoes.

The Flotilla Company have painted their steamer for the Prince all white--given her a buff funnel, and she flies the Royal Standard with the quarterings wrong, as usual, and looks mighty big and fine as she surges south over the silky, mirror-like surface of the river. There is a blaze of sun, and three dug-out canoes, with men in pink and white, flying bannerets, go out to meet her. With their gay colours, the white steamer, and the gleam of bra.s.s-work, you have a subject for a picture after the style of Van Beers--if there was only time! I just make a modest grab at it with an inky pen.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Burmans come streaming along the yellow sandy sh.o.r.e in rainbow tints, and two of our soldiers in khaki, almost invisible but for the boots and red necks, sweat along the loose sand with them. Up the bank are seated groups of girls and women, quietly filling their souls with the joy of gazing at the white ship that contains the Imperial Ti.

... Put in the night at Minhla.--After dropping anchor, our new pa.s.sengers, Mrs Jacobs and daughter, and their guests and ourselves sit round the deck-table and talk of the celebrations in Rangoon, and we all turn in at ten, for we grudge an hour taken off these days of light.

They got off at Yenangyat further up the river, a place where there are oil springs and works.

21st.--We get up early these days, because the country is so beautiful, and because it is a little chilly out of the sun, and morning tub begins to have attractions again; it is so cold and exhilarating, and you feel fifty times more energetic up here than in Rangoon; you feel you must not miss any of the river's features, so tumble out betimes. Possibly the anchor coming up at daybreak awakened you, and if that did not, a dear little Burmese boy's c.o.c.k and hen must have done so; the c.o.c.k sends out such clarion challenges to all the c.o.c.ks ash.o.r.e before daybreak. The boy in green silk kilt with touch of pink, holding his two white pets with their red combs, makes a most fetching piece of colour.

We begin to think thicker clothing would not be amiss--but a quick walk on sh.o.r.e makes one's blood go merrily. We decided to come here again with some sort of a house on a keel of our own, and stop and shoot here and there, and paint; perhaps drift down river from Bhamo through the defiles, with sport wherever one wanted it--four kinds of deer, elephant, jungle fowl, francolin, snipe, geese, duck, possibly leopard or tiger, and a few miles inland there are rhino and gaur--there's a choice!--and I'd have a net too--four weeks out, by "Henderson" or "Bibby," four here, and four back--I wonder if my presence could be spared at home.

MIMBU.--Here are splendid trees, like those in Watteau's pictures, on the top of the banks, their foliage drooping over cottages. These are very neatly built on teak-wood legs. You can see into some of them through the bamboo walls and floors, and see touches of rich colour in their brown interiors--ladies in emerald silk and powdered faces, jet black hair and white torch cheroot, and, perhaps, the goodman coming in, in green cloth jacket, pink round his hair, and say, a crushed strawberry _putsoe_ down to the middle of his st.u.r.dy brown calves.

A number of Burmese get off here. Up the sandy bank are collected about fifty carts. The bullocks in them are finely bred, and are coloured like fallow deer, and look fat and well-cared for. The carts are sand-coloured and sun-bleached, with great thick wheels, and the contrast of the dainty pa.s.sengers--women and children with neat packages--getting into these is very pleasant. The men busy themselves yoking the oxen; they are dressed in bright silks and cottons, several have M'Pherson tartan _putsoes_. A mother lifts her b.u.t.terfly-coloured children into the clean straw and gets in herself, and the eldest daughter, with white jacket and prettily-dressed hair, steps in demurely, tucks up her knees in her exquisite plum-coloured silk skirt, and away they go in dust and sun and jollity--verily, I do believe, that Solomon in his very Sunday best was not a patch to one of these daintly dressed figures....

I walk along the country road and have a glimpse of the white and gold of a paG.o.da, and a glimpse of the river through tree trunks in shadow, and wish the steamer's horn for recall would not sound for many days.

21st January.--Past Mimbu--sands wide and whitey-grey. There are white cirri on blue--sky and sand repeated on the river's surface. At the ends of the sand-spits are waders--oyster catchers I vow--one might be at Arisaig in a splendid June instead of the Irrawaddy in January.... Long rafts of teak logs pa.s.s us occasionally, drifting slowly down with the current. The three or four oarsmen, when they see us, run about over the round logs and give a pull here and a pull there at long oars, and try to get the unwieldy length up and down stream; they wear only a waist cloth, and look so sun-bitten; there is but one tiny patch of shadow in the middle of their island under a lean-to cottage of matting, with a burgee on a tall bamboo flying over it. Our wash sends their dug-out canoe bobbling alongside their raft, and splashes over and between the logs, and the raftsmen have to bustle to keep their herd together, and we pa.s.s, and they go and dream, of--well I don't know what; that's the worst of being only a visitor in a country--without the language, you can only guess what the people think by their expressions.

We drop anchor off Yenangyaung. There are sandy cliffs here, riddled with holes made by blue rock-pigeons (?)--more shooting going a-begging!

And there is a bungalow on a sandy bluff, and picturesque native craft lie along the sandy sh.o.r.e, altogether rather a sandy place. The oil works don't show from the river very much[27]. The Jacobs' party get off here. Mr Jacobs manages this particular source of Burmah's wealth. They go ash.o.r.e in a smart white launch.

[27] Crude oil production of Burmah in 1904--116 million gallons, of which 73 million came from Yenangyaung. In 1902 the Burmese oil fields yielded nearly 55 million gallons, valued at the rate of 250 gallons for a sovereign--Del Mar's "Romantic East."

There is the wreck of a river steamer on a sandbank off Yenangyaung, its black ribs lie about like the bones of disintegrated whale; it is not pleasant to look at. She went on fire, and about 200 Burmans were drowned, and no one would save them, though there were many canoes and people within three hundred yards. A Scotsman could only get one boat's crew to go off, and they saved the captain and others, the rest jumped overboard and were drowned. Burmese are said to be good swimmers, but I have not so far seen a Burman swim more than two or three strokes, though I see hundreds bathing every day. The Chittagong Indians who form our crew swim ash.o.r.e with a line every time we tie up, and they are about the worst swimmers I have ever seen; they jump in on all fours and swim like dogs or cattle. In this case of the drowning people, the lookers on would say it was not their affair, just as they would, with the utmost politeness, if you chose to worship in a way different from them; a _reductio ad absurdum_, from the point of view of those in the water, of a very charming trait. The Burman is naturally brave, but his philosophy is that of the Christian Socialist, it is not his creed to be heroic, or to take life, or thought for the morrow; and if a man smites him on the cheek, though he may not actually turn the other, he doesn't counter quick enough in our opinion--doesn't know our working creed--"Twice blest is he whose cause is just, but three times blest whose blow's in first;" so we took his country--and make it pay by the sweat of our brows--poor devils.

We are steaming now north by east, a very winding course, for the water is shallow though the river is wide. At high water season I'd think there must be too much water for appearance sake--it must feel too wide for a river and too narrow for the sea.

We stop at another village. Popa mountain detaches itself from surroundings, thirty or forty miles to the east; it is faint violet and rises from a slightly undulating wooded plain. It is a great place for game and nats. Most powerful nats or spirits live there, and if you go shooting you get nothing, unless you offer some of your breakfast as a peace-offering to these spirits in the morning. This has been found to be true over and over again by those who have shot there.

The day closes, the Arrakan Mountains far away in the west are violet.

The river here is wide as a fine lake and so smooth it reflects the most delicate tints of cloud-land. In front of us a low promontory stretches out from the east bank; we have to spend the night there. It is heavily clad with trees, delicate paG.o.da spires, white and gold, rise from the dark foliage and gleam with warm sunset light against the cool grey sky in the north. Trees and spires, sands, cliffs, cottages, and the canoes with bright-coloured paddlers, are all reflected in the smooth water.

As we get within ten yards of the sh.o.r.e six of our Chittagong crew plunge into the glittering water with a light rope, and are ash.o.r.e in a minute and are hauling in our wire hawser; the setting sun striking their wet bodies, makes them almost like ruddy gold, and their black trousers cling to their legs. It seems an elementary way of taking a line ash.o.r.e; I think that with a little practise two men in a dinghy would be quicker and would look more seamanlike--but probably it was the way in the Ark, so the custom remains.

The Burmese villagers gather in groups and sit on the top of the bank in the growing dusk. We can just see a suggestion of their gay colours and the gleam of their cheroots. G. and I go ash.o.r.e and stumble along a deep, sandy road; on either side are little and big trees with open cottages behind them, made of neatly woven bamboo matting, lit with oil crusies. We come to a paG.o.da, and tall white griffins at its entrance staring up into the sky, strange, grotesque beasts--the white-wash they are covered with looks violet in the fading light.

At dinner, yarns on the fore-deck, big beetles humming out of the night against our lamp, and the Captain telling us deep-sea yarns--how he signed articles as a cabin boy, and of the times before the annexation of Upper Burmah, when the white man skipper was of necessity something of a diplomatist and a soldier. Some sailors can't spin yarns, but those who can--how well they do it!

As we were at coffee there was a gurgling and groaning came from the people aft, so we took our cigars, and went to see the row, and order restored. There was a little crowd struggling and rolling in a ball, and it turned out there was a long Sikh in the middle of it in grips with a diminutive Chinaman, who might have been a wizened little old woman from his appearance. It was the big Sikh who had done the horrible gurgling; the silly a.s.s had joined in with several Chinese, professional gamblers, and of course lost, and unlike a Burman or a Chinaman, the native of India can't lose stolidly. He vowed he'd been set on from behind, and had been robbed of fifty-four rupees. The Captain a.s.sessed probable loss at two rupees, and the first officer took him down the companion to the lower deck, the Sikh standing two feet higher than the little Scot.

Later, the long black man went hunting the shrimp of a Chinaman round the native part of the ship, and caught him again and asked the Captain for justice, and looked at me as he spoke, which made me uncomfortable, for I could not understand, but guessed he expected the Sahib to stick up for a Sikh against any d.a.m.n Chinee. I would have liked to photograph the two--they were such a contrast as they sat on their heels beside each other, the wizened little expressionless, beady-eyed Chinaman with his thread of a pigtail, and his arm in the grasp of the long Sikh, with black beard and long hair wound untidily round his head.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

22nd January.--Another very distinctive charm about this river is that the two sides are generally quite different in character. On one side this morning, the sun is rising over a wilderness of level sandbank, buff-coloured against the sun, over this there is a low range of distant mountains, with Popa by itself, lonely and pink; and looking out on the other side from our cabin window we find we are steaming close under steep, sunny banks, overhung with luxuriant foliage.

Where there is a break in the bank we look up sandy corries that come down from hills, clad with park-like trees and scrub--the very place for deer! There are no inhabitants on the river side, though we pa.s.s every mile or two a ruined paG.o.da spire.

Pa.s.sing Pagan we see the tops of some of its nine hundred and ninety-nine paG.o.das. Many of them are different in shape from the bell-shaped type we have seen so far. At breakfast we watch them as we pa.s.s. The Flotilla Company does not give an opportunity of landing to see these "Fanes of Pagan," which is very disappointing. So this ancient city, one of the world's, wonders, is seldom seen by Europeans. There are nine miles of the ruined city; "as numerous as the PaG.o.das of Pagan"

is, in Burmah, a term for a number that cannot be counted. Mrs Ernest Hart, in "Picturesque Burmah," describes them in a most interesting chapter. The authorities on Indian architecture, Fergusson, Colonel Yule, and Marco Polo, all agree that they are of the wonders of the world. Mrs Hart compares them in their historical interest to the Pyramids, and in their architecture to the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. She says of Gaudapalin Temple, which is the first temple seen on approaching Pagan, that the central spire, which is 180 feet, recalls Milan Cathedral. It was built about the year 1160 A.D. Colonel Yule says that in these temples "there is an actual sublimity of architectural effect which excites wonder, almost awe, and takes hold of the imagination." Mr Fergusson is inclined to think this form of fane was derived from Babylonia, and probably reached Burmah, via Thibet, by some route now unknown. They have pointed arches to roof pa.s.sages and halls, and to span doorways and porticoes; and as no Buddhist arch is known in India, except in the reign of Akbar, and hardly an arch in any Hindoo temple, this disposes of the idea that the Burmese of the eleventh and twelfth centuries derived their architecture from India. There are besides temples and fanes, many solid bell-shaped paG.o.das of the Shwey Dagon type. The Ananda Temple is the oldest. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, the outer corridors are a hundred feet. The interior, from descriptions I've read, must be splendidly effective and impressive.

We stop at oil works, Yenangyat. The people come on and off in boat loads of bright colours, and women come and sit on the sand beside the ship. Each woman has an a.s.sortment of lacquered ware, orange and red, delicately patterned cylindrical boxes, with neatly fitting trays and lids, and bowls, trays, and priests' luncheon baskets--large bowls with trays and smaller bowls inside each other, rising to a point with a cup over the top. This ware is made of finely woven cane, and some of woven horse-hair, alternately coated with a tree varnish, ash, and clay, polished in laths and covered with faintly raised designs and colours between, and brought to a polished surface. The best is so elastic that one side of a tumbler or box can be pressed to meet the other without cracking the colour inlay. They seem to cost a good deal, but when you examine them, the intricacies of the designs of figures and foliage account for the price. The groups of sellers on the sh.o.r.e were interesting, but there was altogether loo much orange vermilion for my particular taste--a little of that colour goes far, in nature or art.

The women wore rose red tamiens or skirts, and these, plus the red lacquer work and reddish sand, made an effect as hot as if you had swallowed a chili!

After Pagan, the traveller may s.n.a.t.c.h a rest for wearied eyes. The sandbanks and distance are so level that the views are less interesting than they were below, but, after all, appearances depend so much on the weather effect. To-day, sky, water, and sand are so alike in colour, that the effect is almost monotonous.