From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 22

In the evening a delightful dinner-party, the above two deputies entertaining the aforesaid company in the Fort.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

7th February.--To-day a young soldier and an artist conclude that they both had their fill of exercise yesterday.

We started at break of day and didn't get home till after sunset and then had to dine at the old Fort and witness a Kachin Pwe in the moonlight till the small hours.

I confess I was tired after the day's shoot, but so was Carter and he was in the pink of condition, which consoled me. It was a memorable day amongst my sporting days, because of the novelty of surroundings, not on account of the bag of snipe.

We turned out before daybreak, which was neither novel nor pleasant; it was cold and very uncomfortable getting from warm blankets into the chilly morning in the draughty bungalow, and reminded me of the way we are turned out in winter starts for Black Game, and woodc.o.c.k in Morven--being routed out half awake in the dark by a certain energetic sportsman, hurricane lamp in hand.

I had to meet Carter at the Fort where we were to take canoes, and an elephant, across the Irrawaddy to a jheel, five miles through jungle.

The sun came up splendidly, hot and yellow over China, and warmed me comfortably as I drove to the Fort, and the mist off the plain rose and became sunlit c.u.muli to lie for the rest of the day on the shoulders of the Kachin Highlands.

Carter, I found in the midst of impedimenta; servants, Burmese, Kachins and natives, lunch boxes, cartridges, guns and a Mauser rifle; for though we were going for snipe the country we were to go through holds all sorts of big game, though the chance of our seeing any was remote as the jungle is dense and covers great areas.

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A quarter of a mile across the exposed sand of the river bed brought us to the canoes in which we were to cross. Our elephant swam, or waded, across higher up. We divided our party into two, and we crossed in the dugouts. These are graceful long canoes, cut from a teak tree trunk, with a fine smooth surface and with a suggestion about them of being easy to roll over; bamboos lashed alongside steadied them, and allowed our Kachin and Burman to walk along the side when poling. We made use of a slack water on our side, and another behind a sandy reed-covered island half-way across to make up our leeway. Silvery fish were jumping, pursued by some larger fish, and C. and I laid plans to try harling for them after the Shannon or Namsen fashion. On the far side we got all our baggage made fast to the sides of the pad--a sort of mattress on the elephant's back--as it knelt on the sh.o.r.e, and on the top of the pad we stretched ourselves and held on to the ropes as the elephant heaved up.

Quite a string of men tailed out behind us over the sands with cartridge bags, and gun cases on their shoulders. On the bank we found a Burman guide at a little village beside a small white paG.o.da. There were yellow-robed priests walking in the groves of trees and palms, and they noticed us I daresay, but made no sign that to their way of thinking we were doing harm to ourselves by going to kill snipe--the Phoungyi does not judge.

We then entered the kaing gra.s.s of which we had seen so much from the steamer and realised the difficulty of getting at game in this country.

For miles we rode along a narrow path and these reeds were high over our heads, and as we sat we were about ten or eleven feet from the ground![33] Tiger, gaur, deer, elephant and many other kinds of big game were all in this jungly country which extends for miles, so getting a shot at any of them is a good deal a matter of luck, or time. I expect it was lucky that we did not see anything but the tracks of these beasts, for I think my companion would have tried his small bore at anything. We had a certain anxiety about Gaur, miscalled Bison, for our steed had been badly gored by one--its hind quarters showed the scars--and it was warranted to bolt when it winded them, in which event we would probably have got left, as the reeds and branches would have cleared us off the pad. For five miles we followed the lane in the gra.s.s, and pa.s.sed two Burmans, midway, carrying fruit; they dodged into the reed stems and let us pa.s.s and laughingly admitted they were afraid.

Here and there we came to a place where we could see over the top of the savannah for a mile or two and expected to spot deer or elephant in the park-like scenery, till we remembered the depth of the gra.s.s.

[33] Col. Pollock says the gra.s.s of these savannahs runs from ten to thirty feet high--"Wild Sports of Burmah and a.s.sam."

The slow action of our steed made me think we were getting only slowly over the ground, but I noticed the men behind had pretty hard walking to keep up with us. After an hour or so, we turned off the path and trod down a road for ourselves through the reeds, and came to jungle of trees and undergrowth, with heavy foliaged creepers growing up the trees and from branch to branch, and air roots hanging from aloft, straight as bell ropes--up and down--into creeks, below undergrowth and out into the open again; the elephant being judge of where the ground would bear us, gingerly putting out its great tender feet, sinking deep into mud, making us cling on to the back stays of the pad, then dragging its feet out of the soft mud with a loud sucking sound, leaving great holes slowly filling up with black water. When a tree stump came in our path he would very deliberately crush it down with a rending sound, or if a big branch barred our way, up came the great trunk and slowly folded round it, and down it came with a crash, and was bent under foot.

Sometimes a branch was too thick and strong: then the mahout drew his dah, gave three or four chops within the width of an inch--the elephant waiting meantime--when up would come the trunk again, and down went the timber. These Kachin dahs must be well tempered[34] and have a fine edge, for our mahout cut filmy creepers hanging lightly as a hair, as easily as thick branches.

[34] I noticed later they were not ground to an edge, but shaved with steel spoke-shave.

About ten we got to the jheel; a swamp in an open s.p.a.ce of about sixty acres, of water and gra.s.s; of a fresh green, surrounded by low woods.

Fresh tracks of sambhur and other deer were round it and signs of tiger; so much big game had pa.s.sed that there were deeply worn paths. I've no doubt that by waiting there, one could have had a shot at big game before long. It made me wish, with all my heart, for time and my 450 cordite express, and I half decided to send for it to Rangoon. Snipe was our hope in the meantime, so we got off some clothes and plunged into the marsh and up got snipe at our first step, and we brought down three, and thought we were in for a great bag. But there was rather too much water; as we went on it came well over our knees, and every now and then up the tops of our thighs so there was too little holding ground for us or snipe. We walked in line, laboriously, halting every now and then to wait for one or the other to flounder out of a deep place; and when the sun got up the glare from the water made me think of sunstroke; however, we persevered and managed to get fourteen couple before lunch time, and I found my American five-shooter the very thing for the work.

How I wish I had known of there being such good snipe shooting at Mandalay, I would certainly have had a go at it there: I think 120 couple was a recent bag to one gun in twenty-four hours.

It was very odd having the elephant walking after us, it seemed so much at home; with his length and number of legs, it could walk slowly but comfortably where we bipeds had to struggle. As it went it twisted its trunk round bunches of the water gra.s.s, tore them out of the water and swished the mud off the roots by beating it to and fro across its forelegs till it was clean, and then she stowed it down her mouth, bunch after bunch--what an enormous quant.i.ty of food they must swallow! The mahout on its back was in a good place to mark down dead birds; if it had been taught to point and retrieve, it would have been even more useful.

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The walking was very tiring, one leg on firm ground and the other up to the top of the thigh in mud and water for one second, and vice versa the next; and the trees kept any breeze there was off the jheel, so we streamed from the tops of our heads. I don't think I ever in my life felt so hot when shooting--or a bottle of lager at lunch so delicious!--even the rough native cheroot came in as a pure joy!

The elephant stood beside us as we lunched, under the trees, flapping its ears in the shade, and occasionally adding a branch of a tree to its morning meal. The sunlight and patches of shadow on its grey skin made its great bulk blend into the background of stems and deep shadows, so that I understood what hunters say about the difficulty of seeing them in heavy jungle: it was as hard to see as an elk in pines. I wondered why it did not join its wild companions in the neighbourhood; for it was once wild, and there was nothing to prevent it going off if it pleased.

After lunch we decided to try for duck; that turned out a failure, but not for anything would I have missed the experience of wandering through jungle, where, without an elephant, we could not have moved. I am glad I am not yet very keen about orchids, or how my teeth would have watered!

for they clothed the branches above us; they seemed generally to grow on branches about twenty or thirty feet from the ground, towards the light and air; some trees were literally covered with them at that height.

Our men we had to leave behind, as there was no track, and the Burman guide climbed up the crupper beside us, and we wandered away to some pools he knew, where there might be duck. I think we dozed a little--it was so hot and silent in the forest. There was a feeling of being lost, for there were no landmarks in the interminable beauty of tall trees and undergrowth. It was a puzzle for the mahout and elephant to find openings wide enough to take us and the side boxes on the pad through the tangle. Often a wrong direction was taken, and a circuit had to be made to get round a tree, a ma.s.s of creepers, or a deep pool. Both the Burman and the elephant seemed to calculate, to a hair's breadth, the height and width of all it carried. I think the corner of one box only once touched a branch, and when we lay low no branches touched our heads; either the Burman's dah or the elephant's trunk cleared them off us.

The first pool was lit by a golden shaft of light through the greenery, rising fish were breaking its smooth weedy surface, but duck there were none; so we plunged on in the silence in another direction, came out into the kaing gra.s.s again, left the comparatively open forest behind us, and entered a trackless sea of reeds, which closed round us thickly on all sides.

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The elephant surged through this steadily, waving its trunk in front, then pressing the reeds to right and left, or raising it high, and pulling down ma.s.ses that threatened to sweep us off the pad. The dust and the heat of the sun overhead, and the monotony of the surging sound was a little oppressive.--It reminded me of moments long ago, in smaller reeds, and a small boy hunting duck round a loch in Perthshire; the stuffy, closed-in feeling, the crashing of the reeds, and the silence when you stopped to listen. Here we paused too, now and again, and the Burman stood up on the pad and tried to get our bearings. We got pretty well lost, I believe. Then on we went, the huge beast crushing through the endless savannahs, as at home in its reeds as a liner surging through pathless seas. The motion and sound kept going all night in my dreams, the slow rolling of vast bones and muscles under the pad, and the crash of the reeds giving way, and the swish as they closed behind us. Here, as in the jungle, pretty blue convolvuli twisted up dead reeds nearly to our level, and peeped up at the sun. When we finally struck the long-sought for pools there were no duck, leastwise, but two, and some snake-birds, as they call a cormorant here that has a neck like an S. Round the edges the gra.s.s had been regularly grazed, so I'd bet on a shot there for one who could wait, but, apart from the shot, what would one not give for the pleasure of watching some of Burmah's beasts in their natural state. We were both a little tired by the time we got back in the afternoon to the path to the river, and an hour or two after, when we crossed the sands, and slid off our elephant's back at the river's edge, we had to take kinks out of our lower extremities, and even our elephant seemed very exhausted as it stood in the shallows, and slowly lifted water in its trunk and squirted it into its mouth. She and her mahout lodged the night on the far side.

As we crossed the river in our canoes, the sun was setting, and Carter said, "Isn't this like the West Highlands?" I had been thinking the same, almost admitting to myself that this country is perhaps as beautiful--certainly to the sportsman who neither rents nor owns lands at home, it must be out and away better. The view from his window in the Fort to the west was splendid. The Military Police Bungalow is on the top of the river bank, and beneath us stretched the sands, and the river reflecting violet and gold from the after-glow; then the rolling woods and the distant Chin hills, in purple and red, against the sunset, with one tall rain-column, very slowly pa.s.sing across the yellow sky. Swing a branch of a heavy-leaved tree across the top of the wide window in j.a.panesque arrangement, put two men, two pipes, and two pegs in the foreground, the rising bubbles sparkling yellow in the level sunset rays, and the pipe's incense ascending in blue perpendiculars, and you have a suggestion of the perfect peace and entire absence of bustle which we a.s.sociate with a certain Valley of Pong.

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It made "trop de chose," to quote the great Carolus, to go out to dinner after such a full day, but the occasion was somewhat important; General Macleod and Mrs Macleod and his staff were to be entertained at the Military Police Mess.

The dinner was beautifully done, flowers and menu could not have possibly been better, though the party was not large, only our two hosts of the Military Police, the General and his wife, and his aide-de-camp, and G. and myself. I learned afterwards the A.D.C. had charmed G. with tales of the dangers of crossing into China without escort and permits.

We had a great entertainment or Pwe after. We took out cigars and chairs outside, and sat in a half circle in moonlight and shadow. In front of us was a s.p.a.ce of silvery grey sand, the stage we will call it; at the back of the scene was a sentinel's box on the stage right, to the left the lower part of a tree, and, between these, a low breastwork of earth, all in shadow against a moonlit distance of mist, and woods and mountains. Enter left (spectators right), the supers from shade of trees, carrying lamps, they are Indian soldiers, Sikhs possibly, in mufti, you cannot distinguish them easily, they sit in shadow, two deep round the back of the stage on the ground and low breastwork, the lamps at intervals on the ground throw up a little warm light on their faces: the hubble-bubble is lit, and goes round from hand to hand, and the smoke of the tobacco hangs a little.

Enter left, dancers and musicians slowly, with shuffling steps. The quiet is broken by a note on a gong, struck softly, and there is an almost inaudible flute melody on reeds, and liquid notes struck on empty bamboos. These dusky figures are Kachin men, with red turbans, and short, white, very loose kilts and bolero jackets. Some of the reflected light from the sand shows their curious, serious, boyish faces. They are short, but well-knit; they dance in a slow figure in a line, hand in hand, the bare feet shuffling with a little sound in the dust. The music is very faint, but you long to be able to remember the uncommon air that seems to have caught the quiet of the hills, and the depths of the bamboo woods.

These Kachin players are natives of the mountains here, and to the north. They are being brought into order, and indeed, a number are enlisting in the Military Police. Till recently, they were free, wild mountaineers, doing a little farming and raiding and vendetta business.

They went off, and came back from the deep shadows of the trees with glittering swords and more strident music, and louder beating on gongs, and harsher notes on chanters, and a loud booming sound on a narrow, six-foot-six drum with bell-shaped mouth; and the figures danced quickly, going backwards, in circles, and breaking into groups, the swords whirling and flickering beautifully in the moonlight, and the audience clapped hands gently in time, and there was an occasional heugh! as used to be the way in our Highland Reel, before the invention of the--lowlander, the screaming "eightsome."

I wish I remembered more of the Pwe--how I wish I could see it over and over again, till I could remember part of one of these quiet reedy tunes, so that I could recall this scene and the charm of Burmah whenever I pleased--for me, not even a scent, or colour, or form, can recall past scenes so vividly as a few notes of an air, the rhythm of some folk-song--a few minor notes, an Alla--Allah, and you breathe the hot air of desert, and feel the monotony of black men, and sand, and sun--Thrum--thrum--thrum, and you are in the soft, busy night, in Spain, and again a few minor notes, strung together, perhaps, by Greig, in the Saeter, and you feel the scent of the pines in the valley rising to the snow--a concertina takes me back to warm golden sunsets in the dog watches in the Doldrums!--guess, I am fortunate receiving sweet suggestions from a concertina!

8th February.--Up in the morning very early, and went with the Algys to witness the Review of Captain Kirke's Kachin and Native Military Police before the General. Mrs Algy looked on from the Fort, and General Macleod and Captain Kirke stood at the saluting base, Mrs Macleod on a white pony behind, and Mr Algy of the Civil Police, and myself represented the B.P. The newly-recruited Kachins' marching and drill was perfection. Their rifles and bayonets they handled with precision, and as if they loved them. They are small men, but well shaped, not quite so bombe, but even more lithe-looking than Ghurkas, Captain K. says they are as good for hill-work; in fact, if it is possible, they are better!

They stormed a village after the march past, which was a charming sight to see. The people in the village used black powder, so you could tell from what parts of the brown, sun-dried cane houses the shots came from.

They took cover wonderfully, considering it was only sham fight, ran in in sections, generally aimed at something, and fired without flinching, though they wore boots, which must have been a new and painful experience. I felt quite martial myself, and felt how excellent it must be to go fighting with some hundreds or thousands of lives to stake on an issue, and, so reflecting, my admiration increased for those private gentlemen at home, and in the Colonies, who went with only their own lives to Africa, for somebody else to stake.

In the evening the Officers came to the D.-C. Bungalow, and we had music, and drank to the health of our unknown host who is still in the hills, and Captain Kirke pencilled a route map for our ride into China.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Yesterday afternoon we did a little preparation for our trek into China.

Mr Kohn, the storekeeper in Bhamo, imports to the East, the essentials of western civilization (in my opinion claret and cut Virginian) and the etceteras; Cross and Blackwell things. And the West, he supplies with Shan swords and orchids, Kachin bags, ornaments in jade, gold and silver, and all sorts of curios. So we got bread from him for seven days, and tinned b.u.t.ter, milk, coffee, and a supply of the dried leaves of a certain aromatic shrub, for an infusion called Tea, also his Uisquebagh, and live ducks and hens in baskets, and six Chinese ponies, and three Chinamen--quite an extensive piece of shopping which took two hours at least.

... It is really very pleasant to feel we are actually going with our own mule train into the wilds, where even Cook's tickets and Empires peter out; there is almost the same exciting feeling as of sailing into uncharted seas, and seeing new lands.

Our mule train cannot exactly be called interminable; but we have four riding ponies to add to the live stock already mentioned, making a caravan of ten beasts. Besides the three Chinese men, there is our Madra.s.see boy, an Indian cook, in black top-coat and black Delhi cap; he has a plain but honest face, and a stutter and a few words of English, and there is a youthful Burman to help him, and three Indian soldiers, Sowars, to ride behind our ill.u.s.trious selves! Quite an interesting crowd when you come to think of it, for its size and babel of tongues!

but, my certie! I'd nearly left out the cook's charming and stately Burmese wife! She is the most decorative part of the show; with a yellow orchid in her black hair, coppery-brown lungy, green-jacket and pink scarf floating from her shoulders; she carries a black gingham umbrella in one hand, and in the other, of course, a big white cheroot, and behind her toddles her dog, liver and white, half terrier, half daschhound.