From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 23

We got our packages fast on the pack saddles, and the procession on the road only three hours after the time we had aimed at, which we thought not bad for beginners, and G. and I followed, in a pony trap, with the four ponies and two Sowars, her maid being left in the care of the American missionary's wife.

Out of Bhamo for some miles, the road is macadamised, broad level and straight, with grand columnar trees on either side, and leaves on its surface. Every mile or so you meet or pa.s.s groups of Kachins, Chinese or Shans, or people you can't quite place. They walk in Indian file as they are accustomed to in narrow hill and jungle paths. The Chinese men are without women and carry burdens, the Kachins carry their swords slung under the left arm, and their women carry their burdens. Some tribesmen have bows and arrows as well as swords. The Kachin woman's costume is of a pretty colour, a little dark velvet jacket with short sleeves, a kilt to the knee, and dark putties, both of woven colours like tartan, in diced and in herringbone and running patterns. She carries the load in a narrow, finely-woven basket on her back, and her black hair is dressed after the fashion in Whitechapel. She is short with very strong calves.

Her jaunty husband comes behind, with his red bonnet or turban c.o.c.ked on one side, the sword and red ta.s.selled bag hung from his left shoulder.

The square Kachin bag or satchel is a pure joy of bright threads and patches and wonderful needlework, and is a little suggestive of a magnificent sporran. His expression is said to be sly, but I don't think so. His head is held straight on a longish neck for his size, his dark, slightly oblique eyes are wide open and mildly startled looking--ditto his mouth, he is neater in figure than the Chinese, and does not look so heavy and potent. The top of his head is wide, his nose short and jaw and chin square but not deep.

As we drove through the fallen leaves and the shade on this fine road, the sun setting behind us lit up the tallest trees and branches in front of us in gold and green against the violet hills in the East. I scribbled figures in sketch-book and G. drove, and the syce sat behind with my gun handy. I also kept a corner of an eye lifting for jungle fowl, and by Jove! we were not two miles out when a hen ran across the road a hundred yards ahead and the sketches flew, and out came the gun; but instead of driving on and getting down when past as I ought--we stopped, and I went on, and when I came up to the place saw a c.o.c.k scurrying along, and fired just as it got behind a bamboo clump, and I said--"tut, tut," and was very disappointed; as have been many men before me, by the same trifling miscarriage. It seemed a handsome little bird, a glowing bit of orange red colour. It's as fascinating as novel, the sensation of driving through country where you may see game at any time, and which all belongs to you and is gamekeepered by Government for you--it makes you feel a share of the county actually belongs to you.

I have read that you should get your terrier into the trap about this part of the road; the leopards have demonstrated this by collaring those that have followed the few white men's carriages that have driven along it. You may, see big game from it--I only saw pigs; they crossed the road, grey and bristly fellows, I'd swear they were wild, but I met Shans driving others in leash so like that now I am not quite sure.

It gets cold and dark as we get to the end of our drive, and we are glad to get down and into a rest-house of bamboo, built on trestles; it is like a pretty little shooting-box in the midst of shooting of measureless extent. The moon shines on its thatch, and the lamp lit inside tells us our caravan has arrived before us. The country is flat here, with fields and little jungle. We see the woods rising to the hills which we will reach to-morrow, and wisps of pungent smoke from a village near hang low across the fields. A few minutes walk brings us to where a smith works under a tall solitary tree; the smith, as usual, is brawny, and sparks fly up and bellows blow, and children blink at the glow just as they do elsewhere. The apprentice works the bellows, and at a nod from the smith pulls out the glowing metal, and the two thump away at it cheerily, and shove it back and heap up the charcoal, the bellows go again, and the smith has three whiffs at his pipe; it is a dah, or sword, they are making, welding one bit of iron after another into one piece.

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We dine by candle light, and the moonlight comes through the hanging screen window and through the s.p.a.ces between the planks of the floor, and our music is the distant ringing of the anvil, and the intermittent liquid notes of a Burmese reed instrument in the village.

After dinner, the mail, which we had not time to read yesterday, and our home news from the cold North-West. Two letters are from "The Grey City," both from authors, one with a word picture of that most dreary sight, our empty High Street on a Sunday morning, the poor people in their dens and the better cla.s.s in St Giles; the other tells us that the "Boyhood of R. L. S." does well, as of course we knew it would; so we pa.s.s the evening pleasantly enough with thoughts of East and West, and friends here and there--even though that jungle fowl did get clean away.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Kalychet, 10th February.--It seems quite a long time since we were last night in the plains, in mist and haze and moonlight. It rained, and was very damp indeed during the night. Our slumbers were disturbed by a groaning, creaking, wooden-wheeled lowland train of carts, that seemed to suffer agony for ages--it went so slowly past and out of hearing; perhaps it was the squeaking of the wheels that set all the c.o.c.ks a-crowing. The more the wheels creak the better, for the Burman believes this creaking and whistling keeps away the "Nats" or spirits of things.

The night seemed long and unrefreshing, and in the grey of the morning we found our blankets were wet with fog. But that was down below, now we are up on higher ground, and the air is drier and pleasant.

In early morning we drove in the pony cart half the way from Momouk to this Kalychet, the sowars riding behind with the four ponies. The road lay through green aisles of bamboo that met overhead, and it was cold and wet under them for some hours.

At mid-day we stopped and the syce went back with the pony cart, and I unpacked some fishing tackle to have a try for Mahseer on a river some distance beyond our halting place. I selected a rod from the million of bamboos round us, one of decent growth, not the longest, they ran to ninty feet at a guess, and fastened snake rings on with adhesive plaster from our medical stores, the stuff you get in rolls, an adaptation of a valuable tip from _The Field_;[35] the tip was for mending rods, but it does as well, or better, for putting on temporary rings.

[35] An improvement on the splendid tip is to use the gummy tape used for insulating electric wire.

It was a grand river, what I'd call a small salmon river, tumbling into pools over great water-worn boulders, with a tangle of reeds and bamboos above flood mark. It was piping hot fishing, and the water seemed rather clear for the phantom I tried. I had two on for a second, and had a number of touches from small Mahseer that I saw following the minnow, but failed to land anything, so alas!--I can't swear I've caught a Mahseer yet or killed a jungle fowl--my two small ambitions just now. G.

collected seeds and roots of wild plants to send home, so she had a better bag than I had. We rode back to our halting place to lunch--or tiffen, or whatever it's called in these parts--a sort of solid breakfast at one o'clock,--on the side of the pony track; the Chinese pack-ponies wandered round eating bamboo leaves and tough looking reeds.

Along the road we pa.s.sed many groups of Kachins, all with swords and mild wondering eyes. This halt was rather a business I thought,--all the packages unladened, pots and pans and fires, and a complicated lunch. I incline to our home fashion when living out of doors, of a crust and a drink at mid-day and a square meal after the day's outing.

As we were getting our cavalcade started, along came Captain Kirke and Carter in shirt-sleeves, riding back hard to Headquarters. They are hard as nails but looked just the least thing tired, having ridden a great distance since yesterday on an inspecting tour from some hill village.

They hoped to get to Bhamo by night _if_ their steeds held out.

For the rest of the day we rode, at first with our whole crew, latterly by ourselves and the two Sepoys:--cantered a hundred yards or so and jog-trotted, ambled, walked, cantered again and climbed slowly up hillside paths; through damp hollows, between brakes of high reeds with beautiful fluffy seeds, under tall trees festooned with creepers with lilac flowers, and over hard sunny bits of the path with b.u.t.terflies floating up against us, and overhead, orchids and pendant air roots and wild fruits. I suppose it was the beautiful surroundings that made the ride so enjoyable, and the change from the plain to the hill air.

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Towards evening we rode up a saddle ridge that crossed the valley along which we had been riding, and came out of trees and bamboos into the open. Here we found another pretty public-work's dak bungalow of dark teak uprights and cross beams, with white-washed cane matting between and neat gra.s.s thatch laid over bamboos, with wide views up and down the valley of rolling woods and distant hills. To the north-east a distant range of blue hills cut across the valley, touches of sunlight showed they were covered with forest; below us the path led zigzagging into the yellow and green bamboos. Looking back to the south down the valley we had come up, the Chin hills bounded the horizon, but between us and them lay miles and miles of rolling woods, and a haze at the foot of the hills over the plain of the Irrawaddy. The air was delicious, the views enthralling, the lodging comfortable, the country we might call our own, with no one about, except the native Durwan, or caretaker, and his Kachin women folk, only in the distance on a hillside were two Kachins clearing a patch of jungle--otherwise solitude and peace. Our ponies and baggage arrived all right but some time after us; it ought to have been looted if what recent writers say about the Kachins is right--that "they do no honest labour, but live by lifting cattle, looting caravans, and stealing anything upon which they can lay their hands." Krishna and all the others set at once to unpack and get ready our meal, which felt rather late--I should have timed them to arrive before us. It grew chilly in the evening, and our red blankets soon seemed uncommonly attractive.

Sunday forenoon.--You might, if of a contemplative mind, and not hara.s.sed by desire for sport, or movement, or travel, stay for many hours, even days, with great content at this Kalychet bungalow, looking out over forest and glen, inhaling the pure air, and even run to poetry were you of the age.

"Watching shadows, shadows chasing,"

--over the forest-clad mountains which have only cleared patches here and there, where Kachins have cut the bamboos, taken a crop or two and then moved on, leaving the ground to lie fallow and grow over weeds again. On the hillside there are two of these clearings across the track above us, some two acres or so in extent, with the bamboos cut and stumps of trees projecting, and in the middle of one of these there is a native hut, like a fragile boat-house, projecting from the slope of the hill. Narrow footpaths through the bamboos lead from our cleared s.p.a.ce up to them. Two little Kachin women are climbing up these paths, their cattle in front of them; each has a basket on her back, and she spins as she goes--now they are followed by a sprightly boy and his sister, the boy straight as a dart, with a sword slung across his back, and his gay red-ta.s.selled satchel on his left side; both have bare feet, and neither of them seem to heed the thorns. The girl has a loose bundle of thin hoops of bra.s.s and black cane round her hips, under her short black jacket, and two great silver torques round her neck and breast; her clothes are dark blue, black, and red.

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... There is the quiet of the mountains; only slightly broken at intervals of an hour or so when a caravan pa.s.ses, but sometimes these pa.s.s perfectly silently without stopping; barefooted carriers with their merchandise slung across the shoulder on bamboos, and sometimes with ponies, and bells jingling cheerily. Just now, one has come from the China frontier, some ten carriers wearing pointed straw hats several feet wide. They unlimber and drink a little water from a spring that spouts out of the side of a hill through a bamboo; they are quiet people--their voices and the gurgling of the spring just reach us. Then from Burmah side come women carriers, Shans, I think, old and young, in dark blue clothes, short petticoats and tall turbans; they come st.u.r.dily up the hill and joke with the Chinese coolies as they pa.s.s without stopping down the zigzag path into the bamboos, by the path our ponies and people have already followed. But here is movement! and a cheery jingling!--a whole string of Chinese pack ponies, eighty at least, coming up from Bhamo, each laden with bales, a Chinaman to every three ponies. At the end stalks a lean Indian. I suppose he owns the show--his wife follows, a very black thing, a Madra.s.see, to judge by her not very white and inelegant hangings. They drink and spit at the spring, and he sees us and salaams, and looks in to see the durwan, who is one of his countrymen.

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But now we must be jogging too, though it is pleasant here. We leave one sowar behind, in pain he says, but I doubt if he's very ill. So we get on to our rather big polo ponies, one black, the other white, and go down the valley on the path to China--said bridle path quite dry now excepting under bamboo clumps, though it rained hard in the night.

7 P.M.--Kulong Cha--"There's no place like home" they say, and I thought so; now I think there is, perhaps even better. Our own highlands must have been like this before General Wade and Sir Walter Scott opened them to the tourist; the Pa.s.s of Leny or where Bran meets Tay, when there was more forest, and only bridle tracks, and men going armed, must have been like this, even to the free fishing and shooting.

We are in a cup-shaped wooden glen, our rest-house eighty feet up the hillside above the track, and a brawling burn that meets the Taiping a few hundred yards beyond our halting place. The burn suggests good fishing, and the Taiping looks like a magnificent salmon river. It is 7 P.M. and Krishna busy setting dinner, and your servant writing these notes to the sound of many waters and by a candle dimly burning, for the sun has gone below the wooded hills and left us in a soft gloom. Several camp fires begin to twinkle along the road where the caravans we overtook, and others from the east, are preparing for the night. Our Chinese coolies too have their fires going near us, the smoke helping to soften the already blurred evening effect. We have had, for us, a long afternoon's ride--a little tiring and hot in the bottom of the valley when the path came down to the Taiping river,--a winding and twisting path, round little glens to cross foaming burns, level enough for a hundred yards canter, then down, and up, hill sides in zigzags, here and there wet and muddy with uncertain footing, through groves of bamboos and under splendid forest trees, some creepers hanging a hundred feet straight as plumb lines, others twisted like wrecked ships' cables, and flowering trees, with delicious scent every hundred yards or so. We felt inclined to stop and look, and sketch vistas of sunlit foliage through shadowy aisles of feathery bamboos, or splendid open forest views with mighty trees, and the river and its great salmon pools. There were splendid b.u.t.terflies, some large and black as velvet, with a patch of vivid ultramarine, others yellow with cerulean, and another deep fig green with a blazing spot of primrose, and pigeons, and of course jungle fowl, because I had not my gun!

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Our caravan arriving here was picturesque. They came round the corner over the burn bridge, walking briskly, the sick sowar riding in the rear, the cook and his Burmese wife leading--she so neat, with a pink scarf, green jacket, and plum-coloured silk skirt, her belongings in a handkerchief slung over her shoulder from a black cotton parasol, and in her left hand, carried straight as a saint's lilies, a branch of white flowers for G.; then came the Burman youth, also with some bright colour, a red scarf round his black hair and tartan kilt; he carried my gun, and the Chinamen in weather-worn blue dungarees, loose tunics and shorts, and wide yellow umbrella hats slung on their backs, with their s.h.a.ggy brown and white ponies. We arrived at five, the mules and baggage at six, and already dinner is almost cooked, our belongings in place, beds made, mosquito curtains up,--and this day's journal done!

... Wish somebody would write this day's log for me--I must fish! The burn in front is in grand spate, so is the Taiping river, roaring down discoloured. If I know aught of Highland spates, they will both be down in the hour and fishable. The glen is full of sun from behind us, and the mist is rising in lumps. It rained in the night; when we turned in, the mist had come down in ridges on us, and it felt stuffy and warm under blankets, and the sound of the waters was m.u.f.fled by the mist. I awoke with a world of vivid white light in my eyes, the glen was quivering with lightning, and the G.o.ds played awful bowls overhead!

Green trees up the hillsides and contorted mist wreaths showed as in daylight, and then were buried in blackness and thunder. Then the rain came! to put it intil Scottis--a snell showir' dirlin' on the thatch.

There was the bleezin cairn, and the craig that lowped and dinnled i'

the dead-mirk dail, the burn in spate and the rowin flood o' the Taiping dinging their looves thegither at their tryst i' the glen--ane gran' an'

awesome melee. But I don't like these effects, so I buried myself in red blankets, and as the rain thundered down, thought of our coolies; I expect they got from under their hats and went below the floor of our bungalow. The atmosphere, after an hour, grew suddenly pleasant and cool--a breeze rose--there was light in the left, and the glint of many stars--and I pulled on another blanket and slept at last refreshingly.

What a night the Chinese up the road must have had. No jungle however thick could have kept out that rain, and it is thin where they are, for many campers have cut down the branches and bamboos for fodder and firewood. They sleep with only a piece of matting over their bodies, the wide straw hat over their head and shoulders; and their fires, of course, were extinguished. The sort of thing our Volunteers enjoyed in S.A., and for which they got rheumatism and experience, and a medal, and no opportunity to wear it.

One of the sepoys has cut me a bamboo, so it's time to be off to put on snake-rings, and get out tackle and try somehow to hang on to one of these Mahseer that I have heard of so much and of which I know so little. Local information there is none, but I have spoons and phantoms, and so--who knows!

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

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The above notes and remarks, full of hope, were written with a little impatience to be "on the water." Now, after two hours scrambling through jungle to and from the river, I've less hope and an empty basket. It was hot and still down in the glen, like the vale wherein sat grey-haired Saturn, and--

"Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feathered gra.s.s, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest."

and fruit and flowers too lay sodden under foot. It was tough work getting through the few hundred yards of jungle of creeper thorns and boulders to the river's edge. I fished two or three sheltered runs, and came back soaking from within and without from the heat and wet foliage, scratched by thorns, with ears drumming from the noise of many waters, and no basket, and the river not down two inches and muddy as could be!

We must be off again now--or at least let the pack ponies and servants go.

12th, Monday.--Nampoung, after two hours on our little gees, two hours that seemed days! Hot and stuffy down in the glens in the din and roar of the Taiping in spate, climbing up for a thousand feet, a hundred yards on the level, twisting round corries--such fascinating corries, stuffed with every sort of tropic growth, like the pictures one saw in stories of Jules Verne, but in such rich varied colouring! I vow I saw creepers of two hundred feet, wild plantains with fruit, and great ferns, heavy-leaved dark foliage and feathery bamboos, the leaves yellow and dropping and covering our path with a crisp brown carpet.

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We rode generally in single file, our right sides against rocks or cuttings in the yellow earth bank, and every here and there were views through the foliage, sometimes almost straight down below us a thousand feet, where we could catch a glimpse of foaming river and hear its roar coming up to us.

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