From Edinburgh to India & Burmah Part 25

... In the morning we woke early and drank in the beauty of the clouds lifting off the river and floating up the corries in the distant hills.

We did not awake early intentionally; the wet mist in the night tautened the cord of the fog horn, and when the steam pressure rose, off it went loud and long enough to waken seventy sleepers.

... We pa.s.s villages quickly on our way down. We have a flat on either side, but there is only a half-hearted bazaar in one, and the other is empty, so we can use it as our promenade.

By lunch time the sky had all cleared into a froth of sunshine and blue and white clouds. The sand and distant forest and hills became well nigh invisible in the bright light, and the river seemed a shield of some fine metal, that took all the sky and smoothed it and reflected it with concentrated glitter. For our foreground we have the white table on deck in shade, with a heap of roses and white orchids in a silver bowl; the fallen petals blend into the half-tone of the table cloth, and there's peace and quiet and sleep, to the pulsation of the paddles and the hissing of the foaming water pa.s.sing astern.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Girl of Upper Burmah]

At Tayoung in the evening we swing round, head up stream, and lie along the sh.o.r.e--too late to go shooting, so we put on a cast of flies and cast over rising fish, and get a dozen very pretty fish in half-an-hour.

I confess I put a tiny piece of meat on each fly, but hardly enough to call it bait fishing. These were all silvery, "b.u.t.ter fish," excepting one, which was rather like a herring. Meantime we had the heavy sunk line baited with dough, and by and bye it began to go out into the stream, and we paid out line rapidly, and then suddenly hauled taut and were fast to a "big un." It was pull devil, pull baker for about five to ten minutes, when the big fish came alongside, and we got a noose round its tail and hauled it on board. It weighed twenty-eight lbs!

... The 22nd.--I think, but who can tell?--for each glorious hot day is as monotonously beautiful as the day before; all bright and shining, the blue and white sky reflected in the endless silky riband of the river down which we steadily paddle, between silver strands and bowery woods, stopping only for the night, and possibly for an hour or two in the day, when we go ash.o.r.e to sketch, or sometimes to shoot.

I have been trying to make up my mind which of two perfect days'

shooting was the best. This afternoon's shoot and tramp through the jungle--Bag, my first brace francolin, to my own gun, or a day last year in stubble and turnips, and twenty-five brace partridges to my own gun and black pointer. I think the jungle day has it, though the bag was so small, by virtue of its beauty, as against the trim fields of the Lothians.

We started together, G. and her maid to collect seeds and roots and orchids, and I wandered on to shoot with a Burmese guide.

Some of the tall trees have shed their leaves, and are now a ma.s.s of blossom. One high tree had dropped a mat of purple flowers, as large as tulips, across the dried gra.s.s and brown leaves at its foot. Another tree with silvery bark had every leafless branch ablaze with orange vermilion flowers. "Fire of the Forest," or "Flame of Forest," I heard it called in India,--its colour so dazzling, you see everything grey for seconds after looking at it. Then there were brakes of flowering shrubs like tobacco plants with star like white flowers, and the scent of orange blossom; and others with velvety petals of heliotrope tint, and ma.s.ses of creepers with flowers like myrtle, and a fresh scent of violets and daisies--the air so pure and pleasant that each scent came to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way, being free to you or your neighbour.

With a shade of luck, I'd have had quite a decent bag; but you know how some days things just miss the bag--you can't exactly tell why--so it was this afternoon; there should have been two hares, and two quail, and two birds that seemed very like pheasants. One fell in impenetrable thorns, and we could not get nearer than about ten yards, and I missed another sitting. To restore my reputation with the Burmese boy, I had to claw down some high pigeons from untold heights on their way home to roost. After this, as I was loading, a partridge got up from some stubbly gra.s.s in a clearing, with an astonishingly familiar whirr, and went clear away, and I'd barely loaded when a b.u.t.ton quail whipped over some bushes, and it dropped, but in impenetrable thorns! I'd not heard of Burmese partridges, but the flight and whirr were unmistakeable, though the bird was larger than those at home. So we went on, longing for the company of my silky, black-coated pointer Flo, and a couple of hardy mongrel spaniels--together we would soon have filled the bag!...

It is such fun going through new country, without a ghost of an idea which direction to take or what method to pursue, or what game to expect.

At the next cleared s.p.a.ce we came to, two birds, mightily like pheasants, were feeding on some ground that had once been tilled, so, by signs to the Burmese boy (he cleans the knives on board) I easily made him understand he was to drive them over me, and we each made a circuit, he round the open, the gun behind a brake of dog roses and plantains, and the birds came over with rather too uncertain flight for pheasants.

I got one, and the other fell far into thorns, but they were, after all, only a large kind of magpie, but with regular gamey-brown wings, blue-black heads, and long tails that gave them on the ground a pa.s.sing resemblance to pheasants. The next open s.p.a.ce seemed absolutely suited for partridges, and, as we walked into the middle, up got two and came down to quite a conventional right and left, and our glee was unbounded when we found them in the dried gra.s.s. The colours of their plumage was handsome, not quite so sober as that of our partridge at home, and their size and shape was almost between that of a grouse and a partridge; Francolin,[37] I've since heard they were. Two hares I just got a glimpse of, greyish in colour, and very thin-looking beasts. Then the sun got low, and we heard deer barking in knolly ground, and would fain have sat the evening out quietly, and waited, and watched the night life of the jungle.

[37] There is not a specimen quite like them in S. Kensington.

It was dark when we made for the river and the soft, dusty track through the green gra.s.s at its edge. Big beetles pa.s.sed us humming, and we met some children with lamps swinging, and they sang as they went, to keep away the Nats or spirits of things.

Our steamer looked pleasantly homelike, lying a yard from the sh.o.r.e. The purdahs were up and showed the lamp-lit table on deck, set for dinner, and flowers, books and chairs, a cosy picture. The light was reflected in the grey river, and waved slightly in the ripple of the current from the anchor chain. A cargo steamer, forsooth! a private yacht is the feeling it gave.

There are only two pa.s.sengers besides ourselves, a Mr and Mrs S. With the master and mate we make six at dinner, and the concert after, in which the first mate plays piano accompaniments to all the chanties we can sc.r.a.pe together--"Stormy Long,"--"Run, let the Bulgine Run,"--"Away Rio:" cheerful chanties like "The Anchor's Weighed," with its "Fare ye well, Polly, and farewell Sue," and sad, sad songs of ocean's distress, like "Leave her, Johnnie; Its time to leave her." Neither the master nor mate have seen salt water for many a day, but I know their hearts yearn for the wide ocean and tall ships a-sailing; for all the beauties of all the rivers in the world pale beside the tower of white canvas above you, and the surge and send of a ship across the wide sea.

... 23rd February.--Kyonkmyoung--not p.r.o.nounced as spelt, and spelling not guaranteed. We spent the night at above village. Now we are pa.s.sing a wooded sh.o.r.e, and two remarkable paG.o.das side by side, like two Italian villas, with flat roofs and windows of western design, each has a white terrace in front with a small paG.o.da spire, and in the trees there are many white terraces and steps up to them from the river's edge.

... The up-river mail has pa.s.sed us, it had been delayed on a sandbank; we ship an American family party from it. Having lost some hours on the sandbank, they cannot now proceed up the river to Bhamo, as they had intended, so they returned with us to Mandalay. The first gangway plank was hardly down when they were ash.o.r.e and away like a bullet, with a ricochet and a tw.a.n.g behind; a Silver king, they say, and a future president!--How rapidly Americans travel, and a.s.similate facts, and what extraordinary conclusions some of them make.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We slow-going Scots hang on at Mandalay for a little. We have not half seen the place, and wish to spend hours and hours at the paG.o.da, watching the worshippers there, and trying, if possible, to remember enough expressions and forms and colours to use at home. Our fellow pa.s.sengers, Mr and Mrs S., elect to stay on board. They have some days to spare, waiting for a down-river steamboat, wisely preferring that, to the bustle through to Rangoon in the train.

... Mr S. is playing the piano, G. and I are painting, Mrs S. sewing, and all the morning, from the lower deck, there comes the continual c.h.i.n.k of silver rupees, where Captain Robinson and his mate are settling the trade accounts of the trip, blessing the Burmese clerk for having half a rupee too much; funny work for men brought up to "handle reef and steer."

Three steamers, similar to our own, with flats, lie alongside the sandbank, all in black and white, with black and red funnels and corrugated iron roofs, and "Glasgow" painted astern. Bullock-carts b.u.mp along the sh.o.r.e in clouds of dust, and the bales come and go, and trade here is still really picturesque; there are no ugly warehouses or stores, and everything is open and above board--just, I suppose, as trade went on in the days of Adam or Solomon.

Went to the railway station, we were obliged to do so. We must leave the river to get down to Rangoon and Western India, to catch our return P. & O. from Bombay. We have decided to return by the north of India, and not by Ceylon, though we are drawn both ways. Ceylon route by steamer all the way, seems so much easier for tired travellers, than going overland in trains; but what would friends at home say if we missed Benares, Agra, and Delhi.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

... A native stationmaster, in a perfunctory manner, points out the kind of 1st cla.s.s carriage we have to travel in. It is not inviting, and we get back to the river, and make a jotting of our steamer and the sh.o.r.e against the evening sky, and the bullock-carts slowly stirring the dust into a golden haze.... Then we go to live on sh.o.r.e with friends for a day or two.

I despair of making anything, in the meantime, of the Arrakan PaG.o.da, and the great golden Buddha with the wonderful light on it, and the kneeling tribesmen and women from over Asia. It is one of the finest, if not _the_ finest, subject for painting I have ever seen, and yet I can't see one telling composition. Looking at the people kneeling, from the side, you can't see the Buddha, and, looking at the Buddha, you only see the peoples' backs.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

From the train to Rangoon, you see very little of the country: we felt rather unhappy in it after the comfort of the steamer. A native stationmaster lost half our luggage for us--vowed he'd put it on board.

I knew that he knew that he had not done so, but I could do nothing. It was glaringly hot at the station; several Europeans wore black spectacles, and I had to do the same, for needle like pains ran through my eyes since the day on the snipe jheel at Bhamo.

The first part of the journey was smooth enough, but bless me! they brought up the Royal train from Rangoon at ten miles an hour faster than we travel down! How uneasily must have lain a head that is to wear a crown.

We couldn't sleep at night for the carriage seemed to be going in every direction at once--waggled about like a basket, and we shook so much we laughed at a mosquito that aimed at a particular feature. But in the early morning we did actually sleep for a little, and about 4 or 5 A.M.

were awakened, for tea, and plague inspection at 6 A.M., about two hours before getting into Rangoon!--a plague on tea and inspectors at that hour of the morning!

It wasn't pure joy that journey. Ah! and it was sad too, getting to the cultivated plains round Rangoon--eternal rice fields and toiling Indians--uglier and uglier as we neared civilisation. The saddest sight of all, the half-bred Burman and Indian woman or man--the woman the worst; with, perhaps, a face of Burmese cast, over-shadowed with the hungry expression of the Indian, and a black thin shank and flat foot showing under the lungy, where should be rounded calf and clean cut foot. We may be great colonists we Britons, but I fear our stocking Burmah with scourings from India is only great as an evil.

Now I will pa.s.s Rangoon in my journal. We stayed a day or two at a lodging in a detached teak villa in a compound which contained native servants, and crows _ad nauseum_--it was dull, stupid and dear, and we were sorry we had not gone to the hotel, and our greatest pleasure was visiting the Shwey PaG.o.da again, and the greatest unpleasantness was getting on board the British India boat the "Lunka" for Calcutta. We were literally bundled pell mell on board, some twenty pa.s.sengers and baggage, and some five hundred native troops all in a heap in the waist on top of us--what a miserable muddle. The French pa.s.sengers smiled derisively at the inefficacy or rather total absence of any system of embarkation of pa.s.sengers, and the Americans opened their eyes! Always they repeat on board--"Why, you first cla.s.s pa.s.sengers don't pay us." On the Irrawaddy river boats they say this too, but they make you jolly comfortable for all that.

It was six hours of struggle, mostly in the sun, before I got our things into our cabin, and half our luggage lay on deck for the night with natives camping on it! The officers on board were very pleasant and agreeable, as they were on board the last British India boat we were on, but the want of method in getting pa.s.sengers and their baggage off the wharf and into boats and on board was almost incredible....[38] There was a vein of amus.e.m.e.nt, I remember, when I can get my mind off the annoying parts of our "Embarkation." I got a chanter from a Chinese pedlar in the street in the morning--heard the unmistakeable reedy notes coming along the street as I did business in the the cool office of Messrs Cook & Co., and leaving papers and monies went and met the smiling Chinese pedlar of sweetmeats who sold me his chanter. The position of the notes is the same as on our chanter, and the fingering is the same; afterwards on board when I played a few notes on it the beady black eyes of the Ghurkas in the waist sparkled, and they pulled out their practice chanters from their kit at once--and there we were!--and the long-legged, almond-eyed Sikhs on their baggage looked on in languid wonder.

[38] Getting off at Calcutta was indescribable--if possible worse than the embarkation--_a sauve qui peut_.

Would you like a description of Calcutta? I wish I could give it. It was a little different from what I expected, smaller, and yet with ever so much more life and bustle on the river than I'd expected. Commerce doesn't go slow on account of heat, and here, as in Burmah, I was surprised to see so much picturesque lading and unlading of cargoes going on by the river banks, and the green gra.s.s and trees running from the banks into the town. But we will jump Calcutta, I think, it is too big an order; but before going on may I say that the architecture is, to my mind, better than it is said to be. In Holdich's "India" it is unfavourably compared with that in Bombay, but do you know, I almost prefer the cla.s.sic style of Calcutta to the scientific rococco Bombay architecture, but I offer this opinion with the greatest diffidence, for I know the author of "India" is an artist--still--"I know what I like,"

as the burglar said when he took the spoons.

BENARES.--One evening we took train from Calcutta to Benares. Flat fields of white poppies were on either side, and English park-like scenes, without the mansions, and we thanked our stars we had not to live in what the Norse call "Eng" or meadow land.

The things of interest in Benares are in order--first the Ghats, then a river called the Ganges, and the monkey temple; of course there are a great many natives, but from a cursory impression of the faces in the crowds, I think they rank after the monkeys.

We arrived on a feast day with the golden beauty of Burmah and its people fresh in our minds, and found these natives were painting the town red. They slopped a liquid the colour of red ink over their neighbours' more or less white clothes, and threw handfuls of vermilion powder over each other--an abominable shade of vermilion--so roads and people and sides of houses were all stained with these ugly colours; in fact, at the Ghats or terraces at the river side, where many thousands were congregated, the air was thick with the vermilion dust. From the water's edge up the steps to the palaces and temples and houses at the top, the terraces swarmed with thousands of people, and the talk and mirthless laughter rose and fell like the continuous clamour from a guillemot rookery.

The scenes we met in the streets were only to be described in language of the Elizabethan period. If to-day at home we pa.s.s obscurantism for morality, the Indian does the reverse; he tears the last shreds from our ideas of what Phallic worship might once have been.

I think the Ghats are the most nauseating place in the world; there, is Idolatry, in capital letters--the most terrible vision that a mind diseased could picture in horrible nightmare! for you see thousands of inferior specimens of men and women dabbling in the water's edge, _doing all and every particular of the toilet in the same place almost touching each other_, and right amongst them are dead people in pink or white winding sheets being burned, and the ashes and half-burned limbs being shoved into the water--and I forgot--there's a main sewer comes into the middle of this.

We got on to a boat with a cabin on it, and sat on its roof on decrepit cane chairs, and the rowers below with makeshift oars gradually pulled us up and down the face of the Ghats--what oars, and what a ramshackle tub of a boat--too old and tumble-down for a fisherman's hen run at home.

Holy Gunga! What a crowd of men and women line the edge of these steps knee deep in the water, and babble and jabber and pray, day after day, and pretend to wash themselves, without soap! Only one man of the thousands I saw was proportionably shaped; and one woman was white, an Albino, I wish I could forget her bluey whiteness! and I saw boys doing Sandow exercises, evidently trying to bring up their biceps--poor little devils--how can they? They haven't time--they will be married and reproducing other little fragilities like themselves, before they are out of their teens!

The monkey temple is full of monkeys, and they have less apish expressions than the priests. The Prince of Wales saw it the patron told me, and added, "Princess give handsome presents--also Maharajahs--from 100 rupees to 50." So I gave one, very willingly, to get out, and thought it cheap at the price. Besides the nastiness of the monkeys, there was much blood of sacrifices drying on the ground and altars, and this was covered with flies; there are some abominable rites in this temple, but they are now _not supposed_ to sacrifice children.