Chapter III: Up the Irrawaddy to Bhamo

A group of white pagodas glowing in the sunlight: a flat shore rising to little hills further up the river--little hills with more pagodas on top of them, and beyond in the distance pale ghostly mountains almost lost in a faint haze. Perhaps there is no scene more typical of Burmah than this I looked upon from the deck of a steamer at Ferryshaw Siding, that meandered slowly across the wide water, just stirred by the least possible ripple.

A train waited on the far side above a stretch of loose grey sand. I was on my way to Katha to join there one of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's boats on its way up to Bhamo, and my dinner was eaten that Christmas evening in a small railway refreshment-room decorated with some prints after Landseer, and one of a sentimental girl's head called "The Soul's Awakening." Another man shared the same table in unbroken silence until, with some very bad coffee, the Hindoo "butler" brought the bills. "Excuse me," I said to the stranger, "but {40} you are an Englishman, and this is our Christmas dinner--will you drink a glass of wine with me?"

So we drank toasts in port that was thick enough to have pleased Alfred Tennyson, and slept none the worse for it on the jolting lumbering train.

There was a dense mist at Katha when I left the railway for the river-boat, and progress was slow until the air cleared and long flat sandbanks became visible and a green tree-clad plain with blue mountains to the north-west. Teak rafts drifted past us downstream on their long journey to Poozoondoung Creek, and the old tusker Mpo Chem and his "lady helps." Many rafts of bamboos passed us also, supporting heavy teak logs below them, for teak is not easily rafted till it is three years dead, and recently-felled logs float reluctantly as if possessing still enough of life to tell their sorrow at leaving the upland forests.

It is not many decades since rafts freighted with human bodies, more nearly still in touch with life than the new teak logs, floated down this river. Our captain, whose name was Teeldrup, a Dane with Icelandic blood, ran boats for the Irrawaddy traffic some years before the final annexation, and described to me a passage on this very piece of the river when no less than thirty unfortunate Kachins came floating down {41} the stream crucified upon bamboo frames. "A lot has been talked of the cruelties," said Captain Teeldrup, "but I think the poor devils were generally soon put out of their misery."

Mora and Segaw we passed--villages on the banks--taking on a few native passengers from small boats that came out to us, and at eight o'clock in the evening we anchored in mid-stream. The deck was quite covered in with canvas, and canvas also covered all the cabin windows. Notwithstanding these precautions, however, the mist in the morning was so thick that when I came to dress all my clothes were thoroughly damp. At half-past seven the fog began to lessen somewhat, but there was no question of starting, although we were already many hours behind time. Lumps of brown spongy froth kept appearing to float past and out of sight again in the little space of thick muddy water visible round the boat.

Hours later we got away, and at length sighted Bhamo late in the afternoon. I could just make out the red building of Fort C and a white spot, which I was told was the "bell" pagoda. Of the two existing forts, A is for the military police and C for the regulars, B, the intermediate fort, having been done away with a few years ago.

The broad river with its innumerable eddies comes swirling down between its level sandbanks, {42} and as the scenery was at Katha so it was at Bhamo--just a level plain of tall grasses and trees and beyond these, distant mountains now the colour of a ripe plum's bloom. Then suddenly slate-grey landing-flats appeared against the sand, and in a few minutes I was again on shore.

At Bhamo the agent of the Flotilla Company is a white-haired Frenchman, who once held an influential position in Burmah as minister to King Thebaw. He had gone to the East as a Bourbon exile and after years of unsuccessful schemes and vain intrigue, discredited and ruined by the failure of his own plans, Monsieur D'Avera, in a steamship office, now lavishes the distinguished courtesy of an old French family upon American tourists and such wayfarers as myself, and is said to have written an astounding book of memoirs for posthumous publication.

It is in trade that Bhamo's claim to attention lies, and in the street of Chinese offices and stores for the exchange of Manchester for Chinese goods. A Burman, to whom I had been talking on the boat, was related by marriage to the family of a Chinese merchant, and in the evening he took me to call at a house with the top of the gateway curved up at the ends in a way, he said, only affected by Chinamen of official position. The merchant was apparently some kind of consul, and over and above the details of his own business, {43} watched on behalf of the Chinese Government the interest of his Bhamo compatriots.

The Chinese merchant himself was away, but his sons showed me over the warehouse and gave me tea in a living-room, where there was an aquarium of goldfish, and which was decorated with a few pieces of lacquer and long strings of Chinese New Year cards nearly a twelve-month old, which hung across the room near the ceiling.

Sitting there drinking tea I could see through the series of now dusky storerooms to the street entrance, and from little lattices at the sides of these rooms noted the glint of lamplight and saw that the clerks were busy over their books.

That night I went to another "Pwe," given this time under cover. A large bamboo structure upon the sandy shore of the river, which had been erected by Government for a recent durbar, had been rented by the "Pwe" impresario for use as a theatre, and as the affair was, in this case, entirely a business venture (a kind of Burmese touring company), a charge was made for admission, varying from four annas to one rupee.

The orchestra was very similar to the one I had seen at Rangoon, but being nearer to it I could see the performers better. It consisted first of a big drum slung in the air from a long horizontal dragon, whose fantastic head rose above the front of the stage; next, a circular {44} wooden well frame or box, within which were placed a series of between twenty and thirty small drums, each about four to six inches across; then a lower circular enclosure with metal balls and cups in place of the drums. These three items were put in a line immediately in front of the stage, and inside the circle of small drums, with candles round him on the edge of the surrounding woodwork, sat the _chef d'orchestre_, who tuned up his drums, which he struck with his bare fingers, through all the intervals between the passages of music.

On one side of the chef sat a man at the big dragon drum and on the other one playing on the metal cups, while behind squatted several players of wind instruments and three or four men with split bamboo rods, four or five feet long, which made a loud clapping noise when suddenly closed. The playing of the tiny drums was extremely skilful, but the wind instruments were wheezy and screechy, though I thought the general effect of the whole orchestra was rather pleasing.

My Burmese acquaintance had come with me to the "Pwe"; and his knowledge of English, which he spoke with a peculiarly soft and gentle intonation, enabled me to understand the thread of the narrative. The entertainment was sophisticated enough to include some simple drop-scenes which, however, had no appropriateness {45} nor any connection with the story, and a curtain which rarely descended as the divisions of the drama were of great length.

There was again a terpsichorean heroine, the daughter of a powerful nobleman, and after she had danced for half an hour there followed a very long scene between a king and his ministers. In dancing the hands and arms were moved more than the feet, and there was much jerky and angular movement of the body. The costumes were again of old Burmese court style, and a curious detail was that the hats worn by the four ministers were tall domes, which curved over at the top in the same manner as the head-gear of Venetian doges. The king, who wore on his head a veritable pagoda, was haranguing his ministers about revenue and the unsettled state of his frontiers, but my Burmese friend explained that he only instructed his ministers by suggestion and not with direct orders. The story was wrapped round the raids of a great dacoit who had been harassing border country and had carried away and married the ever-dancing heroine. There was a very amusing scene between the lady's father and her two servants, comic parts which were acted with such droll and humorous gusto that it was a delight to watch them, even without a key to their words. Indeed this scene had a motive worthy of Molière, and recalled to me at the same time {46} the incident in Yeats' play--_Where there is nothing there is God_,--in which an English owner of land is tried for the uselessness of his life by Irish tinkers in a barn.

The foolish master agrees that one of the servants, who has explained that he is himself very wise and the master very foolish about all things, shall take the place of judge and bids him sit in the middle of the stage to conduct a mock trial in which he, the master, is the accused. The scheme breaks down, of course, and when the master finally goes for his servant and trounces him well, there is wild rough and tumble on the stage and riotous laughter from the audience.

No people in the world can give themselves more gladly and light-heartedly to enjoyment than the Burmese, and there was not a single member of the audience--man, woman or child--who looked as if there were such a thing as care.

Another droll scene was in the house of a timorous villager. This was supposed to be at night and quite in the dark, though the lamps hanging along the top of the stage (there were no footlights) were not lowered at all, so that the acting of the dark was not obscured by any attempt at realistic effect. The dacoit and his followers were groping and feeling about the stage to find the villager, who quaked and shook as if paralysed with terror; then one of the searchers would come upon him and touching {47} some part of his motionless body would describe it to the dacoit as something other than the part of a man, and go on groping round the room till he once more encountered the quaking villager.

Men, women and children shouted, shook and rolled in a very ecstasy of delight at this piece of pantomime. Really it should not be difficult to govern such people as these! Unfortunately, however, his natural love of pleasure is combined in this short dumpy man, Jack Burman, with an indolence fatal to business success. His mortgaged land falls into the hands of the chetty, and in commercial matters he is being quietly walked over.

Burmah, so rich in natural resources, in spite of the statements of school geographies, must look for the future to be exploited not for peaceful improvement of its own comparatively small native population, but for the speculators of Capel Court and Wall Street, and the hordes of Hindoos and Chinamen flocking through its doors. There is in all countries a clash of interests between practical success (which implies the largest possible aggregation of healthy, well-nourished bodies having freedom of action) and ideal success (of which I might dream indefinitely without continuing this book), and it is that eternal combat that makes at once the bitter and sweet of government.

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I left the "Pwe" at last to go on unravelling its long story till dawn, and myself got some hours of sleep in readiness for a morning in the Chinese quarter of Bhamo.

This is a wide street with a gulley or gutter about 4 feet wide along the front of the shops, with four or five wooden planks laid across it close together as an approach to each. There were coolies under bamboo yokes or shoulder-poles bearing crates and baskets, Shan men on ponies bargaining green fodder, and Chinese women, with the traditionally contracted feet, making quilted woollen coats, while fat babies played securely in movable wooden pens. An Indian policeman, khaki-clad, with his legs in puttees, was trying to make himself understood by a party of Kachins--two men and an old and young woman. Three out of these four possessed large _goitres_, hanging wallets of flesh, which made them look dewlapped like bulls. La Naung was the name of the older man, and both the women were named Makaw. The girl was bare-headed and had her short hair cut in a thick fringe over the forehead, and had round her neck three large stiff rings. They carried the same gay-coloured haversacks I had seen at Hsipaw, and wore upon waists, arms and legs similar coils of thin black bamboo.

In the chief Chinese temple or joss-house two standing figures, about four times {49} life-size--Shotsa and Quan Pin--were placed on either side of a central grille high up in the wall, through the meshes of which could be seen the long-bearded face of Quansa. The latter's expression might be described as benevolent; but that of the giant Shotsa, who held a mighty blade in the air with his left hand, was horrible enough to draw from an American lady, who came in while I was there, the remark:--"I guess if I stayed here that face'd just skeer me into religion," (Her companion replied:--"That's the only way you _would_ get it!")

In a hall of this polytheistic temple beyond the one of Quansa, was a Buddha with small figures all round the walls, and in front of these as boxes for offerings an incongruous series of Huntley & Palmer's biscuit-tins, still decorated with their original paper coverings.

The Burmese houses at Bhamo are very different from the Chinese shops, being built on tall wooden piles with long flights of wooden steps up to them, and in sunset light a group of such houses is a pretty sight, especially if some silk cloths are spread to dry and some girls are looking out over the veranda.

Of course Bhamo has its pagoda too, and of more recent years its race-course and polo-ground, but I had only a peep at these before rejoining the river steamer.

On the return journey I had good views of {50} the defile below Sinkan village, where the hills rise steeply from the edge of the water, and in some places sheer walls of bare rock rise precipitously several hundred feet--gaunt perpendicular cliffs more like some piece of scenery near Balholm or Dalen in Norway than any I had yet seen in the East, and doubly welcome after the comparative monotony of sandbanks. Most of the hillside was clothed with dense jungle, which made more effective contrast with the bare treeless places.

On the right bank, a little distance from the big rock of the defile, there is a village and this is where Lala was lost. Lala was a little black bear an engineer told me about. "It was one of those honeybears," he said--"had a white V-shaped mark on the chest." They kept chickens on board in a coop and one night Lala pulled a chicken out of this coop, practically skinning it between the bars; the Sakunny, the wheelman, declared that Lala took a piece of his bread and deliberately placed it in the chicken's trough outside the bars and waited till the bird put its head out. He was not the sort of man to make up such a story, but the engineer could hardly believe him and asked to be called the next time the Sakunny could see the bear was after the coop. Whether the engineer was in bed or not, Lala used to sleep not far from him on a mat by the engine-room door. One night the wheel-man {51} called him up, and he actually saw the bear take along a piece of his bread and drop it into the trough. He was ready to cuff Lala if he touched a fowl, but the bear was too quick for him, and the very moment a hen put her head through the bars whipped it out clean through. The engineer never gave Lala meat, but somebody got feeding him on "bully beef," and that seemed to make him restive. He never really bit anybody, but the engineer felt it was safest to get rid of Lala. He got off one day at the village near the defile and took the bear a mile and a half away into the jungle and "lost" him.

Soon after the villagers petitioned the engineer to take the bear on board again. It seemed that Lala was haunting the village and stole chickens persistently. So there was nothing for it but to take him on to the steamer again. Then he gave him to the Rangoon Zoo.

It was months after that the engineer went to see Lala. He took with him a retriever, which had been a great chum and playfellow of the bear. When he asked about it at the gardens they said it had got very wild and would not take its food. I'll give the rest of the story in the engineer's own words.

"They were just going to give it rations, so I said, Give me the food and I'll go into the cage myself. I took the retriever in with me, and I'll {52} never forget the way that bear looked at me as long as I live. The poor thing just stood up and put its forepaws on my chest and looked into my eyes as much as to say:--'Is this what you've done to me?' No, I'll never keep a wild animal again."

Below the defile the stream widened again and the banks were low sand-flats as before. The sun blazed on the water, but little pieces of tin tied to floating bamboo marks gleamed brighter than the water surface. In the evening a long wraith of white mist lay across the grey-blue of the mountains, and in the reflection of the afterglow bamboo stakes swung from side to side with the current, tied to the bottom by their sand-bags and shaken to and fro as a soul tethered to mortality quivers in the stream of circumstance.

On each side of the steamer a man was now trying the depths with a long pole, which he swung round in the air; like some monotonous prayer he chanted the depths of the water--_Sari ache balm--ache balm--ache hart_--chanted these words again and again.

The easy charm of the river-road gains a hold upon the traveller. There is none of the irksome noise and shaking of the railway, and even the huge cockroaches seem friendly. At every riverside village stopping-place there is a bright scene of talk and laughter. The people on shore {53} get all their news and do all their shopping on the steamer's arrival, and friendliness is as pervasive as the sunshine.

One night on the Irrawaddy I slept on deck among a crowd of passengers, and my immediate neighbours were three chained criminals. Two of them had killed somebody and were handcuffed together, a chain from the handcuff being fastened to an iron stanchion. When brought on board they were roped as well, but the ropes were removed and they smoked cheroots comfortably enough. Two Punjabis and a couple of smart little Burmese policemen had charge of them, and the Punjabis slept, but all night the Burmese police took turn about to watch. Whether it was the influence of the river or of the tobacco I know not, but the murderers seemed no more ill at ease than the rest of us; only, whenever there was a little chink or jingle, the policeman's eyes brightened.

Slowly the mountains darkened and the mirrored magic of a little moon floated upon the ever-moving stream.

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