CHAPTER XIV.
A CHINESE FORTIFICATION—CHINESE ARMY DESTROYED BY FAMINE—VIANG PA POW—KIANG TUNG LAWAS—WITCH VILLAGES—AN INTELLIGENT PRINCE—BEST DIRECTION FOR RAILWAY—PURCHASE AN OX FOR FOOD—AN ANCIENT LAKE—LEAVE PA POW—UPPER GORGE OF THE MEH LOW—KIANG TUNG LAWAS A JUNG TRIBE, AND DISTINCT FROM BAU LAWAS—BURMESE SHANS—CATTLE WITH NOSE-BAGS AND MASKS—EFFECT OF SOIL ON FOLIAGE—SURPRISES IN THE JUNGLE—TEMPLE AT BAU MEH PIK—OFFERINGS TO DECEASED ANCESTORS—THE VALLEY OF THE MEH SOOAY A GAME-PRESERVE—INDICATIONS OF GOLD—ROAD TO VIANG POW—LOWER GORGE OF THE MEH LOW—PORTOW, THE LITTLE ELEPHANT’S PLAYMATE—LOI KOOK—LOI CHANG SHANS RETURNING FROM FRONTIER DUTY—UNWARRANTABLE ACTION OF CHINESE GENERAL—KIANG HUNG SHANS BURMESE SUBJECTS IN 1886—REMOVAL OF CAPITAL—KIANG HUNG ANNEXED BY BRITISH IN 1888—SHANS DREAD ENTERING DESERTED TEMPLES—DECEASED MONKS CLASSED AS DEMONS—WORSHIPPING DECEASED MONKS—SUICIDE OF A PRINCESS AND TWO OF HER MAIDS—SOUSED BY AN ELEPHANT—COURTESY OF THE CHOW HONA OF KIANG HAI—AN IMMENSE PLAIN.
Viang Pa Pow—the City of the Croton Forest—is a Viang Hau or Yunnan-Chinese city, which was fortified and stockaded by the Chinese when they sent four armies to attack Burmah (A.D. 1765–69), and was unoccupied when M‘Leod passed it in 1837. The Chinese forces are said to have been much harassed by the Lawas and other hill tribes, and being entirely cut off from their supplies, had to kill their ponies for food, and ultimately to retreat. Famine proved their chief enemy, and very few lived to reach Yunnan.
The city is surrounded by a double moat and an inner rampart, the latter palisaded on the top with teak-logs standing 12 feet high from the ground. It is 1700 feet long, 1073 feet broad, and contains seventy houses. The muang, or district, has 322 houses scattered amongst the Shan villages, and about 2250 Shan inhabitants. The valley of the Meh Low is, however, chiefly occupied by the Kiang Tung Lawas, whose houses are far more numerous than those of the Shans. These Lawa gain their livelihood by cultivating rice, cotton, sugar-cane, and indigo, and by mining iron, and making muskets, dahs, spears, ploughs, chains, and other articles. We passed by many of their villages between the city and Ban Meh Pik, and later on between Kiang Hai and Muang Hpan.
The Shan villages in the Muang have been set apart for the habitation of reputed wizards and witches. These people have the choice of settling here or in Muang Ngai, Muang Pai, and in Kiang Hsen—all of which regions are deficient in population. Dr M‘Gilvary told me that many of the people accused of witchcraft are so foolish as actually to believe in the truth of the accusation, and that there is more superstition and consequent fear, hatred, and malice in the witch villages than elsewhere in the country.
Soon after camping I had a visit from Chow Chaum Muang, a first cousin of the Queen of Zimmé, the most intelligent native met by me during my journeys. With the aid of a box of matches, he took great pains in explaining to me the general features and lie of the country. He said there was no range of hills between Viang Pa Pow and the valley of the Meh Wung, and that the best direction for the railway from Raheng would be from Kiang Hsen viâ Kiang Hai, Muang Hpan, Penyow, Ngow, and Lakon. As he arranged the matches according to the lie of the hills and streams, I sketched the plan on paper. I found his information extremely correct. The Shan nobles are certainly much more truthful and reliable than the governors and officials in Siam, who pride themselves upon their duplicity, and do as little as they can to aid a visitor to their country, and all they can to deceive him.
Early the next morning our Chow ordered in a fresh supply of rice, ducks, and fowls, and asked us if we would like to purchase an ox for food. Of course we gladly consented, and handed him the money. The owner seemed loath to part with the animal, and we more than fancied that the prince had taken heavy toll of the money before it passed from his hands. Anyhow, all of our party had a pleasant addition to our diet for some days. Most of the meat was subsequently smoked and jerked, and therefore kept well.
North-east of the city, about five miles distant, Loi Mok—a range of hills twenty miles long—commences. In this range the Meh Wung takes its rise, and we are about to skirt these hills until we leave the Meh Low for Kiang Hai. The range forms the eastern flank of an ancient lake-basin, which is now drained by the Meh Low. The basin in which Muang Pa Pow lies was formerly severed from the lake by Loi Pa Tyoo, and apparently forms part of the previous drainage-area of a former lake on the Meh Wung.
We had to wait till 1 P.M. for ten fresh coolies and two elephants to replace the twenty coolies we had brought from Zimmé. When these arrived, we left the camp and proceeded due north down the valley of the Meh Low. After passing through the rice-fields of three Shan villages, great spurs from the ranges on either side began to close in; and at the 303d mile we entered the forest, and soon afterwards crossed a flat-topped spur about 70 feet high which proceeded from Loi Mok.
A mile farther we crossed a bend of the Meh Low where the stream was 80 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and had 1 foot of water, and entered the gorge where the river had broken through the hills. Here we met a large company of Kiang Tung Lawas returning from fishing, and carrying fishing-nets which were weighted at the bottom with chains. The women, young and old, were bare to the waist, and the men were dressed, like our Zimmé Shan followers, in garments of cotton dyed with indigo.
There could be no mistaking this race for the Bau Lawa: like the La-hu, whom I met in Kiang Hai, they are akin in language to the Lolo tribes of the Jung race in Yunnan. This is evidenced by comparing the Lolo vocabularies given by Mr Bourne in the report of his journey in South-western China (Blue-book, China, No. 1 of 1888) with the vocabularies given by me in the account of my exploration.
For the next three miles we were amongst the hills. Great spurs covered with teak and other valuable trees sloped up from the river, in whose bed shales and flagstones cropped up. The grass and scrub-jungle on some of the spurs was on fire, and my elephant, from fear, was playing a scale sounding like one played on a child’s tin trumpet, and by no means resembling the ordinary roar of the beast. After crossing two bends of the river, we reached the Kiang Tung Lawa village of Ban Ta Kau, which is situated beyond the gorge, and halted for the night.
After dinner we called up the head-men of the village, and took their vocabulary. To show the utter difference between their language and that of the Bau Lawas, I may mention that fire, water, fish, and pig in Bau Lawa are—ngau, raowm, ka, and layt; whilst in Kiang Tung Lawa they are—bee, hlang, laung-teh, and wa. The Lawas said that nearly every year some of their kinsmen from the neighbourhood of Kiang Tung paid them a visit, and that their forefathers were immigrants from the north, and not natives of the Zimmé State. These people have not such pronounced oval faces as the Lolos in Ssuchuan (although probably of the same race) or the La-hu near Kiang Hai, and at first sight I took them for Burmese Shans. They have, however, better developed noses than the Shans, and some of their women might be taken for handsome gipsies.
Next day we started before the morning mist had been dissipated, and passed through the fields of Ban Pa Bong. The spurs on either side of us were rapidly retreating, and we were now well into the old lake-basin. At the village the plain was three miles broad, and it quickly expanded to six and seven miles, the hills on either side being frequently lost in the haze. The small trees and bushes were spangled with the large pale-blue flowers of a creeper; and white convolvulus, jessamine, and the yellow blossoms of a vine-leaved creeper were frequently seen.
Near Pa Bong we met fifty-three laden cattle, accompanied by a party of Burmese Shans wearing blue trousers and jackets, and great straw hats atop of the silk handkerchiefs which were twined round their top-knots. All the oxen wore nose-bags made of rattan-cane, to prevent them from browsing by the way; and the leaders wore a mask in front of their faces, fancifully worked with cowrie-shells, and topped by a beautiful peacock’s tail. This, of course, was to make the animals hideous, in order to frighten the demons away. Besides the ordinary brass sleigh-bells that are hung round the necks of the oxen, a large bell was suspended from a frame above the leader’s head. The bells are useful for letting the elephant-drivers and other caravans know of their approach, and to enable the caravan-men to track the animals when they are grazing at a halting-place.
The morning was pleasant, and the country very beautiful, and made even more so by the mist rising and falling as it lifted from the plain and was swept from the valleys by the morning breeze. The great variety of trees in the portions of the plain that were not under cultivation, and the constant recurrence of trees out of and in leaf, was a source of continual surprise. The same class of trees were in full leaf in one place where the soil was rich, and had dropped their leaves at a place close by where the soil indicated a laterite formation.
The elephants amused themselves as they went along by showering down bamboo seeds upon the men as they passed among the clumps, and seemed not to care at all for the mahout’s whip with the lump of lead attached to the end of its thong. The climate in the basin of the Meh Low being moister than in the Zimmé plain, the verdure is more luxuriant. I noticed a bamboo 60 feet high growing without soil, rooted in the arm of a tree four feet above the ground.
At times, on stretching my neck out of the howdah in order to get a further glimpse of something we had passed, I would see a group of white-turbaned Shans squatting in a bamboo bower, looking, in their great peaked hats and their blankets wrapped round them, like gnomes in the Black Forest. Here would be a party of villagers who had scuttled out of sight as they heard us approach. There a group of porters, with their burdens by their side, chatting and resting in the shade. In a jungle-clad country, nothing could be easier than to surprise an enemy.
After passing several Lawa villages we reached the large Shan village of Meh Pik, or the Pepper river, and halted for ten minutes to visit a temple, which was handsomely decorated with gold-leaf and vermilion, and occupied by a very ugly image of Gaudama, about which stood many smaller and less hideous images. The offerings, which consisted of flowers, food, dolls’ houses, and toy elephants and ponies, were indications of what the votaries wished forwarded to the spirits of their deceased relations and friends. Written instructions frequently accompany such emblems, stating for whom they are intended, and at the tag end the writer curses any one that steals them, and hopes that that individual may be punished in the four hells.
Leaving the village we entered a large grazing-plain, in which many buffaloes with their usual attendants, white paddy-birds and mynahs, were feeding in the plain, crossed the Meh Low and the large rice-plain of Ban Pong, and halted for the night on the bank of the Meh Soo-ay, near the large village of the same name, which is situated 323½ miles from Hlineboay and 1566 feet above the sea. Ban Meh Soo-ay is the headquarters of the governor of this district, who called on us as soon as he heard of our arrival. He told me that the valley of the Meh Soo-ay is the private game-preserve of the King of Zimmé, and that no one is allowed to hunt there, or even enter the valley without the royal permission. It is therefore uninhabited, except by deer, tiger, rhinoceros, elephant, wild cattle, and other large game. From slate and quartz being the only pebbles in the stream-bed, it is not at all unlikely that gold may exist in the hills stretching into this valley, as it does in the same geological formation in other parts of the Shan States.
From the village of Meh Pik, which we had passed, he said a path led westward across the hills to Viang Pow, which was reached by caravans in three days. The descent on the Viang Pow side of the hills was very gradual, but part of the ascent from the Meh Low side was difficult. His village contained sixty houses, but he could not tell, without referring to his books, the number in the other villages under his jurisdiction. In the village I noticed peach-trees, the first I had seen.
The little elephant’s fun.
The next day we left early, and a mile and a half from our camp entered the gorge through which the Meh Low escapes between the spurs from Loi Kook Loi Chang on the west and Loi Mok on the east. These two ranges form the north and east flanks of the old lake-basin, which is now drained by the Meh Low. For five miles, spurs from either side occasionally approached near the stream, which we had frequently to cross in order to shorten our route, as the river is very serpentine in its course. Whilst passing through this gorge, Ramasawmy was playing “God bless the Prince of Wales” on a reed flute; and the little elephant was taking every chance he could to hustle the men over as they crossed the river, and souse them with water from his trunk. If there is truth in transmigration of souls, that little rogue must have been a monkey in a former existence, and had not lost his zest for malicious pranks.
Portow, who had an overweening opinion of his own dignity, and was bent on setting up as an oracle, was unfortunately not only the butt of the boys, but likewise the sport of the baby-elephant. Many a time have I seen him hustled over by the youngster, who seemed to have picked him out as his playmate. Slily and softly stealing up behind, he would suddenly increase his pace, and with a quick shuffle or a sudden lurch shoulder him sprawling to the ground. Portow during this part of the journey behaved like a hunted or haunted man, ever looking behind to see whether the dreadful infant was near.
The large spurs on our left were called Loi Pa Kuang, the hill of the deer-forest; Loi Wung Ngoo, the hill of the snake pool: between which rose Huay Pak Chang, the brook of the elephant’s mouth; and Loi Kee-Wo Hay, the hill where the cattle scatter their dung, so called because the cattle caravans that cross it on their way by a short cut to Kiang Hai, are much distressed whilst ascending its steep sides. There were several plains in the gorge, the spurs being at times half a mile and a mile apart.
At the 330th mile, the river, then 1500 feet above sea-level, takes a sudden bend to the east, and passing betwixt an isolated hill and the last spur from Loi Mok, enters the Kiang Hai plain. At the end of the spur is the small village of Ban Tsen Tau, and in front of the isolated hill were three deserted houses in old patches of cultivation, which had been occupied by witches on their way to settle at Kiang Hsen. After leaving the river, we commenced crossing the small spurs which stretch into the Kiang Hai plain from Loi Kook Loi Chang, and halted for the night at a pretty mountain-stream, the Huay Wai, the brook of bamboos. Shortly after our arrival we met 200 Shans on their way back to Zimmé from Kiang Hsen, carrying their things on light bamboo shoulder-trestles, somewhat similar in shape to the frames of the pack-saddles used for caravan cattle and mules. The men rest the trestle first on one shoulder, and when tired on the other. The Shans were returning from doing frontier duty; some disturbance having arisen in the Burmese Shan States to the north.
Front view of trestle.
Side view.
These disturbances are alluded to by Mr Bourne of our Chinese Consular Service in his report (Blue-book, China, No. 1, 1888), where he notes that when at Ssumao in January 1886, he heard that “in 1884 the Chinese asserted their authority through Ma Chung, the General at Puerh, in a rather questionable manner, by the removal of the Hsuan-wei Ssu, and also of the officer (Patsung) of the Liu-kun district.” The Hsuan-wei Ssu is the chief of Kiang Hung, and the district named is the one nearest to Ssumao belonging to Kiang Hung.
On Mr Bourne sending his writer “to visit a Burmese temple (Mien Ssu) situated four miles south of Ssumao, and forming part of a castle belonging to the Liu-kun Tu-ssu, ... they (the priests) described themselves as Burmese subjects, but said they bore a heavy yoke, having to pay taxes both to Ssumao (the Chinese frontier-post) and to Che-Li (the Chinese name for Kiang Hung). My writer, who has been in Burmah, described the castle as quite Burmese in construction.”
View of Loi Poo-ay at 1.3 P.M. 14th March.
The fact that the Shans within four miles of Ssumao considered themselves to be subject to Burmah in January 1886, a year after we had annexed that country, is most important. It thus becomes evident that the “Upper Burmah Notification, No. 75, of 1888,” by which “all of the territories east of the Salween river which on the 27th November 1885 owed allegiance directly or indirectly to the King of Burmah” are included in our dominions, includes the portion of the Burmese Shan States that lies to the east as well as to the west of the Meh Kong river, and therefore the whole of the country through which the Burmah-Siam-China Railway will run from Kiang Hsen right up to the Chinese frontier-post at Ssumao. If we had not annexed the Shan States of Kiang Tung and Kiang Hung, they would inevitably have fallen sooner or later to the French, and our only practicable road for a British railway to China would have been foolishly relinquished, together with the trade of the people of Western China.
When talking about the temple we had visited at Ban Meh Pik, Dr M‘Gilvary told me that the Shans are afraid to visit a deserted temple, for the reason that the images of Gaudama are inhabited by Pee Soo-a Wat, the spirits of deceased Buddhist monks, who are the protecting spirits of the temple. If neglected, having nothing to live on, they become savage, and sit like Giant Despair, gnawing their nails; being thenceforth classed amongst demons, or malignant spirits. If a temple is not totally abandoned, and offerings are made to only one image by a worshipper, the envious spirit of another is apt to avenge himself by startling the votary; and should the person afterwards become ill, or should accident or other misfortune happen to him, the image is thenceforth regarded by the people as the embodiment of a malign spirit. Ancestral spirits and those of a family clan, if not worshipped and fed every three years, likewise become malignant in their inclinations.
View of Loi Kook Loi Chang at 1.3 P.M. 14th March.
When an abbot, celebrated for his learning and virtue, dies, it is the custom for those who have spent their monastic life under his instruction, to prepare a shrine for him in some part of their house, or, if still in the monastery, in their dormitory, where flowers and food are placed for the acceptance of the spirit of their deceased teacher. If he is treated with neglect or disrespect, he may become a spirit of evil towards his former pupils. Apparitions may be caused by good or evil spirits.
With reference to his having told me that the Shans were a romantic people, Dr M‘Gilvary said that suicide amongst them was by no means unusual. If a man considered that he had been slighted or ill-used in any way, he was apt to brood over the fact, and work himself into a state—when he would take his own life. Only a year or two ago one of the princesses being crossed in love, hung herself from a branch of a tree; and two of her maids, finding her suspended, in sorrowful despair at having lost their sweet mistress, sought to accompany her in death by dangling from the same branch.
Starting early the next morning, we crossed a few low spurs and then descended to the great plain of Kiang Hai. As we passed near the first village, my elephant, which had taken a trunkful of water at the last brook, made a bad shot, and sent it flying over me and my survey-book. This feat made Portow, who was walking by the elephant to translate for me, nearly die of laughter; his sense of fun for once becoming greater than his sense of his own dignity. We halted for the night at the large village of Don Chi. The villages in the neighbourhood belonged to three Kwangs, or sub-districts, and contained 600 houses. In one of the villages I noticed several papaw-trees in the orchards. The juice of the fruit of this tree renders any tough meat tender, and has been successfully employed in the removal of the false membrane in diphtheria.
We put up for the night in the hunting residence of the Chow Hona, or second chief, of Kiang Hai, who arrived in the evening, but courteously insisting that we should remain, put up elsewhere. From the large plain near the village we could see Loi Poo-ay eleven miles to the east, stretching away to the south, and giving rise to the small hillocks that separate the sources of the Meh Low from those of the Meh Ing; and to the west were Loi Kook Loi Chang, and some smaller hills on the south of the Meh Khoke.