The present engineer of the line was, at the time of my visit, also staying at Gokteik (investigating a suspected change of curve through heat expansion), and he took me in the early hours of the morning through some of the dense jungle in the gorge above the feet of the bridge. The engineer carried a Winchester repeater, and I was armed with a good double-barrelled rifle, but our hopes of seeing certain stripes reported to be near were vain. We crept for a long time stealthily through dense jungle-growth, with a variety of prickles and spikes, and came upon fresh hoof-marks of wild boar, small deer, saumbur and buffalo but no sign of a tiger, and I could not remain for a second attempt.
My next stopping-place was Hsipaw, a town of some size, in which is the palace of Sawche, the Sawbwa of Hsipaw. I was sorry to find that this gentleman's English adviser, to whom the authorities had promised to write about my coming, was away on leave. There was no other English resident at Hsipaw except the keeper of the refreshment-room at the railway station, which included the usual accommodation of a dak bungalow. This was a man with a pronounced Cockney accent and a humorous twinkle in his eye, and in view of the approaching Christmas season he had laid in a large number of cured hams, which hung all round the room. At Hsipaw that evening there sat at table with me two other passengers who were changing trains; one, the medical officer for the Shan States, whom I had joined on leaving Gokteik, and the other, a mining engineer who had had blackwater fever at Buluwayo and had come to Burmah for a change of air.
The doctor was on the look-out for plague cases, and where he had native assistants they waited at the railway stations to report to him as he passed through. Thus at Kyankine I had heard a native assistant tell the doctor that a Shan woman, who was selling bringalls in the market, had declared she had seen four or five people dying at an outlying village.
"Can you rely on her statement?" said the doctor.
"I can't exactly say."
"You should have sent for the poogi" (the "poogi" or "pudgy" is the village headman who collects the taxes and takes them to the "Nabang," the head of a circle of villages and responsible to the Government). "You should have sent for the poogi," said the doctor.
"I did, sir," the assistant answered, "but he said he had not heard anything about it."
"What about the Jaremai Nabang—isn't he here?"
"He is away from here, sir; he goes sometimes to Lashio—the woman said it was seven or eight days ago, but the poogi did not know anything about it."