Soon after I returned to the Court-House the Sawbwa adjourned the sitting, and we were talking together upon the balcony when he went up to the railing and pointing to a figure upon the ground below said to me, "This is one of my gardeners."
I had noticed the man earlier; he was a thin tall Hindoo who had walked very slowly to the Court-House, and as if with much difficulty. He was dressed in a white robe and had squatted upon the ground, wrapping the drapery round him and over the top of his head. A fat man with a large buff turban had strolled after him and was walking up and down. It appeared that the latter was a doctor. The Hindoo gardener was suffering badly from dysentery, but was unwilling to go away to the hospital because he had a Shan wife and feared she would run away while he was shut up. "If he goes," said the Sawbwa, "I will keep his place for him and let him come back to work when he is cured." The man, however, was still unwilling and resisted all persuasion. "Then let him die," said the Sawbwa, and went on talking to me about England.
Although Sawche has so many wives he has only one son, a boy of twelve or thirteen, named Maung Nyo. I saw him coming through the central avenue of the bazaar, dressed in rich silks and with his face whitened like a woman's with ground sandalwood. He was being wheeled slowly along upon a smart plated bicycle by two men, while another pair of attendants carried a long-handled gold umbrella on each side of him. In a few days Maung Nyo was to enter upon his period of Hpoongi or priest-training, in accordance with orthodox Burmese custom.
The bazaar at Hsipaw was chiefly interesting on account of the Kachins who had come in from a distance. They carried gaily ornamented haversacks, and their women-folk, strong-looking and heavy-faced, wore about the waist and ankles large coils of bamboo as thin as fine string and black in colour.
The usual rows of bazaar shops were ranged under long arcades roofed with corrugated iron, and out in the roadway double and treble lines of sellers from outlying places had spread their market produce on plantain leaves. Of dried fish there was certainly an extraordinary variety—thirty kinds at the very least, but there was no profusion of strange fruits and no showy display of silks or finery, and the scene was animated without being gay.
The air was free and wholesome at Hsipaw, and the Shans had that healthy look which seems to be the common heritage of all people of the hills.
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.