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, 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 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.
AT A BURMESE PWE.