Tambusami had laid in food supplies at Mandalay, and dividing ourselves and our belongings between two bullock-carts at the top of the bank, we jolted along the road through Nyaungoo. The higher clouds were just caught by the new daylight as we passed under the tamarind trees of the village. The walls of the houses were mere screens of plaited bamboo, though often there was also an outer fence of bamboo posts 6 feet high.
A wan amber light now began to bathe the tops of a grove of 50-foot toddy-palms.
After leaving the village I began to pass tall cactus hedges and then a dilapidated pagoda with old grinning leogryphs, pale lemon in colour, and a gilded dome. There were broken masses of crumbling red brick, and under the now dove-coloured sky the glass facets of tall bird-topped votive poles gleamed brilliantly. Then the road entered the district of a myriad ruins and long lines of broken gods. Purple and violet and fiery orange-red, a multitude of small clouds scattered across the pale steely-blue. Tall trees of cactus with small leaves on spreading branches, as well as the upright column cactus springing green from the sand, now bordered the road. Suddenly all the red of the clouds changed to gold, the purple to pale soft heliotrope, and in a burst of golden light the sun rose over a line of violet mountains. Past stray bushes of wild cotton, with their mauve blossoms and pale-bluish leaves, men were carrying loads of red lacquer bowls. These bowls, packed in column and swinging in nets from the shoulder crosspole, looked like bundles of giant red sausages.
Mile after mile we jolted and creaked and presently passed between two great piles of red brick with a Buddha in a porch on the exterior of either side—all that remained of the great gateway—or one of the great gateways—of the ancient city of Pagan.
The building of Mandalay was only commenced about fifty years ago; Pagan was founded before A.D. 200. In Mandalay there are now close upon 200,000 inhabitants; at Pagan there are eight miles of brick-strewn sand and a few poor villages. Mandalay, situated where the Irrawaddy is joined by its chief tributary, is likely to become a great railway centre; Pagan, in the dryest part of the dry zone, has had no practical importance since it was sacked by Kubla Khan in 1286. But in that wilderness of rubble and cactus the remains of 5000 pagodas and monasteries (it is said there were once 13,000) can still be traced, and among them are certain buildings in a good state of preservation, vast in size and of quite peculiar interest.
A few small black pigs and a number of very mangy dogs loitered about some huts. I was now in a land of ruins. Dismantled shrines, broken pagodas and dilapidated temples stretched in every direction, but here and there were vast structures of plaster-faced brickwork, either unharmed by time or restored in spite of the popular belief that there is no merit in mere reparation.
The Circuit House which I reached at last is a substantial building of iron and teak, and letting daylight and air into the empty rooms, which reeked with new varnish, I chose a suite upon the upper floor which has a wide covered balcony. Hitherto travellers who wanted to visit Pagan have had either to take camping equipment with them or else to sleep at Nyaungoo, five miles away. In preparation for a recent visit of the Viceroy, however, a large and comfortable circuit house was built near the riverside, in the very centre of the ruins, and for the future there need be no difficulty in obtaining "lodging for the night." The Viceroy, on the occasion of his visit, abode in his launch, and I was told I was the first stranger to sleep at the Circuit House. I had obtained the key of the cupboard, which harboured plate and kitchen utensils, and while I went off to look round, Tambusami prepared a welcome breakfast.
From the house you look over the wide river, which is not more than a quarter of a mile away, to a range of mountains beautiful at every hour of the day. I walked inland a little way to the Thatbyinnyu Pagoda (the Temple of Omniscience), the loftiest of the buildings at Pagan, 200 feet high and standing upon rising ground. It is square in plan but with a large projecting porch on one side. The middle portion is a huge quadrangular mass of brickwork supposed to be solid, but between this solid centre and the outside there are upon the lower three of the five storeys of the building external terraces and internal corridors with stairways connecting the floors, in the thickness of the walls. Dark and sombre within, it is easy on descending from the upper storeys to choose wrong stairways and to wander about as in a maze. Upon the third storey, on the side of the great projection, there is in a recess against the inner wall a colossal seated Buddha.
