At last he did begin to move, backwards!
This was a circumstance for which I was wholly unprepared. If a horse runs away, naturally, he is to be stopped by pulling the reins, but if he runs away backwards, there seems nothing to be done; whipping only encourages him to run faster. I tried to turn the pony round, so that if he persisted in continuing to walk backwards, we might at any rate progress in the right direction, but he preferred not to turn, and I did not wish to insist, lest he should become annoyed; to annoy him at the very outset of the journey I felt would be the height of imprudence.
The natives of the village gathered round, and with that wonderful capacity for innocent enjoyment for which the Burmese are noted, watched the performance with the deepest interest and delight, while I could do nothing but try to appear at ease, as though I really preferred to travel in that manner.
At last however, my brother would wait no longer, and shouting to the orderly and sais, he made them seize the bridle of my wilful pony, and drag us both forcibly from the village.
And so we started.
Oh! that ride—what a nightmare it was! The pony justified his reputation, and was certainly the most quiet animal imaginable. He preferred not to move at all, but when forced to do so, the pace was such that a snail could easily have given him fifty yards start in a hundred, and a beating, without any particular exertion. He did not walk, he crawled.
In vain did I encourage him in every language I knew, in vain did the sais and orderly ride behind beating him, or in front pulling him, our efforts were of no avail. Once or twice, under great persuasion, he broke into what faintly suggested a trot, for about two minutes, but speedily relapsed again into his former undignified crawl.
My brother at last lost patience and rode on ahead, leaving me to the tender mercies of the sais, who, no longer under the eye of his master, and seeing no reason to hurry, soon ceased his efforts, and we jogged on every minute more slowly, till I fell into a sleepy trance, dreaming that I should continue thus for ever, riding slowly along through the silent Burmese jungle, wrapped in its heavy noon-day sleep, till I too should sink under the spell of the sleep god, and become part of the silence around me.
But the scenery was glorious, and I had ample time to admire it. Our road wound up the side of a jungle clad hill, around and above us rose other hills covered with the gorgeous vari-coloured jungle trees and shrubs. Immediately below us lay a deep wooded ravine, shut in by the hills, and far away behind us stretched miles and miles of paddy fields and open country shrouded in a pale blue-grey mist. I cannot imagine grander scenery; what most nearly approach it are views in Saxon Switzerland, but the latter can be compared only as an engraving to a painting, the colour being lacking.
What most impressed me was the absolute silence, and the utter absence of any sign of human life. All round us lay miles and miles of unbroken jungle, inhabited only by birds and beasts; all nature seemed silent, mysterious, and void of human sympathies as in the first days of the world, before man came to conquer, and in conquering to destroy the charm. It is impossible quite to realise this awe-inspiring loneliness of the jungle