My entrance into Remyo, the future scene of my experiences, at half-past ten that morning was striking, though hardly dignified.
Picture to yourself a sorrowful, huddled figure, seated on a weary dishevelled looking pony, covered from head to foot with red dust, and surmounted by a large battered topee "tip-tilted like the petal of a flower." I had long ceased to make any pretence at riding. I sat sideways on my saddle, as one sits in an Irish car, grasping in one hand the pummel and in the other my large green sun umbrella, for the sun was terribly hot. How weary I was, and how overjoyed at arriving at my destination!
But even yet my troubles were not over. There was the house, there my sister waiting in the veranda to welcome me, but directly my pony arrived at the gate of the compound he stopped dead. Apparently it was not in the bond that I should be carried up to the door, and so no further would he go. I was too impatient to argue the matter, too weary to give an exhibition of horsemanship, so there was nothing to do but descend, walk up the compound, and tumble undignifiedly into the house, where the first thing I did was to register a vow that never again, except in a case of life and death, would I attempt to ride a Burmese pony.
Chapter V.—AN UP-COUNTRY STATION.—
"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."—(Gray.)
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I daresay that Remyo is very like other small up-country stations in Burmah, but to me it appeared to be the very end of the earth, so different was it from all I had expected. It stands in a small valley, surrounded by low jungle-clad hills. The clearing is perhaps three miles long by one and-a-half wide, but there always appeared to be more jungle than clearing about the place, so quickly does the former spread.
The Station is traversed crosswise by two rough tracks called by courtesy roads, and is surrounded by what is imposingly termed "The Circular Road." This road, but recently constructed, is six or seven miles long, and passes mostly outside the clearing, being consequently bordered in many places on both sides by thick jungle.