“With the exception of high knolls standing up here and there, and a strip of high ground at the base of the hills, the whole country, fields, roads, bridges, is under water from one to twelve feet, or more, in depth. Boats are the only means of locomotion for even a few yards. You sail across the country, ploughing through the half-submerged long grass, piloting a way through the clumps of brushwood and small trees, into the streets of large agricultural villages, where the cattle are seen stabled high up in the houses, twelve feet from the ground; the children are catching fish with lines through the floor; the people are going about their daily concerns, if it is only to borrow a cheroot from their next-door neighbor, in canoes; in short, all the miseries and laughable contretemps sometimes pictured in the illustrated papers as caused by floods in Europe, may be seen—with this difference, that every one is so accustomed to them that they never create a thought of surprise.”
The northern part of Burmah abounds in mountain streams of exquisite beauty. An eye-witness describes them in glowing terms, as follows:[[10]]
“In some places they are seen leaping in cascades over precipices from 50 to 100 feet high; in others, spreading out into deep, quiet lakes. In some places they run purling over pebbles of milk-white quartz, or grass-green prase, or yellow jasper, or sky-blue slate, or variegated porphyry; in others, they glide like arrows over rounded masses of granite, or smooth, angular pieces of green stone. In some places nought can be heard but the stunning sounds of ‘deep calling unto deep’; in others, the mind is led to musing by the quiet murmur of the brook, that falls upon the ear like distant music. The traveller’s path often leads him up the middle of one of these streams, and every turn, like that of a kaleidoscope, reveals something new and pleasing to the eye. Here a daisy-like flower nods over the margin, as if to look at her modest face in the reflecting waters; there the lotus-leafed, wild arum stands knee-deep in water, shaking around with the motion of the stream the dew-drops on its peltate bosom like drops of glittering quicksilver. Here the fantastic roots of a willow, sprinkled with its woolly capsules, come down to the water’s edge, or it may be a eugenia tree, with its fragrant white corymbs, or a water dillenia, with its brick-red, scaly trunk, and green, apple-like fruit, occupies its place; there the long, drooping red tassels of the barringtonia hang far over the bank, dropping its blossoms on the water, food for numerous members of the carp family congregated below.”
Having studied the Geography and the Physical Geography of Burmah, we turn to its Natural History. The domestic animals are the ox, buffalo, horse, and the goat. The horses are small, and are used for riding, never as beasts of burden. The dog is not kept as a pet, or for hunting, but, as in other Oriental countries, he roams about the cities in a half-wild condition, devouring offal, and at last becomes the victim of famine or disease. The jungles swarm with wild animals, the monkey, elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, leopard, deer, and wild-cat. The elephants are caught, tamed, and used for riding. The white elephant, or albino, is especially prized. A specimen is always kept at court as the insignia of royalty, one of the king’s titles being, “Lord of the White Elephant.” The tiger sometimes steals out of the jungle into a Karen village, and carries off a pig or a calf, or even a child. When once he has tasted human blood, he is very dangerous. An American missionary, a lady, relates that she came once to a native village which a tiger had formed the habit of visiting every night. On each occasion he would carry off some domestic animal. The villagers had taken no measures to avert the danger. She urged them to try and kill the monster. She described how speedily an American village would rid itself of such a nuisance. And so they built an enormous trap or dead-fall. The trunk of a tree was to fall and break the tiger’s back. A squealing pig was tied up for bait. The following night some English officers arrived. They sat up late talking over their adventures, when suddenly a terrific roar pealed through the village. The officers rushed out and found an enormous Bengal tiger pinned down in the trap. They speared him to death, and his beautiful skin was given to the lady as a trophy.
Even in the towns the dove-cote has to be placed on the top of a high pole, the base of which is sheathed with tin, in order to prevent the wild-cats from climbing up and devouring the doves. One of the author’s childish reminiscences is seeing in a cage a wild-cat that had been caught alive in the belfry of the church at Maulmain.
Venomous and offensive reptiles and insects abound. While you are eating your dinner the lizard may drop from the bamboo rafters upon the table. As you step out of your door the gleaming forms of chameleons shoot up the trunk of your roof-tree and hide themselves in the branches. The scorpion, with its painful sting, and the centipede, with its poisonous bite, may be found in your garden. The children must be warned not to race through the bushes in your compound, lest they encounter the hated cobra, whose slightest nip is sure and speedy death. The author remembers his father taking the Burman spear, the only weapon which he ever used, and going down into the poultry-yard to dispatch a cobra, whose track had first been discovered in the dust beneath the house.
How much discomfort and suffering are caused, even in our own land, by rats, mice, snakes, flies, and mosquitoes! And the foreign missionary has these same pests, but in a more aggravated form. These are larger, more numerous, and in addition to them he has to cope with the white ants that in armies destroy his furniture, the scorpion, the centipede, the cobra, the tiger.
The inhabitants of Burmah next claim our attention. The Burmans belong to the Mongolian race, the characteristics of which are “long, straight hair; almost complete absence of beard, and hair on the body; a dark-colored skin, varying from a leather-like yellow to a deep brown, or sometimes tending to red; and prominent cheek-bones, generally accompanied by an oblique setting of the eyes.”[[11]]
The Burmans are described by a modern writer[[12]] as “of a stout, active, well-proportioned form; of a brown, but never of an intensely dark complexion, with black, coarse, and abundant hair, and a little more beard than is possessed by the Siamese.”
At the time of Mr. and Mrs. Judson’s arrival, the population numbered from six to eight millions. This included, however, not only Burmans, who are the ruling race, and dwell mainly in the larger towns and cities, but also several subject races—Shans, Karens, Kakhyens—half-wild people, who live in villages scattered through the jungles and along the mountain streams. These tribes have different habits, and speak a different language from the Burmans. They are related to the Burmans somewhat as the North American Indians are to us, being, perhaps, the original inhabitants of the country, and having been subjugated at some remote period of the past. It would seem that wave after wave of Mongolian conquerors had swept over the country from the North, and these tribes are the fragments of wrecked nationalities.