Vide Yün-nan, the Link between India and the Yangtze, by Major H.R. Davies.—Cambridge University Press.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Two days from Burma. Tropical wildness induces ennui. The River Taping. At Hsiao Singai. Possibility of West China as a holiday resort from Burma. Fascination of the country. Manyüen reached with difficulty. The Kachins. Good work of the American Baptist Mission. Mr. Roberts. Arrival at borderland of Burma. Last dealings with Chinese officials. British territory. Thoughts on the trend of progress in China. Beautiful Burma. End of long journey.
I was now two days' march from the British Burma border. The landscape in this district was solemn and imposing as I trudged on again, very tired indeed, after a day's rest at Chiu-ch'eng. In the morning heavy tropical vapors of milky whiteness stretched over the sky and the earth. Nature seemed sleeping, as if wrapped in a light veil. It attracted me and absorbed me, dreaming, in spite of myself; ennui invaded me at first, and under the all-powerful constraint of influences so fatal to human personality thought died away by degrees like a flame in a vacuum; for I was again in the East, the real, luxurious, indolent East, the true land of Pantheism, and one must go there to realize the indefinable sensations which almost make the Nirvana of the Buddhist comprehensible.
The river Taping farther down, so different from its aspect a couple of days ago, where it rushed at a tremendous speed over its rocky bed, was now broad and calm and placid, and extremely picturesque. The banks were covered with trees beyond Manyüen. Near the water the undergrowth was of a fine green, but on a higher level the yellow and red leaves, hardly holding on to the withered trees, were carried away with the slightest breath of wind.
At Hsiao Singai, on February 15th, I again had difficulty in getting a room; so I waited, and whilst my men searched about for a place where I could sleep, an extremely tall fellow came up to me, and having felt with his finger and thumb the texture of my tweeds and expressed satisfaction thereof, said—