White men do not often come to Chittagong. Chatting like old acquaintances, with the district ruler stretched out in a reclining chair between us, we came near to forgetting, for a time, that we were mere beach-combers.
“And now, of course,” said the governor, when James had told him about our journey from Calcutta, “you will wait for the steamer to Rangoon?”
“Why, no, Mr. Commissioner,” I answered; “we’re going to walk overland to Mandalay, and we took the liberty of calling on you to—”
“Mandalay!” gasped the Englishman, dropping his slippered feet to the floor. “Walk to Man—Why, my dear fellow, come here a moment.”
He rose and stepped to a corner of the veranda, and, raising an arm, pointed away to the eastward.
“That,” he said almost sadly, “is the way to Mandalay. Does that look like a country to be crossed on foot?”
It certainly did not. Beyond the river lay an unexplored wilderness. Range after range of bold hills and rocky mountain chains lay beyond the forest, rising higher and higher until they were lost in the blue and haze of the eastern sky. At the very edge of the river began a vine-choked tropical jungle, covering hill and valley as far as the eye could see, and broken nowhere in all its extent by a clearing, or even by the beginning of a pathway.
“There,” went on the commissioner, “is one of the wildest regions under British rule. Tigers abound; snakes sun themselves on every bush; wild animals lie in wait in every thicket. The valleys are full of wild men, savage outlaws that even the government fears; and the spring floods have made the mountain streams raging torrents. There is absolutely nothing to guide you. If you succeeded in traveling a mile after crossing the river, you would be hopelessly lost; and, if you were not, what would you eat and drink in that wilderness?”
“Why,” said James, “we’d eat the wild animals and drink the mountain streams. Of course we’d carry a compass. That’s what we do in the Australian bush.”
“We thought you might have a map,” I put in.