As the sun was declining the next afternoon we climbed the highest of the verdure-clad hills on which Chittagong is built, to seek information from the district commissioner. For the native residents, priest or layman, knew naught of the route to Mandalay. The governor, aroused from a Sunday siesta on his vine-curtained veranda, received us kindly, nay, delightedly, and, having called a servant to minister to our thirst, went in person to astonish his wife with the announcement of European callers. That lady, being duly introduced, consented, upon the solicitation of her husband, to contribute to our entertainment at the piano.
White men come rarely to Chittagong. Chatting, like social equals, with a district ruler stretched out in a reclining chair between us, we came near to forgetting for the nonce that we were mere beachcombers.
“And now, of course,” said our host, when James had concluded an expurgated account of 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 traversed on foot?”
It did not, certainly. Beyond the river, dotted here and there with crazy-quilt sails, lay a primeval wilderness. Range after range of bold hills and mountain chains commanded the landscape, filling the view with their stern summits until they were lost in the blue and hazy eastern horizon. At the very brink of the river began a riotous tropical jungle, covering hill and valley as far as the eye could see, and broken nowhere in all its extent by clearing or the suggestion 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 dacoits—savage outlaws that even the government fears; and the spring freshets 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.”