A sandy highway, placarded the “Toungoo Road,” led forth from the village, skirting the golden pagoda of Pegu, a rival of the Shwe Dagón; but soon swung northward, and we struck across an untracked plain. Far away to the eastward a deep blue range of rugged hills, forerunners of the wild mountain chains of the peninsula, bounded the horizon; but about us lay a flat, monotonous stretch of sandy lowlands, embellished neither by habitation nor inhabitant.
Ten miles of plodding, with never a mud hole in which to quench our thirst, brought us to a teeming bamboo village hidden away in a tangled grove. When we had driven off a canine multitude and drunk our fill, we should have gone on had not a babu pushed his way through the gaping, beclouted throng and invited us to his bungalow. He was an employé of a projected railway line from Pegu to Moulmein, even then under construction, that was to bring him, on the day of its completion, the coveted title of station-master. In anticipation of that honor he had already donned a brilliant uniform of his own designing, the sight of which filled his fellow townsmen with unutterable awe.
We squatted with him on the floor of his open hut and dispatched a dinner of rice, fruit, and bread-cakes—and red ants; no Burmese lunch would be complete without the latter. When we offered payment for the meal, the babu rose up chattering with indignation and would not be reconciled until we had patted him on the back and hidden our puerile fortune from view.
Railways are strictly handmade in Burma. Within hail of the village appeared the first mound of earth, its summit some feet above the high-water mark of flood time; and a few miles beyond we came upon a construction gang at work. There were neither steam cranes, “slips,” nor “wheelers” to scoop up the earth of the paddy-fields. Of the band, full three hundred strong, a few toiled with shovels in the shallow trenches; the others swarmed up the embankment in endless file, carrying flat baskets of earth on their heads. They were Hindus, one and all, of both sexes; for the Burman scorns coolie labor. The workers toiled steadily, mechanically, though ever at a snail’s pace, and the basketfuls fell too rapidly to be counted. But many thousands raised the mound only an inch higher; and, where the grading had but begun, one day’s labor did not suffice to cover the short grass.
Beyond, were other gangs and between them deserted trenches and sections of embankment. The dyke was not continuous. The company sub-let the grading by the cubic yard to dozens of Hindu contractors, each of whom, having staked out some ten rods along the right of way, threw up a ridge of the required height and moved on with his band to the head of the line. Their trenches were sharp-cornered, flat-bottomed, and contained little pagoda-shaped mounds of earth with a tuft of grass on top, by which the depth could be estimated.
Early in the afternoon we came upon a small, sluggish stream, beyond which stood a two-story bungalow of unusual magnificence for this corner of the world. A rope was stretched from shore to shore, and the primitive ferry to which it was attached was tied up at the western bank. We boarded the raft and had all but pulled ourselves across when a greeting in our own tongue drew our attention to the bungalow. On the veranda stood an Englishman, bareheaded and smiling.
James sprang hastily ashore, leaving me to bring up the rear—and the knapsack; but at the top of the bank he stopped suddenly and grasped me by the arm.
“Holy dingoes!” he gasped. “Do my eyes deceive me? I’m a Hottentot if it isn’t a white woman!”
It was, sure enough. Beside the Englishman stood a youthful memsahib, in snow-white gown. A millinery shop could not have looked more out of place in these blistered paddy fields of the Irawaddy delta.
“Trouble you for a drink of water?” I panted, halting in the shade of the bungalow, which, like all dwellings in this region, stood some eight feet above the ground, on bamboo stilts.