From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

The next morning, as we went on deck, the steamer was dropping down the river. The guns of Fort William were firing a salute; at Garden Reach we passed the palace of the King of Oude, where this deposed Indian sovereign still keeps his royal state among his serpents and his tigers. We were all day long steaming down the Hoogly. The country is very flat; there is nothing to break the monotony of its swamps and jungles, its villages of mud standing amid rice fields and palm groves. As we approach the sea the river divides into many channels, like the lagoons of Venice. All around are low lying islands, which now and then are swept by terrible cyclones that come up from the Bay of Bengal. At present their shores are overgrown with jungles, the home of wild beasts, of serpents, and crocodiles, of all slimy and deadly things, the monsters of the land and sea. Through a net-work of such lagoons, we glide out into the deep; slowly the receding shores sink till they are submerged, as if they were drowned; we have left India behind, and all around is only a watery horizon.

CHAPTER XXII.

BURMAH, OR FARTHER INDIA.

In America we speak of the Far West, which is an undefined region, constantly receding in the distance. So in Asia there is a Far and Farther East, ever coming a little nearer to the rising sun. When we have done with India, there is still a Farther India to be "seen and conquered." On the other side of the Bay of Bengal is a country, which, though called India, and under the East Indian Government, is not India. The very face of nature is different. It is a country not of vast plains, but of mountains and valleys, and springs that run among the hills; a country with another people than India, another language, and another religion. Looking upon the map of Asia, one sees at its southeastern extremity a long peninsula, reaching almost to the equator, with a central range of mountains, an Alpine chain, which runs through its whole length, as the Apennines run through Italy. This is the Malayan peninsula, on one side of which is Burmah, and on the other, Siam, the land of the White Elephant.

Such was the "undiscovered country" before us, as we went on deck of the good ship Malda, four days out from Calcutta, and found her entering the mouth of a river which once bore the proud name of the River of Gold, and was said to flow through a land of gold. These fabled riches have disappeared, but the majestic river still flows on, broad-bosomed like the Nile, and which of itself might make the riches of a country, as the Nile makes the riches of Egypt. This is the mighty Irrawaddy, one of the great rivers of Eastern Asia; which takes its rise in the western part of Thibet, not far from the head waters of the Indus, and runs along the northern slopes of the Himalayas, till it turns south, and winding its way through the passes of the lofty mountains, debouches into Lower Burmah, where it divides into two large branches like the Nile, making a Delta of ten thousand square miles—larger than the Delta of Egypt—whose inexhaustible fertility, yielding enormous rice harvests, has more than once relieved a famine in Bengal.

On the Irrawaddy, twenty-five miles from the sea, stands Rangoon, the capital of British Burmah, a city of nearly a hundred thousand inhabitants. As we approach it, the most conspicuous object is the Great Pagoda, the largest in the world, which is a signal that we are not only in a new country, but one that has a new religion—not Brahmin, but Buddhist—whose towering pagodas, with their gilded roofs, take the place of Hindoo temples and Mohammedan mosques. Rangoon boasts a great antiquity; it is said to have been founded in the sixth century before Christ, but its new masters, the English, with their spirit of improvement, have given it quite a modern appearance. Large steamers in the river and warehouses along its bank, show that the spirit of modern enterprise has invaded even this distant part of Asia.

Burmah is a country with a history, dating back far into the past. It was once the seat of a great empire, with a population many fold larger than now. In the interior are to be found ruins like those in the interior of Cambodia, which mark the sites of ancient cities, and attest the greatness of an empire that has long since passed away. This is a subject for the antiquarian; but I am more interested in its present condition and its future prospects than its past history. Burmah is now a part of the great English Empire in the East, and it has been the scene of events which make a very thrilling chapter in the history of American Missions. Remembering this, as soon as we got on shore we took a gharri, and rode off to find the American missionaries, of whom and of their work I shall have more to say. We brought a letter also to the Chief Commissioner, Mr. Rivers Thompson, who invited us to be his guests while in Rangoon. This gentleman is a representative of the best class of English officials in the East, of those conscientious and laborious men, trained in the civil service in India, whose intelligence and experience make the English rule such a blessing to that country. The presence of a man of such character and such intelligence in a position of such power—for he is virtually the ruler of Burmah—is the greatest benefit to the country. We shall long remember him and his excellent wife—a true Englishwoman—for their courtesy and hospitality, which made our visit to Rangoon so pleasant. The Government House is out of the city, surrounded partly by the natural forest, which was alive with monkeys, that were perched in the trees, and leaping from branch to branch. One species of them had a very wild and plaintive cry, almost like that of a human creature in distress. It is said to be the only animal whose notes range through the whole scale. It begins low, and rises rapidly, till it reaches a pitch at which it sounds like a far-off wail of sorrow. Every morning we were awakened by the singing of birds, the first sound in the forest, with which there came through the open windows a cool, delicious air, laden with a dewy freshness as of Spring, the exquisite sensation of a morning in the tropics. Then came the tramp of soldiers along the walk, changing guard. In the midst of these strange surroundings stood the beautiful English home, with all its culture and refinement, and the morning and evening prayers, that were a sweeter incense to the Author of so much beauty than "the spicy breezes that blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle." The evening drive to the public gardens, where a band of music was playing, gave one a sight of the English residents of Rangoon, and made even an American feel, in hearing his familiar tongue, that he was not altogether a stranger in a strange land. The Commissioner gave me his Report on British Burmah, made to the Government of India. It fills a large octavo volume, and in reading it, one is surprised to learn the extent of the country, which is twice as large as the State of New York, and its great natural wealth in its soil and its forests—the resources for supporting a dense population.

I found the best book on Burmah was by an American missionary, Dr. Mason, who, while devoted to his religious work, had the tastes of a naturalist, and wrote of the country with the enthusiasm of a poet and a man of science.[9] He describes the interior as of marvellous beauty, with rugged mountains, separated by soft green valleys, in which sometimes little lakes, like the Scottish lochs, sleep under the shadow of the hills; and rivers whose banks are like the banks of the Rhine. He says: "British Burmah embraces all variety of aspect, from the flats of Holland, at the mouths of the Irrawaddy, to the more than Scottish beauty of the mountainous valley of the Salwen, and the Rhenish river banks of the Irrawaddy near Prome." With the zest of an Alpine tourist, he climbs the wild passes of the hills, and follows the streams coursing down their sides, to where they leap in waterfalls over precipices fifty or one hundred feet high. Amid this picturesque scenery he finds a fauna and flora, more varied and rich than those of any part of Europe.

The country produces a great variety of tropical fruits; it yields spices and gums; while the natives make use for many purposes of the bamboo and the palm. The wild beasts are hunted for their skins, and the elephants furnish ivory. But the staples of commerce are two—rice and the teak wood. Rice is the universal food of Burmah, as it is of India and of China. And for timber, the teak is invaluable, as it is the only wood that can resist the attacks of the white ants. It is a red wood, like our cedar, and when wrought with any degree of taste and skill, produces a pretty effect. The better class of houses are built of this, and being raised on upright posts, with an open story beneath, and a broad veranda above, they look more like Swiss chalets than like the common Eastern bungalows. The dwellings of the poorer people are mere huts, like Irish shanties or Indian wigwams. They are constructed only with a frame of bamboo, with mats hung between. You could put up one as easily as you would pitch a tent. Drive four bamboo poles in the ground, put cross pieces and hang mats of bark, and you have a Burmese house. To be sure it is a slender habitation—"reeds shaken with the wind;" but it serves to cover the poor occupants, and if an earthquake shakes it down, little harm is done. It costs nothing for house-rent; rice is cheap, and the natives are expert boatmen, and get a part of their living from the rivers and the sea. Their wants are few and easily supplied. "There is perhaps no country in the world," says Mason, "where there are so few beggars, so little suffering, and so much actual independence in the lower strata of society." Thus provided for by nature, they live an easy life. Existence is not a constant struggle. The earth brings forth plentifully for their humble wants. They do not borrow trouble, and are not weighed down with anxiety. Hence the Burmese are very light-hearted and gay. In this they present a marked contrast to some of the Asiatics. They have more of the Mongolian cast of countenance than of the Hindoo, and yet they are not so grave as the Hindoos on the one hand, or as the Chinese on the other. The women have much more freedom than in India. They do not veil their faces, nor are they shut up in their houses. They go about as freely as men, dressed in brilliant colored silks, wound simply and gracefully around them, and carrying the large Chinese umbrellas. They enjoy also the glorious liberty of men in smoking tobacco. We meet them with long cheroots, done up in plantain leaves, in their mouths, grinning from ear to ear. The people are fond of pleasure and amusement, of games and festivals, and laugh and make merry to-day, and think not of to-morrow. This natural and irrepressible gayety of spirit has given them the name of the Irish of the East. Like the Irish too, they are wretchedly improvident. Since they can live so easily, they are content to live poorly. It should be said, however, that up to a recent period they had no motive for saving. The least sign of wealth was a temptation to robbery on the part of officials. Now that they have security under the English government, they can save, and some of the natives have grown rich.