The listlessness of the Siamese and other Shans with regard to contagious diseases is astonishing. They seldom take any care to avoid contact with leprous persons, who are quite common in their families; and until 1840, when vaccination was introduced by the American missionaries, they had no thought of shielding themselves or their children from their most terrible scourge, smallpox. Even now, when the utility of vaccination is explained to them, many shrug their shoulders and carelessly reply, “Tam boon tam kam,”—follow good, follow evil—which implies that they must submit to whatever happiness or sorrow their deserts bring them.
One of the great causes of disease amongst them is, doubtless, the uncleanliness of their dwellings and furniture. It might be inferred that a people so fond of bathing, and so particular in washing their persons and clothes, would be equally clean in their houses. But such is not the fact. They scarcely ever scrub the ceilings, walls, or floors of their dwellings. You may see dirt upon the walls and posts of their houses, layer upon layer, the accumulation of years. The floors, if made of plank, are always of a dingy dirty colour, yet polished with a varnish made by the dirt of their bare feet continually rubbed in with other filth. Here and there in the floor you will see holes conducting to the lower storey, which they use as spittoons, and for other purposes.
The houses of the nobles and wealthier classes have one room, or more, carpeted with grass matting, which hides the holes above mentioned, and such rooms are pretty well furnished with spittoons, generally dirty beyond description. When the floors are of split bamboo, the ordinary flooring of the poorer classes, one has a clear view of the filth beneath the floor, as the interstices between the slats are many and often large.
A peculiar concentration of filthiness is to be found in Siamese bedrooms, especially so if they are occupied by invalids. The sick have little strength or spirit to give attention to the cleanliness of their persons, much less to their bedding, and their relatives are little disposed to care for these things. It is fortunate that their rooms are well ventilated through chinks in the walls, floors, and roofs; and that the continually accumulating filth is quickly dried, and is thus probably deprived of much of its inherent power to engender disease.
The missionary stated that, having visited the sick at their homes for twenty-nine years, he might truthfully say he had not seen a clean mattress, pillow, or mosquito-bar oftener than once in twenty visits, and then only among his Christian flock. The bedrooms amongst the masses of the people were generally horribly untidy. Their mattresses and pillows, having never had a sheet or pillow-case put over them, and having been used for months, and sometimes years, without any kind of washing, were generally brown and greasy as smoked bacon. Their mosquito-curtains, which when new were white, looked as if they had been long smoked in a chimney. The unmistakable marks of bed-bugs were thick and black enough to throw a European lady, or even gentleman, into hysterical fits at the sight. The Siamese think it wrong to kill their bugs, so merely take them up tenderly, and drop them into a little cocoa-nut oil, which soon gives them their quietus; or place the infested mats in the sun, so that the unacclimatised pests may die of sunstroke.
After such a description of the loathsome habits of the Siamese, it is refreshing to return to the Christian Chow Phya, whom we left squatting on the floor, telling us tales about the country. Before he left, I asked him to draw me a map showing the position of the different streams entering the Meh Wung, from the source of the river to its junction with the Meh Ping. On its completion, he gave me the names of 112 villages lying in the basin of the river, and said there were many more whose names he could not recollect. Fifty-four of these villages lay to the north of the city, and the remainder to the south in the portion of the valley that will be traversed by our proposed railway. Villages containing less than thirty houses were not included in his list.
Elephants, he said, took 13 days in travelling from Lakon to Raheng; 4 days to Muang Peh; and 5 days from Muang Peh to Muang Nan. In following the White Elephant route from Lakon to Raheng, the road is easy, and no hills are crossed between the two places. This portion of the country which will be traversed by the railway was surveyed by Dr Paul Neis in 1884, and a copy of his survey has been submitted to the Government and Chambers of Commerce with the other maps, included in our “Report on Railway connection of Burmah and China.”
The Rev. David Webster, of the American Baptist Mission, whom I had met at the Siamese frontier-post on the Thoungyeen river, and subsequently shared quarters with at Zimmé, has been very successful amongst the Karens in the hills neighbouring Lakon. This field was only opened out in 1881; and in 1885 he had 161 Karen converts in these villages amongst his congregation. I have never met a missionary more in earnest than Mr Webster. He and his wife and their golden-haired little daughter seem utterly regardless of creature-comforts, and make long journeys among the hill-people, bearing all sorts of inconveniences in order to carry out their good work. I cannot speak too highly of all the American missionaries I had the pleasure to meet in the country. Although Dr Cushing was ailing with incipient smallpox, which had not yet declared itself, we could with difficulty persuade him to refrain from visiting the Karen villages occupied by the Christians, although they lay at a considerable distance from our route.
Mr Webster has frequently suffered from malarious fever, and in his report, dated Lakon, February 10, 1885, gives some interesting particulars as to his views on the subject. He says: “It is noticeable that different localities have each its own peculiar type of fever. This that I have just experienced is entirely new to me; yet it has not had a very bad effect, except that I am weak, and not as usual inclined to much exertion. As far as fever is concerned, I do not see that we have much to choose between places. In some places some men are healthy and others are sick. Much more depends on the person than on the place, I think; and, again, as much depends upon the exposure to heat, fatigue, cold or wet, and to the lack of really good food, as upon anything else in the locality.” Although all my companions got fever at one time or another, I am thankful to say that I remained free from it; the only effect the malaria seemed to have upon me was to loosen for a time every tooth in my head, which is hard lines enough when one has to munch hard biscuits or even gingerbread nuts.
Many of the tribes between Zimmé and the Chinese frontier are Karen, and in a pamphlet published in 1881 by Dr Cushing, he states that “the Karens in this direction, towards Zimmé and beyond towards China, are very numerous, probably more numerous than all the Karens in British Burmah.” It is therefore likely that a very large field for missionary work will be opened up by our assuming control of the Shan States lying between the Salween and Meh Kong rivers.