LEAVE ZIMMÉ WITHOUT INTERPRETERS—BORROW A TENT—REACH BAN PANG KAI—THE CRY OF GIBBONS—LEGEND—A PRIMITIVE PAGODA—THREE KINDS OF PAGODAS—DESCRIPTION—LOW PLATEAU DIVIDING MEH LOW FROM MEH WUNG—BRANCH RAILWAY FROM LAKON—THE HEAD SOURCES OF MEH WUNG—A STORM—TEAK—REACH MUANG WUNG—COCKLE’S PILLS—A TEMPLE AT NIGHT—TOWER MUSKETS—A PLAGUE OF FLIES—MOOSURS—DR CUSHING LEAVES FOR BANGKOK—HIS EXCELLENT ARRANGEMENT—TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE INTO SHAN—LOSS OF SHAN INTERPRETERS—MR MARTIN JOINS PARTY—BAU LAWAS IN SOUTHERN SIAM—ARRIVAL OF MR GOULD—ELEPHANT TITLES—DINNER AT THE MARTINS’—A PRESENT OF CIGARS.
After being detained five days at Zimmé in the hopes of one of the missionaries being able to accompany me to the sources of the Meh Wung, the Princess Chow Oo Boon kindly hired me some of her elephants, and I started on the morning of April 26th, without interpreters, accompanied merely by the elephant-men and my own servants. Natives of India have an astonishing power of quickly learning sufficient words and sentences of a strange language to allow them to express themselves more or less fluently to the people of the country. As Jewan, Veyloo, and Loogalay were not exceptions to the rule, and I had acquired some little knowledge of the language, I thought we should be able to manage very well.
As the rains had set in, and we might expect showers every night, I borrowed a good-sized bell-tent from one of the missionaries, which, on a pinch, would contain myself and two of the servants; while the other one could curl himself up in an elephant-howdah, and shelter himself beneath its cover.
I followed the route which was taken by M‘Leod in 1837, when on his way from Zimmé to Kiang Tung, as far as Ban Pang Kai, a village 9 miles to the south of Viang Pa Pow, which we had visited when proceeding to Kiang Hai. The height of the pass over the divide between the Meh Hkuang and the Meh Low crossed by the route is 3413 feet above the sea.
During the morning, before reaching Ban Pang Kai, we were accompanied by the howling of the gibbons which infested the evergreen forests; and I halted for a few minutes to take down their cry, which ran thus: Hoop-hoi, oop-oi, oo-ep, oo-ep; hoo-oo-oo, oi-e-e-e, hoi-e, oop-oop, oi-oi-oi-oi, oop-oi, oi-oi-oi-oo, oop-oi, hoi-hoi-hoi, hau-au-au. For miles on the journey these were the only sounds heard in the forest, and even the notes of some of the birds vociferated in the early morning seemed to be imitated from this cry. One calls koo-a-woo, at-a-woo; another, koo-a-koo, koo-a-hoo; another, koo-wa-ra, hoo-wa-ra; another, hoop-pa-pook; and another, hip-poo-hill, hip-poo-hill.
View of the hills to the north-east of Zimmé from Pen Yuk.
The Shans call the gibbon hpoo-ah (husband), from the similarity of its cry to that word, and account for its wailing as follows: In a former existence a woman, who afterwards was born as a gibbon, lost her husband, and becoming distracted, wandered through the forest rending the air with her cries—hpoo-ah! hpoo-ah! (husband! husband!). When she was born as a gibbon, she continued the cry, which has been kept up by her descendants ever since.
Ban Pang Kai lies 49 miles from Zimmé, and 2058 feet above the sea. Although only a small village, it possesses a temple, the roof of which was anything but watertight, as the thatch required renewing. A large white ant-hill served as a pagoda, and had offerings of flowers placed before it. It was the most primitive, and most correct to the original design, that I had ever seen, as, according to the monks, Gaudama left no instructions with reference to pagodas, but merely said that a small mound should be raised over his bones in the form of a heap of rice.
