A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States

by Holt S. Hallett

At first the oil appears milky and thin, but it gradually becomes brown and thicker by exposure to the air. A good deal of sediment collects in the jars into which the oil is put, which is mixed with rotten wood or other material, and formed into torches, from 15 to 18 inches long. These torches serve as candles and lanterns, and also for kindling fires. The oil is used for oiling boats, and, mixed with a finely pulverised resin, as a putty for filling the seams of the boats, and, with less resin, as a coating to protect their bottoms. In a few days it becomes quite hard and impervious to water.

Camping in the evergreen forest, under the great tree, with the air rapidly cooling after the heat of the day, was very enjoyable, and was rendered more so by recollections of our late stuffy quarters in the pest-ridden city. Then we had pork, roast-pork, for dinner! No one can realise what a luxury that is who has not existed mainly upon fowls for several weeks.

For the sake of future travellers in these parts, I may here note the particulars of our daily meals. Before dawn, whilst the elephant-men were bathing their charges in the neighbouring stream and we were having our morning dip, our boys were cooking our chota haziri, or early meal, which consisted of a tin of Kopp’s soup mixed with a table-spoonful of Liebig’s essence of beef, and some biscuits, with coffee, cocoa, or tea, and half cooking the fowls which would be required for our breakfast. By daybreak our meal was completed, and everything packed on the elephants, so that we might be away as soon as it was light. On each of our howdahs we carried a cosie-covered Chinese teapot, into which hot tea had been poured after having been brewed in another pot, and an enamelled teacup to drink out of when thirsty on the journey.

At breakfast, which was served during our mid-day halt, we had soup, chickens, sometimes a duck, curry, and rice, and vegetables when we could get them. The tender shoots of young bamboos, and certain fern-fronds when stripped of their stalks, form excellent substitutes for garden vegetables, and were frequently eaten by us when procurable. Our dinners were similar to our breakfasts, with the addition of fried plantains, tapioca, sago, or boiled rice and jam. Beef was a luxury seldom to be had, and to procure a beefsteak one had to purchase an ox.

The following morning we were off early, and two miles beyond our camp came to the water-parting that divides the streams flowing into the Meh Kong from those emptying into the Meh Nam. It was only 1643 feet above the level of the sea, or 377 feet above Penyow, which was here 14 miles distant.

Nothing could have been more surprising to us. Loi Kong Lome, the great range to our right that separates the Meh Ngow from the Meh Ing, was four or five miles distant, and dying down into the plain, while Loi Nam Lin, the main range on our left, was ten miles away, with its nearest spur two miles from us.

We were in a great gap between two ranges of mountains, and were merely crossing the undulating ground intervening between them. Here was a freak of nature to be taken advantage of for railway purposes. I had now proved that the water-parting of the Meh Kong and the Meh Nam could be crossed through a gap in the mountains, and that Kiang Hung, at the foot of the Yunnan plateau, could be joined to Bangkok, the capital of Siam, by a railway passing through a series of valleys separated from each other by only undulating ground, which offered no physical obstruction to the carrying out of the work. It now remained to be seen whether an alternative line viâ the valley of the Meh Wung, which would bring Zimmé and Maulmain into nearer connection with the railway, was equally feasible.

Descending along the Meh Yu-ek, amongst hillocks and broken ground, we seemed to be passing through the valley of the shadow of death. The forest had a ghastly appearance. Dead bamboos lay like spellicans cast about in every direction, and many had been crushed down by others to the ground, which was carpeted with yellow silvery leaves. The light colour of the bark of the few trees scattered amongst the clumps was strangely in tone with the dead bamboos; and their yellow-green, fresh-sprouted foliage, added to the weird aspect of the scene. One could nearly believe that the pale-blue and yellow butterflies flitting over the path were the souls of human beings in the land of dreams, or on their pilgrimage to a new life.

After descending 363 feet in 4 miles, we reached Ban Hai, a hamlet in a forest of noble teak-trees. Near here, willows were growing in the stream-bed, and a caravan of thirty-five laden cattle passed on their way from Muang Peh to Kiang Hai.

We continued along the stream for another two miles, and then left it flowing to our right, and crossing a couple of low spurs, descended to and crossed the Meh Ngow. This river at our ford was 1073 feet above the sea, 60 feet broad, and 6 feet deep, with 6 inches of water in its bed. The fall from the crest of the pass to our crossing of the Meh Ngow was only 570 feet in a distance of 8 miles. Three-quarters of a mile farther we halted for breakfast at a house that had been erected for our use in the rice-plain of Ban Koi.