Bhamô, known by the Chinese as Tsing-gai, and in Pali called Tsin-ting, is a narrow town about one mile long, occupying a high prominence on the left bank of the Irawady. Instead of walls, there is a stockade about nine feet high, consisting of split trees driven side by side into the ground and strengthened with crossbeams above and below. This paling is further defended on the outside by a forest of bamboo stakes fixed in the ground and projecting at an acute angle. However formidable to barefooted natives, the stockade does not always exclude tigers, which pay occasional visits, and during our stay killed a woman as she sat with her companions. There are four gates, one at either end and two on the eastern side, which are closed immediately after sunset; a guard is stationed at the northern and southern gates, while several look-out huts perched at intervals on the stockade are manned when an attack of the Kakhyens is expected. The population numbers about two thousand five hundred souls, occupying about five hundred houses, which form three principal streets. There are many thickly wooded by-paths, and bridges over a swamp in the centre of the town, leading to scattered houses, dilapidated pagodas, zayats, and monasteries.
The street following the course of the bank, with high flights of steps ascending from the river, has a row of houses on either side, with a row of teak planks laid in the middle to afford dry footing during the rains. The houses of the central portion are all small one-storied cottages, built of sun-dried bricks, with tiled concave roofs with deep projecting eaves. Through an open window the proprietor can be seen calmly smoking behind a little counter, for this is the Chinese quarter, and the colony of perhaps two hundred Celestials here offer for sale Manchester goods, Chinese yarns, ball tea, opium, Yunnan potatoes, lead, and vermilion, &c. They also regulate the cotton market, and the traffic in this product, which is brought both from the south and the north, is carried on even during the rains. The head Chinaman, who is responsible for order amongst his compatriots, is a man of great influence. He and his fellow merchants, professing great friendship, invited us to a grand feast and theatrical entertainment given in the Chinese temple, or rather in the theatre which formed a portion thereof. We entered through what was to us a novelty in this country, a circular doorway, into a paved court. The theatrical portion of the building was over the entrance to a second court, facing the sanctuary, which is on a higher level. A covered terrace surrounded the holy place on three sides, with recesses containing seated figures nearly life size, with rubicund faces and formidable black beards and moustaches. Each of these was carefully protected from dust by being enshrined in a square box closed in front with gauze netting. Besides the theatrical entertainment, which was interminable, we were regaled with preserved fruits and confectionery, with tea and samshu, or rice spirit, followed by numerous courses of pork, fowls, &c. The staple of conversation was the dangers and impossibilities of getting through to Yunnan; every argument they could think of to induce us to abandon the idea of progress was then and afterwards employed. It can readily be imagined that the Bhamô Chinese traders viewed with utter dismay the prospect of Europeans sharing their trade; to their schemes of hindrance we shall again recur.
The rest of the townspeople are exclusively Shan-Burmese, living in small houses built of teak and bamboo, all detached and raised on piles. The Woon’s house, on a low promontory running out into the swamp behind the Chinese quarter, was a large tumbledown timber and bamboo structure; but its double roof and high palisade covered with bamboo mats marked the dignity of its occupier. A small garden overrun with weeds contained the remains of a rockery and fish-pond, and a neglected brass cannon, under a low thatched shed, guarded either side of the gate; in a large adjacent space stood the court-house. All the public buildings were then in a state of dilapidation and decay; this the inhabitants attributed to Kakhyen raids, destructive fires, decay of trade since the Panthay wars, and misrule. Evidence was not wanting in the numerous neglected pagodas and timber bridges, and in the ruinous and charred remains of what must have been handsome zayats, that Bhamô, in palmier days, deserved the eulogiums passed on it by Hannay and other travellers.
The Shan-Burmese seemed a peaceful, industrious class. In each house a loom is found in the verandah, and the girls are taught to weave from an early age. The women are always busy weaving silk or cotton putzos and tameins, preparing yarns, husking rice, or feeding and tending the buffaloes, besides doing their household duties. The men till the fields, but are not so industrious as the softer sex. A few are employed in smelting lead, and others work in gold, or smelt the silver used as currency. To six tickals[17] of pure silver purchased from the Kakhyens, one tickal eight annas of copper wire are added, and melted with alloy of as much lead as brings the whole to ten tickals’ weight. The operation is conducted in saucers of sun-dried clay bedded in paddy husk, and covered over with charcoal. The bellows are vigorously plied, and as soon as the mass is at a red heat, the charcoal is removed, and a round flat brick button previously covered with a layer of moist clay is placed on the amalgam, which forms a thick ring round the edge, to which lead is freely added to make up the weight. As it cools, there results a white disc of silver encircled by a brownish ring. The silver is cleaned and dotted with cutch, and is then weighed and ready to be cut up. Another industry is confined to the women, who make capital chatties from a tenacious yellow clay, which overlies this portion of the river valley, in some places forty feet thick; the earthenware is coloured red with a ferruginous substance found in nodules embedded in the clay.
From the same clay, a number of Shan-Chinese from Hotha and Latha make sun-dried bricks outside the town, and a colony of the same people sojourn every winter at Bhamô, making dahs, or long knives, which are in great demand. A number of Kakhyens are often to be seen near the town, bringing rice, opium, silver, and pigs for sale. Their chief object is to procure salt, for which necessary they are dependent on Burma. They are not allowed to encamp within the town, but are compelled to shelter themselves outside the gates, in miserable wigwams. The Burmese assigned as a reason for their exclusion their dread of the Kakhyen propensity for kidnapping children and even men, and also because a small party might be the precursors of a raid.[18] A few days after our arrival, four children who had been stolen were recovered. One of them was brought by her mother, to show the large round holes bored in the back of the ears as a sign of servitude. The other three were little fat Chinese children, and adopted by the head tsitkay. A curious illustration of their habits of man-stealing was also afforded us.
The Burmese interpreter found among the Kakhyens outside the town a man who privately told him that he was a kala, or foreigner, who had been ten years in slavery; having heard of the arrival of the kalas, he anxiously desired an interview. His features showed that he was a native of India, and his history, given in a jumble of Burmese, Kakhyen, and Hindostani, was as follows. Deen Mahomed, a petty trader from Midnapore, had come to Burma with nine others ten years before. They stayed a year at Tongoo, thence making their way up as far as Bhamô. In this neighbourhood, during a halt for cooking, all had gone to seek firewood save Deen Mahomed and another, who were in charge of the goods. A party of Kakhyens suddenly rushed out of the bush, and seized both men and goods. His comrade was taken away he knew not where, and he was carried off as a slave. A log of wood was fastened to one of his legs, and he was further secured by ropes fastened to this, and braced over his shoulders. This he wore for two months, during which time he was not made to work, but was guarded by a Kakhyen. He was then released on his promise to remain. A few days after, the village was plundered by a hostile tribe, but he and his master escaped to another village, where he was bartered for a buffalo to another man. His new master treated him well, but did not allow him to leave the hills, and after two or three years gave him a Kakhyen wife. He had almost forgotten his native language, but not his native country. As soon as he heard of our arrival, he resolved to ask our aid in his deliverance. We sent him among his fellow-countrymen of the guard, who clothed him, and he was installed as a groom, and taken with us as an interpreter. That his story was true, we had confirmation, as his quondam master preferred a claim for compensation for his loss.
The country behind Bhamô runs up to the base of the mountain wall in undulations so long as to present the general aspect of a level slope, covered with eng trees and tall grass. For about a mile outside the stockade, the surface is cut up by numerous deep jheels, evidently old backwaters of the Irawady, which once flowed in a long curve, marked by an old river bank, south-east of the town. The soil, especially in the hollows, is very rich, giving two crops of rice annually. Numerous legumes, yams, and melons, and a little cotton are grown, and the sandy river islands yield capital tobacco.
The edible fruits procurable are jacks, tamarinds, lemons, citrons, peaches, &c., and plantains are plentiful.
About a mile north of the town, the Tapeng river debouches into the Irawady, after flowing twenty miles through the plain as a quiet navigable stream, hardly recognisable as the furious torrent which rushes through the neighbouring gorge. During the dry season, it is one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards wide, and navigable only by boats, which convey a constant traffic between the Irawady and Tsitkaw, where the merchandise is transferred to and from mules. During the rains, the Tapeng is at least five hundred yards wide, and navigable for small river steamers up to this place.
Occupying the angle between the two rivers, the remains of an ancient city are still discernible, though completely overgrown by magnificent trees and thickets of bamboo and elephant grass. The broad wall, composed of bricks and pebbles, can be traced from the river banks at its northern and southern extremities, which are a mile apart. We followed one section for three quarters of a mile, and found it in some places thirty feet high from the bottom of the moat, which is still traceable. The ruins, which, to judge from appearances, are coeval with those of Tagoung, mark the site of the oldest Tsampenago. This city, according to tradition, quoted by the old phoongyee at Bhamô, flourished in the days of Gaudama. There is yet another ruined city of the same name on the other side of the Tapeng, which does not present the same appearance of great antiquity. Twelve miles to the east of Bhamô are the ruins of another city named Kuttha, while Bhamô itself has a predecessor in the village called Old Bhamô, near the foot of the Kakhyen hills, the former importance of which is witnessed by its ruined pagodas. Here too is that old brick building mentioned by Dr. Bayfield as probably the remains of the old English factory erected in the beginning of the seventeenth century. We have little but conjecture to guide us as to the vicissitudes of these ancient cities of the Shan kingdom of Pong. As elsewhere in Burma, each new founder of a dynasty seems to have transferred the seat of power to a new site. But the legend of the origin of Tsampenago, of which the history of Bhamô is a continuation, may be more interesting than dryasdust details of antiquity.[19]