Four weeks had now been spent by our leader in a fruitless attempt to get the tsitkays to assist in making the necessary arrangements. What between the novelty of their first introduction to enterprising Englishmen, their dread of acting till the Woon arrived, and last, though not least, their fear of offending the influential Chinese, they could do nothing, nor give any information. As the arrival of large Shan caravans and companies of trading Kakhyens proved, all routes were not closed. The magistrates admitted a small trade existed by the Tapeng and Ponline route; by this route it was decided that we should go. It soon became known to our leader that the Chinese merchants, failing to deter us from proceeding, had taken more active measures. They had written to the Kakhyen tsawbwas, desiring them to withhold assistance, and they further intrigued with the imperialist officer Li-sieh-tai, who at this time threatened the road to Momien and Tali-fu, entreating him to cut off the expedition en route. The turning-point of our fortunes had now arrived. We could gain no exact information as to the political relations of the Shans, and only knew that the Panthay government extended to Momien, which was believed to be the residence of Mahommedan chiefs of importance.
Major Sladen, with promptness and decision, resolved, unknown to all, to outwit the Chinese. He despatched letters to the chiefs of Momien, explaining the peaceful objects of the mission, and the approbation given to it by the Burmese government under our treaty, and pointing out the advantages of opening the direct trade. These letters, with copies of the treaty and proclamation, were secretly sent off by three Kakhyens from the southern hills, who had attached themselves to our interest.
The next character claiming our attention was Sala, the Kakhyen chief of Ponline, who came to Bhamô at the request of Sladen, after refusing to comply with the order of the tsitkays. He visited us attired as a mandarin of the blue button, and attended by six or eight armed followers. He carried a gold umbrella, which he had received from the king of Burma, with the title of papada raza, or mountain king. There was nothing regal in his aspect or bearing. He was a tall, thin man, with a contracted chest, long neck, very small and retreating forehead, while his oval and repulsive visage was adorned with high cheek-bones, oblique eyes, and a depression instead of a nose. During the interview, when all the Burmese officials were present, he sat ill at ease, with his eyes bent on the floor. We received him as an independent chief, with the escort drawn up under arms in his honour. But little information was procured, as the interpreter, a village tamone, could not be persuaded to give correct versions of the chief’s short and almost monosyllabic answers. So Sladen brought the interview to a pleasant close by offering a friendly cup of eau de vie. This seemed to suit the chief, and he and his retinue finished a bottle of brandy, and asked for more. His parting words were, “Remember the brandy, and send it to me quickly.”
The following day, at a private interview, the chief threw off his former reserve, which he said had been forced on him, as he could not afford to offend the Bhamô Chinese. It was his own wish to assist the mission, but he stipulated for a small Burmese escort, to show that we had the full support of the king. He engaged to assemble a hundred mules at Tsitkaw, a village on the right bank of the Tapeng twenty-one miles distant; thence he undertook to conduct us safely to Manwyne, the first Chinese Shan town, and boasted himself as the greatest chief on the route, and on good terms with all the tsawbwas.
The new Woon arrived on the 20th of February, but declined to land for three days, as they were dies nefasti. In the meantime he sent word that we might have boats to take the baggage to Tsitkaw, but advised us to wait until he had fired his guns, and brought in the various Kakhyen chiefs. The day after his landing, Sladen, with Sala, visited him, and the Ponline chief asked for a Burmese guard, alleging as a precedent that a guard had been sent up with the king’s cotton. The Woon, however, declared it to be quite unnecessary and uncalled for, and told the chief that the cases were quite different. The tsawbwa then consented to take us on without the guard, but told the Woon that he had received threatening letters from the Chinese. The Woon admitted his knowledge of the Chinese opposition, and promised to admonish the head Chinaman at Bhamô that he would be held responsible for our safety. The morning after the Woon arrived, he proceeded in state to the court-house, escorted by two hundred men. He wore the fantastic dress of a Burmese prince, a short tight richly coloured coat covered with gold tinsel, with two enormous wing-like epaulettes, and a tall gilt hat like a fireman’s helmet, surmounted by a pagoda-like spire. His appointment was read, and the guns fired, after an hour had been spent in driving home the powder and cartridge of green plantain leaf. Our baggage was despatched the next day, but two difficulties remained. We had no Kakhyen interpreters, and the rupees, which were said to be useless in the Shan country, had not been changed, for no country silver was to be found in Bhamô, a mysterious and suggestive fact. But these were not held sufficient to delay our departure, which took place on the morning of the 26th of February. Our want of a guide was removed by an accidental meeting in the street with the head jailor, a good-natured Shan, whom Sladen induced to guide us to Tsitkaw, promising to screen him from any displeasure of the authorities. Although the distance is only twenty-one miles, the loss of time caused by ferrying our party of one hundred men over the Tapeng compelled us to halt at the village of Tahmeylon, where we put up in a small monastery. Early the next morning we started, skirting the Tapeng through tall grass, with occasional rice clearings. At the junction of the Manloung river with the Tapeng, a number of ruined pagodas marked the site of the second town of Tsampenago, built at a much later date than that near Bhamô.
By noon we reached Tsitkaw, and were received inside the low stockade by the Burmese officials and a miserable guard armed with rusty flint muskets, who garrison this as a customs station. We were conducted to a small barn-like zayat, which had been cleaned out for our use. Inquisitive natives speedily sought to force their way in, and had to be kept at bay by armed sentinels, though with caution. And we were requested to have a guard under arms all night, to protect our property against thieves, and perhaps ourselves against tigers, which occasionally overleap the stockade. In the morning, the Kakhyen tsawbwas, or chiefs, and pawmines, or headmen, of Ponline, Tahlone, Ponsee, and Seray, through whose lands lay the route to Manwyne, appeared to take charge of ourselves and baggage. As the Shan-Burmese of Tsitkaw and other villages near the hills keep on good terms with the highlanders, the chiefs showed no timidity of the Burmese officials; they made themselves quite at home, and asked for brandy; under its genial influence a formal assent was soon given to our passage through their territories.
The first process was to collect all our baggage, that it might be passed in review, and divided into small loads. Outside Tsitkaw, we had passed an enclosure in which were about a hundred men, chiefly Shans, with a few Kakhyens. These fellows had jeered at us in passing, and it was by no means reassuring to learn that this unmannerly mob consisted of the mule owners, as restive and untractable as their beasts. Each man owned from one to a dozen mules, and looked after his own interests without regard either to his employer’s or the rest of the caravan. The consequent shouting, disputing, and almost fighting that ensued as each helped himself to the packages that seemed desirable baffled description. At last all the baggage was distributed in little heaps, and each man marked off the number of mules required on a primitive tally, formed from a piece of bamboo, which he broke across into a corresponding number of joints, and put up carefully against the day of reckoning.
The next morning witnessed another scene of confusion and quarrelling, as the panniers or pack-saddles were brought in order to have the loads adjusted. The packs are secured to cross-trees, which fit into transverse pieces of wood, fixed in the saddles; and a band passed in front of the mule’s shoulders keeps all firm in its place. When the burdens had been arranged, it appeared that there were more mules than loads, and the disappointed proprietors furiously disputed the possession of their lots with their more fortunate competitors; hands were repeatedly laid on the hilt of the dah, but all ended in bluster, and finally the loads were arranged. When all seemed ready for the morrow’s starting, the choung-oke, or bailiff of the river, appeared on the scene, accompanied by several Kakhyens, and informed us that March 1st, being the 9th of some Kakhyen month, was an altogether ill-omened day to commence any undertaking. This Burmese official further confidentially informed Sladen that there was a quarrel brewing between the muleteers and the chiefs, which would break out before long; but he was disconcerted by the prompt action of the leader, who sent for the chiefs, and, assuring them of his confidence, said that he would abide by their arrangements for the transport. To this they replied that we were their brothers, and that they would be true to us for ever. The enforced delay at this place enabled us to make a short excursion to the Manloung lake, about one mile and a half distant. I went all round it in a small canoe, which held three people with difficulty. The western bank is high and wooded, but broken by two channels, through which the Manloung stream issues, uniting below a small island, on which stands a Shan village of the same name. Besides this, there is another island, and a village named Moungpoo. The high bank is continued on the north, beyond the lake, as a prominent ridge covered with tall trees, extending in a bold sweep to the foot of the hills; it appeared evidently to be an old river bank, and that the lake marks what was once the course of the Tapeng. The Manloung stream falls into a remarkable offshoot of the main river, which afterwards rejoins the Tapeng by several channels. This stream is deep and rapid, and supplies several irrigating water-wheels. The lake is two miles long and a mile broad, and according to native accounts very deep. To the east extended a succession of swamps, hidden under a luxuriant growth of high grass; careful search discovered no springs or streams as sources of supply, although doubtless the former exist, as there is a constant outflowing of water. It is probably also a reservoir, filled annually by the overflow of the Tapeng, which during the rainy season frequently floods the level plain to a depth of two feet for some days at a time, the flood suddenly rising and as suddenly subsiding.
Manloung contained about eighty houses, and the women at this time were all busily engaged in weaving cloth from cotton procured from the Kakhyens, who grow it on the hills. The village boasted of a large and flourishing monastery, far superior to any to be seen at Bhamô, and with a large number of resident pupils. The dormitory was exhibited with pride by the chief phoongyee; the beds were neatly arranged along one side of the room, each possessing a nice clean mattress and coverlet and superior mosquito curtains.
Thence we returned to Tsitkaw, where the filthy disregard of decency exhibited by the drunken highland chiefs, which we were obliged to tolerate, made our enforced sojourn still more insupportable; and an additional source of anxiety was furnished by the information, imparted by Sala, that Moung Shuay Yah, our Chinese interpreter, was really in collusion with the hostile Chinese.