The little grandson and heir of the tsawbwa was brought to be introduced. The old chief evidently doated on the boy, and made a most urgent request, that Sladen would consider him as his son. When he learned that he already possessed a little boy, the chief exclaimed, “Then let them be brothers.” It appeared that the astrologers, in forecasting the event of our mission, had divined that this adoption by our leader was essential to the future welfare of the heir of Sanda. The interview closed with the circulation of tea and betel, and after we had requested the chief’s acceptance of a handsome table-cloth and other presents, we took our leave, but were followed to our quarters by servants of the tsawbwa bearing supplies of rice, ducks, fowls, and salted wild geese. The next morning the tsawbwa made his appearance, accompanied by his grandson, and bringing presents of a silken quilt and handsome embroidered Shan pillows. A richly enamelled silver pipe stem was given to Sladen in the name of his newly adopted son, for whom the grandfather earnestly besought his affection and care. At his request it was arranged that in leaving the town we should pass in front of the tsawbwa’s house. As the cavalcade neared the gates of the enclosure, two trumpeters stationed there blew a lusty flourish on their long brass trumpets. The chief himself stood on the steps, shaded by two large umbrellas, one a gold chatta and the other red, with heavy fringes. His chief men surrounded him, and the little grandson was held in the arms of an attendant. We dismounted to shake hands, which rather puzzled the chief. After a cordial parting, a salute of three guns was fired, and the trumpeters preceded us, blowing sonorous blasts till we passed through the south-eastern gate.
The road followed the embankments of the paddy fields, across the entrance to the high steep glen down which flows the Nam-Sanda stream, which was forded. A low red spur from the north-west range, nearly meeting another from the opposite range, here confines the Tapeng to a narrow deep channel, and divides the valley into two basins, one of Sanda and the other of Muangla. Having crossed this spur, we forded a small stream, which was quite warm, from its being fed by the hot springs of Sanda. The Muangla valley is a repetition of that of Sanda, with the same direction, and flanked by similar parallel heights, until the head of the basin is reached. There the valley, as it were, bifurcates: down the northerly division, the main stream of the Tapeng flows from the north-east through a fine valley, shut off from the Muangla basin by an intervening range of grassy hills. A large affluent, called the Tahô, or by the Chinese Sen-cha-ho, comes down from the east-north-east, between the high hills which appeared to bound the valley before us, but, opening farther on, enclose the valley of Nantin.
Numerous villages were passed, the inhabitants of which gave us a most hearty welcome. Near the head, or fork, of the valley, the Tapeng, even now a hundred yards wide, runs nearly across it, from one side to the other. We forded it at a village called Tamon, where a large bazaar was being held. Having crossed a slightly elevated flat peninsula on the left bank, and above the junction of the rivers, covered with charming villages embowered in high trees and splendid bamboo topes, we came to the Tahô flowing in broken streams in an old channel, a mile wide, between lofty banks. A great portion of the level ground is covered with rice fields, for the irrigation of which the streams are diverted.
A very neat bamboo pavilion had been erected for us on the high bank overlooking the Tahô, and after a rest, we crossed the channel to Muangla, which was visible on the opposite side, below a range of low red hills. We ascended the old river bank, and passed through the southern gateway, screened by a brick traverse, into a short broad street closed by a stone wall. Here we were conducted to a ruined Chinese temple, which had been hastily repaired for our occupancy, and were speedily invested by a crowd of curious folk, who seemed never satiated with staring.
Muangla, or Mynela, nearly ninety miles from Bhamô, stands on a high slope on the left bank of the Tapeng, enclosed by a brick wall nine feet high, with numerous loopholes and occasional guard-houses. The wall, with its six strong gateways, protected by traverses, appeared to be in much better condition than that of Sanda. With the exception of the broad bazaar street, the various roadways were mere lanes paved with boulders. The population within the walls could not exceed two thousand, which might be doubled by the addition of the large suburban villages close to the town. One of these contained the remains of some handsome Chinese temples, destroyed by the iconoclastic Panthays. One temple, built in a picturesque series of terraces, still retained evidence of its former grandeur in elaborate carving and colouring, a number of life-sized figures, and a large sweet-toned bell on the highest terrace. In still another, one of the courts contained a symbolic representation of the passage of souls into the future life. A miniature bridge with many passengers was depicted, guarded by two human forms, and spanning a miry hollow. In the latter, human beings were being tortured by monstrous dogs and serpents. Some of the passengers were represented being thrown from the bridge into this abyss; others had passed to Elysium, or Neibban, on the further bank. In another recess stood a low square hollow pillar with an opening on one side, facing a structure resembling a small brick stove with a chimney-like orifice, over which, as issuing from it, were depicted men and animals. This seemed intended to figure the transmigrations of the soul in the whirlpool of existences, from which every good Buddhist desires to escape into Neibban.
Close to the town, but out of sight of the buildings, we came upon the burial-ground of the tsawbwas, overlooking a desolate sea of hills. Over handsome horseshoe tombs with broad terraces and lofty portals of well-hewn gneiss, a few scattered pines stood sentinels. In the common graveyard, between the town and the junction of the river, as in many others passed in the valley, the graves are all raised and rounded as in old churchyards at home, lying to all points of the compass, with a broad stone slab at the head, but little care is shown except for the burial-places of the chiefs, in this particular the Shans differing altogether from the Chinese.
Viewed from Muangla, the western range of the valley culminates in a bold precipitous mountain, frowning above the Tapeng, which comes down through a narrow gorge between it and the hills which rise behind the town, and wall the valley of the Tahô. Above this narrow gorge, the Tapeng flows down a broad level valley, from its source reported to be three days’ journey distant. At its exit from the gorge, it is a quiet deep stream; at this spot a boat ferry was plying, and the view reminded us forcibly of Scottish mountain scenery. A long deep valley ran along the eastern face of the opposite hill, dotted on both sides by Kakhyen and Poloung villages and dark green forest. Its stream was conveyed across the Tapeng gorge by a wooden aqueduct, to irrigate the fields on the further bank. We were warned not to venture far from the town, so could not explore as much as we wished and had leisure for. A ceremonial visit had been duly paid on our arrival to the youthful tsawbwa, a lad of fifteen, who, under the regency of his mother, governed the extensive district of Muangla, paying a tribute of five thousand bushels of rice to the Panthays. The officials, who evidently favoured the old Chinese imperialist regime, demurred to our proceeding, for fear of the banditti infesting the road to Mawphoo. In this they were supported by the tsawbwa of Hotha, who joined us here, on his road to Momien, with a caravan of one hundred and fifty mules laden with cotton. He was a man of energy and education, speaking and writing both Shan and Chinese. As one of the largest traders between Bhamô and Momien, he possessed the respect and confidence of both Shans and Panthays. Sladen sent letters to the governors of Nantin and Momien, to which replies were brought on May 21st by our missing interpreter, Moung Shuay Yah, who was accompanied by three well-dressed and fine-looking Panthay officers, also by a guard sent to escort us to Momien.
On the 23rd of May, we left Muangla, and crossed the muddy flat to the Tahô, where the valley contracted to a breadth of scarcely two miles. Here we were joined by the Hotha chief with his well-appointed caravan, but a halt was called, as a report came in from the front that three hundred Chinese were ahead ready to attack us. Advancing to Nahlow, a little further on, a fresh report raised the numbers of the enemy to five hundred, and we were pressed to order a volley, which would frighten them away! At Nahlow the villagers pointed out a hill as the post of the Chinese, who had killed two men, but careful examination with field-glasses could detect no signs of the enemy. Some men were now observed a thousand yards ahead, and the Panthay officers galloped forward to reconnoitre. The mules were unloaded, and the villagers brought buckets of pea curd and fried peas strung on bamboo spathes. Our scouts having reported all clear, we proceeded over undulating boggy ground, and descended about eighty-five feet to the bed of the Tahô in a long oval basin, covered with gravel and boulders, and closed in on three sides by grassy hills. We presently came upon a man lying by the stream, with a frightful gash in his head, and a wound in his chest. He was a poor trader, who had been attacked, robbed, and, as it proved, murdered, for despite our help he died in a short time. At the head of the valley, a slippery zigzag path led up the steep face of a great spur of the Mawphoo mountain, the summit of which commanded a splendid prospect of the rich valley of the Tapeng, mantled with green paddy, and of the wild barren gorge below us. The sides of the parallel ranges, here a few hundred yards apart, were marked by large landslips, many of them white as snow. Our path lay along one which formed a perpendicular precipice five hundred feet above the Tahô. A high mountain facing Mawphoo was pointed out as the Shuemuelong, famous in the wars between Burma and China. From the summit, a level path turning north-east led us to Mawphoo, situated at the extremity of a high level basin, marked by two terraces on the northern side, with the Tahô flowing invisibly in a deep cleft, or ravine, at the base of the southern hills. At first sight one is inclined to regard it as an old lake basin, for it is so closed in by hills that the presence of the river could not be even suspected by a spectator who had not previously traced its course.
Mawphoo, which was said to have been recently the stronghold of Li-sieh-tai, was a wretched walled village in ruins, garrisoned by a few Panthay soldiers. The crumbling walls and ruins were overgrown with weeds and jungle, and it was hard to believe that this place had been held by an enemy and stormed only a few weeks before. From this the road skirted the level ground of the valley, but numerous deep watercourses presented frequent difficulties, while the rain of the last few days had rendered the path dangerously slippery. There was evidence however in the paved roadway, the numerous substantial stone bridges, and the frequent ruins of villages, that this must have been a considerable highway in peaceful times; now the whole country seemed to be a desolate waste. For some miles the heights along the road were manned by strong Panthay and Kakhyen guards, who carried a profusion of yellow and white flags, striped with various colours. All were armed with matchlocks, as well as spears and tridents mounted on shafts twelve feet long. Each picquet, as we passed, discharged their pieces, and then followed in our rear beating their gongs. At the end of this remarkable valley, we made a rapid descent to the treeless valley of Nantin, which now opened to view curving to the north-east or rather almost north. At the foot of the descent, the Tahô, which leaves the valley through a deep rocky gorge, is spanned by an iron chain suspension bridge, with massive stone buttresses, and an arched gateway on either bank. The span is about one hundred feet, and planks laid across the chains, covered with earth and straw, serve as a roadway, while one of the chains sweeps down from the top of the gateway, to serve as a railing. A small circular fort on an eminence was garrisoned by a few men, who guarded the bridge. We continued along the right bank through the Nantin valley, the sides of which presented three distinctly marked river terraces, and, having forded the river, entered the little Shan town of Muangtee, or Myne-tee, one hundred and eight miles from Bhamô. The walls were crowded, and the short narrow street through which we passed was thronged with women and children. Very few men were visible, owing, as we were informed, to the incessant fighting, which had killed off most of the male population.
