This worthy man, whose real name was Yu-tu-chien, and whose office was that of writer or Chinese secretary, was a Christian from the province of Hoopeh, one of the many sincere converts made by the Lazarist missionaries. His intelligence and anxiety for knowledge, with his amiable and faithful disposition, made him justly a favourite with all. From the Woon downwards, every inhabitant who could speak Chinese was anxious to interview and pay respects to the new-comers from Pekin, and devoutly believed that the writer was a lesser mandarin sent in attendance on the great man, and it must be confessed that Yu-tu evidently increased in self-respect as he realised the estimation in which he was held by the Chinese-speaking people, including the tsawbwa of Mattin and his followers.
The Woon, or governor of the town or district of Bhamô, was most zealous in carrying out the royal orders, and was personally most friendly. He was a short, elderly Burman, with prominent eyes and good face, whose chief occupation seemed to be incessantly muttering prayers, as he slid through his fingers the beads of the black amber rosary which he invariably carried. His principal wife and his children had been left in Mandalay as hostages for his good behaviour, according to the usual Burmese policy; but his establishment was presided over by a second or inferior wife, a stout elderly lady, whose acquaintance I was privileged to make. This was on the occasion of an entertainment given by him in honour of Margary, the day but one after his arrival. We sat with him on carpets in his verandah, while about forty of the prettiest and best dressed women of Bhamô, ranged in lines, postured and sang in the covered courtyard below. The various officials formed a background, and the crowd surrounded the performers. The infusion of Shan blood is evident in the superior good looks and physique of these daughters of the land. All were well dressed and adorned with silver and some with gold bracelets and other jewellery; the older and very much uglier women stood behind the last row of performers, and led the singing. We squatted Burmese fashion, and smoked, while tea and Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits were served with nuts and persimmons dried in sugar, followed by the customary betel and pan. Fortunately, etiquette did not oblige us to continue too long in the uncomfortable posture, which Burmese adopt by habit, and we could come and go as we liked during the two hours that the performance lasted. In the evening we visited the Chinese temple, in which a ceremony or function was proceeding on behalf of a Chinese townsman who had recently become insane. One part of the ceremonial consisted of a theatrical performance or puppet-show, viewed through a transparency, the actors being represented by small figures cut out of leather, with talc heads; they were moved by bamboos, one fixed at the back and another to one of the arms. The figures were placed close behind the transparent window, and a Chinaman in charge of each shouted the words of the part, while he manipulated the figure with great skill. We were permitted to go behind the scenes, and by a narrow wooden staircase ascended to a lobby leading into a large room, which was full of Chinese, smoking and drinking tea. Hundreds of the leather puppets were suspended round the room from lines, as if they had been clothes hung up to dry. This was at once the stage, green-room, and orchestra. The musicians were seated along the walls on benches; the instruments were a flageolet and a small violin, formed of a segment of bamboo, with a snake skin over the opening, and two strings stretched to the end of the bamboo handle. One man thumped two stones on a desk by way of drum; another played the cymbals, and others small gongs. Behind the transparent windows, at one end, stood a row of Chinese moving the puppets and shouting the dialogue. All were amateurs engaged in a work of charity, though how the patient was to be benefitted did not appear.
During this exchange of civilities, the preparations for as early an advance as was possible were not pretermitted. With regard to the route to be traversed by the expedition, the Woon had fully expected that the embassy or central road would be selected, and the Mattin tsawbwa, through whose territory it passes, had come to Bhamô to make arrangements for our transit. The Burmese preferred this route, as they had more influence over those Kakhyens, and declared that they could guarantee our safe passage more certainly by this route than any other. The line to be followed would correspond with that travelled over on our return journey in 1868. A Burmese embassy, carrying tribute to China, had recently gone by this road, but was reported to have been detained in the hills for more than a month, the mountaineers having barricaded the road, in order to effectually extort black mail. This embassy, or some of their members, had been heard of by Margary, as he was passing near Momien. The fact that the tribute-bearing Burmese embassies were accustomed to travel by this route did not recommend it as advisable for the passage of our expedition, and the Political Resident, with Mr. Elias, acting under orders, had, before our arrival, made arrangements for us to proceed by the Sawady route. From thence the road leads to Mansay, ten miles distant, a Shan village under Burmese and Kakhyen protection, which is the regular rendezvous for all Kakhyens coming down to Sawady or Kaungtoung to barter their goods for salt and ngapé. From Mansay, four marches through the country of the Lenna Kakhyens conduct to Kwotloon, in the Shan state of Muangmow, on the right bank of the Shuaylee. Thence the proposed route goes by way of Sehfan, a Chinese Shan state, dependent on the governor of the walled town of Muanglong, up the valley of the Shuaylee, and crosses the watershed to Momien. Such information as was possessed had been obtained by Moung Mo, the Kakhyen interpreter, who had been despatched by the Resident, in 1873, to Muangwan, and thence to Sehfan. He described the country between this and Muangmow as a cultivated plain, studded with villages, and the Shuaylee as a deep river a hundred yards wide. Sehfan is a small town of three hundred houses, surrounded by numerous large villages. Its chief had been brought up by the Chinese governor of Muanglong, and was a firm friend of the Chinese; he had recently married the eldest daughter of my old friend, the Hotha chief, with whom we had spent such pleasant days in 1868.
In 1873, great disturbances were caused by the aggressions of a Shan rebel from Namkhan, a Burmese Shan state on the left bank of the Shuaylee; and the Maran Kakhyens, who were at feud with the next clan of the Atsees, frequently attacked caravans and looted Sehfan villages. Beyond Sehfan lay the populous Chinese Shan states of Muangkwan, with two large towns of one thousand houses, and Muangkah on the Salween. The Chinese towns of Muanglong and Muanglem were both described as containing four thousand to five thousand houses, which is probably an exaggeration.
Agreements had been entered into with the Paloungto Kakhyen chief, who had undertaken to provide two hundred bullocks for carriage, mules not being procurable, and to escort the mission safely into the Muangmow district. The necessity of employing pack bullocks extended the time likely to be required for the journey to Momien to thirty or forty days; as, however, it was a principal object to explore this partially known route, which was universally admitted to present the fewest physical difficulties, the time so expended and the slow rate of travelling appeared likely to afford the scientific members of the mission more ample time for inquiry and observations. In this view of the case, the leader did not wholly concur, and though deciding to proceed to Muangmow, he contemplated striking off thence via Muangwan and Nantin.
It turned out to have been overlooked in the preliminary arrangements that Sawady is not in the Bhamô district, but under the jurisdiction of the Woon of Shuaygoo, to whom no orders had been sent from Mandalay. The Woon of Bhamô was rather nonplussed by our decision to adopt the Sawady route, but sent to request his colleague of Shuaygoo to come and advise on the subject. This, however, the official, who, as it afterwards appeared, is utterly hostile to Englishmen, altogether refused to do; but the Bhamô Woon decided to send his own troops under the command of a tsitkay, a veteran officer, to escort us as far as Mansay; but he evidently considered the Kakhyens beyond that point as refractory, though nominally in the Burmese territory. The Kakhyen pawmines declared their willingness to be answerable for our safety from Mansay if the Burmese would convoy us thus far, and then reviewed our two hundred packages, at the size of which they shook their heads. The boxes had all been carefully calculated to hold seventy-five pounds each, half a load for a mule, which carries fifty viss, equal to one hundred and fifty pounds, and had been constructed for package on the cross-trees used in mule carriage. Bullocks, however, cannot carry so much, and the goods are loaded on them in bamboo baskets, which, lined with the bamboo spathes, are almost watertight. It became necessary, therefore, to rearrange the cumbrous baggage, which was a work of some days.
Profiting by the experience of the former expedition, Colonel Browne resolved not to be encumbered with a cash-chest. All the coined money was exchanged for sycee, or lump, silver, at the rate of one hundred rupees for seventy tickals of the finest quality, or seventy-three tickals and a half of the more alloyed which passes among the Kakhyens, and these ingots were distributed among the private boxes of the party.
Our inquiries about the several routes brought out the fact that the Chinese fully believed us to be intent on making a railway, one man remarking that the Sawady route was much the longest, but, “of course, the best for the railway.”
It is hard to follow the workings of the Chinese mind, but it was plain that the objects of our expedition were as far from being perfectly understood by them as ever, and that they watched the movements of the mission with a secret feeling that the objects contemplated were somewhat beyond the peaceful pursuit of the interests of commerce and scientific inquiry.
During the delay consequent on the alteration of the packages, our friend the Woon got up pooays, or dances, for our amusement, and for three hours at a time relays of women from the different quarters of the town danced and sang.