The progress of the flotilla of six laden boats against the rapid stream of the Tapeng was necessarily slow. The right bank presented a wide stretch of level country studded with tall cotton trees and oil trees. The highest leafless branches of the former furnish eyries for the ring-tailed eagle (Haliaetus leucoryphus, Pallas), a pair of which birds were perched on a tree close to the bank commanding the river. One bird was added to our collection. The left bank was clothed to the water line with an impenetrable forest of magnificent trees, rising from a jungle with ratans and luxuriant musæ. Numerous peacocks displayed their splendid plumage on the high branches, most provokingly out of shot. Hornbills, brown doves with violet necks abounded, and in the jungle, barking deer, hog-deer, and sambur. The exposed sandbanks were covered with snake-birds; terns, black-headed egrets, plovers, and Brahminy ducks and wild geese also were frequent. We moored for the night at the village of Queyloon, in time for a short excursion to some abandoned rice plantings, in search of wild ducks; returning from which we observed numerous small owls, the soft eccentric flight of which resembled that of the goat-sucker.
Soon after sunrise we were again en route, having waited some time for a promised supply of buffalo milk, this being an almost unattainable luxury in Burma; but the baby buffalo had anticipated our demand, and disappointed our hopes. At the village of Tahmeylon, where we had made a stoppage on the first ascent of the Tapeng in 1868, the changes of the river channel were exemplified. At that time the water ran deep under a high bank, but now a broad sandbank extended in front of the village. We had landed on the other side of a neck of land which caused a bend in the river, intending to strike the public path, which we missed, and had to make our way by buffalo runs, which penetrated the tall thick grass like tunnels. Along these we had to proceed nearly doubled up, occasionally caught and almost choked by creepers, drenched by the dank grass overhead, and knee-deep in miry clay. By dint of keeping the sun before us, we succeeded in reaching Tahmeylon by noon. Beyond this, the course of the river winds in a remarkable manner, doubling successive long tongues of land, and enclosing a large island overgrown with impenetrable jungle, until the village of Maloolah is reached, on the left bank. The villagers warned us to moor our boats for the night at some distance from the bank for fear of tigers, which are numerous, and attack boats near the bank, and even the villages, at night. In the neighbouring village of Tsitgna, ten of the inhabitants had been killed by tigers in the preceding twelve months. We crossed the stream in the morning in a dug-out, intending to shoot peafowl in the forest which covered the rising ground on the right bank, but the margin of the forest proved so swampy as to prevent all access. Jungle fowl and squirrels were numerous, and our servants reported hog-deer. We rejoined the boats at the outflow of the Manloung stream, having breakfasted at the pagodas of Old Tsampenago. A labyrinth of streams and swamps extends on the right bank to the place where a branch of the Tapeng flows round and joins the Manloung stream. On the left bank the forest is dense and high, and beyond it rises the irregular outline of the Kakhyen hills, gradually becoming more distinct as Tsitkaw is approached. At this village we found a khyoung outside the stockade prepared for our accommodation, and the baggage was stored in a large shed used for the storage of the royal cotton. A Burmese guard, under the command of the tsare-daw-gyee, formed a cordon around our residence, and by night had erected a number of huts, while their fires formed a circle within which no robbers nor tigers were likely to penetrate.
At five in the afternoon of the next day, Browne, Margary, and Allan arrived from Bhamô, which they had left at 10.30. The necessity of avoiding the network of streams and swamps had obliged them to cross the river three times in boats, while the two led horses and the ponies swam across.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ADVANCE.
Residence at Tsitkaw—View from our house—The Namthabet—Junction of the rivers—Arrival of the Woon—Conference of tsawbwas—Hostages—Kakhyen women—Rifle practice—A night alarm—A curious talisman—We leave Tsitkaw—Camp at Tsihet—Burmese guard-houses—Lankon, Ponline—Camp on the Moonam—Hostile rumours—Camp on the Nampoung—Departure of Margary for Manwyne—Escape of hostages—Letter from Margary—We enter China—Camp on Shitee Meru—Burmese vigilance—Visit to Seray—Conference with Seray tsawbwa—Suspicious reception—Return to camp—Burmese barricades.
The village of Tsitkaw, which seemed little changed as to its dirty poverty since my recollections of 1868, consists of about eighty huts, built on piles, enclosed within a bamboo stockade, which was being repaired. The western half of the village is occupied by Chinese, and for the first time the Chinese women are seen, for there are none in Bhamô. At this time the Celestials were busy erecting a wooden temple outside the stockade. Their principal men came to our khyoung to greet Li-kan-shin, otherwise Moung Yoh, who was known to them, and had been supposed to be dead. In the Buddhist khyoung, two French missionaries, Father Lecomte and another, whom we had met at Bhamô, had taken up their abode. They professed to be engaged in opening communications between their mission in Burma and that in Yunnan, and had made interest to accompany our party. It now appeared that they proposed proceeding to Manwyne by themselves; but the Woon of Bhamô interfered, and refused to allow them to enter the Kakhyen hills on the north of the Tapeng. We were rather puzzled to understand their exact object or account for their sudden change of plans.
TSITKAW, ON THE TAPENG, LOOKING TOWARDS THE KAKHYEN HILLS.
We had to remain at Tsitkaw some days, until the Kakhyen chiefs assembled and the mules for carriage to Manwyne arrived. The air and water are better than at Bhamô, and our sojourn, with its excursions, was a pleasant time. Our residence consisted of two bamboo houses, as it were, placed side by side, the drainage of the two roofs in the centre being caught in a hollowed log of wood. A wooden ladder led up to the first apartment, beyond which the sleeping room was shut off by a kalagah, or curtain. To the rear a wide alluvial flat stretched away to the dense jungles swarming with tigers, and beyond which lay the Manloung lake and its adjoining swamps. From the front a charming view presented itself. Below a grassy bank ran the swift, smooth stream, one hundred and fifty yards broad, bordered on the other side by yellow sandbanks, fringed by a high screen of rich verdure marking the limit of the Tapeng in flood. Beyond this rose the wall of the luxuriant forest, backed by the lofty, well wooded Kakhyen mountains. Six miles distant, this wall appeared unbroken, for the gorge by which this river debouches is masked by a low line of hills, round which the Tapeng is deflected in a north-west direction, until it comes round above Tsitkaw, to flow towards the Irawady. There were manifold temptations for a sportsman or a naturalist; on the long alluvial flat, in the morning, flocks of parrots, Sarus crane, and Brahminy ducks, were seen feeding in numbers, and large snipe and glossy ibis abounded in the paddy fields. On the sandbanks bordering the river, flocks of wild geese were wont to settle, and afforded us some most literally wild goose chases. In the great trees, as Margary said, the gorgeous peacocks were as plentiful as magpies, and he was most anxious to secure some of their feathered spoils, to send to General Chiang at Momien, who wanted the plumage for his hat. We participated in most enjoyable excursions, and, to quote his words again, led a regular gipsy life. One was to Manloung lake, where our havildar shot a deer, to the delight of the Sikhs, who expressed unqualified admiration of the country, and a strong desire that we should annex it.
One day was devoted to a long walk to the Namthabet river, beyond the detached range of low hills. From the village of Tsitgna, we crossed in a dug-out to the opposite village of Kambanee, where we observed some Kakhyen women, who seemed almost too frightened to raise their eyes from the ground. The road, at first broad and good, led through a level tract, covered by forest of eng tree and high grass, of the same character as that which extends between Bhamô and the hills. As the land rose in long undulations, the character of the forest changed, a variety of timber succeeded the eng trees, and dense groves of bamboos filled the hollows. The slopes soon led up to a tolerably high ridge, covered with dense forest, except where patches had been cleared for the cultivation of maize. The summit commanded an extensive view of the Tapeng plain, and of the Manloung lake, which was seen to cover a large area. We descended by a steep path, winding through bamboo thickets and clearings. In traversing this richly wooded tract, which seemingly contained all the essentials of a sylvan paradise, we were impressed with the paucity of bird life; only a few parrots screeched their surprise at the intruders. On a high tree, three pigmy hawks were seen, one of which fell a victim to the exigences of science.