We presently came on the Namthabet, a clear, rapid stream, winding in a rocky channel down a narrow valley, beyond which rose the mass of the Kakhyen hills, clothed with dense forest. A Kakhyen woman was just about to cross from the opposite side, but fled at our appearance, and no persuasion on the part of our guide could induce her to return. We descended the valley, passing a fire, on which rice was cooking in a green bamboo, but the owner had hidden himself in the bush. We reached the Tapeng at a place where a sort of slide had been cut in the banks, down which the bamboos, when felled, are launched into the river, to be floated into the Irawady, where they are made into rafts, and sent down stream to the capital. A party of Kakhyens were seen busy at work cutting bamboos, and we passed their temporary huts in a clearing; and those of our party who were unacquainted with them seemed surprised at their peaceful and friendly demeanour. A scramble over the rocky left bank of the Tapeng brought us to the junction of the two rivers, and the day’s march of fifteen miles was more than repaid by the magnificent beauty of the gorge through which the Tapeng debouched from the main range. The towering masses and walls of rock, clothed to their summits with forest, at the base of which the river flowed deep and slow, the exquisite foliage, and the rich colour of brilliant flowers, made up an enchanting scene, very different from that which the same river presented when last I viewed it, under lowering clouds and in full flood, the height of which was now indicated by a faint brown line on the rocks, thirty feet above its present level. The Namthabet flowed out of a lesser gorge spanned by a ricketty bamboo bridge, which one of us tried to walk over, but was speedily reduced to fall on hands and knees and crawl across the vibrating structure. We made our way back by a forest path through tangled vegetation, over the ups and downs of the ridge, until the proper road was struck, by which Kambanee was reached near sundown.
An armed party, preceded by a sonorous gong, were descried making for Tsitkaw, and at Tsitgna we learned that our old friend the Woon had arrived in person from Bhamô to expedite the arrangements for our progress to Manwyne. A conference had been held some days previously with the tsawbwas of the northern hills; among whom were conspicuous our old friend or enemy, Sala, the Ponline chief, and the pawmine of Ponsee whom we had nicknamed “Death’s Head;” with them were others, whose names were unknown to us. It had been agreed that the hire to be paid per mule to Manwyne should be seven rupees eight annas, besides a fee, by way of tax or toll, of five rupees for each animal. The final arrangements had been postponed for five days, when a buffalo sacrifice was to be held, at which all the chiefs interested could be present. They had been convened at Manwyne not by mandarins but by merchants, who wished to remonstrate with them about the robberies of caravans, which constantly occurred on the Ponsee route. An instance of this was reported during our stay, by some Chinese, who came in and averred that they had been fired on by Kakhyens, near Ponsee, and had been compelled to pay two hundred rupees blackmail. The day following the Woon’s arrival, the Seray chief was alleged to have brought in a drove of mules. Colonel Browne, on the Woon’s invitation, attended a second conference, at which all the chiefs were present, and signed an agreement, drawn up in Burmese. It was stipulated that they should convey us safely to Manwyne, at which place the agreed upon presents should be distributed to them, and that the sons of the Ponline, Ponsee, and Seray tsawbwas should be detained as hostages for the fulfilment of the contract.
The son of the Seray chief was a young man whose demeanour and countenance gave a most unfavourable impression; in fact, he appeared to be a dissipated young ruffian, and decidedly unfriendly to the strangers. Sala’s son was a lad of fourteen, much superior to his father in appearance and manner; he was a frequent visitor to our khyoung, and also a patient, as he suffered, like many of his countrymen, from inflamed eyes, for the cure of which he seemed duly grateful. He was rather a favourite of the old Woon, who took him to Bhamô, and it is to be hoped that the better education and training will fit him to be a better chief than his avaricious and treacherous father.
Consequent on the arrival of the tsawbwas, was a large influx of their subjects, who flocked in in great numbers, both of men and women, bringing presents of fowls and vegetables, and bamboo flasks of sheroo. The members of our party who saw them in their native independence for the first time were greatly interested in the “little scowling women” and the half savage men. An unpublished letter, almost the last written by Margary, graphically depicts them:—“We let them ascend to our ratan floor, raised on stakes, and apart from the novelty, and indeed fun, of trying to buy their various curiosities, it is by no means a savoury infliction. The shocks of an electric machine produce a constant flow of merriment, and we roar with laughter at the grimaces and contortions of our savage guests. The women are getting bold by this time, and come in considerable numbers, bringing us their simple offerings of friendship. They are the queerest creatures imaginable, and dirty beyond all description. Yet there is no small degree of coyness about them, which makes them interesting, in spite of their red-stained lips and unwashed legs. They wear the most marvellous girdles of loose rings of ratan split to the thickness of a thread, and a belt covered with cowries. The ears are pierced with big holes, in which they insert silver tubes six inches long, adorned with tufts of red cloth. We have been trying to-day to tempt them to sell these strange ornaments for dazzling bead necklaces, but to no purpose. One creature permitted me even to draw a tube out of her ear, but my attempts at bargaining only produced good-humoured laughter from the men and giggles from the women.”
The curious crowds became at last so troublesome that we were obliged to close the mat screen in front of our entrance hall, to secure ourselves from the intruders who wished to watch us at our breakfast. The excitability of their nature was exemplified when the Sikhs were paraded at rifle and revolver practice at a target. The Kakhyen eye-witnesses shouted and flourished their muskets, and some sprang to the front blowing their matches, and indicating that they wished to try their skill. The Burmese officers had to restrain them, and afterwards the pawmines came forward, and formally asked the tsare-daw-gyee to permit them to fire at the targets, at the same distance, three hundred yards. This was refused, and the excitement gradually subsided. The Burmese said that it all arose from the fact that a Kakhyen cannot even hear a gun fired without instantly discharging his own piece, if only in the air.
On February 14th the Ponsee pawmine arrived to inquire when we would start, and was informed that we were ready to set out at once. Thereupon a conference of chiefs took place under a sort of cotton tent or canopy, which had been erected by the Burmese, apparently from mistrust of the ability of our floor to bear a crowd. It was then decided that we should march on the 16th, as the Burmese wished that a Chinese caravan should precede us. The tsare-daw-gyee remarked that if the Kakhyens intended to attack either party, he would give them the opportunity to do both, to avoid mistakes. He reported that orders had been received at Manwyne, from the governor of Momien, that the English mission was to be treated “according to custom,” of which phrase no one could furnish any explanation. In the night we were alarmed by what seemed to be an apparent stampede of mules, and a prodigious shouting from the Burmese guard. It turned out that a buffalo which the Kakhyens were slaughtering had broken loose, with its throat gashed, and after a chase had been despatched just opposite our khyoung, where in the morning they were cutting it up, having fixed the head on a post of the zayat, probably in our honour as founders of the feast. At noon, the tsare-daw-gyee appeared, accompanied by a tsitkay-nekandaw, or deputy, from Bhamô, who had been sent by the Woon to report progress. The official activity was stimulated by the fact that the officer who had been sent up with us to Mandalay, and had returned thither, had been condemned to banishment in chains to Mogoung, because he had not waited to see us off. As the poor old man had returned with our consent, and was in bad health, our leader wrote to Mandalay to intercede for his pardon, which was subsequently granted by the king. The tsitkay-nekandaw afforded a curious illustration of a custom mentioned by Colonel Yule.[40] The upper part of his cheeks was disfigured by large swellings, caused by the insertion under the skin of lumps of gold, to act as charms to procure invulnerability. Yule mentions the case of a Burmese convict executed at the Andaman Islands, under whose skin gold and silver coins were found. The stones referred to in the text of Marco Polo, as well as the substances mentioned in the note by his learned editor, do not appear to have been jewels. The custom prevails among Yunnan muleteers of concealing precious stones under the skin of the chest and neck, a slit being made, through which the jewel is forced. This, however, is not to preserve the owners’ lives, but their portable wealth. While at Mandalay, I examined some men just arrived from Yung-chang, and found individuals with as many as fifteen coins and jewels thus concealed, as a precaution against the robbers who might literally strip them to their skin, without discovering the hidden treasure. But our Burmese official regarded his disfiguring gold as a certain charm against danger.
During our interview with the Burmese, some of the pawmines came to receive an advance of one-third of the mule hire, which was paid them; and then Sala appeared to definitely agree on the amount of toll. One of the other chiefs was asked to be present, but he preferred leaving it to Sala’s decision. The latter agreed to receive five rupees per mule, and was most careful to keep off any inquisitive hillmen while he was debating, and afterwards receiving the whole amount. As all baggage was ready, save such articles of bedding, &c., as were daily in use, the next day was fixed for the actual departure. Browne, as a final preparation, distributed red turbans to the Burmese guard, which gave something of a uniform appearance to the otherwise motley horde.
We rose at 6 A.M. on February 16th, and made all our personal baggage over to the Kakhyens, who were slow in completing their preparations for a start. The Ponsee pawmine first appeared, and the burden of his complaint, conveyed in the strongest affirmatives, and with most expressive pantomime, was that he had not received any of the blackmail, all the payment having been appropriated by Sala. The tsare-daw-gyee declared that the latter had been obliged to disgorge his plunder, but as a precaution he should be kept as a hostage at Tsitkaw. A difficulty then was occasioned by the size of the box of edible birds’ nests, which no muleteer would take; settlement of this was left by Colonel Browne to the Kakhyen chiefs. A sharp dispute relative to the method of taking the tallies of the number of the mules broke out between the “Death’s Head” pawmine of Ponsee and the Burmese choung-oke. This ran so high that the pawmine threatened to shoot the choung-oke, and the old Burman swore he would cut down the Kakhyen, but the contest resolved itself into abuse, and the Burman prevailed by strength of lungs. A discussion then arose between the Ponsee pawmine and another, whose contingent of mules the former was desirous of reckoning, wholly or in great measure, amongst his own.
The muleteers, having been delayed by the squabble, unloaded their animals and drove them off to graze; the regathering of them was a work of time, but they at last filed off, preceded by Margary and Allan with a division of the Burmese guard. The rest of the mission, however, was retarded by the difficulty of finding porters for the rejected box of birds’ nests, the medicine chest, and photographic apparatus, all of which had been left out in the cold, and had to be carried by Burmese. At four o’clock, we finally cleared out of Tsitkaw, watched by Sala, who waved an adieu from the porch of the house where he was to reside as a hostage for our safety. We observed by the roadside several women sitting with carafes of water, each containing a flower, from which they poured libations as they muttered prayers for our safety. As we passed the succeeding villages of Hantin, Hentha, and Myohoung, the road was lined with women similarly occupied. An hour and a half of slow progress brought us to the hamlet of Tsihet, at the foot of the hills, outside of which men awaited us with welcome draughts of pure and cool water. There are two small villages, each within its own stockade, separated by a space of thirty yards. We took up our quarters in a rickety zayat within the northernmost village. The camp outside presented a most busy scene. Burmans were cooking their dinners, while others were erecting temporary huts of freshly cut bamboos, or thatching them with bamboo leaves and long grass. Groups of Kakhyen muleteers, who had arrived first, were sitting in their huts, smoking and chatting; others were collecting and marshalling the mules in lines between the baggage, each animal having one of its feet fastened to a wooden peg driven into the ground. The Burmese had encamped in a cordon enclosing the Sikhs and Kakhyens, and of course all the baggage; and outposts had been established at the north and south of the village.
The locality of Tsihet, owing to the proximity of the hills, appeared to be unhealthy, and the children looked very sickly. This is not to be wondered at if the ordinary supply of water was to be judged by that furnished to us in the evening, which seemed to have come from a buffalo wallow. All the villagers assembled to watch the kalas at their al fresco dinner, and eagerly accepted our empty bottles, which were regarded as precious prizes.