Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

A missionary soon learns to take an interest in all that affects the life of the people among whom he labors. He finds that climate determines the products of a land to a great extent, and these in turn determine the occupations of the people. He must adjust himself to these conditions. He also finds that his plans for a people must take in their present state and their future prospects. These conditions are largely material. The wealth or poverty of a people determines their spirit and possibilities to a great extent.

Americans especially, very few of whom have ever traveled or lived in a tropical country, and who have not studied conditions in the Eastern hemisphere, except in the best-known portion of the Oriental world, have great need of enlargement of their views on Asiatic questions. In nothing is this more evident than on the geography of Southern Asia. While speaking on missions and Asiatic themes at home recently, I have often tried to gauge the ideas of my audience by asking them to guess the length of the Red Sea. I selected this body of water because it is most familiar to all Bible-students. I take the Red Sea because all have heard of it and all have seen it mapped from childhood, instead of the Gulf of Martaban, for instance, which lies off the coast of Burma; for most of my American readers have scarcely heard of the latter body of water. The answers to this question from an audience, especially if it is secured, as it usually has been, on the moment, have been at once amusing and instructive. The guesses as to the length of the Red Sea generally vary from “sixty” to “three hundred” miles, while a few have gone somewhat higher. But only one answer secured in months, and that from a schoolteacher after reflection and mental calculation, has been half the length of that historic body of water. Usually an audience has taken a laugh at the guesser and their own mental estimate when they have been informed that the Red Sea is about fifteen hundred miles long. I have sometimes told the man who guessed “one hundred miles” to multiply all his ideas of the Eastern world by fifteen, and he would come nearer to the reality than he had been hitherto.

It is common to hear at home all the land commonly spoken of as “India” as a land of a sameness of character, in climate, people, language, and products. One province of it, like Burma, is a small section of the country, just like the rest of the land, and chiefly differing from the other portions of “India” in geographical lines. But establish something of the largeness of these complex countries in the mind, and also their diversity of people and physical conditions, and the man so informed is prepared to understand that Burma may be reckoned as a land of considerable importance in itself and worthy of special study.

Burma is a land with an area of seventy thousand square miles. It lies between the Bay of Bengal and Assam on the west, China on the north, and French Indo-China and Siam on the east. It also extends through eighteen degrees of latitude, from ten to twenty-eight north. In shape it is a little like the folded right hand, with index finger only extended southward. Its greatest width is about four hundred miles, while the Tennasserim Coast far to the south is but a narrow strip of land.

The topography of the country is interesting. There are three principal rivers, the Irrawaddy (the greatest), the Salween, and the Sitiang. All these rise in the north, near or beyond the Burmese border, and flow southward. Between these river basins and to the westward of the Irrawaddy there run ranges of hills rising to mountains. They range from small, picturesque hillocks that only serve to divide water-basins to mountains above ten thousand feet in height. The valleys are comparatively narrow, but very fertile. The hills are not simply single crests running parallel with the rivers, but are extensive successions of ranges quite regular, with indications here and there of volcanic action. The strata are very much broken. For this reason the coal-fields of Burma are not of much value, owing to the broken condition of the strata. When one little portion is worked for a distance, the vein is lost, being removed or buried too deep for work.

The Irrawaddy River deserves special mention. It rises somewhere in the heights of Thibet near the headwaters of the Indus and the Ramaputra. It is noteworthy that the three great rivers of Southern Asia rise very near each other and flow to the ocean so far apart. The Irrawaddy breaks through the hills of northern Burma, and descends into the plains, widening and gathering volume till it reaches the sea. It has several navigable river tributaries, of which the Chindwin is chief. Toward the lower end of its course it connects with a network of tidal creeks that unite with its several mouths, one of which is the Rangoon River. This system of internal water-ways makes it possible to traverse all portions of Lower Burma with river steamers of various sizes, from a steam launch to river boats as large and well equipped as those of the Mississippi. The enterprising and prosperous Flotilla Company of Burma has a great fleet of these vessels running on the Irrawaddy and its tributaries, while the many steamers and launches utilize the tidal creeks. This great enterprise has no rival for this river-borne traffic. The amount of business done on the Irrawaddy is enormous. The Salween is navigable for only thirty miles by ocean steamers, and the Sitiang not at all at present, though formerly sailing vessels made ports about its mouth. Steam launches still ply on both these streams and their tributaries. On all these inland waters there are multitudes of native boats, of curious but most serviceable pattern. They never modify these Eastern crafts after any Western design. It is doubtful if modern ships have made much improvement in their water-lines over many Eastern boats, which can be seen in different styles everywhere, from the Red Sea all around the coasts of Southern Asia. They vary greatly in different countries, and have become fixed along certain accepted lines from which they do not depart, but they all seem to be good. Of all Oriental crafts I have seen, none are more picturesque than the Burma river boats.

Paddy-Boat

The mountain areas of Burma affect the country in many ways. They greatly affect the rainfall. Lower Burma receives the full force of the monsoon current as it comes in off the Indian Ocean. The consequence is a heavy rainfall each year, and a regular and bountiful harvest. Lower Burma has never had a famine. The amount of rainfall varies from one hundred to three hundred inches during the rainy season of six months. The western side of the outer range of the hills, exposed to the same current, has even a heavier fall of rain than the low lands bordering on the sea. The coast range of hills rises to a considerable altitude, and as they extend north and south, the southwest rain currents pour out their water in crossing this range, and so have little moisture left to furnish rain in the upper valleys of Burma. While the sea coast round about Rangoon, and the Sitiang and Irrawaddy Valleys, have abundant rains in the lower portions, as you go northward in each valley the rainfall steadily decreases until in portions of Upper Burma there are great areas of land that will seldom give a crop for lack of moisture. The soil in this arid region is as fertile as anywhere, and where the great and enlarging canal system of the Government is effective, they can produce enormous harvests. But left to the uncertain rainfall, there would be only failure of crops and famine. Happily this condition does not extend over the most thickly-populated portion of Burma.

In another respect the hill portion of Burma is important. Compared with the plains or plateaus of the country, there is a relatively smaller portion of the province of low elevations than that of India proper. The greatest level area is bordering on the sea, and is in consequence much modified by the sea breezes, and the heat is never very intense for a tropical country. But a large portion of the province, which is not cooled by the breeze from the sea, has also a moderate heat for the tropics. I attribute this condition of modified temperature to the fact that we have no large plains or plateaus. Unlike India, where the area that becomes superheated is immense, in Burma the area of low land is small, and therefore is continually modified by the cooler air from the large adjacent mountain tracts. This, it seems to me, accounts for the fact that all the seacoast of Burma is so much cooler than the same kind of elevation of Bengal. They both alike share the sea breeze for a certain distance; but Bengal has hundreds of miles of low plain unbroken by high hills, while Burma’s hills approach near the sea. This gives Burma a relatively moderate temperature, though so far down in the tropics. All the valleys of the tropical world are fertile. But a word should be said about the fertility of the mountain tracts of Burma. Nearly all of these hills and mountains that I have seen are covered with a dense growth of forest. The Indian hills are not so. Many of the latter are entirely barren of trees, and where there is any chance at all they are cultivated in terraces. But the virgin forests of Burma stretch hundreds of miles over hills and mountains. Here and there are villagers, it is true, mostly Karens, in Lower Burma, who cultivate only small areas; but only one year in a place, making a new clearing each year to avoid the work of digging or plowing, and then they let the last year’s clearing grow up to forest again, which it quickly does.