Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

When we arrived on the mountain I found the Karens, who had agreed to do the work of cutting and dragging timber, had failed us entirely. But the tropical rains did not fail. The monsoon is always on time in Lower Burma. With the first downpour all hope of building operations was at an end.

In consequence we went into the long monsoon in this temporary inclosure, by courtesy called a house. We improved the shelter by laying some sheets of corrugated iron on the roof, and weighting them down with poles. In this house we kept school, had our sleeping apartments, and did the cooking and baking for this large family. At first boys and girls were rebellious against assisting in household work, and one girl ran away twice, all the twenty-three miles to the railway. The second time we sent her permanently to her relatives. But in good time much advance in orderly housekeeping was made. Had meddlesome people not followed us into even this isolated place, the work of training would have been much easier. Work for the boys was begun also. They cut the wood, carried the water, and milked cows; also cultivated vegetables, and we planted some eight thousand coffee trees the first year. It was the intention to make coffee-growing a basis for self-support. The coffee the forestry officers had planted twenty years before was growing finely, and was of the best quality. As we did our own work, it would seem an easy matter to secure our own support by this coffee cultivation alone. There were other industries projected also.

During all the months of the first rains the health of our little colony was excellent. There was not one but what received a toning up by the cooler atmosphere, mountain air, and healthful work. This was a great cheer to us all, and was the first step toward making Thandaung known favorably for a hill station.

Thandaung itself is a charming locality. The mountain chain, or ranges, “Karen hills,” as they are called, of which the ridge known as “Thandaung” (iron mountain) is a part, cover a very large area, running from the Malay peninsula to China, and from fifty to one hundred and fifty miles wide. The highest elevations are nine or ten thousand feet, but most of the ridges and plateaus rise no higher than three to five thousand feet. The scenery is magnificent and varied in character. Looking westward from our school, the mountain drops away at an angle of about fifty-five degrees into a deep valley, down which the Pa Thi Chang stream runs in a succession of cataracts. Then the hills rise again, forming a vast amphitheater. Standing on the site of our school, this splendid view is constantly before us. Looking beyond the lower hills, the view widens until the whole of the Sitiang Valley, with its winding river and broad lakes, light up the scenery with life. Beyond this plain rise in succession three ranges of the low Pegu Hills, the intervening valleys but dimly defined, while beyond all these there is a smoky depression indicating the great valley of the Irrawaddy River. Beyond this again, on the farthest horizon, are seen the rounded ridges of the Arracan Hills, about one hundred and twenty miles from Thandaung. In all this vast expanse of mountain, valley, and plain there is not one barren rood of earth. Mountains and plains, where not recently cleared, are covered with a tropical forest. Where there are cultivated fields, they are matted with luxuriant green of growing rice, or yellow with the ripened crop. This stretch of deep-green verdure under a tropical sun throws on the vision a combination of coloring that gives the place a “charm all its own,” as one admiring visitor declared. When the rains have washed the atmosphere clear of dust, the view is very clear. Houses in Tomgoo, twenty-three miles away, are very clearly seen. The great oil-trees on the plains, some specimens of which are left standing where a great forest has been cut away, lift their straight gray trunks a hundred and fifty feet to the first limb, and above this hold a majestic crown. Often have I seen, under the reflected rays of the morning sun, those trunks of trees defined like so many giant pencils. Yet they are twelve to fourteen miles away. To the north and south the view is over well-rounded hills and ridges for sixty to seventy-five miles. But it is to the east we turn for the sublimest scenery. A little over a mile from the school a peak rises above the surrounding heights. It is called Thandaung Ghyi, meaning the greatest Thandaung. Climbing up the forest path, and finally scaling a sharp and rocky height, we stand on the top, only a rod across. From here all the western view, also north and south, is taken. Toward the east an entirely new arrangement of the hills is made. From where you stand there is a precipitous descent of nearly three thousand feet into a basin fifty miles across, rimmed on the east by a great ridge with a culminating peak called Nattaung, or Spirit Mountain, nine thousand feet high. The Bre Hills, where the wild Karens live, join this ridge, and the two curve until they complete the opposite border of the basin. Never have I been able to look on the sublime ranges of mountains and picturesque plains over this sweep of two hundred miles of Burma’s varied surface, without a profound sense of awe and wonder. It is so wonderful that it grows on one, though seen daily for years.

Miss Perkins and Group of Girls, Thandaung.

Once I went with a friend to Thandaung early on a January morning. This is the season when fogs hang heavily over the plains and reach high up the mountain valleys; but our mountain heights are above the fogs, in perpetual sunshine. When we reached the top of Thandaung Ghyi an unexpected view delighted our eyes. The great basin to the east was filled with a dense fog, and we were looking down upon it as it floated like a great gray sea three thousand feet below. The lower mountains here and there lifted above the fog, and their wooded tops made beautiful islands in the sea of vapor. The sun was shining from the opposite side, and the full flood of reflected glory fell upon our eyes.

At another time, accompanying a Government official, I went up to get this view. The rains had not yet ceased, but were dying away. We hoped to reach the top before the daily storm came on. We took this chance, as the views are the most glorious after the rains have swept the sky of every speck of dust. But the rains beat us, and we were drenched, while the mountain was buried in the clouds. After two hours we were growing cold, and were about to give up the object for which we came. Lingering a last moment, I thought I saw a rift in the clouds, and then the streak of light broadened, the rain grew less, the darkness lifted, and a field of blue appeared, the sun shone through the falling rain, and suddenly all the basin below, and old Nattaung, rising above, appeared to our entranced vision! All the heightened coloring was intensified by our position under the shadow of the retreating cloud. Eyes may hardly hope to see a more wonderful vision of mountain scenery than we beheld as this vision was slowly borne from the rift in that retreating storm.

Our new enterprise was planted under such conditions and amid such scenes as these. While it was a discouraging task, a daily view of the mountains round about us drove away many an occasion of low spirits. Taken all together, we in time became a happy family, sharing a common task. During this first monsoon our frail house several times gave way in floor, roof, or wall; but we suffered no serious harm. In September, as the sun was occasionally breaking through the clouds, and we were wondering what move we would make for a better habitation, a telegram came from Bishop Thoburn, which read, “God has sent you a thousand dollars for a house.” If the heavens had opened suddenly, and the money had dropped into our upturned hands, it could hardly have been more really a providential gift in our extreme need. No wonder we all rejoiced aloud! Later a letter came, telling us that a good woman who had come from Scotland to India to visit missions, and having brought considerable money with her to give to mission institutions, had been in conference with Bishop and Mrs. Thoburn, and as a result of a canvass of all the many worthy objects in which a great mission is fostering, she chose this Thandaung school as the first to receive her favor. She approved the undertaking, and gave a thousand dollars to erect a building for the school. No wonder the bishop could telegraph that God had sent the help. This was only the beginning of the beneficence of this good woman; and the strange thing was that she had no acquaintance with Methodists, and had been trained in a Church of quite opposite teaching and polity from ours.

The building of our first house deserves mention. The logs were cut from the forest and dragged to a sawpit and sawed by hand by Burmese sawyers, in the old style of one man above and one man under the log. This was slow and crude work; but it was the only way to get building material. The framework was built on posts set in the ground, as has been the universal custom in the construction of wooden houses in Burma. The iron for the roof had to be brought from Rangoon by rail to Tomgoo, and from there to the mountain top, by carts and coolies. This pioneer work took time and the most constant supervision. The number and character of men that the missionary has to work with, as well as the mixed character of the population of Burma, may be understood from the following account: I bought the iron of a Scotchman, who imported it from Germany. It was delivered to a Eurasian station master, aided by a Bengali clerk. The railroad that carried it is owned by the Government, but managed by the Rothschilds. The iron was delivered at Tomgoo by a Eurasian station master, aided by a Hindu clerk from Madras, and another a Mohammedan from Upper India. A Tamil cart-man carried it to the Sitiang River, where a Bengali Mohammedan carried it over the ferry. A Telegu cart man hauled it to the foot of the hills. Shan coolies carried it up to Thandaung, where Burmese carpenters put it on the house with nails that I bought of a Chinaman, who had imported them from America. The logs of the house had been cut from the forest by Karens, and drawn to the sawpit by a Siamese elephant! The missionary had the simple duty of making all the connections and keeping the iron moving to its destination.