That officer did his best to learn, and remained Gatacre's transport officer till his regiment left the station. He remembers especially his General's friendly manner, tells us how the dignity and power of his personality enabled him to dispense with the formalities of his position, and to do things which in other men might have resulted in undue familiarity. There was an arrangement by which the other staff officer carried on the work in the office, while the transport officer accompanied the General on all his tours. It is to this officer that we are indebted for the following story.
Maymyo
About forty miles from Mandalay there is a little hill-station called Maymyo, at an elevation of 3,500 ft. It is now full of red-brick buildings, and is the headquarters of the Lieutenant-General commanding the Burma Division, and there is a railway up from Mandalay which runs on to Lashio. But in 1889 Maymyo was but a collection of huts and tents, and the road that led thither was not only execrable to travel on, but infested with robbers. However, it served as a sanatorium, and the sick folk from Mandalay had to brave the dangers of the road. The transport officer had been spending a month at Maymyo with his wife, and, having met with exceptional difficulties in making his journey down, was very much alive to its discomforts. Only two days before another party had been attacked, their native driver killed, and their kit dacoited.
When they met next morning the General told the officer to lay a dak to Maymyo, as he intended going there next day. The thought of doing that journey again so soon was most distasteful, but the officer only asked:
"What time do we start?"
"There is no 'we' in it. You don't go. I am going alone."
"That's ridiculous!" followed on, with such simplicity and directness that both broke into laughter.
The idea was ridiculous, but it was carried out. The subaltern's pride of office was wounded by his being thus set on one side, but when he realised that it was done out of consideration to himself, and that no one else was taken, he could not but be satisfied. Risk and exertion were like magnets to draw Gatacre; he went alone, dispensing even with an orderly. The fastest and most active ponies were always sent out for the General's use, and it would have been difficult to find man and beast to keep up with him when on such an excursion. He must have made a very early start, for he rode forty miles up into the mountains, inspected the detachment of the Madras Native Infantry quartered there, and returned in time to dine with the Chief Commissioner. There he met Sir Frederick Fryer, to whom he related his day's work. It afterwards transpired that two of the ponies were broken down by the journey, but even for such a mishap the General found a cheerful use. When rallied by one of his commanding officers on this point, he replied:
"Hard on the ponies! Not at all. Why, my dear fellow, it is really a good thing, for the useless ones get weeded out."
In 1886 Sir George White wrote that it would be a "long time before dacoity died of inanition."[[5]] But British methods, worked with British perseverance, had triumphed over Burmese institutions. In 1889 Sir Charles Crosthwaite could write that "disorder and lawlessness had been put down, and the power of the Government firmly established and fully acknowledged."[[6]] It was, however, reserved for Gatacre to equip a little expedition which was to penetrate into the Kachin Hills, where a leader known as Kan Hlaing was harassing the country. The General sent the following telegram to Calcutta on November 25, 1889: