A Civil Servant in Burma

by Sir Herbert Thirkell White

The Secretary was in charge of State prisoners, a few of whom, members of the late reigning family of Delhi, still survived. The ex-King, Bahadur Shah, who had been tried and sentenced to death for his share in the massacre of English men and women, had been spared the extreme penalty and sent to Rangoon, where he died in exile. His widow, the Begam Zinath Mahal, was in Rangoon in my charge. She and her daughter-in-law were of such exalted rank that they were not parda-nashín[201] to English officers. More than once I saw the old Begam who, thirty years before, had played so lurid a part in the Mutiny. Though now of advanced age, she retained traces of great beauty and was specially proud of her finely shaped, delicate hands. Her beauty was of the Pit, aquiline, dark, menacing. Her son, Prince Jăwán Băkht (P. J. Băkht, as he used quaintly to style himself on his visiting cards), the direct representative of the Moguls, lived in Rangoon with his wife, Shah Zamani Begam, of the race of Nadir Shah, the Persian Conqueror. Jăwán Băkht was not of specially marked character, amiable and harmless. His wife was a lady of charm and dignity, worthy of her lofty lineage. In her youth beautiful exceedingly, time had but little marred that lovely face. Poor lady, she was totally blind, but the disease which had darkened her sight left no disfigurement and hardly dimmed the lustre of her radiant eyes. She spoke the purest Urdu, in liquid tones sweeter than any I have ever heard in that graceful tongue. Beyond words pathetic it was to see and converse with this lady of a great family, keeping to the last the pride of her race and station, with every mark of a gentle and gracious disposition, reduced to comparative poverty, and sharing without a murmur the hard lot of the last scion of a fallen dynasty. Jăwán Băkht and Shah Zamani Begam have long been gathered to their fathers. Their son and daughter, Mirza Jamshíd Băkht and Ronak Begam, last of the line of Babar and Akbar and Aurangzíb, still live in Rangoon in receipt of miserable stipends. It is true that the decadent Moguls did not deserve well at our hands. Bahadur Shah and Zinath Mahal were treated even more leniently than they merited. But their surviving descendants are innocent of complicity in their crimes. Politically, they have never given the slightest trouble; Mohammedans seem hardly aware of their existence. Somewhat more generous treatment might be accorded them. Their pensions might be made sufficient to enable them to live in reasonable comfort.

Another interesting State pensioner, not a prisoner, was Prince Hassan, adopted son of Sultan Suleiman, leader of the Panthay[202] rebellion in Yunnan. When, finally overthrown, Suleiman died by his own hand to avoid capture, Hassan luckily was in Rangoon. There he stayed for the rest of his life, in receipt of an allowance from the Indian Government. Precisely on what grounds the grant to Hassan of a pension from Indian revenues was justified, I have never clearly understood. But all who knew him must be glad that any technical difficulties were overcome. Most charming and courteous of men, Hassan was in some respects the most attractive of the native notables of my acquaintance. He spent his time quietly in study, occasionally paying the Secretary a friendly visit. Ronak Begam became his wife. Some years later, after many wanderings and much tribulation, the Panthay wife of his youth, whom he had believed to be dead, appeared and resumed her natural position in his house. Ronak Begam, who could hardly be expected to take the second place, returned to her family. Hassan died some years ago. There are a good many Panthays in Upper Burma, principally in Mandalay, Bhamo, Mogôk, and the Shan States, sturdy men of stalwart stature and agreeable manners, assiduous traders, and good citizens. With several I was on friendly terms. My best friend among them one day brought his very aged and wrinkled mother to see me and bade her shake hands. The old dame obeyed, but pudically covered her hand with a kerchief before clasping mine.

For a few months in 1888 I acted as Commissioner of the Northern Division, the second officer to hold that appointment. Including the royal city, the Katha district on the borders of Wuntho, the Ruby Mines, the Kachin Hills, the China frontier, the division has always seemed the most interesting in the Province. To me who had been associated with Mandalay from the beginning, the position was specially attractive. The place was full of my Burmese friends by whom I was cordially welcomed. The appointment was temporary, though at first this was not the Chief Commissioner’s intention. As a somewhat maladroit acquaintance, meeting me at the club on my arrival, frankly said: “Of course, you will be here only till a senior man can be sent.” It was true, but he need not have rubbed it in.

Unlike most other officers, Commissioners draw a fixed monthly travelling allowance. It is therefore a point of honour with them to spend a good deal of time away from headquarters. In the Northern Division the cost of travelling was high, and the monthly allowance was never a source of profit. An early tour brought me to Bhamo, after being nearly swamped by a sudden squall. Signs of violence were still common. The Captain of the steamer assured me that quite lately he had seen corpses floating down the river “dreadfully emancipated.” At Bhamo I was shocked to find that the day before my arrival Bo Ti, one of the rebel leaders of Mogaung, had escaped from the primitive wooden jail. He was never recaptured. With him went a young Indian who was under trial for attempting to murder the Colonel of a native regiment. The Colonel I found convalescent. He was a hard man, and sepoys had often threatened to shoot him. As he was shaving one morning he felt a shock, and knew that he was wounded. Thinking that the threat had been carried out, the stout old man said to himself, “They shan’t know they have hit me,” and went on shaving. It was really his own servant, who from behind had slashed him with a sword. Owing to the Colonel’s grim determination not to let the sepoy know that he had scored, his assailant got in another blow. This is the story as I heard it. The Colonel, a bulky, muscular man, recovered from wounds which would probably have killed one of slighter build. It was doubtless by the agency of this young Indian that the guard of the jail was corrupted and the prisoner’s escape facilitated. He, too, made his way to the Kachin country, and was never caught. Vague rumours of his presence in the frontier fights of the next few years were current. I hope he did not have a very good time in the hills.

A story of Bhamo of later years may be told here. A military police sepoy ran “amuck,” as they say. Armed with a rifle and well supplied with ammunition, he took possession of a masonry house, and from a casement amused himself by shooting at anyone who came in sight. The house was duly surrounded by police, and the Deputy Commissioner and District Superintendent came down. It did not occur to them to summon infantry and guns from the neighbouring fort, or to fire volleys at the brick walls. The Superintendent, Mr. H. F. Hertz,[203] obtained a rough description of the interior of the house, and entered it from next door. Groping in the semi-darkness characteristic of native houses, he made his way to the room next to that held by the sepoy. Hearing a sound, the sepoy half-opened the door and thrust out his rifle. Pushing the rifle aside with one hand, Mr. Hertz shot the man dead with his revolver, receiving a slight wound in the encounter. This is the way these things are managed in Burma.

Bhamo was then the headquarters of the district which included the country bordering on China and Tibet, all the present Myitkyina district, Mogaung, and the Jade Mines. The column under Major C. H. E. Adamson, which visited Mogaung and the Jade Mines, had just returned, having secured the submission of Kansi La and Kansi Naung, the Kachin chiefs of the Jade Mines tract.[204] Soon afterwards occurred the assault on Mogaung, gallantly repulsed by Gurkha military police under Captain Hugh O’Donnell[205] and Mr. Lawrence Eliott. Close to China, from which it is separated by a range of hills, Bhamo is filled by a strange variety of races. Chinese, stalwart traders of Yunnan; Panthays, survivors of the great rebellion; Shans, Shan-Chinese, Shan-Burmans, Kachins of many divers tribes, give life and colour and speak a Babel of tongues in the bazaar. Driving along one of the roads leading out of the town, the traveller is impressed by a sign-post bearing the legend—

To China.

Not many miles away the peaks of the Kachin Hills rise in the eastern sky. Across these hills come caravans[206] from T’Êngyüeh (Momien) and Manwaing, in those days paying toll to the Kachins for leave to pass. Through these hills marched the ill-fated Margary before he attempted his fatal return journey. Through them in later days, with happier omens, walked Dr. Morrison at the end of his adventurous pilgrimage. A few miles below the town of Bhamo the Irrawaddy runs through a narrow, rock-bound gorge known as the Second Defile. Conspicuous on the right bank looms the tall Elephant Rock, crowned by a small golden pagoda. I have had the rare experience of passing through the defile by the light of the full moon. The silver light on the towering crags, the silence and the solitude, created an effect full of mystery and charm. Emerging from the defile, we reach the town of Shwegu, whence, gazing on the sunset painting with gorgeous colours the western hills, one realizes “the incomparable pomp of eve.” Above Bhamo the river pierces a still more gloomy, precipitous, whirlpool-haunted gorge, the First Defile. In the dry months, from November to April, this defile is navigable by launches, and with reasonable care the passage can be made without risk. In the rains it is closed to all traffic except that of country boats and timber rafts. Once, long ago, two gallant officers came through in a launch as late as May. They had no wish to repeat the experiment. When in full flood, to traverse the defile even in a boat is an adventure requiring nerve and skill. On the upward course the boat is towed laboriously for many weary days. If the rope slips, the work of days may be lost in a few minutes. Down-stream the journey is far more rapid and even more hazardous. I do not think any British officer has been drowned in the defile, but several of my friends have lost their baggage. At least one launch lies in its fathomless depths. At any time the passage through the defile is full of interest and excitement. Nothing can surpass the wild beauty of its winding, rock-bound course. Here, in mid-stream, a sharp boulder has to be shunned; there careful steering is needed lest the vessel be spun round in a whirlpool; now we seem to be driving straight against a wall of stone. To leave Burma without traversing the First Defile is to miss one of the sights of the world.

Another tour led me across the Shwebo district, then in the Northern Division, where my old friend Mr. B. K. S. MacDermott was in charge. The township officer was Maung Tun, K.S.M., afterwards Extra Assistant Commissioner, a local officer of remarkable ability and of proved courage and loyalty. His father, Bo Pyin, had been Wun of Shwebo, and had retired at an advanced age. He is the man already mentioned who shocked his pious serious-minded son by retaining his passion for the chase.