After a meagre tiffin I again set off on foot amid enchanting tropical scenery. The views were not extensive, for the road lay through a gorge covered with thick jungle. Several hundred feet below the road I occasionally caught sight of the foaming waters of the T'ai P'ing rushing tempestuously through its confined bed. From a wide, majestic and apparently navigable river—for such it was while it flowed through the plains I had lately been traversing—it had become a series of boiling rapids noisily protesting against their confinement within so narrow a channel. Eight miles beyond the frontier I was not sorry to come within sight of the end of my long day's walk—the first of the trim little Public Works Bungalows[364] which a considerate Government has established at convenient distances along the main roads of Upper Burma for the use of officials and travellers. Here I was welcomed by a Kachin damsel, who, in the absence of the regular bungalow keeper, addressed to me soothing words which, I felt sure, must be meant to be words of welcome; and I made haste to interpret them as such. A walk of 23 miles at the hottest season of the year in a tropical country is not a task to be lightly undertaken every day; and when allowance is made for the manner in which I had lived for the past few months, in a country where European comforts are unknown, I may perhaps be pardoned for having given way to feelings of exultation at finding myself in a bungalow furnished—as it seemed to me—with the utmost luxury. A clean table-cloth, knives and forks and glass tumblers, long easy-chairs, a four-poster bed with mosquito curtains, and, above all, a bath, were things of beauty and wonder that seemed almost too good to be true.
My expedition from Weihaiwei to the frontier of Burma had occupied five months and six days. I had travelled from the most easterly prefecture in China (Têng-chou) to the most westerly (Yung-ch'ang); from the extreme north-east to the extreme south-west of China; over the loftiest passes in the empire, and through seven of its provinces. I had also traversed most of China's greatest rivers-the Yellow River, Yangtse, Min, Ya, Ta Tu, Yalung, Mekong, Salwen and Shweli. As to my condition at the end of this long and solitary journey, during the greater part of which I had partaken of the same coarse and frugal fare as my coolies and muleteers, I need only say that apart from a short attack of fever in the Shan plains beyond T'êng-yüeh I never had a day's sickness.
BRITISH-INDIAN TROOPS
At the bungalow of Mong-kung-ka I was still some distance from Bhamo. At the earnest request of my guides, whose mules were exhausted, I spent three days in traversing the remaining 43 miles. On 13th June I halted at the bungalow of Kulong-ka, 30 miles from Bhamo. Next day, at the eighteenth milestone from Bhamo, I found myself on a metalled carriage road, as good as a first-rate country road in England, and followed it to the bungalow at Momauk, a small village inhabited by Shans and Kachins. On the 15th I left Momauk before 6 A.M., hoping to reach the travellers' Dâk bungalow at Bhamo, only 9 miles distant, without having to meet the critical eyes of the European residents. The very slender outfit with which I had started from Weihaiwei had long since disappeared. Peking furs and sheep-skin boots had served me well on the Tibetan mountains, but were hardly suitable for a tropical climate: and what remained of them I had given away to my followers at Tali-fu. Other garments had gradually fallen to pieces, and had been discarded one by one. I was now wearing Chinese straw sandals without socks, an old khaki suit patched with most inappropriate coarse blue cloth, and held together with string instead of buttons, and a huge, wide-flapping straw hat such as forms the headgear of Chinese Shans when working in the fields. The animal on which I had ridden from T'êng-yüeh was a shaggy Yunnanese pony. The saddle, which I had bought in Tachienlu, was of the kind generally used by the natives of eastern Tibet, with a high pommel tipped with metal, and a hard wooden seat covered with tightly-stretched yak leather. The stirrups were iron plates something like flat saucers, and the bridle was of rope and twisted bamboo. I had no desire to be thrust into the deputy-commissioner's dungeons on suspicion of being a head-hunting Wa, or an untamed Kachin, yet it was rash to expect any more hospitable reception in my present condition. My hopes of evading detection until I had emerged a new man from the shops of the shoemakers and tailors of Bhamo were doomed to disappointment. I covered the nine miles at my pony's quickest trot, and the houses of Bhamo were already in sight, when suddenly arose in front of me an ominous cloud of dust. A glint of sunshine shone on a brilliant array of polished arms, and quickly out of the dust advanced a body of Indian troops. The pleasure with which I should have welcomed the sight of a British mountain-battery and the sound of the tramp of the king-emperor's soldiers was damped by my painful knowledge of the ridiculous figure I must have presented. I hastily urged my pony into a friendly ditch while the detachment passed by, but I could not, unfortunately, escape the "stony British stare" of the commanding-officer. Half a mile further on, on entering the town, I met a solitary European on horseback, who in answer to my timid query kindly directed me to the Dâk bungalow. Half an hour afterwards I was arraying myself in ready made garments of varying degrees of misfit in that admirable establishment well known to all residents in Upper Burma as "Kohn's."
[CHAPTER XVII]
BHAMO TO MANDALAY
BHAMO
A few years ago Bhamo was regarded by Europeans as far out of the reach of the ordinary traveller, and beyond the uttermost limits of what to the complacent Western mind constitutes civilisation. Since our soldiers took "the road to Mandalay" and ended an almost bloodless campaign in 1885[365] by annexing Upper Burma and deporting its misguided monarch, the little north-eastern frontier-town of Bhamo has entered upon a new phase of its somewhat dramatic history. It is now a considerable entrepôt of trade, and is bound to derive the full benefit of any future increase of overland commerce between China and Burma. It is therefore full of representatives of all the races of south-eastern Asia who meet there to exchange their varied goods. There is also a garrison, generally consisting of Indian troops, but sometimes of a British regiment as well; and their duty it is not only to watch the Chinese frontier—an easy task nowadays—but also to keep an eye on the wild Kachins and other lawless tribes of north-eastern Burma where there is still a vast tract of country "unadministered"—that is not yet brought under the direct control of the British Government. There is therefore a considerable English colony consisting of officers of the army and of the military police and a few civil officials. Of the latter, the chief is the deputy-commissioner. Like all members of the great service to which he belongs, he is a man who plays many parts and fulfils many functions. He it is who, in the eyes of the subject peoples, represents the imperial power of Great Britain. The "uncovenanted" service is represented by officers of the Public Works and Forestry, and other departments of government. That Bhamo is no longer a barbarous place outside the pale of civilisation is finally proved by the fact that it is now the residence of several English ladies who apparently find life not only supportable but even pleasant.
"There is a wonderful mixture of types in Bhamo. Nowhere in the world ... is there a greater intermingling of races. Here live in cheerful promiscuity Britishers and Chinese, Shans and Kachins, Sikhs and Madrasis, Punjabis, Arabs, German Jews and French adventurers, American missionaries, and Japanese ladies." Such is the concise summing-up of Dr Morrison; and I may add that I found Bhamo much the same as it was when he visited it in 1894 except that the French adventurers and the Japanese ladies appeared to have fled to other pastures. But in another of his remarks I must confess I am unable to concur. "At its best," he says, "Bhamo is a forlorn, miserable and wretched station, where all men seem to regard it as their first duty to the stranger to apologise to him for being there." No such apologies were made to me; and if they had, I should have suspected that the apologist was taking an unnecessarily gloomy view of his surroundings. There are certainly many worse places in the East than Bhamo. It is within easy reach of Mandalay and Rangoon by steamer and train, and is therefore by no means so isolated as its position on the map might lead one to suppose. Its neighbourhood is picturesque; it has clubs and lawn-tennis courts; roads are good; there are many open spaces suitable for polo and the other games that the exiled Englishman loves, and its European houses are roomy bungalows surrounded by delightful gardens full of the glories of tropical vegetation. For part of the year the climate is no doubt trying. The town lies on the banks of the Irrawaddy, and is less than 400 feet above the sea-level. Before the rains break in early summer the temperature sometimes goes up to 100° Fahr. It was over 90° in the shade during the few days that I resided there. But that is cool compared with Mandalay, where the heat, at the end of the dry season, is sometimes excessive. I was told in Bhamo that the temperature at Mandalay about three weeks earlier was no less than 115° in the shade in the afternoon. But the dryness of the atmosphere both at Bhamo and Mandalay during the spring and early summer saves European constitutions from the disastrous results of a high temperature in a damp climate. The summer climate of Hongkong, where the thermometer rarely rises much above 90°, is on account of its excessive dampness far more trying than that of any part of Upper Burma.[366]