THE BRIDGE ON WHICH I RACED A TRAIN.
We had to try the railway track again in Burmah, between Rangoon and Mandalay. There was a road here once, but it has fallen into decay, and in many places is returning to the primæval jungle. In the pelting rain of a Burmese monsoon the so-called road soon became a mere quagmire. Railway-track riding in Burmah is much the same as it is in India, only that, as the climate is moister and more malarial, the adventure involves greater danger to health. The line is banked up on either side to a considerable height—a detail of which I was to have a practical and painful impression. Riding along the footpath one day, my machine stuck in the mud, and unfortunately overbalanced on the wrong side, towards the cutting, so that I could not put my foot to the ground on the other side to dismount. Down I went some ten feet—fortunately with no serious consequences—while, from the bank, my two companions greeted my achievement with loud applause.
My fall into the ditch was not the pleasanter for the probability of disturbing centipedes a foot long, cobras, and scorpions.
RIDING ACROSS THE SALT DESERT OF PERSIA.
What food we got was more highly flavoured than the chutney and curries of India, but we appreciated the lavish supply of bananas and pineapples. One day a native station-master asked us about Lenz, the little American cyclist who went this way and was afterwards murdered in Armenia. We described his sad end, and the jovial Burman was quite overcome. "Very kind smiling face," he said, with tears in his eyes.
When we crossed the frontier into China we left railways behind, though the newspapers have informed us since we came back that a concession has been granted for a railway in Yunnan. I can only say that if that railway is ever made, it will give points to any switchback that was ever invented, so mountainous is the entire country.
When we reached America we little imagined what was before us. We had fondly believed that the most progressive country in the world would at least provide ridable roads for cyclists. But the fact is that while in old countries the road comes before the rail, in newly developed countries the rail comes before the road—and sometimes the road never comes at all. Cyclists, however, are doing a great deal to help themselves in this matter, through the medium of the League of American Wheelmen, one of the most powerful organisations in the United States.