The morning fog gave us a little respite—let us have an extra half-hour on board before landing our goods and chattels—but the horn was let off pretty often before we got our luggage up the loose sand on to the level. Chinese coolies in blue dungaree tunics, wide straw hats and ditto shorts carried it in baskets slung from either end of bamboo poles balanced over their shoulders. They are sturdy, cheery fellows, with well-shaped calves and muscular short feet. When the steamer cleared off we were fairly marooned on the sandbank.
No bullock-carts had come, so G. and I sat on her saddle-box and sketched a departing caravan of mules and ponies, each laden with two bales of cotton,—a Chinaman to every four ponies. There were eighty-four ponies, and they filed away, jingling into the morning mist that hung low on the sand flat. It was a little cold, but we got warmer as the sun rose over the Bhamo trees, and pagoda, and Joss House. At first the coolies stood round us, and our baggage, and took stock of us, but gradually the interest flagged, and they sat down, and we drew them, and G. made this sketch of Bhamo, and the sunrise over China.
… A Burmese woman came to the sand's edge with her baby, and built a shelter with a few bamboos, and some matting for roof, and the baby played in the patch of shadow. As it got hotter we grew wearied of waiting. At last our Boy got the two errant bullock-carts, and we went off in procession, a big bullock-cart with our luggage in front, a Burman youth on top with long black hair escaping from a wisp of pink silk, a Macpherson tartan putsoe round his legs, a placid expression, and a cheroot, of course. G. and her maid came behind with recent fragile purchases; pottery, in another bullock-cart, with an older Burman whose face was a delight—so wrinkled, and wreathed with smiles. I tailed behind and sketched as per margin, as we went through the sand—shockingly unacademical wasn't it, to draw walking?
