From Edinburgh to India & Burmah

by W. G. Burn Murdoch

The Mandalay gharry, a "dog kennel on wheels," is a frightfully ramshackle thing; doesn't the very name suggest a rickety, rattling sort of a machine? They are of hard wood, loosely built, with wooden seats, iron tyres, loose wooden blinds, and springs of iron—I doubt if there are any! and it is hauled by a tiny Burmese pony, licked by a native of India.

… 25th.—A faint mist lifting off the shore. The sun is hardly risen, but already the bullock carts with heavy wooden wheels are squeaking and groaning along the sand. There is just enough mercantile life to be comprehensible and picturesque; some four or five Irrawaddy Flotilla steamers are fast to the bank, and between them are some sixty native canoes with round mat houses on them. The cargoes of the steamers are piled on the sand in bales, so you see the whole process of its being discharged and loaded on the carts and taken away. As the sun rises the dust does the same, and so do the voices of the people, old and young, and the geese and the children join in, but the babel is not unpleasant, it is not too loud; there are pleasant low notes and laughter all the time. The general tone of the voices is not unlike that of a French crowd in good humour.

We have received a kind invitation to go and stay with people on shore, but we resisted the temptation for the meantime. For here on the "Java," we see such interesting scenes; and our up-river boat ought to be here immediately, and to shift our belongings along the shore some thirty yards on to her, will be much less trouble than flitting to our friends' bungalow; so we go on drawing here.

The Phryne in hunting green is down again, languorously dropping her green kirtle. It has an orange vermilion band round the top that clips the green above her breast. She isn't a swell swimmer; all the women do in that way is with their hands and they raise their heels out of the water, and smack down their shins and toes together and just get along, this possibly on account of the tightness of the lungye or tamien. The men have various strokes, mostly sort of dog strokes, and get along but slowly. I have not seen either a man or woman dive.

We have gone up the bank now a few yards to the cargo boat and installed ourselves in it with our luggage—a very easy "flitting"—and we find the cargo steamer just as perfectly comfortable as the mail boat we have left—cabins, mess table, promenade on the upper deck in the bows. There are curtains round the bows to drop if there is too much draught, and thick handsome carpets on deck. To compare price, comfort, and beauty of scenery with a Nile trip would be hard luck on Old Nile and its steamers. I should say this is a third cheaper and six times more comfortable, and many times more interesting. With regard to mosquitoes there are more at this present moment of writing than I have had the misfortune of meeting elsewhere, but it isn't so all the road. I still think, however, that those mosquitoes of the Bassein Creek are incomparable.

We (that is merely "I" this time) went to-day with a very European party of Mandalay residents up and across the river to Mingun in a sort of large picnic on a Government launch. We went to see the second biggest bell in the world and a pagoda that would have been one of the biggest buildings, if it had ever been finished! Both are great draws, and neither is of any account. The view of the winding river from the top of the ruins of the pagoda is certainly exquisite, and for ever to be remembered. But it's a pretty stiff climb to get there, and you should let your enemy go behind, for the loose bricks sometimes go down through the shrubs like bolting rabbits.

The trees too are splendid, and the distant ruby mountains are very exquisite, but as for dancing on a Government boat's deck, and tea and small talk—such things may be had at home, and brass bands too—mo thruaigh!

The big bell weighs about ninety tons; it is hung on modern girders, far enough off the ground to let you crawl inside, and it has a poor tone. The diameter of the lip is sixteen feet. The masonry, otherwise the base for the proposed pagoda, contains 8,000,000 cubic feet, is 165 feet high and 230 feet square, and is cracked through the middle and tumbling to pieces owing, some say, to an earthquake and thunderbolts—I think from bad building and the natural inclination of loose bricks to find their angle of repose.