CHAPTER XXIII

THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE

"This b.u.t.ter is uneatable, Ramaswamy."

"I wash him, Master."

He takes away the dish of nasty, yellow, tinned b.u.t.ter and presently returns with it fresh and white, with much of the disagreeable taste and smell gone. Good! Now we know.

We are sitting on a broad verandah of dark wood with a roof overhead. It is so wide that it is just like a room, only the outer sides are open.

We look out over a moat filled with water and covered with leaves and pink flowers. These are the celebrated lotus flowers, or lilies. Behind rise red walls, with here and there quaint little maroon-coloured towers, all pinnacles and angles, showing up like fretwork against the sky. The moat is crossed by bridges of dazzling white. It is nearly midday, the hottest and stillest time of all the day, and we are lunching in the Circuit House at Mandalay, the old capital of the kings of Burma.

Everyone knows Mandalay by name from Kipling's poem, even if they know nothing of the rest of Burma. We came up here from Rangoon by train,--it took a night,--and by special permission of His Excellency were allowed to stay in this house, which is usually reserved for Government officials, instead of going to the rest-house intended for visitors, and not nearly so nice.

From where we sit we can look through into the wooden unpapered bedrooms behind, with the little string beds on which our own bedding lies in heaps. Ramaswamy has not had time to put it out yet, for he has been busy cooking our tiffin. In these houses the keeper, or _derwan_, will do everything for you if you like, and you pay him so much for his trouble, but if you prefer your own servant to do it you can make that arrangement and borrow the pots and pans. Ramaswamy has given us already b.u.t.tered eggs, some cutlets which tasted goaty, with some excellent little vegetables called bringals, as well as a dish of mixed curry, and he has now put some fruit on the table, and is bringing in coffee. He cooks out there behind in the compound. I saw him just now bending over a handful of sticks. However he manages to get the things hot I don't know. These natives have marvellous ways.

We must rest a while this afternoon and have an early tea before starting out to see the palace which lies inside that brick wall.

The tea is decent, the toast smoky, and the milk very poor. Ramaswamy says that it is almost impossible to get milk; the Burmans don't drink it themselves, and he thinks we shall have to fall back upon that condensed stuff. However, there is excellent jam, and that is a good thing. Look round this bare wooden room and notice how little furniture one needs for perfect comfort. A couple of deck-chairs, a couple of small chairs, a table, a lamp, and a waste-paper basket! What a lot of superfluous furniture one does acc.u.mulate in England!

What are you smiling at? The recollection of the bath? It's a very good way of bathing, I think. A wooden tub in the middle of a tiny room without anything else in it. You can splash as much as ever you like, and even if you spilt the whole bath it wouldn't matter much, because the water would simply run down through the cracks in the plank floor, and any one who knows anything here knows enough not to stand underneath a bathroom which is built out on wooden legs.

We'll start now if you're ready! Hullo! Did you ever see anything so impudent? A great crow on the tea-table! Frighten him away, he's after those chocolates wrapped in silver paper that you brought up from Rangoon. The cheek of it!

When we have pa.s.sed over the white bridge and got inside the wall of the palace we see a wide s.p.a.ce of green with a few houses scattered here and there, and in the middle a group of buildings, one of which has a very tall spire. Inside this wall at one time, the Burman time, was crammed the whole of Mandalay--six thousand houses, more or less. It _was_ the town. The British cleared out all the houses, and the town is now outside in wide streets,--we saw it this morning as we drove up from the station,--and the palace is left here alone in its glory.

That tall, many-roofed spire is the King's house. Only the King was allowed to rival the poongyis in the number of his roofs, no other Burman might do such a thing. It is an empty distinction in two senses, for, as you know, the roofs don't mean floors, they are hollow. There is only one floor, for, of course, the King could never risk the frightful indignity of having anyone's feet above his head. At the top is a htee, or umbrella, as there is on the paG.o.das.

The palace is not all one big building, but a number of buildings, or halls, each only one storey, grouped about with courtyards between. We wander in and out of them, treading on polished floors and seeing brilliant bits of colour framed in dark doorways. Some of the pillars glow a dull red, others are a wonderful gold; some of the doorways are set in frames of carved wood gilded all over. We see columns encrusted with little bits of many-coloured looking-gla.s.s, like those we saw in Rangoon. The halls are very dim in contrast with the brilliant light outside, and there is a kind of tawdriness in the decoration which makes one feel how different in nature these people must be from the ancient Egyptians who built so solidly. Here all is gay, but you feel it is gimcrack--it won't last. Look at that bal.u.s.trade, gleaming deep green; examine it--do you see what it is? Nothing in the world but a row of green gla.s.s bottles turned upside down and embedded in cement! This place isn't old at all. It has not been built sixty years; before that the capital was elsewhere.

All at once Ramaswamy, who has been following noiselessly, pushes you aside with a cry of "Scorpion, Master." There, on the ground, difficult to see in this dim light, is a round black thing about as big as the palm of your hand, with a tail sticking out from it. It is the shape of a tadpole. In another minute you would have trodden on him, and if he had got in above your shoe, well--it would have been unpleasant in any case, and might have meant death!

He lies quite still, not attempting to run away until Ramaswamy's shout brings one of the guardians, a tall man in a dark blue uniform and red sash. He rushes to find a big stone. We won't stop to see it. Poor beggar! Doubtless they'll "larn him to be a scorpion!"

When King Theebaw reigned here he thought himself invincible; the many-roofed spire was "the centre of the universe." He imagined he could treat as he liked not only his own subjects but that white-faced race who had had the audacity to settle down in southern Burma. He soon learnt his mistake.

Leaving the palace we go on to see a very curious thing not far off outside the walls, this is the Kutho-daw, the Royal Merit-House. We enter by an elaborate white gateway and find ourselves in a perfect forest of paG.o.das. They are planted in rows and are all exactly alike and not very large. They are glittering white, and each one has a slate slab inside. The Kutho-daw was built by Theebaw's uncle, who acquired much merit thereby, and he deserved it, for there are no less than seven hundred and twenty-nine paG.o.das. On the slate inside each is inscribed some part of the Buddhist Scriptures. It was a grand idea thus to preserve indelibly on stone the whole Burmese Bible. Here it is for all time. Peep inside one and you will see the funny-looking Burmese writing, which all runs on without being divided up into words, and looks consequently so incomprehensible to us.

What? How you jump! What is it? Another beast? Yes, I see him, that is a tarantula crouching in the darkest corner and looking at us out of wicked little eyes that shine like diamond points. He is a monster spider, isn't he? All hairy too, and his body striped with yellow bands like a wasp's. He sits still, but he is very much alive and ready to jump at a minute's notice. They are venomous brutes. Not quite so bad as a scorpion, but still the bite from one of these fellows is a very unpleasant thing. We will leave him, he can't do much harm here.

Now we will drive round the town and see how the people live.

Here is a happy family seated on a wooden platform stretching out in front of their house. The dust around and over them and in the roadway is almost as bad as Egypt, but here there is nearly always a tree or shrub of some sort to bring in a flash of green. The huts too are built of wood and mats and are raised several feet from the ground; they do not look so hopelessly crooked as the Egyptian mud houses. In the s.p.a.ce underneath huge black pigs, like great boars, wander, and there are black goats too, and skinny hens and pariah dogs. Do you see that mother-dog lying in the roadway, too lazy to move, with six yellow puppies sprawling over her? Poor brute, she is a ma.s.s of mange and so skinny that her ribs stick out! The people here are taught by their religion not to take life of any kind; some of the priests strain their water through a sieve lest they should inadvertently swallow an insect!

So no one kills, even in mercy. All these miserable puppies are allowed to grow up to a starved wretched existence, a misery to themselves and everyone else.

Look at those two elephants stalking down the road; they move majestically, and when they reach the pariah dog the driver, or _oozie_, seated on the first one's neck, p.r.i.c.ks him with a point to make him look where he is going, so that he avoids the dog. You will see plenty of elephants here, for elephants are to Burma what camels are to Egypt, the regular beasts of burden. They carry the kit and camp paraphernalia for the men who go into the jungle sometimes for months. They move the logs and trunks of the timber which is cut in the forests in large quant.i.ties. You remember the dark wood of the Circuit House and the poongyi choung? That is all teak, the best known wood in the country, corresponding to our oak. There are forests of it, and large companies exist simply for getting it out. There are still herds of wild elephants in the little disturbed parts of Burma, and every now and again Government catches them in _keddahs_ in great quant.i.ties. I wish we had the luck to go with a hunting-party.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELEPHANTS, BURMA.]

The family which owns that hut is seated on the edge of the platform and are watching us with as much interest as we watch them. Two bright-eyed little girls in jackets play beside a smiling woman. You will notice here the girls and women have quite as good a time as the boys and men; no veiling of faces or hiding away for them. The Burman knows better, and he would get on badly without the active help and advice of his comrade and wife.

CHAPTER XXIV

ON A CARGO BOAT

[Ill.u.s.tration: DANCING GIRL, BURMA.]

Did you ever see anything like it in your life? I never did.

We are on a steamer coming down the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay, and it is our first evening on board. We are not the only pa.s.sengers, there are also a widow lady and her daughter, a girl a few years older than you, but still in pigtails, whose name is Joyce. We were all four sitting very comfortably after dinner on the deck, which is roofed in, making a fine open room like a verandah, when a few large, light-coloured moths appeared; then, as if by magic, the whole deck was suddenly alive with them. They banged against the gla.s.s of the lights, thumped into our faces, and whirled around exactly like a thick snowstorm with very large flakes.

"It's one of the plagues of Egypt," you yell.

Joyce screams, pulls her long plaits round her face to prevent the moths catching in them, and dives for her cabin. Everyone follows suit, and soon anxious voices can be heard asking, "How many got in with you?"

It is impossible to shut the port-hole, and in less time than I can tear off my clothes my tiny room is as bad as the deck.

Luckily there are mosquito-curtains, and glad of them we are, as we can hear the loathsome soft-bodied creatures blundering about outside them.

Lo! in the morning they are all gone, and when I get on deck, and ask the captain, a stern soul from Aberdeen, where they have disappeared to, he points to the river. "Where would they be? Overboard, of course.

Dead, every one of them. They live but a day."

Leaning over the vessel's side I see some of the gummy bodies, mere hollow sh.e.l.ls now, transparent and fragile, sticking on to the black paint about the bows. The creatures are white ants who come out of holes in the ground at this time of year. Our lights attracted a new-born swarm. At least that must have been it, because we weren't plagued with them again in the same way, though the captain says that in the wet season it is impossible to sit on the deck at all in the evenings because of the mult.i.tude of winged things.

"But then you haven't got any hair," I hear Joyce's cheerful voice saying on the deck. You evidently reply something, for she rejoins at once, "Oh yes, it's in plaits, but they might stick in them! I've always had a creepy horror of crawly things sticking in my hair."

"Cut it off," you suggest brutally.

This is a cargo boat. We had much to see at Mandalay; we visited the Aracan PaG.o.da and Golden Temple, we went up to the hill-station, Maymyo, and on to the Gokteik Gorge, spanned by one of the highest trestle bridges in the world, and when we arrived back at Mandalay we found that the pa.s.senger boat had just left, so we came on by this one, the _China_, which is really just as comfortable and not so crowded. She is fitted with bathrooms and comfortable cabins with little beds in them, and on the s.p.a.cious upper deck are two immense mirrors so placed that all the sights on the sh.o.r.e are reflected in them. You can sit in a lounge-chair and watch them flash past like a continuous cinematograph.

The Irrawaddy flows right through Burma, cutting it in half, as the Nile does Egypt; and it is rather like the Nile, but, of course, not nearly so long, not so long even as the Ganges, though steamers can go up it for nine hundred miles, equal to the length of England and Scotland put together! The river is wide and shallow in places, sometimes as much as two miles across, and at these places great care has to be taken not to run on sandbanks; there is much poling and shouting out of soundings, and when we do stick, a boat rows out with an anchor and drops it, and after a while we ride up to the anchor and there we are!

There is far more vegetation to be seen on the banks than in Egypt, and the life in the villages is much more attractive. The houses are perfectly beautiful--at a distance. They are built of dark wood, and stand on posts, with wide verandahs and thatched roofs, are nearly always embowered in great trees, and have a luxuriant growth of plantains and trees around. The spires of the paG.o.das and the pinnacles and roofs of the choungs generally rise up somewhere in the picture, and in the evening, when the whole village comes down to the water, the scene is charming. The cattle stand knee-deep and the people bathe and wash their clothes and drink heartily of the muddy stream, and then slip on dry garments, after which the women and girls stream up the steep banks, carrying red chatties of water on their heads. All are lively, full of play and chaff. Their life is a happy one, because perfectly simple and natural; no one need starve and no one wants to be rich.

All day the steamer floats along, generally winding slowly across and across the river wherever a little red flag stuck up on the banks tells that there are a few cases or barrels or packets to be taken down to the market. At one place it is _let-pet_, or pickled tea, though the plant from which the stuff is made is not really a tea-plant. Burmans love it, and no feast is complete without it, indeed a packet of let-pet is an invitation to something festive.

It is early afternoon and quite hot and still as we circle toward the sh.o.r.e where the red flag hangs drooping; people in gay clothes are dabbed about like little splashes of colour on the whity-yellow sand.

Suddenly there is a splash, and from our bows, which are high up in the air, one of the Lascars, dressed in blue dungaree trousers, drops feet first into the water like a stone; while he is in the air another follows and another, until there are half a dozen of them in the water, and they go across to the sh.o.r.e, paddling with each hand alternately as a dog does with his paws. They are carrying a line ash.o.r.e. They always jump off like this at every landing-place. They shake themselves like dogs as they land, and the sun soon dries their one and only garment.

But it takes a good while before the line is fixed up to the captain's liking!

Then the people swarm across the plank into the great barge, or flat, tied alongside of us, and a shouting sing-song begins as men and girls alike hurry up and down carrying on board sacks of monkey-nuts. They work hard and untiringly and always good-humouredly; the popular notion that the Burman is a lazy fellow is based on the fact that he won't work if he can help it, but when he has to he does it with goodwill. A funny little incident occurs. The captain, walking down his own gangway, is run into by a coolie who is heading up the plank with a sack on his shoulders; wrathfully the captain sends him and his sack flying, and they both land in deep water. That is nothing, however, for every Burman can swim, and no one bears any ill-feeling about it.

Crowds of little boys and girls are dancing and splashing about on the edge of the water with infinite glee. A mother comes down with her baby and goes into deep water with the tiny thing clinging to her; suddenly she lets it go, and swimming with one hand holds it up with the other while it kicks spasmodically like a little frog. The babies learn to swim before they can walk.