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A

THOUSAND MILES ON AN ELEPHANT

IN THE SHAN STATES

MAUNG HAUT TO KIANG HSEN

A
THOUSAND MILES ON AN ELEPHANT
IN THE SHAN STATES

BY

HOLT S. HALLETT, M. Inst. C.E.

F.R.G.S., M.R.A.S.

HONORARY MEMBER MANCHESTER AND TYNESIDE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETIES

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCXC

All Rights reserved

TO

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES IN BURMAH, SIAM, AND THE SHAN STATES,

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK,

AS A MARK OF THE

HIGH ESTEEM IN WHICH I HOLD THE NOBLE WORK

THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION AND

THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION

ARE ACCOMPLISHING

IN CIVILISING AND CHRISTIANISING

THE PEOPLE OF INDO-CHINA.

PREFACE.

The importance of the Eastern markets to European commerce has long been recognised, and since the famous Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the close of the fifteenth century, and the Portuguese occupied Malacca and established factories or trade depots in Burmah at Martaban and Syriam, the trade of Western China and Indo-China has been a prize which has attracted the commercial aspirations of every maritime mercantile community in Europe.

In 1613, the Portuguese were ousted from Burmah, and six years later, the English and Dutch established factories in that country. Some years afterwards the Dutch were expelled, and in the middle of the next century the French became our rivals for a short time. In 1756 the chief of their factory was executed, and their factory was destroyed, never to be resuscitated.

The first Englishman whose name is recorded in history as travelling in Siam and the Shan States is Thomas Samuel, who happened to be at Zimmé when that place was recaptured by the Burmese in 1615. In Purchas’s ‘Pilgrims’ it is related that he had proceeded from Siam to Zimmé “to discover the trade of that country.” From that time to 1687, when the English were turned out of Siam for killing some of the natives in a scuffle, many English merchants resided there.

Whilst the coast of Burmah was under native dominion, our traders had to content themselves with travelling along the great rivers; and it was not until 1829, three years after we had annexed the Burmese provinces of Tenasserim and Arakan, that steps were taken by us to establish overland trade with Northern Siam, the Shan States, and China. In that year Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General of India, ordered a mission to proceed, under Dr Richardson, from Maulmain to the Siamese Shan States, to ensure friendly relations and trade in that direction; and in 1837, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General, despatched Captain (late General) MacLeod, viâ Zimmé and Kiang Hung to China, with the view of opening up trade with that country. Notwithstanding the favourable reports of these and subsequent missions, and the frequent petitions of our mercantile community asking for the connection of Burmah with China by railway, no action has been taken by the Indian Government in the sixty years that have elapsed since Dr Richardson’s mission, for improving the overland routes leading from Burmah to the great undeveloped markets which immediately border our possessions on the east. Burmah might as well have remained for these sixty years in native hands, for all the good that its acquisition has been to the furtherance of our trade with the neighbouring regions.

When I retired from Government service at the end of 1879, the French were again in the field. They had annexed the south-eastern corner of Indo-China, had seized Cambodia from the Siamese, were determined to wrest Tonquin from China, which they have since succeeded in doing, and had openly avowed their intention to eject British trade from Eastern Indo-China, and to do all they possibly could to attract the trade of South-western, Southern, and Central China to French ports in Tonquin, where prohibitive duties could be, and have since been, placed upon British goods. It was under these circumstances that Mr Colquhoun and I took up the question, placed the necessity of connecting India with Burmah, Siam, and China before the public, and with the aid of the mercantile community determined to carry out a series of exploration-surveys to prove whether or not Burmah could be connected with these countries by railway at a reasonable expense, and to select the best route, financially and commercially, for the undertaking. The present volume deals with my exploration-surveys in Siam and the Shan States.

The country through which I passed, besides being of interest from a commercial point of view, was at the time of my visit shrouded with that glamour which invests all little-known regions; and an accurate knowledge of its physical features and political relations promised to be of great importance in view of the action of France in Tonquin, and our threatened embroilment with that nation in Upper Burmah.

Before commencing the narrative of my journey, in which the manners, customs, and habits of the people will be portrayed, I will, from information recently acquired by myself and other travellers, and from other sources, give a slight sketch of the ethnology and history of the interesting races met with by me on my journey.

The first mention in history of Lower Indo-China is in the ‘Annamese Chronicles,’ where it is stated that Founan—the early Chinese name for Cambodia—in B.C. 1109 was under the rule of a native queen. The next we hear of it is in A.D. 69, at the time when a Brahman from India, named Prea Thong, who is said to have been the fugitive son of the sovereign of Delhi, married the then ruling queen. This Brahman is believed to have introduced Brahmanism, architecture, sculpture, and astronomy into Cambodia. At that time Cambodia consisted of an agglomeration of seven States, which were constantly at war with each other. On the death of the Brahman’s son, the commander-in-chief of the army made an end of the principalities, and was elected to the joint throne.

From B.C. 125 there are many accounts of embassies passing between China and Cambodia, and the country seems rapidly to have reached a height of prosperity and Eastern splendour. In the third century Chinese ambassadors mention palaces, towers, and theatres having been erected for the reception and amusement of the guests, and meeting merchants in the ports from countries as far west as the Roman Empire. The people were described by the Chinese as an active and robust small black race, with long hair knotted on the top of the head; the rich wearing only a silk loin-cloth, and the poor one of cotton. The women had head-coverings, and decked themselves with beautifully wrought silver jewellery set with precious stones. The men excelled in making jewellery, gold and silver vases, furniture, and domestic utensils—and were honest, and hated theft above all things. They worshipped Hindoo gods, and offered up human sacrifices.

This small black race, the Cham or Siam, was of the Malay stock, doubtless darkened by interbreeding with the Negrito aborigines, and perhaps with Dravidian colonists from the Madras coast. Remnants of the Negrito aborigines, evidently akin to the Australioids, are still found in the hilly districts of the Malay Peninsula, as well as in some of the adjacent islands: and the Kha, or Ka, in the neighbourhood of Luang Prabang; the Trao, to the east of Bienhoa in Cochin China; the Hotha Shans, in the Chinese Shan States; and one of the native races in Formosa,—are, according to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, representatives of the same stock, and akin to the Tiao, a race of pigmies, with whom the Chinese (Peh Sing tribes) became acquainted when they entered North-eastern China more than 4000 years ago.

To the north of the Chams, the country from an early period was occupied by the Lawa, a race with Mon affinities and probably of the Mon stock, who, according to their own traditions, and the beliefs and traditions of their neighbours, are the aborigines of the region stretching southwards from Yunnan, and eastwards from the Salween to the Meh Kong, and perhaps even to the China Sea. Many of the names of principalities and deserted cities are said to have been derived from the Lawa; and fierce battles were fought between them and the Shans before the former were conquered or driven into the hills. In a few years the language of this interesting race will be extinct, as the race have gradually been absorbed into the Shan and Peguan population, and Shan as well as Lawa is now being spoken in their few remaining distinct villages.

To the west of the Lawa were the Mon or Mun, a Mongoloid race of Malaysian affinities, whose scattered tribes spread from Indo-China into Western Bengal and Central India, where they are now known as Kolarian. Their first kingdom in Lower Burmah was founded at Thatone, an ancient seaport on the east of the Gulf of Martaban, by an Indian dynasty from the Madras coast, in the sixth century B.C. About the end of the first century of our era, Mon tribes drove the Burmese from Prome, which had been their capital from B.C. 483. These tribes were probably descendants of the Ngu race, including the Pang, Kuei, and Miao tribes, who, with the Shan, Yang or Karen, and King or Chin tribes, formed the chief part of the population of Central and Southern China during the struggle for empire—604–220 B.C.—between the Dukes of Tsi, Dsin, Ts’in, and Tsoo, which ended in the ruler of Ts’in becoming the first Supreme Emperor of China. Some of the wars waged by Ts’in during this period seem to have been wars of extermination; and many tribes must have sought safety by moving southward and south-westward out of the area of turbulence. In one campaign 240,000 heads are said to have been cut off; in another, 140,000; and in others, 60,000, 80,000, and 82,000 heads.

In A.D. 573, the Mon founded a separate kingdom at Pegu, which, with the Thatone kingdom, was destroyed by the Burmese King of Pugan in the middle of the eleventh century; from that time to 1287, when Pegu was conquered by the Shan King of Martaban, Lower Burmah remained under the Burmese. In 1540 it was reconquered by the latter, and formed part of their empire for 200 years. In 1740 the Mon, aided by the Karen and Gwe Shan, rebelled against Burmah, and, electing a Gwe Shan as their king, commenced the great fight for supremacy, which lasted till 1757, and left the Burmese supreme in the country until we annexed it.

The language of the Mon is now nearly extinct in Lower Burmah. The Mon or Peguans, who sided with us during the first Burmese war, were mercilessly ill-treated by the Burmese when we evacuated Martaban and Pegu: those who did not escape into Tenasserim, Zimmé, and Siam, were either murdered or forced to learn and speak the language of their oppressors.

To the north of the Mon race, in the district of the Middle Irawadi, the country was occupied from an early date by Burmese tribes of Tibetan origin, who were gradually welded together by warlike Kshatriya princes, who invaded the country from Northern India. According to the Tagaung Raza Weng, their first capital in Burmah was founded at Tagaung by Abhi Raja, one of the Sakya Rajas. This prince came from Kapilavastu with an army, and, B.C. 923, built the city. One of his sons founded a dynasty in Arakan, and a grandson established another at Kalê in the Kubo valley. The destruction of the first monarchy at Tagaung was due to the irruption of tribes, probably Shans, from the East. This is said to have happened in the sixth century B.C.

About this time a second band of Kshatriyas arrived from Gangetic India, whose chief, Daza Raja, married the widow of the queen of the last dynasty, and some years later, B.C. 523, built old Pugan, near the site of the ancient capital. His successor was expelled and driven south by the Shans, and founded a new capital, B.C. 483, at Prome, in the north of Lower Burmah. Upper Burmah was thus left in the possession of the Shans, many of whose cities in the Shan States lying to the west of the Salween were founded about this time. Moné is said to have been built as early as B.C. 519.

Thirteen years after the Burmese were turned out of Prome by the Mon, they created a new capital, A.D. 108, at Pugan, where the Burmese monarchy continued until 1291, when it was expelled by the Shans, who governed Burmah from that time until 1554. From thence until we annexed the country, Upper Burmah was under Burmese rulers.

The Karen tribes who are found scattered amongst the hills in Burmah and Siam from the latitude of Mandalay southwards, are called by the Burmese Karen or Kayen; by their other neighbours they are known as Yang, pronounced sometimes nasally as Nyang. These people are believed to have been a branch of the Chau or Djow, which entered the north-west of China about B.C. 1276. The Djow displaced the Shang dynasty in China B.C. 1122, and remained supreme over the agglomeration of principalities forming the Chinese Empire until B.C. 336, when some of the States acknowledged Ts’in as their lord. Djow was ultimately overthrown, in B.C. 255, by the Prince of Ts’in, who took possession of Djow’s sacrificial vessels and the nine tripods, the symbols of empire. During their rule the Djow preserved their ancient faith in divination, and the augurs in the courts of the principalities occupied a distinguished position. No expedition or any business of importance was entered into without first consulting the fates.

The Yang or Karen—who gave their name to the Yangtsze Kiang, and settled on its banks—at the time of the destruction of Tsoo, the great principality which covered Southern China, by the Shensi State of Ts’in, B.C. 221, occupied the country to the south of the river in the provinces of Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Kiangsi. They were driven away by the Shan and Mon population of the eastern provinces, 210–206 B.C., and were finally expelled from China by the Shan King of Nanchao, viâ Yungchang, a city on the Bhamo route, A.D. 778. They have since spread southwards into Lower Burmah and Siam. At the time they left China, they are said to have numbered 200,000 families.

The traditions which are repeated from father to son in metrical verse by the Yang, have evoked great interest among the American missionaries, who have done such good work in converting them to Christianity. From the creation until after the flood these traditions are intrinsically the same as the Mosaic accounts. Some people firmly believe the Karen to be the ten lost tribes of Israel; but as their ancestors are known to have been in China some 550 years before the ten tribes were lost, it is much more reasonable to believe that they received their traditions from the Mohammedans of Yunnan, or that before their entrance into China they followed the tracks of the Peh Sing tribes, and had their earlier home in the neighbourhood of the Semite tribes, and there acquired their knowledge. The two other races which have extended southwards from China into Indo-China are the Jung and the Shan. The former was already on the borders of China, and some of its tribes had settled about the southern bend of the Hoang Ho at the time when the Peh Sing Chinese tribes arrived from their long journey from the neighbourhood of Chaldea. The Jung, according to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, were originally of the same white stock as ourselves, and have become hybrid by intermixture with the neighbouring races. They were so warlike in their disposition that their name became amongst the Chinese equivalent to that of warriors. In the seventh century B.C. they were spread across the north of China from the extreme west of Kansu to the neighbourhood of Pekin. Many of their tribes were absorbed by the Ts’in—the Seres of the Greeks and Romans—of the province of Shensi, whose State name Ts’in has been by Europeans corrupted into China.

The people of Ts’in claimed kinship with the Niao-suk (Nila-Cakas or black Sakœ), and with the Fei or Bod, the people of Tibet. About B.C. 770, Ts’in was incorporated in the agglomeration of dukedoms or States forming the Djow dominion, and rapidly increased in strength by conquest, and partly by the absorption of the neighbouring Jung tribes. It then grew in power at the expense of the eastern States, and brought them into subjection. It further carried its sway across the Yangtsze B.C. 279, and conquered Tsoo. Its duke became Supreme Emperor of Ts’in B.C. 220.

The Jung tribes which were not absorbed by Ts’in, gradually pressed southwards amongst the Shan tribes in Szechuen, and are now found, under the tribal names of Mo-so, Lissu, Lolo, La-hu, La-wa (Lahs and Wahs to the north of Kiang Tung), &c., in the west of that province, and in Yunnan, Kweichau, and the Shan States as far south as the latitude of Zimmé, and as far west as the Salween river. These tribes speak a Tibeto-Burmese language.

The Shan race, known by the self-names of Tai, Pai, Lao, &c., occupies an area of country six times as large as the United Kingdom; yet, owing to the trading propensities of the race, the dialects spoken by the Shans differ so slightly that travellers from the Tonquin hills, Kwangsi, Yunnan, and Bhamo can converse with people at Zimmé and at Bangkok.

In the earliest times we hear of the Shans under their tribal names stretching across China from east to west, and occupying the country between the Yangtsze and the Hoang Ho. From 1766 to 1122 B.C. they are supposed to have been the dominant power in China, since the Shang, or traders, the ruling dynasty during that period, were presumably of their race. Later on they spread over Southern China, forming a large ingredient in the kingdoms of Tsoo, Tsen or Tien, and Nan-Yueh, and extended into the valleys of the Irawadi, Salween, Meh Nam, and Meh Kong.

The last of their tribes to leave Central China for Indo-China appear to have been the Chau Tai or Siamese, who were expelled from their seat in Kiangsi and Anhwei in the tenth century of our era. They were driven to the south-west into Kwangsi and Kweichau, where some of their tribes are still found, and a large body ultimately migrated into the Shan States to the south of Kiang Hsen.

In the latter half of the thirteenth century the country occupied by the Shans was in a state of turmoil and unrest. The ancient principalities in Yunnan had been conquered by Kublai Khan 1253–54; the Shan States to the south and west of Yunnan had been attacked, and a consequent great displacement of the population occurred. At that time the agglomeration of States formed by the Ngai Lao or Lao Shans stretched southwards from the latitude of Kiang Hsen to the northern confines of Cambodia or La-Wek, which then included a number of principalities in the valley of the Meh Nam, as well as in that of the Meh Kong. About 1281, according to the Shan records at Zimmé, the Prince of Kiang Hsen advanced southwards and conquered Lapoon, and in 1294 founded the present city of Zimmé. The Lapoon Shans fled into Martaban, and, headed by one of themselves, attacked the Burmese governor, slew him, and made their leader Wa-re-ru King of Martaban, A.D. 1281. Six years later, this Shan king conquered Pegu, and Shan kings reigned over the joint kingdom from that time until they were conquered by the Burmese in 1540. Upper Burmah was likewise under Shan kings from A.D. 1290 to 1554.

It was about the time of the conquest of Lapoon, according to Siamese history, that the Siamese were expelled from Kiang Hai by the Prince of Sittang. The Siamese fled southwards, and founded a new capital at Muang Pehp or Pet, opposite the present city of Kamphang Pet on the Meh Ping. In 1320 they deserted that city and founded another in the neighbourhood, and thirty-one years later migrated to the south, built their new capital at Ayuthia, on the site of a deserted Cambodian city called Viang Lek, founded dukedoms or Muangs at Soo-pan-Boo-ree and Lop-Boo-ree, and joined the confederation formed by the Ngai Lao States, over which the King of Sukkhothai was then suzerain. This king had attacked Cambodia in 1296, pillaged its cities in the valley of the Meh Nam, driven the Cambodians to the eastward, and thus rendered the country available for the Siamese settlements.

As time went on the Siamese became the predominant State in the kingdom, and entered on frequent wars of aggression with Cambodia, Annam, Vieng Chang, and Zimmé. In 1546, six years after the Burmese King of Toungoo had conquered Pegu, the Siamese commenced the series of wars with Burmah which ended in nearly exterminating the population of both countries.

Every able-bodied man who did not take refuge in flight was forced into the ranks, either to defend his country, or to attack that of his neighbours, or the neighbours of the power to which his own State was tributary. Armies, from forty thousand to two hundred thousand men strong, ravaged the land, and swept away, as in a great net, those of the inhabitants who were not killed in battle. In vast tracts not a man, woman, or child remained; and elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, deer, wild cattle, and other wild animals took possession of the devastated country. At length the Mon armies of Burmah, who hated forced service, mutinied, and, taking their wives and children with them, fled into Siam; and Zimmé, which had been under Burmah, except in times of rebellion, from 1558 to 1774, threw off the yoke and asked for the protection of Siam. To such an extent was the population thinned out by the incessant warfare, that when we annexed the Burmese province of Tenasserim, which borders Siam and Zimmé, we found in it barely seventy thousand souls.

Burmah is blessed with a fruitful soil and a bounteous rainfall. It only requires increased population to make it the garden of the East; and every chief commissioner, from Sir Arthur Phayre downwards, has advocated its connection with China by railway, as the means for supplying that want from the most industrious and enterprising people in Asia, the Chinese.

I take this opportunity to record my deep sense of gratitude to the Rev. J. N. Cushing, D.D., and the Rev. D. M‘Gilvary, D.D., who accompanied me as comrades and interpreters during part of my explorations, for their friendly endeavour to secure the success of my undertaking; and I have much pleasure in expressing my heartfelt appreciation of the frank cordiality and unwearying kindness accorded me by all the American Missionaries and Missionary Ladies during my stay in the country.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

LIST OF MAPS.

A THOUSAND MILES ON AN ELEPHANT IN THE SHAN STATES.

CHAPTER I.

DR CUSHING’S ARRIVAL—A-HENG—LEAVE SHOAYGOON—GOLD AND SILVER CARRIED—FLOOD OF 1877—A BAD DRIVER—DOG OFFERED TO DEMONS—SOUSED IN THE HLINEBOAY—HLINEBOAY—TRADERS—MR BRYCE’S PARTY—ASKED TO JOIN PARTIES—DR CUSHING IN CHARGE OF COMMISSARIAT—LABELLING AND SORTING BASKETS—THE LUGGAGE—MEDICINES—KAREN INTERPRETER—LOADING THE ELEPHANTS—PORTOW AND LOOGALAY—MADRAS BOYS GOOD FIGHTERS.

“Dr Cushing here, sahib! boat coming:” so gasped Veyloo and Jewan, my Madras servants, as they came racing up the staircase of the teak-built court-house at Shoaygoon, where I was enjoying a smoke whilst reclining in my table-armed folding-chair. This chair, which was a miracle of comfort and convenience, together with my camp-bedstead, had been designed and constructed for me by A-heng, a very clever and honest Chinese contractor, who for many years had been employed by me in constructing bridges, court-houses, jails, bazaars, and various other public buildings whilst I was in charge of the Tenasserim division of Burmah. This division, measuring 630 miles in a north and south direction, forms the eastern portion of Lower Burmah, and is bordered on the east by Siam and the Siamese Shan States, through which I was about to journey in search of the best route for a railway to connect Burmah with South-western China.

Following the boys, who had rushed off as soon as they had given me the news, I scrambled down the steep bank of the Salween river, which forms the western boundary of the garden of the court-house, and reached the water’s edge some minutes before the boat stranded at my feet.

“Here we are, together at last!” I exclaimed, as I helped my future companion from the boat; “I do hope you are better. I was so glad you succeeded in persuading the doctor to allow you to come,—I should have been helpless without you.”

“Thanks; I feel better already, and hope to be all right in a day or two,” said Dr Cushing. “Jungle-life was what I wanted: my illness, although partly the after-effects of fever, was mainly due to being cooped up for months at indoor work. Have you got the elephants?”

“Yes,” I replied, “they are at Hlineboay, and I have arranged for seven carts to take our things there to-morrow. We can have them packed after lunch, and see if we shall require more. Come along; the boys have lunch ready.”

Meanwhile the boys had been welcoming Ramasawmy, Dr Cushing’s Madras servant; and Shoay Wai and Portow, the Shan interpreters, who had been hired for the expedition, were aiding the boatmen to unload the boat and carry the things to the court-house.

The next morning, the 21st of January, we were away early, Dr Cushing and I leading the way in the cart which carried our bedding and the treasure; the latter consisting of fifteen bags, each containing a hundred rupees, packed away in the tin boxes and waterproof bags amongst my clothing, and a heavy burden of gold-leaf, which for safety I carried on my person. How glad I was to place the gold in the custody of the missionaries at Zimmé when I arrived there! Very few men would care to be rich if they had to carry their wealth in bullion about them.

After continuing northwards along the river-bank for two miles we turned eastward, crossing the low land that lies between the Salween and the high laterite ground which separates it from the basin of the Hlineboay river. The highest point passed by the cart-road between Shoaygoon and Hlineboay is less than a hundred feet above the former place. The great flood of 1877 rose two feet six inches above the bank of the Salween at Shoaygoon, or to a level twenty feet above the ground in the interior; but owing to the breadth of the valley and the slope of the country, the flood-water passed off in a stream a mile in breadth and about ten feet deep.

Leaving the valley, we proceeded over laterite ground, amongst small trees and scrub-jungle. Before reaching the Hlineboay river we had been pretty nearly jolted to death by our abominable driver, the worst and most apathetic of his kind I have ever suffered from. The carts, as is usual in Burmah, were springless, and ordinary jolts might be expected; but this creature drove us against trees and over tree-roots a tyro might have avoided. I was particularly annoyed, as Dr Cushing was only just recovering from an attack of liver complaint. It was no use expostulating (though expostulate we did), for there only came bang, bang, bang over another tree-root. We had to laugh, the man seemed so utterly irreclaimable. Loogalay, my half-breed Burmese Mohammedan, who was walking by the cart, assured us that it was no use talking to the man,—“He was yainday (a country lout); born a bullock, and would die a buffalo”—that is, he was born a bumpkin and would die a blockhead.

On passing near the village of Quanta, which is situated about eleven miles from Shoaygoon, Dr Cushing called to me to hold my nose,—the Karens, to propitiate the nats (demons, gnomes, and fairies) of the vicinity, had sacrificed a dog to them, and the air for a hundred yards was reeking with the stench from the crucified remains.

A mile and a half farther on we entered the low ground bordering the Hlineboay river, and shortly afterwards came to the stream. The banks, even where cut away for the cart-road, were steep, and the ford was narrow. Here was a chance for our Jehu. When racing down the bank, instead of attending to the oxen he gazed back at the other carts. The cattle, turning sharply at the ford, dragged the cart into the deep water up-stream. We were soused up to our waists, our bedding was drenched, and I incurred three hours’ unexpected labour in cleaning and readjusting my surveying instruments, which would otherwise have been ruined by their bath. Our Handy Andy was not in the least discomposed by his achievement; it was an everyday feat to him: his countenance was a picture of impassive stolidity; he showed no signs of being horrified or even delighted at the effects of his carelessness. What could we do but laugh? He was indeed born a bullock, and fast merging into the buffalo. A mile and a half down-stream from the ford, skirting the river, brought us to Hlineboay, where we put up in the court-house, which the myook, or native judge and magistrate, had courteously placed at our disposal.

Hlineboay, a village of seven or eight hundred inhabitants, chiefly Karens, being the headquarters of a township, contains a court-house and police station. It lies at the junction of the thoroughfares from Thatone and Maulmain to the Shan States and China, and is at the navigation head of the Hlineboay river, and 111 miles distant by water from Maulmain. In the dry season, which lasts for half the year, it has a large local market and carries on a considerable trade. People congregate there from all directions. Scattered before the court-house you may see natives of India from Maulmain with cotton goods and twist; Burmans and Talaigus from the same place, with oil, salt, dried and salt fish, tinned provisions, and other commodities; Karen villagers with fowls, ducks, and pigs from the neighbouring districts; Shan and Toungthoo cattle-dealers from Thatone on their way to the Shan States; Chinese with mule-caravans from Yunnan; parties of Shans from Zimmé, with packs of beautifully worked silk garments, and others returning with woollen and cotton piece-goods and sundry articles of peddlery: the whole scene teeming with life and colour. In the rains trade becomes slack, and the Myook moves his quarters to Shoaygoon, opposite which the great teak-rafts drift down the Salween from Siam, the Shan States, and Karenni to the timber-yards at Maulmain.

Moung Tsan Yan, the Myook, an old acquaintance of mine, came to see us on our arrival, and told me that he had secured fourteen elephants, six for our party and eight for that of Mr Bryce, the head manager of the Bombay Trading Company, who had asked me to join parties with him, so that we might travel together as far as Zimmé. Dacoits might be lurking on the frontier: the more Europeans there were together, the less liable should we be to attack. I accordingly halted until the 23d, when, hearing that he was delayed, I determined to start, making short journeys in order to enable his party to overtake us.

Dr Cushing kindly took over the commissariat from me, and we set to work to sort and rearrange the baggage. Previous to leaving Maulmain I had purchased forty pahs, or baskets made of pliable wicker-work, each being about twenty inches long, fifteen inches broad, and ten inches deep, which would fit easily into the howdah of an elephant. These, after sorting, we labelled and numbered, entering the contents of each in my note-book.

Method in packing saves a great deal of trouble and time when on a journey. I never met a more methodical man than Dr Cushing. His arrangements were admirable. Everything was kept in its place. Each elephant load was stacked separately throughout the journey. Each driver had charge of his own load, and was held responsible for it.

Stores for several weeks’ supply were packed separately, two pahs together containing what was likely to be required each separate week; and no other pahs, except those in charge of the cook, were allowed to be opened without our consent. The cooking utensils, crockery, a dozen of brandy for medicinal purposes, two dozen of whisky, and some of the medicines, were packed in straw in small wooden cases. These, together with the pahs, two waterproof bags, and a tin box for clothes and money, my office-box, rugs, bedding, chairs, and camp-bedstead, and our two selves, formed the load of the six elephants which were to convey us and our belongings to Maing Loongyee, where fresh steeds had to be procured.

The medicines, purchased by me chiefly in England, were the usual ones carried in Indo-China. They consisted of quinine, Warburg’s tincture and arsenic for fever, ipecacuanha, Dover’s powder and laudanum for dysentery, Eno’s fruit-salt, Cockle’s pills and chlorodyne for lesser ailments; pain-killer for dispelling the agony of bites from noxious insects such as the huge dairy-keeping red ants that milk syrup from plant-lice, centipedes and scorpions; Goa powder for ringworm, the most general and contagious plague in the far East; and vaseline and Holloway’s ointment for abrasions of the skin and ordinary casualties so frequent on a journey. Dr Cushing was a doctor of souls: he knew, and would know, nothing of physic; he abhorred it. His wife had been the general practitioner on his former journeys. There was no help for it; I must be the physician as well as the leader of the party.

Portow.

At daybreak on the 23d of January, having finished our packing and procured a Karen guide who could speak Burmese and Talaing to serve as my interpreter as far as Maing Loongyee, we had the elephants brought in and loaded. Here Dr Cushing’s power as an organiser became apparent. The baggage had been stacked into six loads, two smaller than the others for the elephants which were to be ridden by us. The howdahs, however, proved of unequal size, and some of them would not hold the tin boxes and cases which were intended for them. The air was filled with complaints and remonstrances. Each of the Karen mahouts, naturally, wished his beast to carry less than its portion. Each objected to have another burden foisted on him. Loogalay and Portow were worse than useless: both made confusion worse by fussing about, tugging at the Madras boys, and putting them out of temper by imperious commands mixed with abuse. Ignorance, according to the copy-books, is boastful, conceited, and sure. I never saw the proverb better exemplified than by these two men throughout the journey. It was impossible, in Portow’s opinion, that Portow could be mistaken; he knew everything; he was always ready and eager to advise, and equally ready to jeer at and snub any one else who ventured to do so: but although he had been the head-man of his village, and was an egregious blockhead and an egotistical bumpkin, he was eminently good-natured, and bore no malice when plagued, as he frequently was, by our Madras boys.

Loogalay, or Moung Loogalay, as he liked to be called, was a hectoring, swaggering blade, as gaily dressed as a game-cock, and as vain as an actor. A well-built lad of about two-and-twenty, who had been brought up in an English school, tall and good-looking, thoughtless, gay, and careless, in his gaily coloured Burmese costume he looked the beau-ideal of a dashing youth. His hair tied in a chignon on the top of his head, and festooned with a loosely arranged silk kerchief; his putso, or plaid, serving as a petticoat, with the end jauntily thrown over his shoulder; his clean white cotton jacket with gold buttons, and the flower stuck in his ear,—how could one help enjoying the sight of him, however much one might be put out by his indolence!

Madras boys, particularly those who have been attached to the officers of a native regiment, and have seen more or less of the world, generally have a pretty good opinion of themselves. Some are good wrestlers, and most of them can use their fists. Loogalay was employed as my henchman, or peon—not to do domestic service, but to attend to my wants on the journey; to pick up geological and botanical specimens, measure the depth and breadth of streams, help me when photographing, and carry instructions to the rest of the party. His salary was greater than that of the boys, and he looked upon himself as head boss over them. Anyhow, to him they were kulahs, his natural inferiors, mere savages or outer barbarians; he was a loo—a man and a Burman. Instead of giving orders as emanating from me, he constantly put their backs up by assuming mastery over them, and issuing orders as from himself.

“Heh! Kulah! put those here, not there. What are you about?—yainday!” he vociferated, as the boys were handing up the things to the elephant-drivers. The boys treated his orders with sullen disdain, and went on quietly attending to their business. Loogalay was stamping about and slapping his thighs, becoming more flushed every minute, and looking more and more like an enraged turkey-cock. I was enjoying the fun, sitting quietly smoking in my chair up in the court-house, and would have liked to have watched its further development. There is nothing like a thunderstorm to clear the air, or a good determined school-fight to put the young folk at their ease and knock sense into them. Dr Cushing, however, being in charge of the marching arrangements, put an end to the cabal by appearing on the scene and bundling Loogalay and Portow off to attend on the other elephants.

With his presence order came out of chaos, and by half-past seven we were ready to start. A quarter of an hour later Dr Cushing stepped off the verandah of the court-house on to the head of his elephant, sprawled over the greasy Karen mahout to the seat that had been prepared for him, said good-bye to the Myook, and headed the train of elephants as they commenced their journey.

MAULMEIN TO MAINGLOONGYEE

CHAPTER II.

SURVEYING—THANKFUL FOR A HALT—LEAVE HLINEBOAY—KAREN HOUSES INFESTED WITH BUGS—HALT NEAR WELL—RIGGING UP SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT—TENT LEFT BEHIND—TEAK-FOREST—YUNNANESE—A SCARE—EXPLODING BAMBOOS—TREES 130 FEET HIGH—A MID-DAY HALT—THE BRITISH GUARD-HOUSE—A NIGHT CAMP—GLUTINOUS RICE, MODE OF COOKING AND CARRIAGE—ELEPHANTS FEEDING—HEAVY DEW—JOURNEY DOWN THE YEMBINE VALLEY—MOTION OF ELEPHANTS—DIFFICULT SURVEYING—A PRACTICAL JOKE—RAILWAY TO RANGOON AND MANDALAY—HEATHEN KARENS—NO LONGER A MISSIONARY—DIFFICULTY IN CONVERTING BUDDHISTS—VENISON FOR DINNER—STUNG BY BEES—PASS BETWEEN THE THOUNGYEEN AND THE SALWEEN—TREES 25 FEET IN CIRCUMFERENCE—LIMESTONE CLIFFS—OFFERING TO THE DEAD—DESCENT TO THE THOUNGYEEN—THE FORD.

Surveying by time-distances and a prismatic compass, when on the march, requires a steady hand, a quick judgment for selecting an object for your angle, and a good memory. If the hand is unsteady, the ring of the compass, which is balanced on a needle, will not come to rest. In a jungle-clad country you must watch the foremost elephant as it winds through the trees, and rapidly select the point for your next angle as the animal is just passing from view. A good memory is required, otherwise in noticing the trees, rocks, by-paths, width and depth of streams, breadth of fields, size of villages, and taking sketches of, and angles to, neighbouring hills, you will forget the object, twig, branch or trunk of tree, that you have aimed at.

Having taken your angle, you must catch up the last elephant—for you are taking your distances by the time it takes in passing over the ground—and observe the time and your next angle on arriving at the object you had formerly chosen. This constant observation, continuing from dawn to dark with one interval for refreshment, is a great strain upon one’s attention, and when joined with the necessity of taking heights from the aneroid barometer, and temperatures from the thermometer at every change of level, makes one thankful for a halt at the foot or summit of a mountain pass, where one has to check the height by the boiling-point thermometer.

For the first hour after leaving Hlineboay we passed over slightly undulating ground, covered with stunted trees and scrub-jungle, and then entered paddy-fields through which we proceeded to Quambee, a Talaing, or Pwo, Karen village in a rice-plain over half a mile in breadth. To the east of the plain amongst the forest appeared many isolated hills and knolls, backed up by a boldly defined peaked range of hills, the Dana Toung, distant about fifteen miles, which forms the water-parting between the Thoungyeen and Salween rivers.

There being no zayat, or rest-house, in the village, and Karen houses being generally infested with bugs, we decided to camp in a grove of large trees in the vicinity of a well, from which we could draw water for bathing and cooking. After the elephants were unloaded and we had finished our supper, a shelter for the night was quickly formed with a few bamboos, roofed with two large waterproof sheets which I luckily had with me. My tent had been left behind in Maulmain through an oversight of the boys; and although the Bombay Burmah party kindly brought it with them to Hlineboay, it may be still at the latter place, as they had not carriage sufficient to bring it farther. A tent is a cumbersome and costly thing to carry about, and we managed very well for several months without one.

The next day we resumed our short stages, hoping that Mr Bryce’s party would catch us up. The country continued of much the same character as between Hlineboay and Quambee—only, cultivated fields became rarer, isolated hills more numerous, and teak-trees were frequently interspersed in the forest. The first night from Quambee we spent in a zayat on the bank of the Hlineboay river.

Towards dark a party of Chinese from Yunnan, who had sold their goods at Zimmé, came scampering by, armed with Shan dahs or swords, spears, and very antiquated horse-pistols. They were conducting a caravan of between forty and fifty mules and ponies to Maulmain, intending to bring them back laden with piece-goods and general articles of merchandise. They ultimately camped about half a mile from us, as several times in the evening we heard from that direction what we considered to be the discharge of firearms. Chinamen were not likely to waste powder in frightening off dacoits or wild beasts when they had any simpler, equally efficient, and cheaper means at command; and next morning we learnt our mistake in a very unexpected and alarming manner. We were suddenly awakened by a fusillade of reports around our camp. I jumped up, seized my Winchester, and rushed out, thinking that our party was being attacked. I found the boys squatting quietly round the fire, grinning like monkeys, and heaping on joints of green bamboos. The liquid in the cavities turning to steam under the influence of heat, caused them to explode, thus giving rise to the reports which had startled us. The rascals had learnt the trick from Portow, and were amusing themselves at our expense, being evidently bent on giving us a good fright.

Leaving the zayat a little before seven, we crossed the river and clambered over a low hillock, and continued through the forest, with teak-trees still appearing at intervals. Small hills and spurs from the Kyouk Toung range were occasionally seen to the east, backed up by the Yare-they-mare hill, a great spur of the Dana range, some four miles distant. About half-past eight we crossed the Hlineboay river for the last time, and shortly afterwards ascended 80 feet to the crest of the high ground, 300 feet above sea-level, and seventeen miles from Hlineboay, which forms the water-parting between the Hlineboay and Yambine rivers.

Thence we passed through the forest, still occasionally with teak-trees, following the course of the Yingan stream, with hills at times bordering on either side, and halted at half-past eleven for breakfast by the side of the stream, under a magnificent clump of thyt-si trees, which produce the celebrated black varnish. These monarchs of the forest, 130 feet in height, owing to great buttresses springing from the stem some feet from the ground, were of enormous girth, and looked truly magnificent. Here was a perfect place for a mid-day halt: hill, forest, and water scenery all combined; a cool stream as a bath for the elephants and ourselves; shelter from the heat of the sun; a pleasant glade for a ramble whilst breakfast was being prepared. Nothing was wanting but the songs of birds and the rippling chatter and laughter of girls to make our picnic all that could possibly be desired. Day after day, month after month, we enjoyed such picnics on our travels.

We struck camp at a quarter past two, and after a little more than an hour’s journey, still following the stream, reached Teh-dau-Sakan, the halting-place close to the Lanma-Gyee Garté, the last British police post on our road to the Shan States—having thoroughly enjoyed our day.

The police station, which is situated twenty-four miles from Hlineboay, consists of two thatched buildings built of bamboo, and surrounded with a dilapidated stockade, which would have been useless as a defence against dacoits. It was occupied by ten or twelve Madras constables, who complained much of the feverishness of the locality, and begged for quinine, saying they were out of it. I never met less intelligent men in my life; they seemed to know nothing of the locality, and the idea of a map was utterly incomprehensible to them—they had not been educated up to it. There was no getting any information from them; the whole current of their thoughts ran towards carna and pice (food and money), and their bodily ailments.

We erected our shelter for the night about a hundred yards from the station, in a grove of thyt-si trees, each measuring from 30 to 40 feet in circumference five feet from the ground. A large party of Shans from Lapoon encamped near us, and came over in the evening for a chat with our men. Camp-fires were dotted around us in all directions. Each elephant had, besides the mahout, an attendant to look after its wants, lop branches off banian and other trees for its food, shackle its fore-feet when we halted, and aid in its morning, noonday, and evening bath.

Each couple of men built a fire for themselves, and kept it alight during the night, partly for warmth and partly to scare wild beasts that might be wandering around. Kouknyin, the glutinous rice eaten by the Karens, is steamed, and not boiled. An earthen pot, or chatty, is placed upon three stones or clods of earth, which serve as a tripod; on the top of the pot is placed the basket containing the rice, and the junction is made air-tight with a wet cotton rag. A fire is then lighted under the pot, and the steam from the water in the pot rises into the rice and cooks it. Whilst hot the rice is stuffed into joints of green bamboos about a foot in length, and eaten when required. Joints of green bamboos likewise serve them for kettles: placed slanting over a fire, the water soon boils. The elephants feeding in the neighbourhood could be heard crashing through the bushes, rending off branches that suited their fancy. These animals were our sentinels, and would trumpet if a tiger came roving in their neighbourhood.

It would have been pleasant to sit in the open air and watch the stars as they twinkled through the trees, if it had not been for the heavy dew which commenced to fall soon after sundown. Loogalay’s mosquito-curtains, made of stout cotton cloth, were dripping wet the next morning, and he came with a long face and wrung them out before us. Portow merely jeered at him, and asked why he had not erected a leaf-shelter, as the other men had done. It is worse than useless complaining of the effects of one’s folly in a company of wits.

Next morning, the 26th of January, we ordered two of the elephants to be got ready to take us on an excursion down the Yembine valley, the farther end of which I had visited on a tour up the Salween. This would give me a chance of learning to survey from the top of an elephant. At first thoughts one would deem such a feat to be impossible; the pitching and rolling of the huge beast, which goes along like a Dutch lugger in a chopping sea, would prevent the compass being brought to rest, and most likely jam it into one’s eye. Yet, by giving way to the swaying movements of the brute, I managed to get as perfect results as when surveying on foot. From thenceforth, during my land journeys, I surveyed from the back of an elephant.

The boys, in packing our breakfast for us, perhaps out of fun, omitted not only to put in my cigars, but also our knives, forks, and spoons, forcing us to improvise some out of slips of bamboo to avoid having to feed native-fashion, with our fingers.

Following the stream of the Yingan till it joined the Yembine, we continued down the valley of the latter, accompanied by the mournful wailing of the gibbons in the forest, the plain gradually opening out to more than a mile in width, but contracting at times to a quarter of a mile, as spurs jutted in from either side. After travelling for three hours and a half, we halted for breakfast at the Karen village of Nga-peur-dau, which is beautifully situated on the hillside to the south of the valley.

The hills opposite the village were bold, and in some places precipitous, appearing as though they had been punched up from below, and were most likely mural limestone. Clay-slate, limestone, and sandstone are the chief rocks in this part of the country. Silver, copper, lead, and iron pyrites are found in Bo Toung, a hill some miles to the north of Nga-peur-dau, and felspar and porphyry are met with along the Salween some distance above Yembine.

We were now within eight miles of the village of Yembine, which is situated at the junction of the Yembine with the Salween. After walking about a mile and a half farther along the hillside, it became evident that a railway could be carried from Yembine to Teh-dau-Sakan with the greatest ease, meeting no difficulties in its path. I had previously ascertained, by visiting Yembine, that the Salween could be crossed in the defile to the south of it by a bridge of four or five hundred feet span; and, from my former experience in the country, I was aware that a line could be carried from the Rangoon and Mandalay Railway to this crossing through one continuous plain. It remained to be seen whether such a line could be continued along the course we were taking to South-western China, or whether the better course lay eastwards from Maulmain to Raheng, and thence northwards to the same goal.

We learnt from the Karen villagers that the Karens in the hamlets scattered through this region, and those to the north and the east, are still heathens, and I was glad to find that the missionaries are now on their scent. Most of the Karens elsewhere in Lower Burmah have become Christians, and the American Presbyterian and Baptist missionaries, who have so well worked the field, are turning their attention to Upper Burmah, Karenni, the Shan States, and Siam. I was amused by reading in a missionary report some months ago the complaint of a missionary that all the Karens in his district had embraced Christianity, and he had not another one to convert. He was a pastor, but no longer a missionary.

The Karens, Shans, Kakhyens, and other hill tribes, who are spirit-worshippers and not Buddhists, are the stocks from which converts are produced in Burmah and Siam. If you wish to have Burmese Christians, it is necessary to train them in mission schools from childhood. A Burmese adult behaves like a goat in the sheep-fold. He skips in and out as it suits him. Too often he merely enters to see what he can get from the shepherd. It is said to cost more to convert a Burman than it does to convert a Jew. A Roman Catholic missionary told me some years ago that he very much doubted whether his mission had ever made a real convert out of an adult Burman. As the sapling is bent, so the tree grows.

Having finished the inspection, we returned to camp, where I regaled myself with my long-wished-for smoke. The boys, when scolded for their delinquencies, pretended to look chapfallen; but I am afraid I had a twinkle in my eyes when rebuking them, as I saw the three convulsed with laughter before they were many paces away. During our absence the other elephant-drivers had shot a deer, and on our return presented us with a leg. This was a delightful surprise, as we had been subsisting on fowls and tinned provisions for several days.

The next day was Sunday, so we had a delightful day’s halt. I sent some of the Karens off to the neighbouring villages to obtain sufficient fowls and rice for our journey to Maing Loongyee, where we could obtain a fresh supply. Veyloo and Jewan went off on a lark, but soon returned in a dismal plight to seek my aid. In attempting to get honey, one had been stung on the eyelid, the other on the neck. An application of Perry Davis’s pain-killer acted like magic, taking away the pain; and a little ointment sent them off again light-hearted—putting down their punishment, I hope, to their yesterday’s conduct.

On Monday we started a little before seven, and followed the Yembine and its branches to the crest of the pass over the range which divides the drainage of the Salween from that of the Thoungyeen. The pass—32 miles from Hlineboay—has its crest 612 feet above sea-level, or 446 feet above our camp at Teh-dau-Sakan. On our way we met a party of Shans proceeding to Maulmain. A descent of about 50 feet from the crest brought us to the plateau, interspersed with detached hills, which is separated from the narrow plain through which the Thoungyeen runs, by a row of cliff-faced masses of limestone 1000 and 2000 feet in height, between which the drainage of the country flows to the river.

Close to the northern foot of the pass we came to the Tee-tee-ko stream, flowing through a pretty and pleasantly wooded valley, along which we proceeded. Turning up a northern affluent, when the Tee-tee-ko turned to the east on its way to the river, we halted for the night under some noble Kanyin trees. These trees, from which a brown resin and superior wood-oil is procured, have stems, often 25 feet in circumference, rising straight as a dart 120 feet from the ground to the first branch. The dense foliage completely shuts out the rays of the sun, thus affording a splendid shade for a mid-day halt. You do not realise their enormous size until from a distance you notice how dwarfed people camping under them appear. An elephant by their side looks like a pig under an ordinary tree.

The next morning, at a distance of two miles from the pass, we crossed the Meh Pau, a stream 60 feet wide and 7 feet deep, which, flowing from our right, enters the Thoungyeen some distance below the Siamese guard-house and below our point of crossing. We then clambered up a circular knoll rising 700 feet above the plateau, and had a fine view of the Pau-kee-lay Toung—one of the precipitous limestone masses lying three-quarters of a mile to the east. Descending from the knoll, which is ascended by the track to save half a mile of extra distance, we breakfasted on the bank of the Koo Saik Choung, just above its rapid descent between two great limestone precipices to the river.

At the junction of one of the many roads which diverged to Karen villages and the Thoungyeen from our track after leaving the pass, we noticed the death-offering of some Sgau Karens belonging to a neighbouring village. The offering was a propitiatory one to the spirit of the deceased, and proffered in order to induce it not to return and haunt the village. A silver coin had been placed in the ground beneath a rudely carved figure, on the top of which narrow strips of red and white cloth were hung; around the figure was a tiny fence, roofed in with a small bamboo platform. Miniature jackets and trousers were suspended from small poles at the sides of the fence. Food, which had been placed on the platform, was no longer there—the thieving birds having most likely deprived the poor ghost of it.

After breakfast we entered the defile, and descended from the plateau in the bed of the Koo Saik Choung, which falls 135 feet in the distance of a mile in a series of gentle cascades, separated by ice-cold running pools as clear as crystal; the towering precipices on either side looming through the trees, with their crests hidden by the dense foliage, and the natural colonnade formed by the evergreen forest through which we were passing rendering the air delightfully cool. How charming it would have been to have breakfasted in this pleasant retreat among the lichen-covered limestone boulders, mosses, and ferns! Leaving the defile, we followed the Thoungyeen down-stream past the Siamese guard-station, which lies on the other bank—the river forming the frontier—to the ford.

The river at the ford is 250 feet wide from bank to bank, with the channel reduced to 70 feet by a great shoal of boulders, now uncovered, stretching from the western bank. The current being swift and the water chest-deep, some of the men were nearly swept away whilst crossing. The boys went in up to their hips, and stood trembling, afraid to proceed farther. I therefore told them to return to the strand, and I would send elephants from the camp to bring them across.

The bank of the river is about 206 feet above mean sea-level at Maulmain. After passing the ford, we crossed the Meh Tha Wah, passed the guard-house, and camped about half a mile off, near the stream and some rice-fields. As soon as the elephants were unloaded, I sent two back for the boys; but meanwhile they had found their way to the ferry, and crossed the river in a boat. The guard-house is 38 miles from Hlineboay.

CHAPTER III.

REV. D. WEBSTER’S PARTY DETAINED—SIAMESE OFFICIALS EXPECT BRIBES—PHOTOGRAPHIC PLATES ALL SPOILT—VISIT FROM KARENS—JOINED BY THE B.B. PARTY—SIAMESE POLICE POST—GORGES IN THE THOUNGYEEN AND MEH NIUM—RAPIDS STOP NAVIGATION—FORESTS AND ELEPHANTS—DWARF RACES—KAMOOK AND KAMAIT SLAVES HIRED BY OUR FORESTERS—MIGRATION OF LAOS FROM TONQUIN—THE KHAS OF LUANG PRABANG—SACRIFICES TO DEMONS—DRINKING THE HEALTH OF STRANGERS—KING OF SIAM ALLOWS SLAVE-HUNTING—MISSIONARIES REQUIRED IN THE MEH KONG VALLEY—LEAVE THE GUARD-HOUSE—CROSSING THE WATER-PARTING—WILD TEA—KAREN VILLAGES BUILT DISTANT FROM ROAD—COUNTRY FORMERLY LACUSTRINE—SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT—HEAVY RAIN—A SHOWER-BATH IN BED—ELEPHANTS CROSSING STEEP HILLS—WILD ANIMALS—REACH THE MEH NIUM—KAREN PIGS—REMAINS OF A LAKE-BOTTOM—THE MAING LOONGYEE PLAIN—EPIDEMIC OF SMALLPOX—VILLAGES TABOOED—ARRIVE AT MAING LOONGYEE—MOUNG HMOON TAW’S HOUSE—A TIMBER PRINCE AND THE MONEY-LENDERS.

The sala, or traveller’s rest-house, we found occupied by the Rev. David Webster, who with his wife and pretty little golden-haired daughter was on his way to Zimmé by a route to the south of that we intended taking. Mr Webster is a missionary of the American Baptist Mission, which together with the American Presbyterian Mission has been highly successful in civilising and converting the Karens in Burmah. He was now on his way to the Siamese Shan States, as he had heard from some of his converts that there were many Karens in Central Indo-China.

In Burmah he had only been able to hire elephants to carry them as far as the frontier, and was therefore at the mercy of the Siamese official in charge of the guard. He had omitted on principle to grease this petty potentate’s palms, with the result that he had been detained waiting for thirteen days. Having lost patience, he had endeavoured to hire the elephants direct from the Karens instead of waiting for the Jack-in-office to take action, but found the Karens were afraid to let them on hire to him for fear of rousing their tyrant’s anger, or having to part with a portion of the hire.

I stopped over the next day to allow the Bombay Burmah party to join us, which they did in the afternoon. In the morning I unpacked my photographic apparatus, and took views of the country, guard-station, and Mr Webster’s party, which included several Karen girls who were attached to their schools. When unpacking the dry plates, I was dismayed to find many adhering to the tissue-paper covers, and all of them spotted by damp. As I opened packet after packet on my journey, I found them all in the same plight, and before I reached Zimmé ceased photographing, and sent the views—some fifty in number—that I had taken, to Mr Klier, the photographer in Rangoon, who had kindly promised to develop them for me.

In the afternoon a Karen man with his little boy and girl came to visit our camp. The children were greatly pleased with the bead necklaces which I gave them. Messrs Bryce and Boss, who had with them ten elephants and eleven ponies and mules—the latter purchased from the Chinese caravan which had passed us when halting on the Hlineboay river—arrived towards dusk, and camped near us.

The Siamese frontier post consists of five buildings, enclosed by a bamboo stockade. The officer in charge of the Laos or Shan police did not inquire for our passports, and allowed Mr Bryce’s large treasure-guard to march by unquestioned. He had no hope of squeezing anything out of the party, and therefore paid no attention to it.

Our intention had been to proceed from the guard-station down the Thoungyeen to its junction with the Meh Nium, and up the latter river to Maing Loongyee; but on inquiry we learnt that such a route was utterly impracticable. The numerous rapids in both rivers rendered them impassable for boats, and even for canoes. Neither elephants nor men could follow the banks, as the rivers passed through great gorges—the cliffs from both sides rising from their beds. We had therefore to turn eastwards, and following branch valleys and spurs, cross the Karroway Toung, or Parrot’s Hill, into the valley of the Meh Ngor, which enters the Meh Nium above the defiles, through which it escapes from the hills.

A large amount of teak timber has for many years been taken from the forests in the Thoungyeen valley. The Siamese had lately raised the tax from five to six rupees a log: their revenue in 1884 from this source amounted to upwards of two lakhs of rupees. Two hundred and sixty elephants were at work in the forests, which, like other forests in Siam, Karenni, and the Shan States, are worked by our Maulmain Burmese foresters. There is a large sale amongst the foresters of tinned milk, salmon, sardines, butter, and biscuits—all coming from Maulmain.

The Kamooks and Kamaits, who attend to the elephants and fell the timber, belong to the dwarf races of Indo-China, and are brought by their masters from their homes in the neighbourhood of Luang Prabang, and hired to our foresters at from sixty to a hundred rupees a year; each master keeping twenty-five rupees or more out of each year’s salary, and the foresters find the men with food.

The Khas, who include the Kamooks and Kamaits, are doubtless the aborigines of the country lying between the Meh Kong or Cambodia river, and the Annam and Tonquin seaboard. They are supposed to have been ousted from the plains and driven into the hills by hordes of Laos, an eastern branch of the Shans, migrating from Tonquin when it was conquered by the Chinese about B.C. 110.

According to the American missionaries who have visited Luang Prabang, the Khas are harmless and honest but ignorant, and despised by their Laos masters. Their villages are erected within stockades, on the summits of the mountains. The majority, however, live in isolated houses, which with their clearings stand out in bold relief against the sky. They cultivate rice, cotton, tobacco, vegetables, fruit, and betel-nut trees; collect stick-lac from the pouk and zi trees, and gold from the torrent-beds; and prepare cutch for chewing with the leaf of the seri vine, betel-nut, and lime. They are likewise great cattle-breeders, and many of the fine buffaloes met with in Burmah have been brought from Luang Prabang.

The Kha villages form the wealth of the Laos, who reside in the valley of the Meh Kong, to the east of the river. The Khas are known to the Siamese as Kha Chays, or slaves, and are treated as such. According to the Laos chief of Luang Prabang, the seven tribes of Khas in his territory are four times as numerous as his Laos subjects. Dr Neis, who has traversed a great part of his State, believes this opinion to be within the mark. Each Kha has to pay a tribute to his Laos or Siamese master. Without the Khas, their lazy, pleasure-loving, opium-smoking masters would have to work, or die of hunger. The extortion practised upon these kindly-dispositioned people has frequently driven them into revolt. In 1879 they joined the Chinese marauders in their attack upon the Laos; and also in 1887, when they sacked and destroyed Luang Prabang, the chief town and capital of the Shan State of that name.

The Khas, like all the hill tribes in Indo-China, offer sacrifices to evil spirits, who, according to them, are the cause of all the ills that man is heir to. In a single case of sickness as many as ten or twelve buffaloes, or other animals, are at times offered up.

They do honour to their guests and distinguished visitors by calling together the young men of the neighbourhood to drink their health in rice-spirit. Those whom I met were happy, cheery, hard-working men with pleasant faces, which, although flat, were not Mongolian, but, I think, Dravidian in type. Their expression betokened freedom from care, frankness, and good-nature. Those measured by me averaged four feet and nine inches in height, and, like the Negritos of the Andaman Isles, few exceed five feet. Their limbs were symmetrically formed, and altogether the Khas looked vigorous, pliant, and active little men. The Kamooks whom I saw, dressed in jackets and trousers dyed blue similar to those worn by the Burmese Shans, and wore their long hair drawn back from their forehead and fastened in a knot at the back of the head.

As long as the King of Siam allows the harmless hill tribes to the east of the Meh Kong to be hunted down, and held and sold as slaves by his subjects, so long should he be abhorred and placed in the same category as the ferocious monsters who have been and are the ruling curses of Africa. The sooner missionaries, American and English, are sent to Luang Prabang, and other places in the valley of the Meh Kong, the sooner will the King of Siam be shamed into putting a stop to the proceedings of the slave-dealers, who, according to French travellers up the Meh Kong, are fast depopulating the hills. There can be little doubt that the Khas, being spirit-worshippers like the Karens, and not Buddhists, would flock into the Christian fold in the same manner that the Karens have done.

During our stay near the guard-house, the temperature in the shade varied between 46° and 81°, the extreme cold being at daybreak, and the greatest heat at two o’clock in the afternoon.

On the morning of the 31st of January we left early, and following the Meh Tha Wah, and its northern branch the Meh Plor, and crossing two spurs for the sake of shortness, reached the summit of the pass over the great spur that separates the drainage of the Meh Tha Wah from that of the Meh Too, which enters the Thoungyeen two or three miles below the guard-house—the crest of the pass being 46 miles distant from Hlineboay, and 2060 feet above sea-level. The spur can easily be avoided by following the valley of the Meh Too.

Leaving the pass, we descended along the Tsin-sway, or Elephant-tusk, stream to the Meh Too, dropping 300 feet in the mile and a half. Proceeding up the Meh Too, we camped for the night at the forty-ninth mile.

The next morning we left early. A mile on, the stream forked, and we followed the intervening spur, which gradually flattened out and spread until we reached the foot of the pass over the Karroway Toung. A short climb of 400 feet past an outcrop of limestone, led us to the crest, 2817 feet above the sea, and 52 miles from Hlineboay, from whence we had a magnificent view of the country to the west. Here Mr Bryce’s party passed us, and we did not see it again until we reached Maing Loongyee.

Having taken some photographs, we followed a rivulet and descended 260 feet in a mile to the Oo-caw, a small stream which flows eastwards into the Meh Ngor, where we halted for breakfast. During the descent from the pass the Shans brought me branches of the tea-plant, which was growing wild in the hills. Its long narrow leaves reminded me of the willow. The men told me that it was likewise found on the route from Maulmain to Raheng, as well as in the ranges to the north of the pass right up to China. Some of the plants were fully 15 feet in height.

From the Oo-caw we should have descended to the Meh Ngor, and followed the stream to the Meh Nium, as Dr Richardson had done on his journey to Zimmé in 1829; but the elephant-drivers said that the route was overgrown, the Karens preferring to keep open the hill-path, along which, owing to the shallowness of the streams, they could proceed throughout the year. Since leaving the Thoungyeen we had met a few parties of Karens, but had not seen any of their villages, as they build them away from the main tracks.

From the Oo-caw the road passes over a series of great spurs, separated by narrow steep-sided valleys, often merely a dip to the stream-bed. From the crests of the main spurs, which were occasionally higher than the summit of the pass, we had magnificent views of the country, which has the appearance of the desiccated remains of a great rolling plateau, the crest of the spurs following the wave-line across the main valley of the Meh Ngor.

There can be no doubt that the hill-bounded plateaux and valleys in the Shan States were at one time lakes, which were subsequently drained—some by subterranean channels, the stream reappearing on the other side of the hills, and others by great rifts made across the hills by earthquake action. The numerous mineral and hot springs we passed, and the earthquakes which still occur at times in the country, bespeak the continuance of unrest near the surface.

After scrambling over six great spurs, we halted for the night near a small mountain-stream. The strata seen since leaving the Thoungyeen had been limestone, sandstone, and shales, each appearing at various times. Many fine tree-ferns were noticed during the day.

The next day rain commenced at half-past three in the morning, and the showers continued until noon. Our howdahs were without covers during this stage of the journey, so we could not creep into them to escape from the storms which occasionally happen in the hills. Our shelter for the night consisted of a few lopped branches of trees, stuck in the ground, serving as rafters and wall-plates for our covering of waterproof sheets, while plaids hanging from the wall-plates formed the walls. This was amply sufficient to keep off the heavy dewfall, but enough care had not been spent on it to secure us from rain. I had turned in much fatigued, having stayed up late inking over the pencil notes in my field-book and writing up my journals, and had slept through the first shower, when I was awakened at half-past five by Dr Cushing, who told me I had better turn out as it was raining in torrents. I merely replied “All right,” and went to sleep again. Soon the water gathering on the waterproofs, which we had rigged up as a shelter, weighed them down and came pouring on to my mosquito-curtains, and, soaking through them, effectually brought me out of dreamland; but I got no compassion from my companion, who absolutely roared with laughter at my being ducked. A change of clothes and a peg of whisky were at hand, and having lit a cigar, I was ready to crouch out the storm cheerfully.

Rain again commenced to pour down at seven o’clock, but we could not afford to delay, so struck our camp and departed. After crossing four spurs, we halted for breakfast at eleven near two deserted houses. The path, owing to the rain, was rendered so slippery, and was so steep, that the elephants at times had to slide down on their bellies, with their legs stretching out behind and before them. To see these great clumsy-looking brutes constantly kneeling down, crouching on their haunches, and then rising again, as they ascended and descended the hillsides, in order to keep their equilibrium and reduce the leverage; never making a false step; putting one foot surely and firmly down before lifting another, and moving them in no fixed rotation, but as if their hind and fore quarters belonged to two independent bipeds; every movement calculated with the greatest nicety and judgment,—forced one to admire the sagacity and strength of the animals, and the wonderful manner in which their joints are adapted to their work.

As soon as breakfast was over we resumed our march, and crossing two more spurs, descended from the last one to the Meh Ngor, a stream 100 feet broad with banks 18 feet high. After following this stream for a mile, we camped for the night. Limestone and sandstone, with occasional shales, were the only rocks previously noticed: here trap cropped up for the first time, and teak-trees again appeared in the forest. We were now 66 miles from Hlineboay, and 396 feet above the sea.

Elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, wild cattle larger than buffaloes, elk-deer, pigs, and other wild animals, are said to abound in these hills. We had heard tigers and deer round our camp nearly every night since we left Teh-dau-Sakan. The boys were at first frightened, and used to borrow my gun to scare the tigers away, but now had become accustomed to the peril, and ceased bothering me. Pea-fowl were plentiful, as we frequently heard them screeching in the morning.

Next morning, starting a little after seven, and skirting the stream for four miles, we crossed the Meh Ngor not far from its junction with the Meh Nium, and soon after entered the teak-clad Huay Ma Kok hills, which separate the Meh Ngor from the Meh Laik. Up and down again we went over hill and valley, instead of following the level path along the Meh Nium; past the Huay Ma Kok, which is a circular subsidence or depression 150 feet wide and 20 feet deep, on the top of a spur, until we came to and crossed the Meh Laik, by which we camped near a cliff of blue slate rock. The rocks exposed in the latter part of the journey were indurated clays and sandstones, both veined with quartz and shales and conglomerates.

The following morning a two miles’ march over a hill in a dense mist brought us to Meh Ka Tone, a good-sized house on the banks of the Meh Nium. The river is here about 150 feet broad, with banks 12 feet high, and water 3 feet deep. Meh Ka Tone lies 76 miles from Hlineboay, and 451 feet above sea-level.

The house belonged to a forester who was absent, having left a Kamook slave in charge. Two Karen pigs, small, hairy, slate-coloured creatures, with dark bristling manes, were tied up by perpendicular strings under the house, so that they could neither lie down nor walk until the strings were slackened. As we had been feeding on tinned meat for the last two days, some of our fowls having been quietly appropriated by the Karens, we tried hard to persuade the man to sell us one of the pigs and a few of the fowls that were scuttling about, but all in vain,—they were his master’s property, and he dared not part with them at any price without his consent.

Resuming the march and proceeding up the valley, now and then crossing hill-spurs and river-bends for the sake of shortness, at the eighty-third mile we again entered cultivated land, near the deserted village of Meh Kok, the site of which is now only marked by cocoa-nut and mango trees. The crests of the main spurs of the ranges of hills on either side appeared to be three miles distant; but on the west, a curious parallel range or formation, rising some 500 or 600 feet above the plain, lies between the main range and the river. On visiting these hills from Maing Loongyee we found them a perfect maze of equal elevation, looking like a gigantic Chinese puzzle, composed solely of friable earth, and rapidly frittering away,—there could be no doubt that we were looking at the remains of an old lake-bottom.

The plain, which is adorned with a great variety of flowering trees and shrubs, like the rest of the country we had passed through, containing much valuable timber besides teak, gradually increased in breadth as we proceeded, and is a mile and a half wide at Maing Loongyee. Several Karen and Lawa, and a few Shan, villages are dotted about it, but the cultivation is insufficient for the wants of the people, most of whom are engaged in forest operations. Rice has therefore to be imported from Zimmé.

Many of the villages in the plain were placed under taboo, owing to an outbreak of smallpox, a disease much dreaded by the hill tribes. The paths leading to such villages are stopped by a branch of a tree being thrown across them, and magical formulæ are stuck up in order to keep the evil spirits who propagate the disease from the village. No stranger dare enter a village so guarded. Should he do so, and death or illness subsequently happen, he would be held responsible. Life, or the price of life, for life, is exacted in such cases.

We halted for the night on the bank of the river, and starting early, reached Maing Loongyee the next morning. Finding that the zayat, or rest-house, was occupied by the Bombay Burmah Company, we despatched a messenger to Moung Kin, a relation of the celebrated Moulmain forester Moung Hmoon Taw, who works the Maing Loongyee teak-forests, and he at once hospitably placed the best part of his premises at our disposal. This arrangement proved very fortunate, as I was thus enabled to procure the most reliable information about the country.

The dwelling-house consisted of three separate buildings, built of teak and shingle-roofed, erected on a large square platform raised eight feet from the ground on posts. The house was situated in a compound enclosed by a stockade, separated from the river by a broad cattle-path, and surrounded on two sides by an orchard fringed with a fine hedge of roses eight feet in height. Two of the buildings on opposite sides of the platform, separated from each other by a broad passage, served as residences for the family. One of these, consisting of three rooms, was handed over for our use. The third building was situated near the north end of the platform, and served as a cook-house and servants’ quarters. We felt quite in clover after our spell of camp life.

Moung Hmoon Taw, to whom the house belonged, was one of the kings of the teak trade. During the last three years, owing to scarcity of rain, he had been unable to float his timber out of the forests, and was therefore unable to repay the loans he had received from the Chetties, or Native of India Bankers. By no means alarmed at his position, he had lately astonished the bankers by sending them a letter through his solicitor demanding a further loan, and stating that unless he received it at once, he would be unable to pay them the sums they had advanced him. There was small doubt that the bankers would be compliant, as they could not afford to lose the 25 lakhs of rupees (£200,000) that was then due from him. The crash was, however, only put off for a time, as last year he became bankrupt. Poor Moung Hmoon Taw! poor bankers! I know who suffered most—not Moung Hmoon Taw. The bankruptcy proceedings were subsequently withdrawn.

CHAPTER IV.

MAING LOONGYEE TRAVERSED BY WAR-PATHS—DR RICHARDSON’S VISIT—PRICE OF SLAVES—DR CUSHING’S VISIT—RAIDED BY KARENNIS—THE CITY AND SUBURBS—VISIT THE GOVERNOR—THE SHAN STATES—GOVERNMENT—SUCCESSION TO THE THRONE—TITLES—MODES OF EXECUTION—ZIMMÉ FORMERLY EXTENDED FROM THE SALWEEN TO THE MEH KONG—THE GOVERNOR AND HIS BROTHER—THE BAZAAR—DISTRIBUTING SEEDS—INFORMATION FROM FORESTERS—COLLECTING VOCABULARIES—MOUNG LOOGALAY—PORTOW—A MAGICIAN—DR CUSHING AT WORK AND EXASPERATED—VISIT TO ANCIENT CITY AND TO THE EARTH-HILLS—CROSSING THE RIVER—A DANGEROUS WALK—PINE-TREES—NUMBER OF LAWA, KAREN, AND SHAN VILLAGES—POPULATION—A KAREN DANCE—ENTICING A LAWA—DESCRIPTION—SIMILARITY BETWEEN KAMOOK AND LAWA LANGUAGES—VISIT TO THE GOVERNOR—EFFECT OF A TELEGRAM—ELEPHANTS HIRED FOR FOREST WORK FROM KARENS—MODE OF ATTACK OF MALE AND FEMALE ELEPHANTS.

The muang, or principality, called Maing Loongyee by the Burmese, and Muang Nium by the Shans, is traversed by war-paths leading from Burmah to Zimmé and Siam, along which great armies of invaders have passed; it was, moreover, subject to frequent inroads of man-stealers from Karenni, an independent State, which borders the muang on the north-west.

Dr Richardson, who visited Maing Loongyee in 1829, three years after we had annexed Maulmain, found it nearly deserted, containing, besides the hill denizens, only 200 houses, distributed among eight villages: the one occupying the site of the city had only ten or twelve dwellings in it.

The teak-forests were then unworked, and its principal export was black cattle—from 2000 to 8000 of these being yearly taken to Karenni and exchanged for slaves, ponies, tin, and stick-lac. Seven bullocks were bartered for a young man, and from eight to ten for a young woman; the very best bullock being valued at five shillings.

When Dr Cushing passed through the muang in 1870, the Burmese Shans, now British Shans, and Karennis had recommenced their raids into the country; and the Siamese Shans and our foresters had been shut up in the city for six months, not daring to venture into the district except in large bodies capable of defending themselves. These hostilities, lasting nine or ten years, had ceased four years previous to my visit, and the muang was recovering from their effects.

The city, which is built in the form of a parallelogram placed nearly true to the cardinal points, and stockaded on all four sides, measures 1740 feet from north to south, and 1050 feet from east to west. It lies 96 miles by road from Hlineboay, and is situated on a knoll, rising 15 feet above the plain and 635 feet above sea-level, in the northern angle formed by the junction of the Meh Sa Lin with the Meh Nium. It is occupied chiefly by Zimmé Shans, and contains 66 houses and two monasteries.

Like all Zimmé Shan towns, it has a peculiar air of regularity and neatness; the ends of the Shan houses invariably facing north and south, and the edges of the roofs, when of leaf or thatch, being accurately trimmed. The roads are well laid-out, ditched on either side, and attended to. A strict system of conservancy is in force, and no refuse is allowed to be heaped outside the houses and palisaded gardens. Aqueducts convey water from the upper course of the Meh Sa Lin, and distribute it through the town. The greater part of the cultivation in the Shan States is carried on by means of such irrigating channels, and in this way two crops of rice are raised in the vicinity of the town.

The suburbs, which are built at the north and west of the city, and outside the stockade, include 104 houses, mostly well built and of teak, chiefly occupied by our foresters and British Shan traders. Three monasteries in the Burmese style, and a pagoda, have been built by the Burmese thitgoungs, or head foresters, in the northern suburb, and another monastery was in course of erection. The people of Maing Loongyee are said to feed on teak, the teak timber trade forming their chief means of support.

Having dismissed the elephants, we went into the city to call on the Siamese official, who was acting as deputy-governor during the absence of the chief at Bangkok. Chow Rat Sampan, the chief, a first cousin of the late Queen of Zimmé, is looked upon as the ablest man in the kingdom. Backed by the influence of the queen, he had gone to Bangkok to get himself appointed second King of Zimmé by the Siamese monarch.

The Shan States are small kingdoms, each containing a number of principalities or muangs. Each State is ruled in a patriarchal fashion by a court, comprising the first and second kings and three other princes of the blood-royal.

The succession to the throne primarily depends upon the person chosen by the court and people being of princely descent—all such are called chow or prince; secondly, upon his influence and wealth, the number of his serfs and slaves, business capacity, integrity, and his popularity with the serfs; lastly, and now chiefly, upon his interest at the Siamese court.

The first and second king usually select the other three chiefs, but their choice has to be confirmed by the King of Siam. The governors of Muang Nium, Muang Pai, Kiang Hai, and other principalities, are appointed by the King of Zimmé, who, like the King of Nan, has been granted the title of Chow Che Wit, or lord of life, by the King of Siam. The chiefs of Lakon, Lapoon, Peh, Tern, and Luang Prabang have only the title of Chow Hluang (Chow Luong or great prince). The title of Chow Che Wit was only allowed to the King of Zimmé in 1883. A Chow Che Wit can order a criminal to be decapitated. Chow Hluangs can only order execution by piercing the heart with a spear.

The Siamese Shan State of Zimmé at the beginning of the eighteenth century extended from the Salween to the Meh Kong. It had jurisdiction over the whole of the States lying in the basins of the upper portions of the Meh Nam, the Meh Ping, and the Meh Wung, comprising Zimmé, Nan, Peh, Lapoon, Lakon, and Tern; their governors being appointed by the King of Zimmé. The disruption of the kingdom resulted from the anarchy reigning in the middle of the eighteenth century, when Zimmé, then tributary to the Burmese, threw off its allegiance and became feudatory to Siam. Zimmé has now hardly a nominal supremacy over Lapoon, Lakon, and Tern, although the rulers are appointed from the same family; and Nan and Peh are perfectly independent of it, owing allegiance only to Siam.

An execution.

We found the Siamese potentate squatting cross-legged, like a great apathetic indolent toad, upon a raised section of his covered verandah, in company with his brother, the head-man of the Siamese frontier post at Daguinseik. Daguinseik is the ford where the main track from Pahpoon to Zimmé crosses the Salween. No greeting was accorded us, no approach to the semblance of courtesy was shown us by these two unmannerly boors, who, like all low-minded Jacks-in-office, considered arrogance and incivility necessary in up-holding their dignity.

Dr Cushing, who accompanied me as interpreter on the expedition, was naturally annoyed at the rudeness and grumpiness of our reception, and was intentionally brusque in expressing our requirements. These comprised six fresh elephants to carry us to Muang Haut, or, if possible, to Zimmé. The governor, who had been up night after night at the poay, or play, which was being given in honour of a youth who was about to join the priesthood, merely yawned in our faces, and left the answering to his brother.

We were assured that there would be great difficulty in getting our elephants, as Mr Bryce’s party required ten, and would have to be served first as they had arrived the day before us; that the elephants were a long distance off working in the forests, and could not arrive for three days at the earliest. I replied that every day was of importance to us, that there were many elephants dawdling about the place, and that I saw no necessity for us to be kept waiting. He said that the elephants I had noticed belonged to the foresters, not to the Karens, and could not be hired to us. We then departed without either of the human toads rising from his haunches.

Meanwhile the boys had been rambling about the town making their purchases and bargaining from stall to stall; everything was double, or more than double, the Maulmain price, and hardly anything in the shape of edibles was to be got. Pork had been sold off in the early morning; no cattle had been killed, therefore beef was not to be had; fowls and ducks were not sold at the stalls, but hawked round to the different houses by the Karens who brought them in. Onions, beans, mustard-leaves, and pumpkins were all the vegetables they could procure: these, with eggs, dried fish, and wafer-bread, they had brought back with them. It would have been only tinned meat again for dinner had not Moung Kin come to the rescue and presented us with some fowls. At the same time, he told us that he would have a cow milked, and we should have fresh milk with our tea next day.

Disappointment came with the morning. The cow kicked the milk-pail over, so we got no milk. Seeing how scarce vegetables were in the bazaar, and considering it likely that we should be kept for several days waiting for the elephants, I sowed a crop of mustard and cress, which we reaped and enjoyed before we left. The curator of the Rangoon Public Gardens had kindly given me a large parcel of English vegetable seeds, and another of Liberian coffee, which I distributed at the various places we stopped at, on the promise that the villagers would plant and attend to them; and I trust that future travellers through the country will find cause to thank me. During our stay at Maing Loongyee, which lasted from the 5th to the 13th of February, I gathered information from the foresters about the country; collected vocabularies of the Kamook, Lawa, and other languages; and made a few short excursions. Loogalay thoroughly enjoyed himself, starring about amongst the Burmese in his best plumage, boasting of the great position he held in the expedition, and joining in the festivities that were going on day and night during our stay. Portow was in his element. He set up as an oracle, and was accordingly consulted. He knew, or thought he knew, what I was about, and the why and the wherefore of everything I was doing. I have no doubt that he led the people to look upon me as a powerful magician.

Dr Cushing, who is the greatest living Shan scholar, was accompanying me as interpreter in order to study the different Shan dialects, and was hard at work, when not at meals or out for a stroll, from morning to night.

Although the delay was rasping to me, as I was eager to be off, and Dr Cushing was exasperated at Mr Bryce’s party getting elephants two days before us, we all enjoyed our stay at Maing Loongyee.

One day we visited the remains of the two ancient cities of Yain Sa Lin, situated about a mile to the south-east of the town, and surrounded and divided from each other by moats and ditches. Their area, which is now overgrown by a forest of great trees, is much larger than that of Maing Loongyee, but contains no visible ruins of ancient date. The small pagodas and ruined temples are modern, having been built in recent times by villagers occupying and cultivating part of the enclosure. The cities were situated on a knoll, and the western ramparts have been swept away by the encroachments of the river. The old city, together with 400 Talaings, or Peguans, according to the ‘Lapoon Chronicle,’ were handed over to the Shan chief of Lapoon as a dowry when he married the daughter of Thoo-tha Thoma, the King of Pegu, in A.D. 1289.

Another day we crossed the river, which lies to the west of the town, to visit the earth-hills and take photographs of the country from the platform of a pagoda, which stands out well against the sky. The water was about three feet deep, and the bottom covered with large pebbles, giving a rather insecure foothold. I was carried across perched on the shoulders of two men. Dr Cushing waded the stream, and resumed his nether garments on the other bank. I could not help glancing slily at him as he tottered along, his predicament being so ridiculous for such a grave and learned man, and his action so like that of the pilgrim who had not boiled his peas.

The path over the hills was covered with small rounded gravel washed out of the earth, which rendered it very slippery for shod feet. The hills were crested with large pine-trees, the first we had seen, and their sides were crumbling away in great landslips caused by the small streams, which carried off the rainfall, undermining the friable earth. Some of the spurs we passed along were barely two feet wide at the top, with slopes often nearly sheer descents. Walking along these, and peering at times into the abysses, I suddenly became dizzy, and had to take a man’s hand to help me along until I reached a broader track. On and on we went, trying to reach the pagoda. The hills proved to be maze-like in character; so at last we gave up the attempt, and I took the photographs from another position. I was not sorry when we got back to the house without a mishap.

From the foresters, purposely summoned by Moung Kin to give me the information, I procured the names of thirty-three Lawa villages, forty-six fixed Karen villages, and eleven Shan villages, including the city, in the basin of the Meh Nium, and its branches. The Lawa villages contained on an average forty-two houses; the Karen, twenty houses; and the Shan, thirty-six houses. None of these foresters were working in the valley of the Meh Ngor, so its fixed villages are omitted.

The villages which are occupied by the Karen Yain—the wild or timid Karens—were said to contain as many people as the rest of the villages put together; but as these villages are temporary erections, only occupied for a year or two at a time, no accurate account could be given of them.

I was assured that the average number of people living in a house was seven; but even allowing only five, there would be upwards of 13,000 people in the fixed villages on my list, and as many more among the wild Karens. Taking into account the fixed villages not on my list, the gross population in the basin of the Meh Nium cannot fall far short of 30,000 souls.

The Siamese deputy, on being questioned on the subject, said that he had no list of the villages or census of the people; but there must be at least 3000 Zimmé Shans, 4000 Lawas, and 5000 fixed Karens, chiefly of the Sgau and Pwo and Sho tribes, in the muang. He could make no guess at the number of the Karen Yain; but they were very numerous. His estimate of the Shans and fixed Karens tallied well with the account given by the foresters; but the Lawas are twice as numerous as he thought they were.

The villages of the Sgau and Sho tribes of Karens are found scattered through the hills far down into the Malay Peninsula. One of their dances resembles the sword-dance of the Highlanders of Scotland, and is thus described by a gentleman who was present at it in a Karen village in the hills behind Petchaburee: Two smooth straight bamboo poles were placed parallel to each other on the ground, about eight feet apart. Across these, and at right angles to them, smaller bamboo sticks are laid—two in a place—so as to form spaces about ten inches wide between each pair of sticks. The musicians take their seats on the ground, by the sides of the parallel poles, and each takes an end of the short cross-sticks in each of his hands. These sticks he first taps together, then shifts them right and left so as to strike those of his neighbours on each side, to make a tapping musical noise, all keeping perfect time together.

The dancers, who are dressed in their most fantastic style, with painted faces, feathers in their turbans, &c., then take their places, and one after another dance into these spaces and along between the parallel poles. As they leap up, the sticks pass under their feet, and they must use their feet so dexterously as not to touch the cross-sticks which are constantly passing to and fro under them. As many as four or five dancers would be leaping up and down, across from end to end, at once, and all keeping perfectly together.

Day after day we tried to inveigle a Lawa into the house, but in vain. At length Moung Kin succeeded in enticing one there who had come with some friends on business to the city. We were elated; we had at last got a real live Lawa—one of the aborigines of the country: what should we get out of him?

He proved to be a tall, good-looking, well-built stripling, aged eighteen, with hair cut in the Siamese fashion and thrown back from his square perpendicular forehead, and eyes with no Mongolian incline about them, but slightly more opened at the inner corners than those of Europeans. He looked painfully shy, and very much ill at ease when he saw the trap he had got into.

I offered him a cigar, which he accepted and nervously twiddled about in his fingers, looking every now and then over his shoulder to see whether any of his companions had followed him, or to calculate the chance for escape. After striking a light for him, I said we were very interested in his people, and wished to learn what we could about their manners and customs, and a few words of their language; and that, if he gave me the information, I would pay him for his trouble, and give him some beads to take to his people.

He grew gradually more composed, but still appeared very uneasy. He said their customs were precisely similar to those of the Shans. Like them, they were now Buddhists, and had monasteries in the larger villages. They called themselves L’wa; water they called ra-own; fire, ngau; man, pree-ra-mee; woman, pa-ra-peum; day, meu-sun-nyit; and night, thom.

He then implored me to let him go, as his friends were waiting for him; and he promised to come again in the evening with a friend, and give us further information. A bird in the hand, particularly such a shy bird as this Lawa, is worth two in the bush; but as he was growing more restless and uneasy every moment, I gave him a rupee and a couple of bead necklaces, and promised him more if he kept his appointment. We then said good-bye, and he hurried off with his presents to join his companions. True to his word, he brought a comrade in the evening, and, being quite at his ease, gave us all the information we required. All our questions were answered in a frank, intelligent manner.

There was nothing very peculiar about their aspect. With complexions slightly darker than the natives of Burmah, their front faces were rather square, remarkable for their high and broad cheek-bones; their side faces seemed flat, owing to the prominence of their perpendicular foreheads; their noses were longer than those of the Burmese; and a line drawn from the top of their foreheads would leave the tips of nose, lips, and chin outside. The under jaws, far from being heavy, were slightly more angular than those of the neighbouring races. The bottom of the ear was about level with that of the nose; and the noses of the race vary greatly from well-formed straight ones, with the nostrils slightly expanding, to perpendicular for half the length, then ordinary pug for the remainder. I was altogether pleasantly disappointed with the race, having from previous accounts expected to see an ill-favoured, ill-shapen, cumbersome-looking people. The Lawa villages are permanent residences, having been occupied by them as far as tradition reaches. Their language has a strong affinity to that of the Kamook, many of the words, such as fish, foot, dog, cry, hand, mother, rice, pony, deer, river, names for other races, &c., being identical. They are, however, in appearance distinct races, and it is not unlikely that the Kamook acquired their present language from the Bau Lawa when the latter were the ruling race in Central and Southern Indo-China, and before the majority of the Lawas lost their own language and acquired that of the Shans.

The day Mr Bryce’s party left we went to the Governor’s house to have it out with him. He being absent, we went up-stairs and sat in the verandah awaiting his return, nursing our wrath to keep it warm. Presently his brother of Daguinseik came in without a jacket, wearing the dirtiest dishclout of a petticoat I have ever seen. His body was otherwise bare, and he looked a slovenly, unkempt savage.

He said they had been doing their utmost to procure elephants for us, but without success. This I knew to be false, as Mr Bryce had told me that their attention had been solely applied to the festivities that were going on, and that for three days after his arrival they had merely yawned over his requirements, and made no ghost of an attempt to aid him in procuring the animals.

Just as we were in the middle of our expostulations, a police constable arrived with letters and a telegram for me, forwarded in all haste by the Deputy-Commissioner at Pahpoon. I may here state that during the journeys letters were frequently sent after and from me by relays of special messengers, and in no case was a letter lost. The arrival of the constable worked like a charm, and had an immediate effect upon the manners of the Siamese official. Asking to be excused for a few minutes, he hurried away, and soon returned with his now not yawning brother, who came along buttoning up his blue-cloth police jacket, which he had not deigned to wear before, seemingly wide awake and anxious to help us.

He said that he had been doing his best, and hoped to get the elephants for us by the following day, or by the next morning at the latest; and when we talked of leaving our things to follow us and proceeding at once to Muang Haut on foot, begged us to wait till the next day, when he would let us know the upshot of his endeavours.

As soon as we had returned home, a messenger came to Moung Kin, asking him to proceed at once to the Governor’s house. On his return, he informed me that an arrangement had been made whereby the Governor would hire to us three elephants, at thirty rupees each, to take us to Muang Haut, and he, Moung Kin, would let us have three more for forty rupees each. These would be ready at dawn the day after to-morrow. Thirty rupees is the usual hire for the journey; we were therefore fleeced out of thirty rupees in this little bargain, but as time was precious, I grinned and bore it.

Most of the elephants working in the teak-forests are owned by Karens, who hire them out to the foresters at from fifty to seventy rupees a month. The price includes the driver, but not the attendant, or any expenses incurred for the elephant.

In talking of the wages given in the forest, Moung Kin told me that larger wages had to be given to the drivers and attendants of vicious female elephants than even to those of rogue male elephants. It appears that male elephants close their eyes when they charge, and, lowering their heads in order to use their tusks, afford an opportunity for the driver to scramble up to his seat on the neck, and thus regain his mastery of the beast. Not so with the females. They approach open-eyed, use their trunks as weapons, and lash about with them—or with a sudden grip seize a man, crunch him à la boa-constrictor, and throw him lifeless, or nearly so, on the ground, to be trampled on.

CHAPTER V.

LEAVE MAING LOONGYEE—A HUNDRED-FOOT WATERFALL—A BEAUTIFUL HILL-TORRENT—A LUGUBRIOUS TALE—GIBBONS—GIGANTIC TREE-FERNS—SHANS CRUEL ELEPHANT-DRIVERS—METHOD OF DRIVING—DROVES OF PIGS AND LADEN CATTLE—LOI PWE—AN ACCIDENT—WILD RASPBERRIES—SHANS BARTERING GOODS—THE MEH LAIK VALLEY—A FALL OF 2049 FEET—PATHS FOR THE RAILWAY—LAWA VILLAGES—ABORIGINES—BURIAL CUSTOM—HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE SHAN STATES AND CHINA—LEGEND CONCERNING THE CONQUEST OF THE LAWAS BY THE SHANS—THE VIRGIN OF THE LOTUS-FLOWER—GAUDAMA SACRIFICED TO AS THE GODDESS OF MERCY—SACRIFICES TO ANCESTORS AND DEMONS—SIMILARITY OF SUPERSTITIONS IN ANCIENT CHALDEA AND THE SHAN STATES—PHOTOGRAPHING LAWAS—CLOTHING WORN FOR DECENCY’S SAKE—COSTUME OF LAWAS—COLD NIGHTS—VIEW OF THE HILLS—BAU-GYEE—IRON-MINES GUARDED BY DEMONS—A YOUNG BLACKSMITH.

On the 13th of February the elephants were brought leisurely in one by one from the forest, where they had been tethered for the night, the last arriving about ten o’clock. A few minutes later everything was packed, and, facing eastwards, we were again off over the hills and far away.

After fording the Meh Sa Lin near the town, and passing through Yain Sa Lin, we crossed the Meh Gat, and proceeded along a good road over a spur, where limestone, slate, and claystone, veined with quartz, cropped up, to the Meh Ka Ni. This stream, turning to the north at the point we first crossed it, tumbles over a couple of falls, one 70 feet, the other 100 feet high, and flows through a ravine into the Meh Sa Lin.

MAINGLOONGYEE TO MAUNG HAUT

The valley of the Meh Ka Ni, up which we ascended, is narrow, the crests of the hills on either side being barely two miles apart. The hill-slopes are well wooded with large and valuable timber. Many of the trees give a splendid shade, and are evergreen. Down the valley, in a bed of granite 30 feet broad, strewn with great granite boulders, leaps and dashes a foaming torrent in the rainy season. At the time of our visit it was but a rivulet falling in little cascades, dancing round the rocks, sparkling in the sunlight, and flowing gently through pleasant pools, delightful to bathe in. For five miles we journeyed through the deep shade of the forest, frequently crossing the stream, and then halted for the night at Pang Hpan. On our way we passed several parties of Kamooks and Karen villagers, and met large caravans of laden oxen conveying paddy and betel-nut to Maing Loongyee.

The camping-ground, situated in an open plain near the meeting-place of several side valleys, lies 105 miles from Hlineboay, and 1753 feet above the sea. The highest shade-temperature during the day had been 73°, and our ride up the pretty glen had been extremely pleasant.

After dinner, in the course of conversation, Dr Cushing, thinking, perhaps, that I was a Mark Tapley, and that a lugubrious tale might cheer me up, told me that he was a most unlucky companion to travel with. All his former comrades had died on the journey, or soon afterwards. He then backed up his statement with three instances. Kelly, a missionary, was drowned one day’s journey from Moné; Lyon, another missionary, had died of consumption at Bhamo; and Cooper had been killed by one of his guard at Bhamo. I instanced his wife, who was then in America, as an exception. It was of no use—she was his better half—I was a doomed man.

Next morning the thermometer stood at 48°, the same as it had been at Maing Loongyee. The trees, however, were shedding their leaves far less in the upper valley than in the lower country. Starting about eight o’clock, accompanied by the mournful wailing of gibbons, who were practising the trapeze from tree to tree far above our heads, and making astounding leaps, we continued up the glen, passing large droves of Karen pigs, and caravans of laden cattle, until the stream forked, and we ascended the intermediate spur to the crest of Loi Kom Ngam—the Beautiful Golden Mountain—the hill-range dividing the drainage of the Meh Sa Lin from that of the Meh Laik.

View looking west down Pass at 10.53 A.M. 14th February.

Gigantic tree-ferns, and the first chestnuts we had seen, were passed as we clambered the spur; and we noticed trees in bloom bearing a red flower, and a large periwinkle-blue creeper which, spreading over the largest trees, spangled them with blossoms. Before reaching the summit we had a magnificent view down the nine miles of valley we had been ascending, extending across the Meh Mum valley to the hills beyond the Salween river. The pass, which is 109 miles from Hlineboay, is 3609 feet above sea-level.

A short descent of 70 feet brought us to a little valley, which we crossed; then following a spur, we descended to the Meh Hau, a small stream draining into the Meh Laik here at a level of 2638 feet above the sea. We had fallen nearly 1000 feet in less than three miles. Crossing the spur which separates the Meh Hau from the Meh Lye, we halted for the night near some springs at the 115th mile.

Left the next morning at seven o’clock and descended for a mile to the Meh Lye, passing on our way 109 laden cattle. The Meh Lai—River of Variegated Water—is 20 feet wide and five feet deep; sandstone and quartz outcrop in its bed. Looking down-stream to the south, we had a pretty view, bounded by pine-clad spurs, into the Meh Laik valley.

Our Karen mahouts had been replaced by Shans at Maing Loongyee. The Shans proved much more cruel drivers than the Karens. The latter seldom used the cruel-looking hammer-hook, or ankus, they all carry, but coax and talk to the elephants; whilst the Shans correct the slightest misdemeanour by a blow that draws blood, and seek for obedience solely by bullying the beasts. The drivers, both Shan and Karen, urge their elephants on by a continuous irritation of the creature’s ears with their toes, which are worked in an incessant pendulous movement at the back of them. They likewise assume all sorts of attitudes on the animal’s head. Squatting on one leg with the other dangling down, lolling over the bump on its forehead, straddle-legged, and side-saddle fashion, but for ever with one set of toes or the other, or both, titillating the brute’s ears.

Loi Pwe seen over a spur at 9.57 A.M. 15th February.
Note.—<6° and <16° imply angles to the east of north, north being 0° and 360°—90° is east, 180° is south,
and 270° west from the point whence they are taken.

From the Meh Lai we ascended a small glen for a little more than a mile, and shortly afterwards entered a narrow defile, where we halted for a few minutes to allow 135 laden cattle and a drove of 40 pigs to pass. Leaving the defile, a magnificent panorama spread out before us. Looking west, the eye ranged over the spurs we had crossed since leaving the pass. To the north about eight miles distant, over the hills bordering the Meh Sa Lin valley, stood out clear against the sky the bald-headed and partly precipitous summit of Loi Pwe. Here was a chance, not to be lost, for taking sketches and photographs and fixing the lie of the country.

Loi Pwe is the nucleus from which many of the spurs and minor ranges stretching into the valleys of the Meh Nium and Meh Laik have their origin. It is joined on to the Bau plateau by spurs some 15 miles in length, radiating in straight lines. Most of the hills in this region are approximately of similar elevation, their crests seeming to be the remains of a great rolling table-land eaten into valleys by centuries of erosion in the stream-beds.

On remounting the elephant, the howdah, owing to the slackness of the girth, commenced to lose its equilibrium, and I should have been precipitated to the ground, a distance of 11 feet, if I had not stepped on to the head of the beast and saved myself from falling by clinging to the greasy perspiring mahout. I had presence of mind sufficient to pocket my watch and instruments, or they would have inevitably been ruined.

Ten minutes after restarting we reached the summit of Loi Tone Wye, or Loi Tong Wai, situated 118 miles from Hlineboay and 3885 feet above the sea. Great fern-trees, 50 feet in height, the highest I have ever seen or heard of, adorned the crest of the hill. Portow brought me a handful of wild white raspberries he had just picked for me to eat. Before reaching the summit we noticed a Lawa village nestling on a hill-slope to the north of us.

On the narrow plateau forming the summit of the hill, we found a large encampment of Shans with many laden cattle. Some of the men had opened their packs and were bartering their merchandise with a number of Karens who had come from the neighbouring villages. Startled by our sudden appearance, most likely never having seen a white-face before, the latter took to their heels, fleeing as if the devil was after them, and did not venture from their hidingplaces until after our breakfast, when we were preparing to resume our march. Then they came, as shy and inquisitive as cattle, and had a good look at us from a respectful distance.

Meh Laik valley and gorge at 1.3 P.M. 15th February.

From Loi Tong Wai we had a magnificent view of the hills in all directions. The great plateau of Bau, 15 miles to the east, and about the same level as the ground we were standing on, was clearly outlined against the sky; and the great trough of the wave between it and us was filled with a multitude of great spurs, crested with fine timber and divided from each other by steep-sided narrow valleys.

To the south-west, 10 miles distant, was the gorge where the Meh Laik passes through Loi Kom Ngam on its way to the Meh Nium; beyond was a sea of hills stretching as far as the eye could reach to the high peak lying to the south-east of our pass over the Karroway Toung. The cliff-faced gap through which the river rushes, tumbling hundreds of feet at a time, is impassable even to the sure-footed Karens. In the 24 miles’ course of the stream between our two crossings its bed falls 2049 feet. The greater part of this drop is said to occur in this short gorge, which must be one of the wildest and grandest scenes in the world.

If the railway from Maulmain is carried up the valley of the Meh Laik, gradually rising along the hill-spurs, a gallery cut in the face of the gorge would enable the line to proceed towards Zimmé without passing, viâ Maing Loongyee, over the hills we have been crossing since we left the city. A better path, however, most likely exists up one of the valleys to the north of Loi Pwe, which would cross the Zimmé hills, descending by the valley of the Meh Sai, which lies between Loi Kom and the Bau plateau.

A gradual descent for four and a half miles brought us to the Meh Laik. Sandstone and quartz, and claystone veined with quartz, cropped up on the sides of the plateau and its spurs, but the bed of the river, 15 feet broad and 4 feet deep, is composed of black-speckled white granite. Our crossing lies 123 miles from Hlineboay and 2508 feet above the sea.

Leaving the stream, we ascended a few feet, and, continuing for half a mile through pine-forest, descended to a rice-plain, where the road traversed in 1879 by Colonel Street and Mr Colquhoun, when on their mission to Zimmé, joins our route. Crossing the Meh Tha Ket, a small stream which flows through the plain, and two dry streams which exposed a great depth of soil, we passed to the north of the Lawa village of Bau Sa Lee, and, fording the Meh Hto, camped for the night on its bank, 125 miles from Hlineboay. A thousand feet down-stream from our camp the Meh Hto is joined by the Meh Tyen. Both streams flow in a bed of granite boulders, and the village is situated at their junction.

In the evening I enticed two of the head-men to the camp, and gained some information about them and the features of the country. They told me the Lawas still occupied the village sites held by them before the Shans and Karens settled in the country. They had no written language, and were now Buddhists like the Shans, and had the same manners and customs. Their villages are scattered through the hills and plateaux as far south as the latitude of Bangkok, and they believed themselves to be the aborigines of the country.

The only difference between their customs and those of the Ping Shans lay in their always burying their dead, whereas the Ping Shans, except in cases of death from infectious diseases or in childbirth, burn them. Burial, however, is still observed by the British Shans. When a Lawa dies, a coffin is made by scooping out the log of a tree, and the corpse is placed in it and covered with a stout lid. After three days the priest is called and the body buried. As amongst the Karens, the personal property of the deceased is interred with the corpse.

The practice of burning their dead amongst the Shans must be of recent date, for in the middle of the sixteenth century, when they first became feudatory to Burmah, burial was the rule—elephants, ponies, and slaves being interred with the chiefs. The Burmese emperor Bureng Naung strictly prohibited the continuance of the custom. Similar observances were usual in olden times amongst the Turkish or Hiung Nu and Scythian tribes in Asia, and with the Tsin dynasty in China as well as amongst the ancient Greeks, as evidenced by Homer’s ‘Iliad.’ The latest record of such human sacrifices in China concerns the obsequies of the Emperor Chi Hwang, B.C. 209, when all the members of the harem having no sons had to follow him in death.

The following legend concerning the conquest of the Lawas by the Shans was told me by Chow Oo Boon, the sister of the Queen of Zimmé, who was the spirit-medium and historian of the Royal Family.

LEGEND OF NAN CHAM-A-TA-WE.

Nan Cham-a-ta-we, a virgin of the lotus-flower, had two sons, who were born at Lapoon. At that time the whole of the country was occupied by the Lawas. The Lawa king met and fell desperately in love with the virgin, and for many years urged his suit. She, being unwilling to accept him as her husband, pleaded the youth of her children making it necessary for her to be constantly in attendance on them, as an excuse.

When the lads became young men, the king still tormenting her with his wooing, she promised to become his bride if he proved able to cast three spears from the top of Loi Soo Tayp, a hill to the north-west of Zimmé rising 6000 feet above the plain, into the centre of the city of Lapoon, a distance of 18 miles. His first cast being successful, she determined to foil him in his further attempts, and accordingly wove a hat out of her cast-off garments and coaxed him to wear it, saying it would greatly add to his strength. His next throw fell short of the city, and, his strength decreasing through the magical powers of the hat, his third spear fell at the foot of Loi Soo Tayp.

The king becoming weaker and weaker, the two sons of the virgin, named A-nan-ta-yote and Ma-nan-ta-yote, being enraged at the Lawa monarch for his pursuit of their mother, determined to drive him from the country. This they were enabled to do through the great merit accruing to them from their birth, which gave them magical powers.

As soon as the elder was born, a large white elephant came and voluntarily served as his domestic animal. Leaves thrown from him turned into fully equipped soldiers, and handfuls of kine-grass became armies as he breathed on them. Having created a great host, he mounted his white elephant, and forced the Lawa king to flee, and pursued him.

On reaching Kiang Hai, the elephant being heated and excited with the chase, the people of the place fled like sheep chased by a dog, shouting out “Chang Hai,” wild elephant. Continuing the chase through Kiang Hsen, the elephant roared so loudly that the people scattered in all directions screaming “Chang Hsen,” roaring elephant.

Having banished the Lawa king from the country, the kine-grass soldiers founded the city of Muang Poo Kah, the kine-grass city, the remains of which are still visible some distance to the north of Kiang Hsen. The virgin of the lotus-flower became ruler of Lapoon, and her eldest son went to Pegu, where he is still worshipped at festivals with dancing, mirth, and music.

Lapoon is named from La, or Lawa, and poon, a spear; Kiang Hai from the elephant being vicious; and Kiang Hsen from its trumpeting.

The virgin of the lotus-flower is depicted by the Shans and Siamese as a mermaid holding a lotus-flower in her left hand, presumably in connection with the belief amongst the Chinese that Kwan-yin, the goddess of mercy, the offspring of the lotus-flower, terminates the torments of souls in purgatory by casting a lotus-flower on them.

A virgin of the lotus-flower.

In China, miniature offerings are laid before images of this goddess as a hint for her to convey the articles implied by their likenesses to the spirits of friends or relations. The offerings, frequently accompanied by a scroll stating who the articles are for, consist of miniatures cut out of paper, of money, houses, furniture, carts, ponies, sedan-chairs, pipes, male and female slaves, and all that one on this earth might wish for in the way of comfort. In Siam and the Shan States there being no temple to this goddess, Buddha, who is generally depicted as sitting on a lotus-flower, is besought to do her work, and similar articles are heaped on his altar—but cut out of wood, or formed of rags or any kinds of rubbish, as paper is not so easily obtainable.

The same miniature images are offered by the Shans and hill tribes to the spirits of their ancestors and the ghosts and demons which haunt their neighbourhood, and food and flowers are left in the little dolls’ houses which are erected for them. If neglected and uncared for, the spirits become spiteful, and bring disease, misfortune, or death to those living in or passing through their neighbourhood.

To any one travelling with his eyes open in China and Indo-China, it becomes evident that Buddhism is merely a veneer, spread over the people’s belief in ancient Turanian and Dravidian superstitions. The belief in divination, charms, omens, exorcism, sorcery, mediums, witchcraft and ghosts, and in demons ever on the alert to plague and torment them individually, is universal, except perhaps amongst the highly educated classes, throughout the country. Comparing these beliefs with those appearing in the Accadian literature of Chaldea, B.C. 2230, as given by George Smith in his History of Babylonia, one is astonished at the perfect sameness of the superstitions.

The next morning, as one of the elephants had strayed away during the night and had to be tracked and brought back, I visited the village of Bau Sa Lee to take photographs of the people. The men had not the slightest objection to being taken; but the women, particularly the younger ones, skurried off as soon as they heard what I was about, and hid themselves in their houses. At length, by the gift of a necklace and a few small silver coins, I persuaded an old woman to fetch two little girls and stand for her portrait with them.

The Lawa women are the only natives in Indo-China whom I have seen wearing their hair parted in the middle, in the mode general amongst women in England a few years ago. Their hair is gathered up and tied in a knot at the back of the head, like that of the ladies amongst the Burmese and Shans. Unlike the Siamese and Zimmé Shans, the Lawa women wear upper clothing for decency’s sake, and not solely for the sake of warmth. Their dress consists of a short skirt reaching to their knees, and a black tunic having a darkred stripe on the outer edge. Some of the elder women wear a piece of cloth on their heads folded into a sort of turban.

The nights were rapidly getting colder; at five in the afternoon the thermometer showed 70°, at six in the morning it had fallen to 38°. We had to sleep dressed in our clothes under our plaids to keep warm; and the men sat huddled up, chatting and toasting themselves by the fires, for many hours towards the morning.

View across the Meh Hto and Meh Laik valleys at 10.54 A.M. 15th February.

Leaving the Meh Hto, we ascended 1150 feet by an easy spur, through a nearly leafless forest of hill-eng and teak, to the top of Loi Kaung Hin—the Hill of the Stone-heap—so called from a cairn on its summit.

Cresting the hill, we were again amongst the fragrant pine-forest. The air was deliciously cool, and the view was superb; I therefore decided to halt and sketch the country from an orchid-covered crag above a precipice several hundred feet in depth. Across the valleys of the Meh Hto, Meh Lyt, and Meh Sa Lin, nearly due north-east and distant 13 miles, we could see Loi Pwe, giving rise to numerous valleys. Between it and due north, on the slope of a great flat-topped spur in the valley of the Meh Tyen, lay the Lawa village of Bau Kong Loi, and beyond the Zimmé hills stretched away till lost in the haze. The whole country looked like a chopping sea of hills, in which it would be impossible, without actual survey, to settle the direction of the drainage. The main range was so cut up by cross-valleys that any one of the valleys I had not visited might drain either into the Meh Ping or the Meh Nium.

After continuing for two miles along the crest of the hill, we descended to the Meh Tyen, and halted for the night on its banks in some rice-fields near the junction of one of its branches. Our camp was situated 131 miles from Hlineboay, and 2831 feet above the sea.

The bed of the Meh Tyen is 20 feet wide and 6 feet deep, and is composed of boulders of quartz and granite.

The following morning at six o’clock the thermometer stood at 36½°. The breeze as we ascended a spur, through the hill-eng and scanty pine-forest, to Bau Koke, chilled us to the bone. Bau Koke is a small catch-pool on the crest of the Bau plateau, 3400 feet above the sea, draining into the Meh Tyen.

The air every moment became hotter as the sun rose and darted its rays through the clear sky, the soil of the plateau was of a deep red colour, and the glare where the forest had been cleared soon became distressing. Continuing along a ridge bordering the northern edge of the plateau, we reached Bau-gyee at eleven, and halted to inspect the village and for breakfast.

Bau-gyee, as the Burmese call it, or Bau Hluang as it is termed by the Shans—“Hluang” and “gyee” both meaning “great”—is situated 137½ miles from Hlineboay and 3704 feet above sea-level. It is in three divisions—two of 30 houses each, and one of 21 houses. The villagers are Lawas, and gain their livelihood as blacksmiths and miners, procuring and smelting the ore at a hill lying to the north of Loi Pwe, two days’ elephant journey from the village.

The mines are said to average 50 feet in depth, and to be guarded by demons who have to be propitiated by offerings of pigs or fowls. If the ore dug up is poor, the sacrifices are repeated so as to persuade the pee, or demon, to allow it to yield more iron. The ore is smelted at the Lawa village of Oon Pai, situated near the mines. No stranger is allowed to watch the process lest the pee should be offended; and the ingots are carried on elephants to the Lawa villages, where it is manufactured into various articles which find a sale throughout the country. The ore mined is the common red oxide of iron.

Whilst breakfast was being prepared we went into the village to have a chat with the people and watch them at their work. The houses are of the ordinary pattern occupied by the Zimmé Shans, built on posts, with the floor raised several feet from the ground, the sides of the building slightly inclining outwards as they rise towards the roof, which is steep and high. Many of the houses are small and dirty, and have pig-pens beneath them.

We found several of the men at work making chains, but they stopped as we appeared. After we had talked with them for a little while, a lad, of about twelve years of age, heated some iron, and seizing a hammer, forged several links of a chain as skilfully and quickly as any man of mature age could have done. An old man showed us several specimens of the ore, but would not allow us to take them away for fear the demons of the mine should be offended.

Their bellows and other implements are curious; the anvil is three inches square and two inches high, formed of a large spike driven into a log of wood. Another implement shaped like a triangular hoe at the top, five inches long and one and a half inch at the base, was likewise spiked into a log of wood, exposing six inches of the spike; this was used for forging hooks and elephant chains.

The bellows, two on each side of the charcoal fire, consisted each of a slightly sloping bamboo four inches in diameter, rising two feet from the ground, with a rag-covered piston working inside it and forcing the air out of a small hole. Each pair was placed three feet apart, and worked by a lad.

There is a dip in the plateau near the village where paddy is grown on a slip of land about two miles long and 150 feet broad. It is irrigated by small springs, the water being led to the fields through bamboo pipes.

CHAPTER VI.

PATH FOR A RAILWAY—LAWA SIVAS—LEGENDS OF POO-SA AND YA-SA, AND OF ME-LANG-TA THE LAWA KING—STORY OF A YAK—DESCENT FROM THE BAU PLATEAU—A COURAGEOUS LADY—WEIRD COUNTRY—RUBY-MINES—REACH MUANG HAUT—CABBAGES—TOBACCO-CUTTING—A BOBBERY—FABLE OF THE PEACOCK AND THE CROW—SKETCHING THE COUNTRY—CONVERSING BY SIGNS—INTERVIEWING THE HEAD-MAN—BOAT-HIRE ON THE MEH NAM—COST OF CARRIAGE—RAINFALL—PRODUCE OF FIELDS—A SHAN TEMPLE—METHOD OF MAKING IMAGES—BARGAIN FOR BOATS—TEMPERATURE IN SUN AND SHADE.

Leaving Bau, we continued along the undulating plateau for two and a half miles through the pine-forests, shallow valleys at times commencing on either side. After passing some springs and large white-ant hills, and catching a glimpse of Loi Pah Khow, a great dome-shaped hill ten miles distant to the north, we came to the edge of the plateau, where a great trough or undulation separates it from Loi Kom, the Golden Mountain. Through this pass, which is about 1000 feet lower than the Bau plateau, I consider a railway might be carried from Maing Loongyee to Zimmé.

Loi Kom stands considerably higher than the Bau plateau, or appeared to do so. Looking sideways across the valley, the hill resembles a very long roof sloped at the ends as well as at the sides.

This mountain forms a link in the Zimmé chain of hills, and is the seat of the celebrated Lawa Yak or “genius” Poo-Sa, whose wife Ya-Sa inhabits Loi Soo Tayp, the great hill behind the city of Zimmé.

LEGEND OF POO-SA AND YA-SA.

A Yak.

These genii are said to be the spirits of an ancient Lawa king and queen, who at their deaths became the guardian spirits of the hills. Previous to the advent of Gaudama Buddha to the Lawa country, Poo-Sa and Ya-Sa were devourers of mankind, insisting upon receiving human sacrifices. On his arrival, Gaudama exhorted them to give up this evil practice; since then they are said to be content with buffaloes. The people, however, have doubts on this point, and at times fear that these powerful spirits, who can prevent the water from coursing down the hill-streams to irrigate their fields, have still a hankering after their old diet. The missionaries at Zimmé told me that the previous year the people had petitioned the King of Zimmé to hasten the execution of some malefactors in order to induce Poo-Sa to allow a larger supply of water to flow from the hills, as their fields were suffering from drought.

There is an annual sacrifice of animals to these genii, every house in the region being obliged to pay two annas, or twopence, towards the expenses. The money is kept in the court-house until June, when the sacrifices are made.[^[1]]

LEGEND OF ME-LANG-TA.

Another legend of the local genii runs as follows: On the Shans’ first entering the Zimmé country, they found the city of La-Maing, which had recently been founded by Me-lang-ta, the king of the Lawas, deserted. At that time the whole of the country to the south of the Burmese Shan States belonged to the Lawas, who resided in the hills in the dry season and cultivated the plains in the rainy season. Overrunning the plains at a time when cultivation was not going on, the Shans occupied La-Maing, the ruins of which adjoin the present city of Zimmé, as well as Lapoon and other similarly deserted Lawa towns.

The Lawa king gathered a great army in the hills to drive the Shans out of his country, but finding them strongly intrenched and in great force, he offered to form an alliance with them if they would cement it by giving him in marriage Nang Sam-ma-tay-we, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of the Shan Prince of Lapoon.

The Shan chief haughtily rejected the offer of the Lawa king, and marched with a great host into the hills, attacked Me-lang-ta, scattered his army, and slew him. The place where he was killed is known as La-wat, “the Lawa destroyed”; and the king became the Pee Hluang, or tutelary deity of the region, and resides in a cave at Loi Kat Pyee, a hill to the north-east of Zimmé. Unlike Poo-Sa and Ya-Sa, he is not a reputed cannibal, but is satisfied with sacrifices of pigs every third year and fowls in the intervening period.

The Yaks of Indo-China are close kin to the giants in our nursery tales, and the Buddhist stories relating to them and other mythical beings would compare well with our own nursery tales. To show what fearful beings they are, I take the following story from ‘Nontuk Pakaranam,’ the translation of which appeared in the ‘Siam Repository’ for 1873:—

STORY OF A YAK.

A Siamese king.

“Aupata Racha Tirat, a son of royalty, went forth to conquer a kingdom. He had four servants to accompany him. A Yak, taking the form of a beautiful woman, beset his path. She enticed the servants one by one to leave their master, and ate them. She purposed to entrap the royal heir, but failed. She then went on before to the royal city, found favour in the sight of the king, and killed and ate all the people in the palace—ladies, nobility, and the king himself. The people saw the bones, and came together to see whence came all this desolation. The king’s son came forward and told the story how the Yak ate his servants and wished to eat him, but was not allowed. The king had been taken with her beauty, and so lost his life and the lives of all who had died with him. They took Aupata Racha Tirat and made him king.”

The ridge bordering the Bau plateau on the north-east continues at the same level for three miles, gradually turning into a great spur. The path which we descended follows a broad plateau sloping gradually down alongside the north slope of the spur, and bordered by the valley of the Huay Sai, which lies between it and Loi Kom. Descending rapidly for the first fifty feet, with granite outcropping on both sides, we crossed the Huay Pa-lat, a small stream five feet broad and one foot deep, flowing in a granite bed.

The slope then became easy, but granite masses were still exposed. Continuing through the pine-forest, we crossed two small brooks, the first flowing over a bed of white granite, and the latter dry. The pine and other trees here commenced to be moss-laden, and zi, cotton, and evergreen trees began to appear in the forest. Reaching Pang Eemoon, a swampy shallow valley, we halted for the night. Our camp, 142 miles from Hlineboay, lay 2685 feet above sea-level. The temperature at 5 P.M. was 78°, and at 6 A.M. 45½°, or considerably higher than on the other side of the table-land. Near the camp are the ruins of an old pagoda, and a small stream flowing over a tough rock, which is used by the people for making hones to sharpen their knives and weapons. Still following the sloping plateau, I noticed that pine ceased to be seen in the forest at the point, a mile from the camp, where the plateau commences to throw off spurs on either side, and a steep descent amongst outcrops of granite and boulders begins. The top of the descent lies 2545 feet above the sea.

Small valleys gradually formed and deepened on either side of us as we descended slowly, halting at times for caravans of laden cattle to pass us. After crossing a torrent 40 feet broad and 3 feet deep, flowing from the great spur on the north, we camped for breakfast on the bank of the Meh Pa-pai, at the corner of the elbow-bend where it turns east. At our crossing, 145½ miles from Hlineboay and 1672 feet above the sea, this stream flows in a solid bed of granite, 82 feet broad, with banks 6 feet high.

When halting at this spot with Dr Cushing, his wife had a narrow escape. During the heat of the day she was startled from sleep by feeling something crawling over her. She at once suspected that it was a snake, and had the courage and presence of mind to remain perfectly still while it crawled up her arm, and over her face, and away from her temple. Then, unable to restrain herself longer, she jumped up and screamed as she watched the large spotted viper disappearing in the grass.

After breakfast we followed along the flat slopes on the side of the stream—the crests of the undulations of the rolling plain we had descended to being at times 50 and 60 feet above us, and small hills occasionally jutted in from both sides. In places where, in order to cut the bends of the stream, we crossed the undulating plateau, which was evidently part of an old lake-bottom, the elephants had worn the path down as deep as themselves, exposing the earth formation, which is mixed with small rounded gravel.

The country was weird in the extreme, the grass parched up; the trees, the bamboos, and even the great creepers strangling the trees, leafless; and the stream looking like burnished steel in its lavender-coloured granite bed. There was a dead stillness about the scene; the orange-red flowers of the pouk trees seemed to flame out of the forest.

After following the stream for five miles, we left it flowing to our right, and proceeding over the undulating ground, crossed a low hillock lying between it and the Huay Sai, a stream 30 feet broad and 5 feet deep. Crossing this stream, we entered the ruby-mine district. The ground as far as the Huay Bau Kyow is covered with sharp fragments of quartz, sandstone, and granite, which have been broken by people in search of the gems. Many of great value are said to have been found here. The workings have been merely on the surface and in the banks of the stream; if scientifically worked, the mines might prove very valuable.

Beyond the Huay Bau Kyow—“the stream of the ruby-mines”—we entered the rice-fields of Muang Haut, and crossing the Meh Haut, 60 feet wide and 5 feet deep, were cheered by the sight of trees once more in leaf. The bright red flowers of Pin-leh-Ka-thyt, the tree under which the Devas dance in Indra’s heaven until intoxicated with pleasure, now flamed in rivalry of the pouk, and the banks of the Meh Ping were fringed with orchards and noble clumps of graceful, plume-like bamboos. Passing through the fields, which are bounded on the west by five little knolls, each crested by a pagoda, we skirted the monastery, temple, and pagoda at the entrance of the town, and passing through it, halted for the night at a fine sala, or rest-house, built near the bank of the river.