The castle stands on an isolated rock with deep wooded ravines on all sides, to which no stranger may go. The saucy castle defied all its neighbours and vexed the lands of my lord archbishop the Elector of Trier, who, to curb its pride, built another castle over against it and called it “Trutz-Elz” (Who care for Elz?). I don’t know the rest of the story, but there stands Elz as good as ever, possessed by the lords of that ilk, and Trutz-Elz is a ruin.
Our time is running out. We left Alf in a dawning of golden mist, and rowed merrily down to Ediger, with its picturesque church, all flying buttresses, pinnacles and crockets, like a church in a Dürer background, to Cochem, with its restored castle and a sense of modern prosperity which is better for the town than for the contemplative traveller. Another clean little hostelry at Treis, with good wine and a cheery landlord. There is a river at Treis and a possibility of small trout if we take great trouble; but we don’t; it is too hot to take trouble; there is no water in the stream, and the fish are asleep. The river now makes up its devious mind to go straight for Coblenz in long reaches, with groynes on either bank. It comes on to rain; we bump a rock and dance along a rapid. Then come commercial buildings with chimneys, reminding us that we live in the iron age. The stream widens, the rain pours down, the Roman bridge comes in sight. Coblenz _finis chartæque viæque_.
May we go there again.
THE IRRAWADDY
EMILY A. RICHINGS
The mighty Irrawaddy, which traverses the entire length of Burma, impresses itself on popular imagination as the living soul of the land, moulded and coloured through countless ages by the influence of the majestic river. If Egypt be the gift of the Nile, Burma is scarcely less the gift of the Irrawaddy, deepened by myriad tributary streams, and flowing in ever-widening volume from forest cradle to fan-shaped Delta. The source of the historic stream is still veiled in mystery, as it winds through impenetrable jungle and untrodden mountains until it becomes navigable for the last thousand miles to the sea. Manifold traditions encompass the great river with that atmosphere of glamour which invests Burma with romantic charm.
The song of the river breathes of nomadic hordes and contending races, of old-world kings, mythical warriors, and legendary saints, until the dominant Burmese united in the Irrawaddy Valley, and the tribes wandering down the lateral tributaries were absorbed or subjected by the ruling power.
[Illustration: THE IRRAWADDY]
The modern voyager generally takes the downward course of the river, journeying by train to Katha, through the palm-studded plains and dense forests skirting the blue hills which divide Burma from the Shan States on the borders of Siam. Under the hovering mists of dawn giant teak and feathery bamboo, looped together with coils of all-embracing creeper, make a rich tangle of matted foliage. Bhamo, the head of navigation as regards the great steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla, and the frontier town on the borders of China, lies along the yellow sand-bank of the foreshore. The Siamese name, signifying “City of Pans,” is derived from the local manufacture of iron and earthenware jars, cauldrons, and pitchers, dating from primitive times. Bhamo, formerly a walled Shan town, fiercely contested both by China and Burma, was captured four times by the Chinese, easily reinforced from their own frontier only thirty miles away. The town of 12,000 inhabitants, protected by an English battery and a police force of Indians and Kachins, is still the meeting-place of converging races. Chinese, Moslems, and Hindus possess their own quarters in the squalid city, where the astute Celestials retain the largest share of local trade, importing cotton and salt, or exporting honey, hides, ochre and chestnuts, with thousands of cooking pans. Blue robes, sun-hats and pigtails, grey roofs with upcurved eaves, and tinselled banners waving round the tarnished red of a Joss-house bristling with weird figures, transport our thoughts to the Middle Kingdom, reached by the sandy track beyond the ruined walls. Tom-toms beat in the Hindu quarter, and dark figures glide past with jingling anklets and filigree nose-rings, or lie supine on rickety _charpoys_ in the open street. A muezzin chants from the minaret of a tiny mosque, and the bearded sons of Islam spread their prayer-carpets in the dust, prostrating themselves in obedience to the voice which summons them to prayer on these alien shores. Beneath the banyan trees of an arcaded court a marble Buddha dreams amid the shadows, and kneeling Shan women offer their morning orisons at the crumbling altar. Tall black head-dresses and dark-blue skirts, embroidered with many-coloured wools, mark a distinct racial type. Silver cylinders weigh down dusky ears, silver hoops encircle sunburned necks, and the glittering chain of a silver needle-case hung from the waist-belt of an almond-eyed girl denotes her rank as a Shan lady. The intelligent faces are bright and animated, but every smile discloses teeth blackened with betelnut. The men of the party sip tea and smoke their silver pipes under the green boughs, leaving the devotional exercises to their womankind. A Burman in rose-coloured turban and plaid kilt lolls upon a stone parapet, and Kachin women, with mops of rough hair and furtive faces washed in grease, pass the gateway with loads of elephant-grass on their backs, bringing a barbaric element into the scene.
Pagoda, Joss-house, and Buddhist temple stand in friendly proximity, and no war of sect or creed disturbs the harmony of life under the tolerant British rule; but the Buddhism of the Shan and the Nature-worship of the Kachin show many points of contact.
The arrival of the Irrawaddy steamer, towing cargo “flats” in its wake, is the event of the week, and rustic barges thread the narrow defile above Bhamo, bringing their contingent of produce and passengers from distant villages on the confines of civilization. One of the great “flats” is a floating market, where Burman and Kachin, Shan and Chin, display their varied merchandise to the motley throng of customers. Gaudy silks and cottons, rude pottery and quaint lacquer-work, barbaric toys and trinkets, fruit, vegetables, and sweetmeats, with household utensils of every kind, fill the dusky space of the covered deck with brilliant colour. Indolent Burmese doze and smoke on gaily-striped quilts, while their wives chaffer and barter with business-like aplomb; for the Burmese woman is the breadwinner of the family, and retains most of the commercial transactions of the country in her capable hands. A pretty girl in white jacket and apple-green skirt, with a pink _pawa_ floating on her shoulders, sits on a pile of yellow cushions and smokes her big cheroot of chopped wood and tobacco in meditative calm. Diamonds glitter in her ears, and ruby studs fasten her muslin bodice, for she goes as a bride to some distant riverside town, and carries her “dot” on her back. Strings of onions and scarlet chillies hang from the rafters above bales of fur from China. Children flit up and down, like many-coloured butterflies, in quaint costumes brightened with pink scarfs and tiny turban, miniature replicas of their elders, for no special garb of childhood exists in Burma, and the general effect suggests an assemblage of gaily-dressed dolls. Shan women in tall black turbans stand round a harper as he twangs the silken strings of a black and gold lyre with sounding-board of varnished deerskin. The weird fractional tones of native music, discordant to European ears, harmonize with the semi-barbaric environment as the musician chants some heroic legend of the mythical past. Presently he approaches a mattress of white and scarlet, occupied by a woman whose brown Mongolian face is blanched to the pallor of age-worn marble by chronic pain, and sings a wild incantation over the sufferer, who by the advice of a fortune-teller undertakes the weary journey to pray for healing at the Golden Pagoda of Rangoon. The charm apparently succeeds, for the tired eyes close, and as the song dies off in a whispering cadence a peaceful slumber smoothes the lines of pain in the troubled face. Family parties sit round iron tea-kettles, and girls bring bowls of steaming rice from the rude galley where native passengers cook their food.
Past green islets in sandy reaches, hemmed in by bold cliffs conveying vague suggestions of Nile scenery, the great steamer pursues her way. Above dark clumps of banyan and tamarind, the golden spires of Buddhist monasteries, or the shining _tee_ of village pagodas, invest the changing landscape with the unique individuality of Burma, distinct in character from the Indian Empire, though politically comprised within it. A magical peace and purity, suggesting a world fresh from the Creator’s hand, transfigures hill and dale with ineffable lucidity of atmosphere and delicacy of colour. The solemnity of the deep gorges piercing the profound gloom of virgin forest supplies a contrasting note of haunting mystery, the loneliness of these upper reaches merely accentuated by occasional signs of human life and activity in the vast solitudes through which the river flows. As the steamer swings round a projecting rock, the grotesque forms of two colossal leographs--the hybrid lion and gryphon of Burmese mythology--rear their white bulk against a green tuft of towering palms at the gate of a Buddhist temple flanking the grey cone of a tall pagoda. Yellow-robed monks lean on the balustrade of an island monastery hidden like a bird’s nest amid the thick foliage, and beautiful even in decay. The broad-eaved roofs, with their carved and gilded pinnacles, are miracles of art, for the historic foundation was formerly renowned throughout Upper Burma, and on festivals even the dog-fish, for which this reach of water is famous, were decorated with strips of gold-leaf, and tamed to come at the call of the monks. Farther on a yellow procession descends a long flight of rocky steps cut in the face of a steep cliff crowned by a monastic pile bristling with gilt finials and vermilion spires. At the foot of the mountain stairway a huge funeral pyre of forest trees attracts groups of villagers, who land from a fleet of carved and decorated boats in festal array, for a monk is to be cremated after the invariable custom of Buddhist orders, and the ceremony is observed as a general holiday. The light-hearted Burmese only extract pleasure from the gruesome spectacle, for what matters this little incident in the manifold cycles of progressive existence reserved for the reincarnating soul?