Stockaded villages line the foreshore, and hilltops glitter with the golden _tee_ of clustering shrines. The sublime defiles of the glorious river, with their frowning cliffs and toppling crags, widen into the dreamy calm of land-locked reaches, where pagodas multiply on every point of vantage, in monumental testimony to the zeal and devotion of the Burmese past. The nomadic races of Burma impressed their character on the multitude of ruined cities and deserted capitals buried under the veil of verdure in the tropical jungle, or covering hill and plain with decaying splendour. In a shadowy channel beneath overhanging rocks the wrecked yacht of the luckless King Theebaw lies overturned, the lapsing water rippling against red funnel and gilded poop. No effort is made to raise the melancholy derelict, a fitting emblem of past sovereignty. At the sacred heights of Sagaing, transformed by the white and golden spires of graceful pagodas into ideal loveliness, a _pothoodaw_, or “man of both worlds,” in semi-monastic garb with yellow parasol, awaits the arrival of the steamer.
The gentle humility of this old _pothoodaw_ contrasts favourably with the aggressive importance of a village “head-man,” or local magistrate, who pushes him aside, and struts along the narrow wharf in tartan silk and spotless muslin, an obsequious attendant carrying his master’s red umbrella and silver betel-box. Yellow-robed brethren dismount from creaking bullock-wagons lined with hay, and await the coming steamer to bear them to the cremation ceremony up-stream. Palm-leaf fans are raised to the brown faces, but two youthful novices satisfy their curiosity concerning European womankind by peeping through the interstices of the sun-dried fronds. Other waiting passengers set out the huge pieces of a clumsy chessboard on a pile of flour bags; for time is no account on these dreamy shores, and two hours must elapse before the Bhamo boat swings in sight.
Evening turns the noble river into a sheet of flaming gold; pink clouds lie like scattered rose-leaves in the path of the sinking sun, and through the deepening veil of twilight the red fires twinkling outside reed-thatched huts of tiny villages supply local colour to riverside life. Jungle-grown Ava and ruined Amapura lie on the water’s brink; the Pagan, grandest of ancient capitals, covers a wide plain with the imposing architecture of a thousand pagodas, the colossal Ananda Dagon soaring like a huge cathedral above multitudinous domes and spires, gold and crimson, white and grey, of the deserted metropolis; for the tide of life swept away from royal Pagan seven hundred years ago. The white tents of the Government elephant camp cover a stretch of sand above the bathing place of the herd, and the officer in charge gives a fascinating account of his adventurous life; though many perils attend the capture of the three hundred elephants annually required by authority, and in the past year fifteen hunters have fallen victims to the dangers which beset horse and rider from sharp tusks, trampling feet, falling trees, and tangling creepers in the dark recesses of primeval forest. The typical denizen of Burmese woods possesses a sacred character in popular estimation, and carven elephants loom through the tropical greenery of the shores, supporting tapering pagoda or pillared portico.
The steamer stops before the unfinished temple and colossal Bell of Mingoon, cracked by earthquake, but the second largest in the world, the grandeur of the uncompleted design memorializing the frustrated ambition of a Burmese king who desired to be immortalized as a _Phaya-Taga_, or “Pagoda-Builder,” rather than by memories of war and conquest. The spiritual idealism which colours Burmese idiosyncrasy tinges the story of the past, and a modern writer aptly epitomizes one aspect of British rule as “an attempt to turn poetic philosophers into efficient policemen.” The charm of this freshwater cruise is enhanced by frequent opportunities of landing at riverside villages, visits to Burmese farms, and strolls through picturesque markets or beneath the palms and tamarinds of country roads leading to mouldering pagodas and forgotten shrines. The inhabitants of these verdant shores are true “children of the river”--the mystic flood which supplies their wants and moulds their character, affording them an “education of contact” with the outside world to soften the crude asperity of mental isolation. The mother plunges her little ones into the eddying waters so early that even in helpless infancy they become amphibious as the croaking frogs in the iris beds at the river’s edge. Merry bathing parties display their skill in diving, swimming, or fishing by hand in the crystal depths; and graceful girls, like brown Naïads, disport themselves beneath the drooping boughs which kiss the ripples of some sheltered creek fit for a fairy’s haunt. Parrots call from the trees, and kingfishers flit across the shallows in flashes of emerald light. Luxuriance of vegetation and depth of colour increase with every hour of the downward voyage. Gold mohur and scarlet cotton-tree dazzle the eye as they tower up into the burning blue of the tropical sky, and when the crescent moon sinks beneath the horizon myriads of glittering fireflies suggest, in the beautiful words of an Oriental poet, that “the night is adrift with her stream of stars.”
Thabetkein, the busy port of the ruby mines sixty miles away; Yandoon, the malodorous fish-curing town _à la mode de Burma_, which buries the native _hors d’œuvre_ to eat it in decay; and beautiful Prome, asleep in the moonlight, are visited in turn, the character of the scenery changing as the wide Delta opens up before the advancing steamer in branching channels, like numerous rivers springing from the parent Irrawaddy. Above us rises the sacred cliff of Guadama, an ancient resort of religious pilgrimage, with countless statues of Buddha carved to inaccessible heights in the living rock. The romance of this watery world turns over a new page on entering the great Bassein Creek, the last stage of the thousand mile course. Elephants feeding in the Jungle, and requiring a whole day for a full meal, crash through the canes regardless of the passing steamer. Peacocks drag their gorgeous trains over pink river-grass and golden sands. Grey egrets preen their soft plumage at the water’s edge, and purple hornbills rest on swaying palms. The Delta is alive with craft--rice boats and launches, cargo-boats and steamers. The barbaric _fenaw_, with swelling sails and twenty oars; the curving native barge, and the graceful Sampans, flitting like brown-winged moths across the stream. Boys, tattooed from head to foot in elaborate patterns, descend side-creek and canal in a rude _dug-out_--the hollow tree which forms the primitive boat--and the green tunnels of foliage show houses of plaited mats, raised on piles and reached by ladders.
Miles of malarious marsh have been reclaimed by Government from the new land ever silting up above the level of the water, and forming the rich rice-fields of this alluvial soil. Riverside towns and villages become more frequent in the lower reaches, and miniature markets of country produce make patches of brilliant colour on the sandy shore. Silken-clad girls, with flower-decked heads, sit beneath pink and green umbrellas, shading piles of golden plantains and pineapples. Bamboo stalls of curious lacquer-ware and trays of clay Buddhas, packets of gold-leaf, and sheaves of incense-sticks appeal to the religious instincts of pilgrims bound for the Golden Pagoda of distant Rangoon. The trade here, as elsewhere, is monopolized by the Burmese women, though many pink-turbaned admirers lie on the sand, smoking, flirting, and singing with the characteristic _dolce far niente_ of masculine life. The long fresh-water cruise floats us from wilderness to the sea, from dreamland to reality. Rice-mills line the shores, ocean-going ships rush towards the forest of masts encircling busy Rangoon, and huge teak-rafts, floated down from distant woods, and sometimes two years on the way, reach their moorings at the Ahlone timber-yards. Elephants, working with military precision, drag the giant trunks by chains from the river’s brink and pile them up with mathematical exactness, pushing them with their heads until perfectly level. Even commercial Burma can never be commonplace, for beyond the motley throngs of the cosmopolitan port, the golden spire of the Shway Dagon, queen of pagodas and goal of the Irrawaddy voyager, idealizes the city clustering round the sacred hill, and created by the central sanctuary of Burma’s ancient faith.
THE CLYDE
ROBERT WALKER
Glasgow and its river have acted and reacted the one upon the other; and the conditions of the city’s prosperity and well-being are indissolubly linked with the stream that wanders down from the upland moors of Lanarkshire, tumbling over precipices, meandering through rich orchard grounds, flowing through the busy haunts of men, until it widens into the noble estuary whose waves reflect the peaks of Arran and wash round the rugged steeps of Ailsa Craig. In its course the Clyde runs amid all variety of scenery: moorland, pastoral, woodland. It is, at one time, a shallow stream, humming over a pebbly bed and glittering in the clear sunshine; at another, a foul and sullen mass of water, which the energy of man has turned to good account in his commercial enterprises; and then again, a restless sea, whose white-crested waves break upon the base of Highland hills. Through all its changes, it is dear to the heart of every true Glasgovian. It has been a source of untold wealth to the place of his birth, and most of his happiest memories are connected with the sunny days of leisure he has spent among its lochs and by its sand-edged bays. Glasgow looks upon the Clyde as its own special glory and possession; it is proud of the manner in which the resources of the river have been developed; it is prouder still of its many natural beauties familiar to its citizens from their earliest youth, and an all-powerful attraction for the strangers who are led to our shores by the fame of its charms.