BHAMO TO MANDALAY

A few years ago Bhamo was regarded by Europeans as far out of the reach of the ordinary traveller, and beyond the uttermost limits of what to the complacent Western mind constitutes civilisation. Since our soldiers took "the road to Mandalay" and ended an almost bloodless campaign in 1885365 by annexing Upper Burma and deporting its misguided monarch, the little north-eastern frontier-town of Bhamo has entered upon a new phase of its somewhat dramatic history. It is now a considerable entrepÔt of trade, and is bound to derive the full benefit of any future increase of overland commerce between China and Burma. It is therefore full of representatives of all the races of south-eastern Asia who meet there to exchange their varied goods. There is also a garrison, generally consisting of Indian troops, but sometimes of a British regiment as well; and their duty it is not only to watch the Chinese frontier—an easy task nowadays—but also to keep an eye on the wild Kachins and other lawless tribes of north-eastern Burma where there is still a vast tract of country "unadministered"—that is not yet brought under the direct control of the British Government. There is therefore a considerable English colony consisting of officers of the army and of the military police and a few civil officials. Of the latter, the chief is the deputy-commissioner. Like all members of the great service to which he belongs, he is a man who plays many parts and fulfils many functions. He it is who, in the eyes of the subject peoples, represents the imperial power of Great Britain. The "uncovenanted" service is represented by officers of the Public Works and Forestry, and other departments of government. That Bhamo is no longer a barbarous place outside the pale of civilisation is finally proved by the fact that it is now the residence of several English ladies who apparently find life not only supportable but even pleasant.

"There is a wonderful mixture of types in Bhamo. Nowhere in the world ... is there a greater intermingling of races. Here live in cheerful promiscuity Britishers and Chinese, Shans and Kachins, Sikhs and Madrasis, Punjabis, Arabs, German Jews and French adventurers, American missionaries, and Japanese ladies." Such is the concise summing-up of Dr Morrison; and I may add that I found Bhamo much the same as it was when he visited it in 1894 except that the French adventurers and the Japanese ladies appeared to have fled to other pastures. But in another of his remarks I must confess I am unable to concur. "At its best," he says, "Bhamo is a forlorn, miserable and wretched station, where all men seem to regard it as their first duty to the stranger to apologise to him for being there." No such apologies were made to me; and if they had, I should have suspected that the apologist was taking an unnecessarily gloomy view of his surroundings. There are certainly many worse places in the East than Bhamo. It is within easy reach of Mandalay and Rangoon by steamer and train, and is therefore by no means so isolated as its position on the map might lead one to suppose. Its neighbourhood is picturesque; it has clubs and lawn-tennis courts; roads are good; there are many open spaces suitable for polo and the other games that the exiled Englishman loves, and its European houses are roomy bungalows surrounded by delightful gardens full of the glories of tropical vegetation. For part of the year the climate is no doubt trying. The town lies on the banks of the Irrawaddy, and is less than 400 feet above the sea-level. Before the rains break in early summer the temperature sometimes goes up to 100° Fahr. It was over 90° in the shade during the few days that I resided there. But that is cool compared with Mandalay, where the heat, at the end of the dry season, is sometimes excessive. I was told in Bhamo that the temperature at Mandalay about three weeks earlier was no less than 115° in the shade in the afternoon. But the dryness of the atmosphere both at Bhamo and Mandalay during the spring and early summer saves European constitutions from the disastrous results of a high temperature in a damp climate. The summer climate of Hongkong, where the thermometer rarely rises much above 90°, is on account of its excessive dampness far more trying than that of any part of Upper Burma.366

I remained at Bhamo from the 15th to the 18th June, during which time I was treated with the greatest hospitality by various local residents. On the morning of the 18th I started for Mandalay on one of the fine steamers belonging to the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and spent the next two days in a complete idleness, which, after months of arduous travelling, I found thoroughly enjoyable. The scenery of this part of the Irrawaddy is not as a rule very striking compared with the magnificence of some of the Chinese rivers, but its placid waters and the rich vegetation of its banks have a tranquil beauty of their own which is quite unique. Perhaps one of the most striking facts about Upper Burma is that it is one of the few countries where the works of human hands—native hands, at least—have not spoiled nature's own loveliness. A Chinese village is seldom a thing of beauty, except as viewed from a distance:367 a Burmese village, on the contrary, hardly ever mars, and very often accentuates, the simple beauty of its surroundings. The houses—built of wood and bamboo—look as if they had grown out, and were still an integral part, of the virgin forest from which their materials have all been drawn. Like the statue which, according to the old Greek fancy, lay hidden in the shapeless block of marble until the artist's chisel released it from its prison, so the Burmese village—as one might dream—was never created by the hand of man, but only lay buried in the primeval forest until the hour when the woodman's axe pruned the luxuriance of the jungle growths. Such, at least, was the impression that came to me as the throbbing steam-boat glided rapidly in the silver morning haze through the noiseless waters of the great river of Burma. A nearer acquaintance with the villages—for we often stopped to embark cargo or to land passengers—hardly convinced me that my dream was an idle one: for the finely-carved teakwood monasteries and the shining pagodas with their gilded summits, and, above all, the graceful figures and merry faces and tasteful dresses of the people themselves, all tended to intensify my first impressions. The sites of the stupas or pagodas are always singularly well chosen.368 It is sad to reflect that some of the beauty of the Burmese riverside villages is gradually passing away in obedience to the dismal Western law of progress. The danger of fire and considerations of economy, coupled, I fear, with the partial decay of the exquisite taste which was once the Burman's birth-right, has brought about the introduction of new methods of building and foreign architectural designs. Most incongruous of all are the corrugated-iron roofs. Can the poor Burman be supplied with no roofing material less hideous? The Burmese are wise enough to retain their own national costume, a matter for which one should feel grateful; but the adoption of cheap black European umbrellas is almost as serious a lapse from good taste as the use of iron roofing, and is apparently recognised as such by the authorities.

When the Prince of Wales was recently in Mandalay he was entertained by the Lieutenant-Governor at a water carnival. It took place on the waters of the moat close to the walls of Fort Dufferin—the old royal city—and such parts of the grounds as were open to the public were crowded with Burmese sightseers, dressed in their finest silks. The show of colour was unfortunately marred by enormous numbers of black umbrellas, used as sunshades. As a Burmese crowd (without umbrellas) is one of the most charming sights to be seen in Burma or anywhere else and was therefore well worthy of a prince's gaze, messengers were hurriedly despatched to inform the smiling crowd that in the presence of British royalty umbrellas must come down. The order was of course obeyed without a murmur, and the Prince of Wales had the pleasure of beholding in Mandalay a more brilliant and picturesque assemblage of his future subjects than he is ever likely to behold in the empire's capital.

The most striking scenery on the Irrawaddy below Bhamo is undoubtedly to be found in what is known as the Second Defile.369 The river at this point flows through a comparatively narrow channel in a gorge which is overlooked by a great cliff about 800 feet high. A few years ago I spent many happy days in a canoe, floating down the beautiful Nam-U,370 from Muang Wa to Luang Prabang. A short distance above the mouth of the river, where it joins the Mekong, there is a stupendous limestone precipice—how lofty I should not dare to guess—which rises sheer out of the water on the right bank. In situation and appearance it is similar to the cliff in the Second Defile of the Irrawaddy, yet, if I can trust my own recollection, the Nam-U precipice is the loftier and more magnificent. As, however, the wild beauty of the Nam-U has never ceased to be a waking dream ever since I shot its rapids in my little canoe, and camped on its banks night by night at the edge of its silent and trackless jungles, it may be that its most striking features tend in my own mind to loom larger than the reality. In any case the Irrawaddy, too, can furnish food for lifelong dreams of beauty.

Having left Bhamo on 18th June I reached Mandalay on the morning of the 20th. Here—for the purposes of this book at least—I may regard my journey as at an end. In travelling overland from the capital of China to the old capital of Burma, I had carried out the pleasant task which I had set myself when I started from Weihaiwei almost half a year before. It were fitting, perhaps, that I should close this imperfect account of my journey with a description of the marvels of Mandalay; but I must decline a task for which no casual visitor can or should regard himself qualified. A week's residence in Mandalay is not sufficient to justify any one except the globe-trotter—for whom two days and a night may be sufficient—in attempting a description of one of the most curious and wonderful of the modern cities of Asia. In the palace grounds I was shown the magnificent monument which was erected to the memory of king Mindon,371 father of the ex-king Thibaw. I was told that in a recent book about Burma, written by one who was too much pressed for time to sift his facts, there is a fine photograph of this monument which is described as "the tomb of king Mindon's favourite Terrier." There is a moral in this little story which we tourists would do well to take to heart.

Next to the numerous palace buildings with their gilded throne-rooms—no longer, thanks to Lord Curzon, used as a European club—the most interesting sights are outside the walls of the royal city. No student of Buddhism will omit to visit that wonderful collection of miniature temples known as the Kutho-daw, which contains the whole of the Buddhist Pali canon—a collection of sacred writings at least five times as long, be it remembered, as the whole of the Christian Bible—carved on nearly a thousand slabs of white marble. Each slab stands upright in a small pagoda and is fully exposed to view, though sheltered from the weather. The pagodas are about seven hundred in number, and are arranged in symmetrical order side by side, the whole forming a great square with a temple in the centre. This wonderful work was carried out by Mindon Min in 1857, simply as an act of religious devotion.372 The other pagodas of Mandalay and its neighbourhood are very numerous, and each possesses interesting features of its own. The finest is perhaps the Maha Myatmuni, generally known as the Arakan Pagoda. It contains a fine brazen colossal image of the Buddha, nearly twelve feet high, in a sitting posture. Its peculiar sanctity is derived from the tradition that it was copied from life and is therefore a true image of the Buddha as he really was. In mediÆval times wars were waged between several of the kings of Burma and Indo-China in order to settle the disputed right of its possession. I was surprised to find that religious scruples have not prevented the introduction of electric light into this temple; but the effect is far from displeasing. The lights in the recess containing the famous Buddha are so arranged that, while they strongly illuminate the image itself, the neighbouring parts of the pagoda, where I saw many girl-worshippers devoutly kneeling, are in deep gloom.

Starting from Mandalay as a centre I paid several visits to other parts of Burma, where I remained altogether about six weeks. Among other places I visited Lashio, only a few days' journey by road from the Salwen at the Kunlon Ferry, and the furthest point yet attained by the railway. There I spent a few days as the guest of the Superintendent of the North Shan States.373 At Maymyo, the charming European hill-station, I was kindly entertained by Sir Herbert White, K.C.I.E., Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, and later on was also his guest at Government House, Mandalay. Maymyo is only about four hours distant from Mandalay by train, but during that short distance the railway climbs a height of over 3,000 feet. Between Maymyo and Lashio I broke my journey for a couple of days, and, under the auspices of Mr D. G. Robertson, the British Adviser, I had the pleasure of meeting the reigning chief or sawbwa of the important Shan State of Hsi-paw. I had hoped to spend some weeks or months in the trans-Salwen portion of the province, for the purpose of studying something of the languages and customs of the numberless tribes that inhabit that fascinating and little-known country, and comparing them with what I knew of the allied tribes in French Laos, and those through whose territory I had recently passed in Chinese territory. As travelling in the Shan States is, however, practically impossible during the rains, I was obliged indefinitely to postpone the fulfilment of that part of my programme. As I hoped to return to the Shan States later on, I commenced the study of the language and hired a Shan servant to accompany me during the remainder of my stay in Burma.

My next objective was the old capital of Pagan, on the left bank of the Irrawaddy, below Mandalay. I spent three days there, exploring the wonderful ruins of innumerable pagodas and monasteries which are all that remain of a city that was once not only the capital of a powerful kingdom but also one of the leading centres of learning and religion in south-eastern Asia. The secular buildings have nearly all disappeared, but the remaining ruins possess many features of the greatest interest to archÆologists. I could trace no sign of Chinese influence in the architecture and decoration of this dead and vanishing city, though it is alleged—on doubtful authority—that the conquering Chinese arms did once at least penetrate as far as Pagan. Here, as elsewhere in Burma, the Chinese invasions do not appear to have left any lasting results or to have affected in any way the art of the country.374

Leaving Pagan I continued my journey down the Irrawaddy, and reached Rangoon on 15th July.

The conviction that a tour through Burma must leave in the minds of most Europeans is that the country is to be congratulated on its people and that the people are to be equally congratulated on their country. That Burma itself is one of the fairest of lands, every traveller can see for himself; and so far as I could judge from my own short experience and from what was told me by sympathetic British residents, the Burmese are perhaps the most cheerful, generous and hospitable, and on the whole the most attractive people in Asia. But one very commonly hears them also characterised as frivolous, incorrigibly lazy, thriftless, superstitious, untruthful, and lacking in courage and tenacity of purpose. Many European travellers and others have come to the conclusion that these sad deficiencies in the Burman's character are gradually bringing about the ruin and extinction of his race. They point to the fact that the population of Rangoon is far less than half Burman; that Chetty money-lenders, cooks and labourers from Madras, and Chinese merchants and shopkeepers, are gradually monopolising the industry of the country, while the Burman looks on with apathy at his own displacement from the fields, kitchens, shops and counting-houses in which his Indian and Chinese rivals wax rich and fat. In many European houses—perhaps in Lower Burma the great majority—there is not a single Burman servant, all the duties of cook, coolie, table-servant and valet being discharged by suave, noiseless and obedient natives of India. The only people who seem to be able to attract Burmese servants, and keep them for any length of time, are members of the Civil Service, who, with their knowledge of the language and familiarity with the national customs and ideals, are better able than any other aliens to sympathise with the Burman in his joys and sorrows, his likes and dislikes, and to understand something of his point of view. They make good masters, and earn their reward in retaining the services of loyal and attached Burmese servants. Of course there are many non-official Europeans who, with the instincts of gentlemen, treat their dependents quite as well and sympathetically as any one; while among the civil servants there are no doubt many who from the beginning to the end of their career in Burma never shake off the feeling of antipathy to the Oriental—coupled, probably, with a strong sense of racial superiority—which they had when they first came out to the East. But these exceptional cases only prove the rule; and it is strong testimony to the intrinsic worth of the Burman's character that the more thoroughly he is understood the more he is liked by those best qualified to judge. The versatile traveller who "does Burma" in the course of his round-the-world tour, and fills a notebook with comments on the character of the Burmese as a result of what he hears at the dinner-tables of Rangoon, would do well to exercise caution before he gives his notebook to the world. Do not some of us in China well know how prone the tourist is to echo the too-often ignorant and one-sided views about the Chinese that he may have heard expressed in the clubs and drawing-rooms of Hongkong and Shanghai? It seems that the situation in Burma is not dissimilar.

I should be courting a well-deserved retort if I were now to attempt, in a few irresponsible pages, a complete character-sketch of the Burman as he appeared to me during my too-brief sojourn in his beautiful country. Instead of doing so I will content myself with recommending the reader who is interested in Burma but cannot visit it to read and read again the books that have been written by such well-informed and sympathetic writers as Sir George Scott, Mr Fielding Hall and Mr Scott O'Connor. It is satisfactory to know from one of these writers that the Burmese are by no means likely to be crowded out of their own country by such vigorous workers as the Madrasis and Chinese. The immigration of these people enriches the Burman instead of impoverishing him. It enables him to withdraw from work which he cordially dislikes, and to devote himself to the tilling of his rice-fields, and to live the free life—and it is by no means an idle one—that he best loves. The Burmese are showing no signs of approaching extinction; on the contrary, they are multiplying with rapidity.375 The Burmese, says Mr Fielding Hall, are "extremely prosperous now. There is less poverty, less sickness, less unhappiness than among any people I have seen East or West. If there ever was a people about whom pessimism sounded absurd, it is about the Burmese."376 If there is, however, one characteristic of the Burman which appears to be beginning to show signs of decay—let us hope it is change rather than decay—it is his artistic sense. His art, like the art of India and Ceylon, is, it seems, becoming demoralised. But that is not due to the example or competition of any Oriental race; it is a result—be it said to our shame—of the English conquest. As regards the common accusation that the Burman is untruthful, it appears to me that Mr Fielding Hall has effectually disposed of this in the book from which I have just quoted. He points out that because a Burman often lies to a European—whom he can hardly help regarding as an unsympathetic alien—that does not imply that he is a liar by nature. "Every man has many standards. He has one for his family, one for his friends, one for his own class, one for his own nation, and a last for all outsiders. No man considers a foreigner entitled to the same openness and truth from him as his own people.... The only way to estimate a people truly is to know how they treat each other, and how they estimate each other.... I should say, from what I have seen, that between Burman and Burman the standard of honesty and truth is very high. And between European and Burman it is very much what the European chooses to make it."377 These remarks, I may add parenthetically, would apply with equal force to the relations between Europeans and Chinese.

The question of laziness and want of energy is a very interesting one, and is not so simple as it appears at first sight. Because the Burman is glad to leave the rough labour of coolies and the dreary duties of cooking foreign food and performing the routine work of house-servant to the Madrasi, and because he is seen smoking big cheroots and wearing silk clothes much too good to work in while his active wife carries on the business of the bazaar, the strenuous Englishman, who knows so well what incessant hard work has done in building up the greatness of his own nation, is at first inclined to regard him with scorn and impatience. Perhaps because I am conscious of a secret sympathy with a life of what I may call intelligent indolence, I am not disposed to execrate the Burman for a fault in which I am prone to share. But, as a matter of fact, the Burman is not so idle as he is believed to be. "Do not suppose," says the eloquent writer from whom I have quoted, "that the Burmese are idle. Such a nation of workers was never known. Every man works, every woman works, every child works. Life is not an easy thing, but a hard, and there is a great deal of work to be done. There is not an idle man or woman in all Burma."378 In the face of a statement so emphatic as this, how is it that the vice of laziness is so often attributed to the Burman? The reason is not far to seek. The Burman lives in a rich country where the actual necessaries of life come easily. He may have to work hard at times, but he does not and need not labour from morning to night and day after day without intermission. He is content with little, for he is a frugal eater and, more often than not, a vegetarian. Money is of little value to him except to buy some of the novelties that are poured into Burma from English factories. No doubt the more he craves to possess these novelties, the harder he will have to work to get the money to pay for them: and this is a fact that is already having a marked effect on the national habits. The Burman who has not become half-occidentalised does not aim at wealth for its own sake: he does not bow down and worship people who have money: Mammon has not yet secured a niche in his pantheon. He only wants enough to feed his relations and himself, to bring up his children in health and strength, and to clothe them with garments that are not only comfortable to wear but pleasant to the eye. If his fields produce more food than he needs, he sells the surplus, and spends the money in works of charity and religion and in graceful hospitalities. The consequence is that at certain seasons of the year—when harvests are over, for instance—he has many hours of what we might call idleness. He wants to live, as well as to be a mere machine for the manufacture of wealth.

The Burmese theory is one which many a robust and healthy-minded Englishman will absolutely reject, and perhaps it is as well that the Englishman should do so. There can be no progress, he will say, if men are only going to do sufficient work to bring them their daily food. To be strenuous and active, to be ready to face difficulties and strong enough to overcome them—these are the only ways to keep ourselves in the vanguard of progress and civilisation. But, after all, is there not a good deal to be said for the Burman's point of view, too? Are we quite sure that we always know what we mean when we speak of progress and civilisation? That there is a terribly sad and ugly side to the development of civilisation in Western countries—a sadness and ugliness chiefly noticeable in the great industrial centres—is a dreary fact which no Englishman is so likely to realise to the full as he who revisits his native country after a prolonged absence in the East. Even in the most squalid quarters of the most densely-populated cities in China I have never come across anything more painful and depressing than comes daily within the experience of those who, like East End missionaries, live in close proximity to the slums and poorer quarters of our great English cities. Unfortunately, the ugliness, if not the squalor, extends itself beyond the slums, though it assumes different forms among the middle and upper classes of our people. At the risk of having one's words stigmatised as cant and humbug, it is difficult to refrain from giving utterance to a feeling of wonder that so much of the energy and activity of the imperial British race should be devoted to social and political rivalries and the accumulation of material wealth, and that modern English life should be so strongly tainted with the vulgarity and brutality that come of sordid ideals. Make a Burman a millionaire: he will build pagodas, he will support monasteries, he will entertain his friends lavishly, he will exercise a graceful charity unheard of in the West,—and all these things he will go on doing until his money-bags are so empty that he can carry them on his back with a light heart. The process will not be a long one. Transport a hundred Burmans to work in an English workshop or factory: they will probably be all dead or mad in five years; or, what perhaps is worse, all the joy and buoyancy will have been crushed out of their souls for ever. This will not be on account of the hard work—they could work harder if necessary—but because of the mechanical nature of the labour, the long hours of sunless confinement, the deadly monotony, the wearisome routine. Englishmen consider themselves the apostles of liberty throughout the world. The Burman, if asked to give his candid opinion after a year's experience of English life, would probably say that the position of the vast majority of Englishmen was not much better than that of chained slaves.

The evils of our civilisation are perhaps less apparent to him who dwells in its midst than to him who observes it from afar, yet in England, too, there have been some sad-voiced prophets. The warnings of Ruskin, Carlyle and Froude, to mention few out of the many who have uttered oracles since the days when Sir Thomas More in his Utopia satirised the love of gold, seem to have fallen on ears that are deaf to every sound but the clink of coin upon coin. Even psychologists and metaphysicians379 have condescended to come into the arena of practical life to tell us plain truths about the falseness of our aims and the barbarities that we have masked with the forms of civilisation.

It is not commercialism and industrialism in themselves that are harmful: it is only too obvious that our national, or at least our imperial existence is dependent on our wealth, and that wealth can come only from flourishing industries and a worldwide commerce. The harm lies, as Wordsworth saw, in making wealth our deity instead of our servant, and "laying waste" the powers and faculties which are fit for nobler and higher functions by forcing them to act as the apostles and missionaries of a false god. We are apt to speak contemptuously of pagan religions. Take down the most grotesque idol that grins upon his shelf in India, China or Central Africa, and put in its place the new god worshipped by Englishmen and Americans to-day, and who shall choose between them as fit objects for adoration?

It is frequently taken for granted—naturally enough in commercial England—that the creation of new wants is one of the finest results of civilisation; that by artificially creating new desires among the people of a "backward" race, we not only enrich ourselves by finding new markets for our trade, but we elevate and ennoble such a people by compelling them to lay greater store on the accumulation of wealth in order that they may gratify those new desires. That it is unwise to accept any such theory as axiomatic may be at least tentatively suggested. "It is popularly supposed" said Ruskin "that it benefits a nation to invent a want. Rut the fact is that the true benefit is in extinguishing a want—in living with as few wants as possible."380 To see the whole Burmese nation clad in Lancashire cottons, labouring with set teeth from morning till night, year after year, their pagodas deserted and ungilded, their gleaming blue sky polluted with the smoke of factory chimneys, their beautiful country turned into a vast hive of ceaseless and untiring industry, simply in order that wealth might grow and British trade prosper, would no doubt be a consummation most devoutly to be wished by the working classes of the ruling race, and also by the alien Government which would congratulate itself on "the unexampled prosperity of the country and the gratifying elasticity of the revenue." But, meanwhile, what of the happiness of the Burmese people? It is a poor answer to say that if they do not want European luxuries they are not compelled to buy them, and that if they despise money no one is going to force them to accumulate it.

If by civilisation we mean an enlightened progress towards the realisation of the happiness of mankind—without necessarily assuming the truth of the Utilitarian position that human action ought to be deliberately directed towards the attainment of the greatest possible sum of pleasures—there can be no doubt that the Burmese people are very high indeed in the scale of civilised races. Nothing is easier than to criticise such statements. Some will say that the happiness of a Burman is a matter of temperament rather than the result of the conditions of his social environment. The Christian who holds that his religion is the only true one, and that all others are false, will condemn the Burman, because, being a Buddhist and a nat-worshipper, he is a "heathen." The man of science will say that in spite of his tolerance and kind-heartedness and humanity, the Burman has made no discoveries worth speaking of in medicine, knows nothing of surgery, and has never invented any labour-saving machinery. In fairness it should be added—for we are still discussing civilisation—that the Burman is not fond of applying his intellect to the devising of mechanical contrivances for slaughtering his fellow-men. Whatever be the shortcomings of his civilisation, the Burman has made one momentous discovery, and it is to this point that I have been trying to lead up: he has discovered how to make life happy without selfishness, and to combine an adequate power of hard work with a corresponding ability to enjoy himself gracefully. "Put him on the river he loves," says Mr Scott O'Connor,381 "with a swift and angry current against him, and he is capable of superb effort. Turn his beautiful craft, enriched with exquisite carvings, down stream, with wind and tide in his favour, and he will lie all day in the sun, and exult in the Nirvana of complete idleness. And this is not because he is 'a lazy hound,' as I have heard him called, but because he is a philosopher and an artist; because there is a blue sky above him which he can look at, a river before him rippling with colour and light; because the earning of pence is a small thing to him by comparison with the joy of life, and material things themselves but an illusion of the temporary flesh."

A few years ago I wandered alone, as I have said, through the wildest parts of the trans-Mekong Shan States and Siam. I had no credentials, no guide, no servants, and had no knowledge of the languages spoken around me. I was received everywhere with the utmost kindness and the most open-hearted hospitality. In village after village in the valleys of the Nam-U and Mekong I found myself an honoured guest. I could give numberless instances of the tact and fine feeling constantly displayed by my hosts in their dealings with the dumb and unknown foreigner who seemed to have sprung upon them from nowhere. Money did not come into the matter at all: it was of no use to my hosts, for there was hardly any trade, and all their food and clothes were prepared in their own villages. During several memorable weeks I travelled through a fairyland of beauty, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a canoe or on a raft. I saw much of the domestic and social life of the people, and so charming was all I saw that I fear my pleasure was not untainted with envy. It seemed to me that not a single essential of true civilisation was there wanting; I felt that all my preconceived notions of what civilisation really meant had been somehow distorted and must be pulled down and built up anew. During my few weeks in Burma I did not travel in the same way, and steamers and trains gave me little opportunity of seeing Burmese life from the inside; but from what came under my own notice, and from what was told me by others who knew, I have no doubt that where the Burman has not lost his national graces through contact with an alien civilisation he is just as courteous and tolerant and well-mannered and "civilised" as those neighbours of his of whom I have such golden memories.

No doubt one of the greatest achievements of a civilisation such as that of Laos or Burma consists in the spirit of peace and restfulness that it seems to embody. There is, of course, a fallacy in supposing that a contented feeling of "having arrived" is to be expected at all in this human life. Whether we believe in an existence beyond the grave or not, few of us dare to be so optimistic as to suppose that perfection in any form can be realised on earth, although we instinctively feel that we must not be satisfied with anything less. Yet when in some parts of south-eastern Asia we have once breathed that Nirvana-like spirit of restfulness and peace, may we not be pardoned if we find there a strange and magical beauty that all the wisdom of the West can never yield us? It may be, indeed, that our complex Western civilisation, in spite of its materialism and its grossness, contains germs of a higher perfection than ever Burma or Indo-China dreamed of. A full realisation of human capacities, to use the phrase of T. H. Green, can hardly be expected in a simple form of society which calls for no great effort and in which there is no great temptation to deviate from the normal in either an upward or a downward direction. Our strenuous Western life, ugly and brutal as much of it is, and besmirched with the stains of blood and toil, may yet give birth to ideals nobler than ever stirred the imagination of southern Asia. The mountain rent by torrents and chasms, or the ocean tearing with white fangs the face of a cliff, presents to human eyes and minds a spectacle that contains a deeper and grander meaning than can ever be conveyed by the fragile beauty of the royalest of flowers: and the rose, for all its loveliness, fades and dies. Still, let us not despise the beauty that is flower-like, even if we meet it in a land of alien faces: we know that "he is false to God who flouts the rose."

I have said that the Burman shows himself able, in play-hours, to enjoy himself gracefully. In the Burman—he is not alone among Orientals in this—there is no vulgarity. When he and his friends are having what we might call "a spree," he never behaves rudely or uproariously, nor does he get drunk.382 His good taste and self-control are shown in his demeanour just as they are in his clothes. He is never a "bounder," either in manners or appearance. All these remarks apply with equal force to his women-folk. The Burmese woman, whatever her class may be and whatever her occupation, is always a lady. There may be much merriment, a great deal of noise, a considerable amount of good-humoured chaff, but no "mafficking." Can we say quite the same of "Merrie England"?

It is hardly fair to dwell on the brightest and most picturesque side of Burmese life—which no doubt has its dark side as well—and compare it with the gloomier and more horrible features of the social life of modern England. But what I wish to emphasise is the one fact that the Burmese people of all classes are able to enjoy themselves—and do so most heartily—without the least admixture of "hooliganism," which a very large class of our own countrymen and countrywomen are too obviously unable to do.383 If an intelligent Burman were to visit England and set himself to discover why it is that among the poorer classes of our great cities merry-making is apparently inseparable from hideous and raucous vulgarity, he would probably ascribe it to the effect of long hours of degrading and mechanical labour, the drudgery and incessant routine of daily life in the sunless workshop and the dismal office—work from which the victims, owing to strenuous competition, derive only the meanest subsistence, and through which all ideas of gracefulness and good taste are obliterated, and all sense of beauty utterly destroyed.

The most wonderful and beautiful feature of Burmese life I have barely referred to, and yet it would deserve a whole volume to itself. The greatest thing in Burma is the Buddhist religion. We have been told by several people who ought to know, that the real religion of Burma is not Buddhism but Animism;384 that Buddhism is merely an outward label, and that what the Burman really worships is not the law of Buddha, but the nats and spirits that inhabit the rivers and mountains and forests. There is, of course, a considerable element of truth in this criticism, and it applies even more truly to the Shans than to the Burmese. I have had evidence of this in the neighbouring countries, when the Shan boys who guided my canoe down the rivers of Laos used to stop to offer up prayers to the river-nats whenever we came to a dangerous rapid. But to describe Buddhism in Burma as a mere label seems—though I say it with all deference to those who know better—to be an exaggeration. The Burmans not only "profess and call themselves" Buddhists, but they are brought up in the tenets of that religion from their earliest childhood, and before the British Government established secular schools they received all their education from Buddhist monks within the walls of Buddhist monasteries. The great majority do so still, though some are sent to the secular schools as well. Like the Siamese, all Burmese boys at some time or other wear the yellow robe and take the monastic vows. Most of them return as a matter of course to the secular life, but it would be contrary to all human experience to expect them to forget the religion they have been taught both at home and at school during their most impressionable years; and, as a matter of fact, throughout their lives they continue to have the greatest reverence for the yellow robe—the symbol, in their eyes, of all that is holy.

I would go so far as to say that the average Burman of the present day is at least as much entitled to the name of Buddhist as the average Englishman or German is to the name of Christian.385 The law of Buddha is certainly not broken by Burmans in the same lighthearted manner that European Governments and individuals consistently break the commands contained in the Sermon on the Mount: it is not contemptuously thrust aside as "an excellent ideal, but quite unworkable in practice." Buddhism, as it is taught and practised in Burma, is a beautiful religion. I never met a single European in Burma—I must admit that I did not come in contact with the Christian missionaries there—who had a single harsh word to say about the wearers of the yellow robe,386 or the general effect of their teachings. Whatever their own religious views may be, all Europeans seem ready to acknowledge that Buddhism was and still is a great power for good, and that it will be a dismal day for the Burmese people when their religion decays or relaxes its hold upon them. Fortunately, there seems to be every reason to believe that it will not do so, that Buddhism is for the Burman, if for no other, a ?t?a ?? ?e?. It seems strange to be told by one of the foremost living exponents of Burmese life and character that the professed religion of Burma is only "an electro-plating, a bloom, a varnish, enamel, lacquer, a veneer."387 Surely this must not be taken quite seriously. A "bloom," a "varnish," a "veneer" suggests something that may be more or less easily rubbed off, without materially affecting the substance on which it has been laid. Can it be held in good faith that Buddhism could be rubbed away like the bloom from a grape and leave the Burmese people substantially unaffected? Do the gentleness, the patience, the humanity, the kindness to animals, the winning manners and the limitless charity and generosity of the Burmese owe nothing to Buddhism? If Buddhism has had even a minor share in the shaping of the character of the modern Burman we dare not call it a mere bloom or varnish. That there is, however, a very broad stratum of animism in the various deposits that have helped through the shadowy centuries of an unrecorded past to build up the religious mind of Burma may be granted without dispute. Animism, as we know, is to be traced in the popular versions of all or nearly all the religious systems of the world. The eleventh book of the Odyssey is—as F. W. H. Myers has remarked—"steeped in animism,"388 and we have only to turn to the eighth book of the Æneid389 to find that even in the polished age of Augustus animistic ideas were far from dead. Brahmanism, Buddhism, Islam, the Greek and Roman mythologies, the popular semi-religious superstitions of China and Japan, and Christianity390 are all to some extent interpenetrated with animism, and it is only natural that in the case of Buddhism the animistic influences should be specially strong: for that faith enshrines, among the noble and simple moral teachings that all can understand, a profound philosophical system far beyond the comprehension of the average half-educated peasant; and it has always shown, perhaps, even too generous a tolerance of the alien opinions and practices with which it has come in contact.

We are told by the well-known writer on Burma from whom I have just quoted, that when in 1888 the hti (pinnacle) of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda at Rangoon was thrown down by an earthquake, a magnificent new one, costing 600,000 rupees, all collected by public subscription, was put up by gratuitous labour.391 I am far from wishing to lay any emphasis on the significance of the mere voluntary expenditure of so large a sum of money, for we know that in Burma all wealth is dross, and that as judged by Burmese ideas few of the rich philanthropists of Europe would rank as other than mere misers; but the fact of the gift of gratuitous labour by a people who are constantly stigmatised as "lazy dogs" and haters of all kinds of hard work, is surely worthy of a moment's consideration. The average Briton is credited with being anything but lazy, yet what would Christian England say if the Primate were to call upon the British workman to give the work of his hands for nothing in the restoration of St Paul's Cathedral? The result of his appeal might possibly suggest in some minds the disquieting reflection that the Burmese were not the only people whose professed religion was a mere "varnish."

Any one who visits the pagodas and watches the people at their devotions—they make a far more beautiful picture, by the way, than the congregation of any European church, though that is not to the point—is not likely to see anything suggestive of the decay of Buddhism. There are, on the contrary, healthy signs of a renewed religious activity which, if guided aright, should lead to splendid results and silence all forebodings. Meanwhile, the jewelled pinnacle of "the greatest cathedral of the Buddhist faith"392—the Shwe Dagon Pagoda—still bears silent witness to the vitality and beauty of the religion which called it into being. So long as the Buddhist faith is a living force in Burma, there will never be wanting eager hands to dress the altars and lay gold-leaf on the dome of that splendid fane, and never will the grand and passionless face of the Lord Buddha be averted from the little Burmese children who with their fathers and mothers come to lay their gifts of flowers at the Master's feet. If Buddhism dies out of Burma the country will lose the most precious of all its possessions; and when the Shwe Dagon, deserted by its last pilgrim, crumbles away into a shapeless heap of bricks, the world's diadem will lose one of its most lustrous gems.