17th January.—On the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's S.S. "Java"—after our British India S.S. experience it is delightful, the quiet utterly soothing. It is hot it is true—hot as in the hot weather they say, but the air is clean on the river.

We are now on the Bassein Creek, twenty-five miles long, going across the Delta west from Rangoon River to the Irrawaddy to steam up it for five days, tying up at night. It is better even than we were told!

This steamer is long, low, and wide decked, with a nice saloon forward on the upper deck, eight cosy cabins on either side, and a promenade in front of them, on the fo'csle head as it were. Aft, divided from us by the pantry and a wire partition, there is a long stretch of deck going right to the stern, all covered by a roof; on this deck sit and lie Burmans, singly or in family groups, in pretty silks, on neat mats and mattresses and pillows with tidy little bundles of luggage beside them.

We do not stop steaming to-night, for we have barely enough of the flood to take us over the shallow midway part of the creek, where the east and west tides meet, so as the sun went below the flat shore and reeds, and it grew dark, the search-light on the lower deck was turned on.

Now we have wonderful theatrical pictures continually changing—bluey-green round pictures framed by the night, first on one bank then on the other, as the light sweeps from side to side, and always down its rays a continuous shower of golden insects seems to come rushing towards us. In the dark behind the lantern, the deck below is crawling with them. The trees we light up on the banks have the green of lime-lit trees on the stage, and the same cut out appearance. Fantastic boats suddenly appear out of the velvet darkness. They have high sterns elaborately carved, and the red teak wood and the brown bodies of the rowers pushing long oars glow in the halo of soft light; other figures resting on their decks are wrapped up in rose and white and green draperies, and each soft colour is reflected quivering in the ripple from the oars.

By the way, as we slept the Bassein mosquitoes did come on board, and answered their description—they do raise lumps! Horses have to be kept in meat safes on shore, and they say you can tell a man who has lived in the district years afterwards, by the way he slips into a room sideways, and closes the door after him. Two or three bites make a whole limb swell; therefore travellers, bring mosquito curtains if you travel here for pleasure.

18th.—Fresh—cool—sun—and this is a wide river in Fairyland, for the colours of foliage, water, and sky are too delicate and bright for any real country I have ever seen. Where, in reality, do you see at one glance, delicate spires in gold and white rising from green foliage, and dainty bamboo cottages of matting and teak; and women in colours as gay as butterflies, coming from them into the morning sun; and fishermen in hollowed logs with classic stems and sterns, their clothing of the colour of China asters, their faces coppery gold, and their hair black as a raven's wing, drawing nets of rusty red, of the tint of birch twigs in winter, out of muddy water enamelled with cerulean.

Every now and then you meet with an extra big bit of fairyland coming down stream in the shape of a native ship with high crescent stern and a mat house near its low bow; all in various tints of a warm brown teak. The crew stand and row long oars and sing as they swing, and you think of Vikings, Pirates, and Argosies.… But down in the lower deck beside Denny's engines it feels quite homely, as if you were going "doon the water" in sunny June—the engines running as smoothly and quietly as if they were muscles and bones instead of hard steel and 900 H.-P.—engineers, engines, and hull all frae Glasgie, all from banks of old Cleutha.

… Now the river widens to nearly a mile, and the tops of ranges of hills appear over the plains. What variety you have in the course of two half days—yesterday amongst crowds and houses and ocean going craft, to-day the calm of the open country with fresh, balmy air, and only river boats.… Here comes difficult navigation though the river is so wide; and we ship a pilot who comes off from a spit of sand in a dug-out canoe.… We surge round hard aport then astarboard, following the channel, through overfalls and eddies like the Dorris More or Corrie Bhriechan in good humour, and there are a few sea swallows to keep us in mind of the sea. It is pleasant to hear the rush, and the calm, of tide race, alternating.

We stop at a village on the river side, and there's a pageant of little boats, a little like Norwegian prams, perhaps sampans is the nearest name for them; they are brightly coloured. The only passenger besides ourselves, Mr Fielding Hall,[24] leaves our steamer here, which we greatly regret; he has told us a little about Burmah, and something of a book he has now in the press, "A Nation at School," and we would very willingly hear more. I gather that its purport is that the Burmans under our rule are really going forward, and that our organisations, hospitals, and factories in Rangoon are proofs of this, though they appear, at the first glance, to be the opposite and that "toute est pour le mieux.…" I am painting now in the cabin he vacated, and ought to be inspired! This Java makes a perfect yacht—granted a cabin apiece—but even with two in a cabin it is very A.1.

The colouring and sandbanks this first day are undoubtedly suggestive of the Nile, but the Irrawaddy is wider; the sand edge falls in the same kind of chunks; the Nile is silvery and blue, with colourless shadows, here everywhere rainbow tints spread out most delicately, and here instead of Egyptians in floppy robes you have refined people exquisitely dressed. As the river is low, we do not see much beyond the edge of the banks. They are topped with high grass and reeds and low palm ferns, and over these appear cane matting roofs of cottages and fine trees.

Paints feel poor things, and a camera can't get these wide effects, at least mine won't—a cinematograph would be the thing. Every five minutes a new river scene unrolls itself. At present, as I look from my large cabin-window, I see a belt of feathery grass, and then the blue sky. A flight of white herons rise, and the sand throws yellow reflected light under their wings; a long, dug-out canoe passes down with a load of colour, red earthenware pots forward, a copper-faced man amidship, in white jacket and indian-red kilt. He is paddling, behind him are green bananas, and in the stern a lady sits in pink petticoat and white jacket. The clothes of men and women are somewhat similar; the man's coloured "putsoe," or kilt, often of tartan, is tied in a knot in front of his waist, and comes down to the middle of his calf. The woman tucks her longer skirt or "tamaine," above her bosom, as you might hitch a bath-towel, and it falls rather tightly to her ankles, and both men and women wear a loose white cotton jacket, which just comes to their waist, with wide sleeves that come below the waist. The men wear their hair long, tied up with a bright silk scarf, and the women wear theirs coiled on the top of their heads with a white crescent comb in it, and often a bunch of yellow orchids. I've heard Europeans say there is little to distinguish the men from the women in figure or dress: but, to me, their figures and faces seem very prettily distinguished.

We stop the night at Henzada, and dine on deck, shut off from the night by a glass partition. The captain tells us how in 1863 the Company was formed to take over from the Government four river steamers previously used for carrying troops and stores; and how the fleet has steadily grown with the development of the province until it now consists of 360 vessels, of all sorts and sizes.

Captain Terndrup also tells us of the occupation of Upper Burmah. He brought down the last of the Europeans before we attacked Upper Burmah, and took up the Staff of our army. Government hired these Flotilla ships for the purpose. He also had to do with the beginning of these gold dredgings in Northern tributaries of the Irrawaddy, which are to make mountains of gold!

A new passenger joins here, a Woods and Forest man. He is full of interesting information about both Lower and Upper Burmah, the Mergui Archipelago and natural history.

We are lying one hundred yards off the shore. From the jungle comes the sound of Burmese music. A PwÉ is being held—a theatrical entertainment given by someone to someone in particular, and to anyone else who likes to attend; generally, in the open air, they go on a whole moonlight night.

20th February.—Almost afraid to get up—the last two days so full of beautiful scenes—positively fear a surfeit—sounds nonsense but it is true to the letter.

Cool and sunny in the morning, the river violet, and the sun faint yellow through wisps of rising mist. We are coming to a village on the bank, palms and trees behind it, and a white pagoda spire rising from them, and one in gold above the village. The cottage roofs are of shingle, buff-coloured and grey, with a silvery sheen. People are coming down the dried mud-bank and across the sand to meet us, red lacquered trays of fruit and vegetables on their heads, and some with their baggage on their heads—their clothes of most joyous colours—

to quote Robert Louis Stevenson, and so these cheery villagers, with their flowers and pretty garments, seem to think. Here is one nation in the world that has attained peace if not happiness: that has preserved the happy belief of the Druids and all primitive peoples, of the relationship of the inorganic to the organic, which scientists now accept and divines begin to consider. Mr Fielding Hall[25] said the other evening "their ideal is untenable in a world of strenuous endeavour and capitalism"—they, of course, do not believe in strenuous endeavour or capitalism, and laugh at "work for work's sake." But we have brought the great "law of necessity" to them, and they must come out of their untenable happiness and fall in line with the advance of civilisation, and give up flowers and silks and simple beauty and cultivate smoke stacks. Our occupation of Burmah really does these people good; witness the hospitals in Rangoon, and the veil of soot from its factories!

Within a hundred years I can see a few odd Burmans going about with hair long and some little suggestion of the old times, a red silk tie perhaps, and a low collar. Foolish fellows, with quaint ideas about simplicity of life, fraternity, and jollity, and old world ideals of beauty. They will be called artists, or Bohemians, men without any firm belief in the doctrine of necessity, or of the beauty of work for work's sake; men who, when they get to heaven, will say, "First rate, for any sake don't spoil it—don't make it strenuous at any price!"

We go ashore, the Captain and I, and Mr Buchanan, the Woods and Forest man. The air is brisk and the sun hot—such a change from Rangoon. We climb the clay steps and walk along the tiny village to the native (Indian) store, to buy a famous headache medicine for G. It is the principal thing they sell. The owner of the store got the recipe from a British Medico, and sells it now all over Burmah, to the tune of 1,300 rupees profit per month—if I may believe my informant! Burmese suffer a great deal from headaches; the sun is strong, and they don't wear hats. There were six native clerks occupied with the sale of this nostrum. I deposited my half rupee for six doses—I'd have taken a ton with hope some years ago.

Then Mr B. showed us his teak logs tethered alongside the banks, waiting for high water to take them on their road south. Some logs are said to take nine years to come down from the upper reaches to Rangoon. Then he rode away on a pretty white pony, first asking me to come and stay in the jungle with him, and don't I wish I could. You feel inclined to stop at Henzada for ever, it is so picturesque and fresh, and the walks by the river under the high trees are very pretty, and there's no dustiness or towniness.

I am sorry Mr Buchanan went; there's much to ask, about what he knew; of trees and beasts and people, or of the geology of these mountains that are beginning to appear to our left and right: to the west, the southern spine of the Arrakan Mountains, and to the east, the ranges of the Shan Highlands, which divide the Irrawaddy valley from the valley of the Salwin river.[26]

I ought to be painting these boats that pass—but there's breakfast-bell—boats my friends, with the colours of Loch Fyne skiffs, as to their sails and woodwork, a little deeper in colour, perhaps, and set off with brighter figures, with here and there a rose pink turban or white jacket. The hulls have a quaint dignity about them, and the carvings on their sterns are as rich as the woodwork in a Belgian cathedral.

Prome.—The sandbanks withdraw, and the wooded ranges of blue hills show more firmly in the background. It is as if we were at the beginning of a very wide Norwegian valley. Fishermen's mat shelters break the monotony of some long sandbanks—isolated signs of life, each on its sharply-cast purple shadow; a naked boy and his sister run along the freshly broken edge of a sandbank, and wave to us.

Round, bend after bend, each a splendid delight to the eye—till two o'clock we look, and look, loath to leave the deck, though our eyes are sore and appetites keen—then lunch, watching the passing scenes—and Prome.

Looking out of our windows, to our left across the river, the scenery reminds me of loch Suinnart or loch Swene in Argyll: there are knolly hills, with woodcock scrub, and terns, or sea-swallows, dipping in the current. To the right the shore is flat, then rises steeply to the road on the bundar, above which we see the tops of brown teak bungalows, set amongst rich green trees like planes, and beyond these again, stand grey stemmed teak trees, and over all, the deep blue sky, and the Shwe Sandaw Pagoda spire glittering with gold, with lower spires of marble whiteness.

Pagoda spires are all along the river side every mile or two, but they do not bespeak a population; most of them are in ruins, they are simply built with sun-dried bricks, some are white-washed, others gilt, only the famous pagodas are ever repaired, for a Burman obtains more evident merit by building a new one. To judge by their number, one might think there must be so many people that game could not abound, but this is not the case at all.

We go ashore by the gangways (two broad planks) past Indian coolies and Burmese laden with bales and boxes slung from either end of bamboos balanced across their shoulders, through ramparts of bales and sacks piled on the sand and gravel shore. On either side of the path there are women sitting with snacks of Burmese food to sell to travellers, sugar-cane, sweet cakes, cheroots, soda-water, and ngapi; this is a great Burmese delicacy and has a peculiar smell! It is composed of pounded putrid fish—as unpleasant to us as a lively old Stilton-cheese would be to a Burman.

Up the bank some forty feet we find we are again in the track of the Royal Procession! There are tiny decorations going up amongst the trees. A triumphal arch, quite twenty feet high, is being covered with coloured paper and tinsel, and a line of flags and freshly cut palm leaves leads to the little siding on the line that goes to Rangoon. The place is so pretty that you feel it is a pity that its natural features should be disturbed by ornament however well intentioned.

We go to the pagoda and climb slowly up the steps, for they are high and steep, and at every flight there are exquisite views out over the jungle of trees, palms, and bamboo, and knolly "Argyll hills," and looking up or down the stairs are more pictures; on both sides are double rows of red and gold pillars, supporting an elaborately panelled teak roof, with carvings in teak picked out with gold and colour. Groups of people with sweet expressions, priests, men, women, and children pass up and down. On the platform there is heat and a feeling of great peace, the subdued chant of one or two people praying, the cluck of a hen, the fragrance of incense, and now and then the deep soft throb of one of the great bells, touched by a passing worshipper with the crown of a stag's horn. There are spaces of intense light, and cool shadows and shrines of glass mosaic, inside them Buddhas in marble or bronze—the bronzes are beautiful pieces of cire perdu castings—flowers droop before them, and candles are melting, their flame almost invisible in the sunlight, and two little children play with the guttering wax.

As we come down the stairs we meet khaki-clad Indian soldiers, with high khaki turbans, and indecently thin shanks in blue putties. They do not fit their uniforms or boots, or the surroundings, and only the sergeants seem to feel their rifles less than a burden. They are told off to posts in the jungle at each stage of the ascent, and we feel our retreat is menaced, but it is only a rehearsal for the Royal Visit to-morrow. Little Prome is all agog! for the Prince comes down the river and is to land here and train to Rangoon.

Before we go aboard we walk through the marketplace by the side of the river; it is lit with a yellow sunset from over the river, the umbrellas stand out brown against the sky, and the burning tobacco of the girls white cheroots begins to show red, and the oranges have a very deep colour, the blue smoke hangs in level wisps in the warm dusty air—and you could lean up against the smell of the ngapi. It is in heaps, and of finest quality they say. Here is a jotting from a sketch in colour; I made also one in line to immortalise the Prome triumphal arch.

There are more than a dozen flags on it now, and you see two natives putting up two lamps; and the governor, you can imagine—he is training his pair of carriage ponies to stand this unusual display. They go up and down the mile of high road on the bundar in such a lather, one nearly out of its skin with excitement. What would be better than an arch, and would please every one, would be to collect all the Burmese residents in the district in their best dresses, and allow them to group themselves as their artistic minds would suggest; their grouping and posing would be something to remember. Burmese woman study movement from childhood, and nothing more beautiful could be conceived than their colour schemes; I've seen arrangement of colours to-day in dresses, delicate as harmonies in Polar ice, and others rich and strong as the colours of a tropical sunset.

But one line more about the town.—Before the Christian era, Prome was within six miles east of being one of Burmah's many ancient capitals; it marked the ancient boundary between Ava and Pegu, otherwise Upper and Lower Burmah. It is seventy five miles above Rangoon, and has 27,000 inhabitants, and has streets here, and a law court there, and an Anglican church, so it is moving—one way or the other.