stration: THE QUEEN'S GOLDEN MONASTERY, MANDALAY. _Page 79._]

It is the tiger, however, which is most to be feared. General
throughout the country, a traveller through jungle or forest must be
ever alert, so stealthy are its movements, and so audacious is it in
its depredations. Its great strength, however, which is not so
generally recognized, the following will serve to show. Close beside
our lonely camp on the Nan-Tu River a tiger killed a sambur, upon
which the natives saw him feeding. Being unarmed themselves, they
ran for the "Sahib" to come and shoot him; but, on regaining the spot,
they found that the tiger had gone, carrying the huge carcass with
him. Following the trail, they came up with their quarry at the
river's bank; but the tiger, still retaining its hold upon its prey,
took to the water, and, although impeded by its heavy burden,
succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. The sad part of the story is
that a native, armed with a "dah," who had followed the tiger into the
river, though an extremely powerful swimmer, was swept away by the
current, and drowned in the rapids below.

CHAPTER XI

TEMPLES AND RELIGION

Burma has been called the "Land of Pagodas," and nothing could be more
true, for from Syriam, below Rangoon, to Myitkyina, in the far north,
is one long succession of these beautiful temples. Not only on the
river-banks do these pagodas crown the hills, but in every town and
village throughout the country; and in many remote districts, far from
present habitations, some shrine, however simple, has been raised.

We have seen something of the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon, but
there are many others almost equally beautiful, if not so large: the
exquisite Shwe Tsan Daw at Prome, the Arracan near Mandalay, while in
old Pagan, Pegu, Moulmein, and a host of other places, are temples
which one might well think could not be surpassed for beauty. I have
told you that these pagodas are usually bell-shaped--a delicate and
most elegant form of design, which gains very much in effect from the
habit the Burmese have of building their temples on a hill, so that
the gradually ascending ground, on the different levels of which the
pinnacles of the "kyoungs" are visible above the trees, leads
gradually upward from one point to another until the temple itself is
reached, towering gracefully above the other forms of beauty with
which the hill is sometimes covered. Another pretty effect is gained
b