2

ENTRANCE TO A BURMESE VILLAGE 41

AT THE WELL 44

THE MARKET-PLACE 48

IN THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST 57

A DAK BUNGALOW 64

THE QUEEN'S GOLDEN MONASTERY, MANDALAY 72

THE SHWE ZIGON PAGODA, PAGAN 80

SHRINE ON THE PLATFORM OF THE SHWE DAGON PAGODA _on the
cover_

_Sketch Map of Burma on p. viii._

* * * * *

[Illustration: A SKETCH MAP OF BURMA.]

BURMA

CHAPTER I

THE LAND

How many boys or girls, I wonder, ever turn to their school atlas for
amusement, or try to picture to themselves what manner of countries
those might be whose strange and unfamiliar place-names so often make
their geography lesson a difficulty?

Yet there are few subjects, I think, which might be made more
interesting than geography, and a map may often serve to suggest
delightful fancies to a boy or girl of imagination.

Open your atlas at random and see what it has to tell you. Here,
perhaps in the heart of a great continent, stretches a mountain range,
and from it in many directions wind those serpent-like lines which
denote rivers.

Following these lines in their course, through narrow valleys or wide
plains, we notice that upon their banks presently appear those towns
and cities whose names you so often find it difficult to remember, and
at length, frequently by many mouths that cut up the delta it has
formed, the river eventually finds its way into the sea.

These are the simple facts our map gives us, but there is a great deal
of poetry behind. That mountain range is Nature's means of attracting
and holding the moisture-laden clouds which have been blown in from
the sea, and either in the form of rain or snow it stores up the water
evaporated from it.

By thousands of little rills, or rushing torrents which score furrows
in its sides, the mountain gives up its store of water to feed the
thirsty plains, and with it yields also valuable ores and minerals,
which are often carried many many miles away to enrich a people too
far removed from the mountain to know the origin of their wealth.

These little streamlets are not marked upon your map, but presently
they join to form one combined river, by which, throug