hue. The Burmese babies toddle about in beauty unadorned, and for
the grown-ups there is every conceivable sort of apparel--or the lack
of it. Most of the laborers on the streets wear only a loin-cloth and
a turban (with the addition of a caste-mark on the forehead in case
they are Hindus), but others have loose-fitting red, green, yellow,
blue, striped, ring-streaked or rainbow-hued wraps, robes, shirts or
trousers: and the women, of course, affect an equal variety of colors.

"The whackin' white cheroot" that the girl smoked in Kipling's "Road
to Mandalay" is also much in evidence here; or perhaps instead of the
white cheroot it is an enormous black cigar. In either case it is as
large as a medium-sized corncob, that the newly landed tourist is
moved to stare thereat in open-eyed amazement. How do Kipling's verses
go?

"'Er petticoat was yaller, an' 'er little cap was green.
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat--jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot.
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on a 'eathen idol's foot."

They are all there in Rangoon yet--the gorgeous coloring of the lady's
raiment, her cheroots, and the heathen idols--

"Bloomin' idol made o' mud.
Wot they called the Great Gawd Bud."

How many images of Buddha there are in the city it would be impossible
to estimate--I saw them not only in the pagodas, but newly carved in
the shops which supply the Buddhist temples in the interior--and the
gilded dome of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, "the most celebrated shrine of
the entire Buddhist world," glitters like a beacon for miles before
you reach the city. Nearly two thirds the height of the Washington
Monument, it is gilded from top to bottom--with actual gold leaf,
Rangoon citizens claim--and around it are innumerable smaller pagodas
and shrines glittering with mosaics of colored glass in imitation of
all the gems known to mortals. {192} Studied closely, they appear
unduly gaudy, of course, but your first impression is that you have
found a real Aladdin's palace, a dazzling, glittering dream of
Oriental splendor and magnificence. To these shrines there come
to-day, as there have been coming for more than twenty centuries,
pilgrims from all lands where Buddha's memory is worshipped, pilgrims
not only from Burma, but from Siam, Ceylon, China, and Korea. I shall
not soon forget the feeble looks of the old white-haired pilgrim whom
two women were helping up the