nter, 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.

[Illustration]

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.

[24] The author of "The Soul of a People," an exquisite description of
Burmese life.

The colouring and sandbanks this first day are un