ought 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 Pwe 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--

"The world is so full of such beautiful things,
I am sure we should all be as happy as kings."

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 d