the
Salwin river.[26]

[26] For short concentrated descriptions of Burmah and Shan States,
_see_ Holdich's "India."

I ought to be painting these boats that pass--but there's
breakfast-bell--boats my friends, with the colours of Loch Fyne skiffs,
as to their sails and woodwork, a little deeper in colour, perhaps, and
set off with brighter figures, with here and there a rose pink turban or
white jacket. The hulls have a quaint dignity about them, and the
carvings on their sterns are as rich as the woodwork in a Belgian
cathedral.

Prome.--The sandbanks withdraw, and the wooded ranges of blue hills show
more firmly in the background. It is as if we were at the beginning of a
very wide Norwegian valley. Fishermen's mat shelters break the monotony
of some long sandbanks--isolated signs of life, each on its sharply-cast
purple shadow; a naked boy and his sister run along the freshly broken
edge of a sandbank, and wave to us.

Round, bend after bend, each a splendid delight to the eye--till two
o'clock we look, and look, loath to leave the deck, though our eyes are
sore and appetites keen--then lunch, watching the passing scenes--and
Prome.

[Illustration]

Looking out of our windows, to our left across the river, the scenery
reminds me of loch Suinnart or loch Swene in Argyll: there are knolly
hills, with woodcock scrub, and terns, or sea-swallows, dipping in the
current. To the right the shore is flat, then rises steeply to the road
on the bundar, above which we see the tops of brown teak bungalows, set
amongst rich green trees like planes, and beyond these again, stand grey
stemmed teak trees, and over all, the deep blue sky, and the Shwe Sandaw
Pagoda spire glittering with gold, with lower spires of marble
whiteness.

Pagoda spires are all along the river side every mile or two, but they
do not bespeak a population; most of them are in ruins, they are simply
built with sun-dried bricks, some are white-washed, others gilt, only
the famous pagodas are ever repaired, for a Burman obtains more evident
merit by building a new one. To judge by their number, one might think
there must be so many people that game could not abound, but this is not
the case at all.

We go ashore by the gangways (two broad planks) past Indian coolies and
Burmese laden with bales and boxes slung from either end of bamboos
balanced across their shoulders, through ramparts of bales and sacks
piled on the sand and gravel shore. On either sid