h neatly fitting trays and
lids, and bowls, trays, and priests' luncheon baskets--large bowls with
trays and smaller bowls inside each other, rising to a point with a cup
over the top. This ware is made of finely woven cane, and some of woven
horse-hair, alternately coated with a tree varnish, ash, and clay,
polished in laths and covered with faintly raised designs and colours
between, and brought to a polished surface. The best is so elastic that
one side of a tumbler or box can be pressed to meet the other without
cracking the colour inlay. They seem to cost a good deal, but when you
examine them, the intricacies of the designs of figures and foliage
account for the price. The groups of sellers on the shore were
interesting, but there was altogether loo much orange vermilion for my
particular taste--a little of that colour goes far, in nature or art.
The women wore rose red tamiens or skirts, and these, plus the red
lacquer work and reddish sand, made an effect as hot as if you had
swallowed a chili!

After Pagan, the traveller may snatch a rest for wearied eyes. The
sandbanks and distance are so level that the views are less interesting
than they were below, but, after all, appearances depend so much on the
weather effect. To-day, sky, water, and sand are so alike in colour,
that the effect is almost monotonous.

At the next village every one seemed jolly and busy, men and women
humping parcels, sacks, and boxes ashore, up the soft, hot sands into
bullock-carts. Now, after our lunch and their day's work, the men are
coming down the banks to bathe--social, cheery fellows, they all go in
together, wading with nothing on but their kilts tucked round their
hips, showing the tattooed designs, that all grown Burmans have over
their thighs. They give a plunge or two, and soap down, and gleam like
copper. Then they put on the dry kilt they have taken out with them,
slipping it on as they came out, modestly and neatly. The women pass
close by and exchange the day's news, and walk in with their skirts on
too, and also change into their dry garments as they come out with equal
propriety. No towelling is needed, for the air is so hot and still--but
the water is pretty cold--I know!

Another entertainment we have at lunch; on a sandbank a little to our
right, a long net; some 200 fathoms, is being drawn ashore, and people
in canoes are splashing the water outside and at the ends to keep in the
fish. There must be twenty men, b