ad and rattled gaily along to see the
town. It is almost pure Burmah here, and the native of India is
beautifully scarce; but Chinese abound, and are uncommonly nice-looking
people. We drive a mile or so with rather dingy teak and matting houses
on trestle legs on either side of the road, overhung with palms and
trees, and see the domestic arrangements through open verandahs--women
and children winding yellow silk in skeins and cooking, the vivid
colours of the silks in sudden contrast to the sombre dusty red and
brown wood of the houses.

We stop at a wooden building with gilded pillars in a clear space of dry
foot-trodden mud, surrounded with tall palms and some teak trees with
grey-green leaves big as plates. The short lower wooden pillars support
a gallery, and this again has other gilded pillars supporting one roof
above another in most fantastic complication; green glass balustrades
and seven-roofed spires wrought with marvellous intricacies of gilded
teak-wood carving. Indian red underlies the gilding, and the weather has
left some parts gold and some half gold and red, and other bits
weather-worn silvery teak. The pillars and doors from the gallery into
the interior shrines were all gold of varying colours of weather stain.
Shaven priests, with cotton robes of many shades of orange, draped like
Roman senators, moved about quietly; they had just stopped teaching a
class of boys to read from long papyrus leaves--the boys were still
there, and seemed to have half possession of the place. Overhead green
paroquets screamed, flying to and fro between carved teak foliage and
the green palm tops. The interior of the building was all gilded wood--a
marvel of carpentry; there were lofty golden teak tree pillars and
gilded door panels with gilded figures in relief, and yellow buff cane
mats on the floor. Light only came in through doorways and chinks in the
woodwork in long shafts, but such light! golden afternoon sun into a
temple of gold, you can imagine the effect when it struck gilding--how
it flamed, burned, and lit up remote corners of the shadowy interior
with subdued yellows! As we looked in, a kneeling priest near us waved
to us to enter, and went on with his devotions, his old wrinkled,
kindly, brown face and neck and close cropped head, and deep orange
drapery all in half tone against a placque of vivid lemon yellow gold in
sunlight. These priests, or phungyis, in their old gold cotton robes
form one of the most