th the
sun in high lights on their tautened muscles.

Immediately at hand a native (Indian) woman, a Madrassee, with her brass
chatty, wades into the water all standing--dirty white canopies and
all--and futilely washes, without soap, and rubs her teeth with a
finger, spits and makes ugly noises and faces, looking now and then
critically at the Burmese women farther up the bank, as if she would
fain copy their more graceful ways and movements. Then she polishes her
brass chatty religiously with mud, and fills it with water where she has
been dabbling, and goes ashore and up the sand, a bedraggled-looking
creature, and conceited at that! Next comes a Burmese mother and her two
young daughters, their bathing dress a smile and a Christmas orchid in
the hair. The eldest is a thing of beauty, with lines to delight a
Phidias. Alas! why must we hide all beauty of form except that of
animals--hide fearfully God's image? Men, women, and children here all
seem fit and fairly well shaped; you rarely see a deformity, except at
show places such as the big temples. It would be the same with us were
we to pay more attention to form, and proportion, than to dress.

I intended to paint at the Arrakan Pagoda to-day, but a pleasant looking
man came on board with a chitsaya harp; I had to try and make a jotting
of him. G. and Captain Turndrup brought him. He sat and played tunes for
hours--epic tunes, which I'd have given anything to remember. His
boat-shaped harp of thirteen strings was tuned in minor thirds, so you
could readily pick out Celtic tunes on it. I am told Sir Arthur Sullivan
came here and listened to his music and made many notes. The harp
belonged to Prince Dabai, Thebaw's step-brother, and I confess I bought
it; but I will restore it if it is required for any National Burmese
Museum or Palace.

Whilst I painted him, the phungyi boys in yellow robes came along the
shore to collect food from the people on the river boats alongside the
sand, and from one or two stalls on the shore. They stood silently with
the big black lacquer bowls in their arms against their waists,
looking humbly down, and a stall holder placed large handfuls of the
rice she was cooking into a bowl. Then the close-cropped bare-headed lad
came to the fifty foot dug-out canoe beside us, but the food there was
only being cooked so he moved on without a word.

[Illustration: A Burmese Harpist]

Half an hour's gharry to the pagoda, an hour there sketching