and trying
to remember things, and half an hour's rattle back in the dark, wound up
my day's study.

[Illustration]

The Mandalay gharry, a "dog kennel on wheels," is a frightfully
ramshackle thing; doesn't the very name suggest a rickety, rattling sort
of a machine? They are of hard wood, loosely built, with wooden seats,
iron tyres, loose wooden blinds, and springs of iron--I doubt if there
are any! and it is hauled by a tiny Burmese pony, licked by a native of
India.

... 25th.--A faint mist lifting off the shore. The sun is hardly risen,
but already the bullock carts with heavy wooden wheels are squeaking
and groaning along the sand. There is just enough mercantile life to be
comprehensible and picturesque; some four or five Irrawaddy Flotilla
steamers are fast to the bank, and between them are some sixty native
canoes with round mat houses on them. The cargoes of the steamers are
piled on the sand in bales, so you see the whole process of its being
discharged and loaded on the carts and taken away. As the sun rises the
dust does the same, and so do the voices of the people, old and young,
and the geese and the children join in, but the babel is not unpleasant,
it is not too loud; there are pleasant low notes and laughter all the
time. The general tone of the voices is not unlike that of a French
crowd in good humour.

We have received a kind invitation to go and stay with people on shore,
but we resisted the temptation for the meantime. For here on the "Java,"
we see such interesting scenes; and our up-river boat ought to be here
immediately, and to shift our belongings along the shore some thirty
yards on to her, will be much less trouble than flitting to our friends'
bungalow; so we go on drawing here.

The Phryne in hunting green is down again, languorously dropping her
green kirtle. It has an orange vermilion band round the top that clips
the green above her breast. She isn't a swell swimmer; all the women do
in that way is with their hands and they raise their heels out of the
water, and smack down their shins and toes together and just get along,
this possibly on account of the tightness of the lungye or tamien. The
men have various strokes, mostly sort of dog strokes, and get along but
slowly. I have not seen either a man or woman dive.

We have gone up the bank now a few yards to the cargo boat and installed
ourselves in it with our luggage--a very easy "flitting"--and we find
the cargo steamer just