at is quite natural
where they taper away into the golden gloom of the sloping timber roofs.
The rooms are lofty, and all on one floor, because the Burmese do not
like to live in rooms with people above. There are infinite intricacies
of gilded teak carving, and some rooms glitter like herring shoals with
silvery glass mosaics and mirrors and crystals. How delightful it must
have been to see these courts, and gardens, and palaces, and
throne-rooms in their full brilliancy before our "occupation," but I
suppose one would have had to crawl on all fours or lose one's head at
the nod of Supayalat. She and Thebaw and their parents were very much
in-bred, and, though she was otherwise particularly charming, she had a
strongly-developed homicidal mania. However, the people wept when they
saw their king and queen being so unexpectedly hurried away in a gharry
to go "Doon the Water" in Denny's steamer, in November 1885. They had
far more fun, they say, before we came; a rupee went farther, and so on;
and I quite believe it--we did not grab the country to amuse them!

27th.--Painted till 2 from 8 in half-hearted way. To the Grahams, then
to the Arrakan Pagoda again, too tired and mosquito-bitten to do much
after getting there--a nostalgia of colour these last few days--but saw
the golden Buddha. The florid iron gates were open, and an immense light
shone on the seated and kneeling worshippers in front. It is the most
effective scene in the world for the amount of staging. A glare of
golden light from unseen lamps--electric, I believe--gleams all over the
calm golden figure. It is raised so that the arch in front just allows
you to see up to the top of the statue; it is over twelve feet high, and
the base is about six feet off the ground.

I must come back; on this journey I have already seen so much on the way
here--some day I will come out direct and paint this one scene, and
perhaps one or two in the Shwey Dagon Pagoda--"if I'm spaired," as they
say in the lowlands, instead of knocking under the table.

... On board to-night; Burmans and natives are making up their booths
and stalls on the flats alongside, and on the after-decks of this boat,
so there is a good deal of hammering during dinner-time. Afterwards we
sit round the table on the fore-deck and tolerate the mosquitoes, and
tell yarns, and I turn in with a picture in my mind, from a story of the
captain's, of an East African coast, and a tramp steamer on a bar, the
sur