f coming over her stern, and the shore lined with drunk niggers, and
green boxes of square-faced Dutch gin--at four shillings and sixpence
the dozen, box included.

CHAPTER XXIX

"Away to Bhamo,
Then fare ye well
You Mandalay girl
We're away----
To the Bhamo Strand."

_New verse to old Chantie_.

[Illustration]

Sunday, 28th.--The steamer blows a second time, and the friends and
relations of our traders, sisters, cousins, and aunts get ashore across
the flat or barge alongside, and the crowd of gharries, ox-carts, and
fruit and food sellers begins to disperse up the sandbank. I see the
tall beauty in green kirtle get a friend to raise her flat basket of
oranges on plaintain leaves on to her head, a slow elegant movement she
may have learned in dancing. Here, when the women dance, there is
little movement of the feet, but the angular movements of the body,
arms, and hands and fingers are very subtle and studied, and are done
very slowly; they have time!--in fact, they have to look forward to so
many re-incarnations before they even become men, that they must feel
entirely superior to Time!

We had a quieter night, leastwise quieter than we expected. A child
cried, and a Burman built his booth a little aft of our cabin, with box
lids and French nails, and the hammering went on till about two. Then
all was quiet, and traders and passengers and their families were
asleep, stretched round the deck aft of our portion--Burmans, Phunghis,
Shans, Karens, Chinese, Sikhs, wrapped in various coloured sheets, in
lines fore and aft and from side to side, dimly lit from above by
lamps--the same in the two decks of the flat which we are to take up the
river with us alongside.

These cargo steamers usually take up two flats,[31] one on each side,
and the amount of trade done on these each voyage up and down, I am
told, is considerable, and must annually give great profit to the
countries whose goods we carry; two-thirds of these goods are
Continental--German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, and some are Japanese.
The deduction to be drawn from this will be equally clear to
Protectionist or Free Trader.

[31] I am told this steamer is 250 feet, beam 48, flats 96, beam 24, and
the mail steamer was 325, beam 62.

We made a false start; the mail steamer from the south we had been
waiting for appeared just as we had cleared off the shore. She had been
delayed by fog, so we anchored for an hour or so