with great content at this Kalychet bungalow, looking
out over forest and glen, inhaling the pure air, and even run to poetry
were you of the age.

"Watching shadows, shadows chasing,"

--over the forest-clad mountains which have only cleared patches here
and there, where Kachins have cut the bamboos, taken a crop or two and
then moved on, leaving the ground to lie fallow and grow over weeds
again. On the hillside there are two of these clearings across the track
above us, some two acres or so in extent, with the bamboos cut and
stumps of trees projecting, and in the middle of one of these there is a
native hut, like a fragile boat-house, projecting from the slope of the
hill. Narrow footpaths through the bamboos lead from our cleared space
up to them. Two little Kachin women are climbing up these paths, their
cattle in front of them; each has a basket on her back, and she spins as
she goes--now they are followed by a sprightly boy and his sister, the
boy straight as a dart, with a sword slung across his back, and his gay
red-tasselled satchel on his left side; both have bare feet, and neither
of them seem to heed the thorns. The girl has a loose bundle of thin
hoops of brass and black cane round her hips, under her short black
jacket, and two great silver torques round her neck and breast; her
clothes are dark blue, black, and red.

[Illustration]

... There is the quiet of the mountains; only slightly broken at
intervals of an hour or so when a caravan passes, but sometimes these
pass perfectly silently without stopping; barefooted carriers with their
merchandise slung across the shoulder on bamboos, and sometimes with
ponies, and bells jingling cheerily. Just now, one has come from the
China frontier, some ten carriers wearing pointed straw hats several
feet wide. They unlimber and drink a little water from a spring that
spouts out of the side of a hill through a bamboo; they are quiet
people--their voices and the gurgling of the spring just reach us. Then
from Burmah side come women carriers, Shans, I think, old and young, in
dark blue clothes, short petticoats and tall turbans; they come sturdily
up the hill and joke with the Chinese coolies as they pass without
stopping down the zigzag path into the bamboos, by the path our ponies
and people have already followed. But here is movement! and a cheery
jingling!--a whole string of Chinese pack ponies, eighty at least,
coming up from Bhamo, each laden with bal