een for long
months keeping watch and ward from their lonely mountain eyries o'er the
furthest marches of the British Empire!

[Illustration]

17th February.--I vow that there is this morning, at the same time, a
suggestion in the air of both spring and autumn. There is a touch of
autumn grey, and the plants in the garden droop a little as they do at
home before or after frost. A level line of cloud rests half-way up the
steel blue hills, it has hung there motionless for hours since the sun
rose, and the air is very pure, with a sweet scent of stephanotis and
wood-smoke and roses. Possibly it is the stephanotis and the wood-smoke
combined that makes me think of spring--spring in Paris; but more
probably Paris is brought to my mind this morning by the interview we
had yesterday with M. Ava about our berths on the cargo boat down to
Mandalay; he is the Bhamo Agent for the Flotilla Company. M. Ava left
Paris at the time of the birth of the Prince Imperial, and came to
Burmah with his own yacht, and has stayed here ever since. I wish he
would write a book on the changes of life he has seen; about the court
life of the Empire, and his semi-official yachting tour, and of his long
residence with Thebaw and his queens, of the intrigue and ceremonies in
their golden palaces, the thrilling episodes of which he was witness,
and of the many changes of fortune he has himself experienced.

... Someone said last night, "How interesting it would be if an artist
were to paint the various types of the tribes here," and my conscience
smote me for not seizing the occasion. So to-day I got my Boy to ask the
native cook, to ask his Burmese wife, to ask her Kachin female assistant
to pose for me, and here she is. Isn't she sweet?--and seventeen, she
says, and she is so shy!--and has a queer, queer look in the back of her
narrow eyes that I'd fain be able to translate; perhaps there's a little
pride of race, and perhaps a little of the timidity of a wild thing from
the jungle--perhaps all the histories of old Mongol invasions and
retreats if we could but read! Her dress is rather rich, jacket black
velvet, edged with red, tall turban of blue frieze cloth, and kilt and
putties of the colours of low-toned tartan made of hand-woven cloth, in
diced and herring-boned patterns. She has a silver torque round her neck
of the druidical shape, the ends of the circle almost meeting, and bent
back with two shapes like flat serpents' heads. In her ears a