reserve us
from sandbanks and let us spend some more hours on your lovely banks;
and we will go down with your rafts of bamboos, and teak, and pottery,
and canoes, and we will avoid all trains till you fraternise with old
ocean again in Rangoon river. Then we will bid you good-bye, it may be
for years, but we hope not for ever.

... At Katha again. The wet pigeon-grey sky lifting, the river the
colour of the Seine. The decorative fig and cotton trees have leaves
just budding, and through the grey stems of the leafless Champaks with
wax white flowers we see groups of figures in dainty colours in the
quiet light, and of course there is the glint of white and gold of a
pagoda.

... In the morning we woke early and drank in the beauty of the clouds
lifting off the river and floating up the corries in the distant hills.
We did not awake early intentionally; the wet mist in the night tautened
the cord of the fog horn, and when the steam pressure rose, off it went
loud and long enough to waken seventy sleepers.

... We pass villages quickly on our way down. We have a flat on either
side, but there is only a half-hearted bazaar in one, and the other is
empty, so we can use it as our promenade.

By lunch time the sky had all cleared into a froth of sunshine and blue
and white clouds. The sand and distant forest and hills became well nigh
invisible in the bright light, and the river seemed a shield of some
fine metal, that took all the sky and smoothed it and reflected it with
concentrated glitter. For our foreground we have the white table on deck
in shade, with a heap of roses and white orchids in a silver bowl;
the fallen petals blend into the half-tone of the table cloth, and
there's peace and quiet and sleep, to the pulsation of the paddles and
the hissing of the foaming water passing astern.

[Illustration: A Girl of Upper Burmah]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

At Tayoung in the evening we swing round, head up stream, and lie along
the shore--too late to go shooting, so we put on a cast of flies and
cast over rising fish, and get a dozen very pretty fish in half-an-hour.
I confess I put a tiny piece of meat on each fly, but hardly enough to
call it bait fishing. These were all silvery, "butter fish," excepting
one, which was rather like a herring. Meantime we had the heavy sunk
line baited with dough, and by and bye it began to go out into the
stream, and we paid out line rapi