We slow-going Scots hang on at Mandalay for a little. We have not half
seen the place, and wish to spend hours and hours at the pagoda,
watching the worshippers there, and trying, if possible, to remember
enough expressions and forms and colours to use at home. Our fellow
passengers, Mr and Mrs S., elect to stay on board. They have some days
to spare, waiting for a down-river steamboat, wisely preferring that, to
the bustle through to Rangoon in the train.

... Mr S. is playing the piano, G. and I are painting, Mrs S. sewing,
and all the morning, from the lower deck, there comes the continual
chink of silver rupees, where Captain Robinson and his mate are settling
the trade accounts of the trip, blessing the Burmese clerk for having
half a rupee too much; funny work for men brought up to "handle reef and
steer."

Three steamers, similar to our own, with flats, lie alongside the
sandbank, all in black and white, with black and red funnels and
corrugated iron roofs, and "Glasgow" painted astern. Bullock-carts bump
along the shore in clouds of dust, and the bales come and go, and trade
here is still really picturesque; there are no ugly warehouses or
stores, and everything is open and above board--just, I suppose, as
trade went on in the days of Adam or Solomon.

Went to the railway station, we were obliged to do so. We must leave the
river to get down to Rangoon and Western India, to catch our return P. &
O. from Bombay. We have decided to return by the north of India, and not
by Ceylon, though we are drawn both ways. Ceylon route by steamer all
the way, seems so much easier for tired travellers, than going overland
in trains; but what would friends at home say if we missed Benares,
Agra, and Delhi.

[Illustration]

... A native stationmaster, in a perfunctory manner, points out the kind
of 1st class carriage we have to travel in. It is not inviting, and we
get back to the river, and make a jotting of our steamer and the shore
against the evening sky, and the bullock-carts slowly stirring the dust
into a golden haze.... Then we go to live on shore with friends for a
day or two.

I despair of making anything, in the meantime, of the Arrakan Pagoda,
and the great golden Buddha with the wonderful light on it, and the
kneeling tribesmen and women from over Asia. It is one of the finest, if
not _the_ finest, subject for painting I have ever seen, and yet I can't
see one telling composition. Looking at the people kneel