ing, from the
side, you can't see the Buddha, and, looking at the Buddha, you only see
the peoples' backs.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

From the train to Rangoon, you see very little of the country: we felt
rather unhappy in it after the comfort of the steamer. A native
stationmaster lost half our luggage for us--vowed he'd put it on board.
I knew that he knew that he had not done so, but I could do nothing. It
was glaringly hot at the station; several Europeans wore black
spectacles, and I had to do the same, for needle like pains ran through
my eyes since the day on the snipe jheel at Bhamo.

The first part of the journey was smooth enough, but bless me! they
brought up the Royal train from Rangoon at ten miles an hour faster than
we travel down! How uneasily must have lain a head that is to wear a
crown.

We couldn't sleep at night for the carriage seemed to be going in every
direction at once--waggled about like a basket, and we shook so much we
laughed at a mosquito that aimed at a particular feature. But in the
early morning we did actually sleep for a little, and about 4 or 5 A.M.
were awakened, for tea, and plague inspection at 6 A.M., about two hours
before getting into Rangoon!--a plague on tea and inspectors at that
hour of the morning!

It wasn't pure joy that journey. Ah! and it was sad too, getting to the
cultivated plains round Rangoon--eternal rice fields and toiling
Indians--uglier and uglier as we neared civilisation. The saddest sight
of all, the half-bred Burman and Indian woman or man--the woman the
worst; with, perhaps, a face of Burmese cast, over-shadowed with the
hungry expression of the Indian, and a black thin shank and flat foot
showing under the lungy, where should be rounded calf and clean cut
foot. We may be great colonists we Britons, but I fear our stocking
Burmah with scourings from India is only great as an evil.

Now I will pass Rangoon in my journal. We stayed a day or two at a
lodging in a detached teak villa in a compound which contained native
servants, and crows _ad nauseum_--it was dull, stupid and dear, and we
were sorry we had not gone to the hotel, and our greatest pleasure was
visiting the Shwey Pagoda again, and the greatest unpleasantness was
getting on board the British India boat the "Lunka" for Calcutta. We
were literally bundled pell mell on board, some twenty passengers and
baggage, and some five hundred native troops all in a heap in the waist
on top of us--what