hat we should be in Rangoon in a few hours. It is not an impressive
stream, being low-banked, scrubby, and muddy; but as we gave the
staggering rice-boats the go-by, I reflected that I was looking upon the
River of the Lost Footsteps--the road that so many, many men of my
acquaintance had travelled, never to return, within the past three
years. Such a one had gone up to open out Upper Burma, and had himself
been opened out by a Burmese dah in the cruel scrub beyond Minhla; such
another had gone to rule the land in the Queen's name, but could not
rule a hill stream and was carried down under his horse. One had been
shot by his servant; another by a dacoit while he sat at dinner; and a
pitifully long list had found in jungle-fever their sole reward for
"the difficulties and privations inseparably connected with military
service," as the Bengal Army Regulations put it. I ran over half a score
of names--policemen, subalterns, young civilians, employes of big
trading firms, and adventurers. They had gone up the river and they had
died. At my elbow stood one of the workers in New Burma, going to report
himself at Rangoon, and he told tales of interminable chases after
evasive dacoits, of marchings and counter-marchings that came to
nothing, and of deaths in the wilderness as noble as they were sad.

Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon--a beautiful
winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither
Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire. It stood upon a green knoll, and
below it were lines of warehouses, sheds, and mills. Under what new god,
thought I, are we irrepressible English sitting now?

"There's the old Shway Dagon" (pronounced Dagone, _not_ like the god in
the Scriptures), said my companion. "Confound it!" But it was not a
thing to be sworn at. It explained in the first place why we took
Rangoon, and in the second why we pushed on to see what more of rich or
rare the land held. Up till that sight my uninstructed eyes could not
see that the land differed much in appearance from the Sunderbuns, but
the golden dome said: "This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any
land you know about." "It's a famous old shrine o' sorts," said my
companion, "and now the Tounghoo-Mandalay line is open, pilgrims are
flocking down by the thousand to see it. It lost its big gold
top--'thing that they call a _'htee_--in an earthquake: that's why it's
all hidden by bamboo-work for a third of its height. You sh