d sudden
death. I had reached the fringe of the veil that hides Upper Burma, and
I would have given much to have gone up the river and seen a score of
old friends, now jungle-worn men of war. All that night I dreamed of
interminable staircases down which swept thousands of pretty girls, so
brilliantly robed that my eyes ached at the sight. There was a great
golden bell at the top of the stairs, and at the bottom, his face turned
to the sky, lay poor old D----dead at Minhla, and a host of unshaven
ragamuffins in khaki were keeping guard over him.

No. III

THE CITY OF ELEPHANTS WHICH IS GOVERNED BY THE GREAT GOD OF IDLENESS,
WHO LIVES ON THE TOP OF A HILL. THE HISTORY OF THREE GREAT DISCOVERIES
AND THE NAUGHTY CHILDREN OF IQUIQUE.

"I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell,
I said: Oh, soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well."

So much for making definite programmes of travel beforehand. In my first
letter I told you that I would go from Rangoon to Penang direct. Now we
are lying off Moulmein in a new steamer which does not seem to run
anywhere in particular. Why she should go to Moulmein is a mystery; but
as every soul on the ship is a loafer like myself, no one is
discontented. Imagine a shipload of people to whom time is no object,
who have no desires beyond three meals a day and no emotions save those
caused by a casual cockroach.

Moulmein is situated up the mouth of a river which ought to flow through
South America, and all manner of dissolute native craft appear to make
the place their home. Ugly cargo-steamers that the initiated call
"Geordie tramps" grunt and bellow at the beautiful hills all round, and
the pot-bellied British India liners wallow down the reaches. Visitors
are rare in Moulmein--so rare that few but cargo-boats think it worth
their while to come off from the shore.

Strictly in confidence I will tell you that Moulmein is not a city of
this earth at all. Sindbad the Sailor visited it, if you recollect, on
that memorable voyage when he discovered the burial-ground of the
elephants.

As the steamer came up the river we were aware of first one elephant and
then another hard at work in timber-yards that faced the shore. A few
narrow-minded folk with binoculars said that there were _mahouts_ upon
their backs, but this was never clearly proven. I prefer to believe in
what I saw--a sleepy town, just one house thick, sc