mbled tea leaves formed into the picturesque
design of Chinese writing, for Mangadone was one of the most
cosmopolitan ports of the East, and stood high in the commercial world
as a place for trade.

Along the street a motley of colour took itself like a sea of shades and
tints. Green, crimson, lemon yellow, lapis-lazuli, royal purple,
intermingled with the naked brown bodies of coolies clad only in
loin-cloths, for every race and class emerged just before sunset. Rich
Burmen clad in yards of stiff, rustling silk jostled the lean, spare
Chinamen and the Madrassis who came to Mangadone to make money out of
the indolence of the natives of a place who cared to do little but smoke
and laugh. Poor Burmen in red and yellow cottons, as content with life
as their wealthy brethren, loitered and smoked with the little
white-coated women with flower-decked heads, and they all flowed on with
the tide and filled the air with a perpetual babel of sound.

The great, high houses on either side of the street were dilapidated and
gaunt, let out for the most part in flats and tenements. Screaming
children swarmed naked and entirely unconcerned upon every landing, and
out on the verandas that gave publicity to the way of life in the
native quarter. Sometimes a rag of curtain covered the entrances to the
houses, but just as often it did not. Women washed the big brass and
earthenware pots, cooked the food, and played with the children in the
smoky darkness, or sat to watch the evening show of the street.

At one corner of the upper end of the street was a curio and china shop
owned by a stout and wealthy Burman, Mhtoon Pah. The shop was one of the
features of the place, and no globe-trotting tourist could pass through
Mangadone without buying a set of tea-cups, a dancing devil, a carpet,
or a Burmese gong, from Mhtoon Pah. A strange-looking effigy in tight
breeches, with pointing yellow hands and a smiling yellow face, stood
outside the shop, eternally asking people in wooden, dumb show, to go in
and be robbed by the proprietor. He had stood there and pointed for so
long that the green glaze of his coat was sun-blistered, but he
invariably drew the attention of passing tourists, and acted as a
sign-board. He pointed at a small door up a flight of steps, and behind
the small door was a dark shop, smelling of sandal-wood and cassia, and
strong with the burning fumes of joss-sticks. Innumerable cardboard
boxes full of Japanese dolls, full of