the northeast was Mandalay, but lately known in romance,
verse and song; somewhere in the southeast lay Prome, known only in
guide-books and time-tables; and farther south, Rangoon, sister to
Singapore, the half-way house of the derelicts of the world. On the
east side of the river, over there, was a semblance of civilization.
That is to say, men wore white linen, avoided murder, and frequently
paid their gambling debts. But on this west side stood wilderness, not
the kind one reads about as being eventually conquered by white men;
no, the real grim desolation, where the ax cuts but leaves no blaze,
where the pioneer disappears and few or none follow. The pioneer has
always been a successful pugilist, but in this part of Burma fate, out
of pure admiration for the pygmy's gameness, decided to call the battle
a draw. It was not the wilderness of the desert, of the jungle; rather
the tragic hopeless state of a settlement that neither progressed,
retarded, nor stood still.

Between the landing and the settlement itself there stretched a winding
road, arid and treeless, perhaps two miles in length. It announced
definitely that its end was futility. All this day long heavy
bullock-carts had rumbled over it, rumbled toward the landing and
rattled emptily back to the settlement. The dust hung like a fog above
the road, not only for this day, but for all days between the big
rains. Each night, however, the cold heavy dews drew it down, cooling
but never congealing it. From under the first footfall the next day it
rose again. When the gods, or the elements, or Providence, arranged
the world as a fit habitation for man, India and Burma were made the
dust-bins. And as water finds its levels, so will dust, earthly and
human, the quick and the dead.

It was after five in the afternoon. The sun was sinking, hazily but
swiftly; ribbons of scarlet, ribbons of rose, ribbons of violet, lay
one upon the other. The sun possessed no definite circle; a great
blinding radiance like metal pouring from the mouth of a blast-furnace.
Along the road walked two men, phantom-like. One saw their heads dimly
and still more dimly their bodies to the knees; of legs, there was
nothing visible. Occasionally they stepped aside to permit some
bullock-cart to pass. One of them swore, not with any evidence of
temper, not viciously, but in a kind of mechanical protest, which, from
long usage, had become a habit. He directed these epithets neve