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 should see it when it's all uncovered. They're regilding it now."
Why is it that when one views for the first time any of the wonders of the earth a bystander always strikes in with, "You should see it, etc."? Such men given twenty minutes from the tomb at the Day of Judgment, would patronize the naked souls as they hurried up with the glare of Tophet on their faces, and say: "You should have seen this when Gabriel first began to blow." What the Shway Dagon really is and how many books may have been written upon its history and archæology is no part of my business. As it stood overlooking everything it seemed to explain all about Burma—why the boys had gone north and died, why the troopers bustled to and fro, and why the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla lay like black–backed gulls upon the water.
Then we came to a new land, and the first thing that one of the regular residents said was: "This place isn't India at all. They ought to have made it a Crown colony." Judging the Empire as it ought to be judged, by its most prominent points—videlicet, its smells—he was right; for though there is one stink in Calcutta, another in Bombay, and a third and most pungent one in the Punjab, yet they have a kinship of stinks, whereas Burma smells quite otherwise. It is not exactly what China ought to smell like, but it is not India. "What is it?" I asked; and the man said "Napi," which is fish pickled when it ought to have been buried long ago. This food, in guide–book language, is inordinately consumed by …but everybody who has been within downwind range of Rangoon knows what napi means, and those who do not will not understand.
Yes, it was a very new land—a land where the people understood colour—a delightfully lazy land full of pretty girls and very bad cheroots.
The worst of it was that the Anglo–Indian was a foreigner, a creature of no account. He did not know Burman,—which was no great loss,—and the Madrassi insisted upon addressing him in English. The Madrassi, by the way, is a great institution. He takes the place of the Burman, who will not work, and in a few years returns to his native coast with rings on his fingers and bells on his toes. The consequences are obvious. The Madrassi demands, and receives, enormous wages, and gets to know that he is indispensable. The Burman exists beautifully, while his women–folk marry the Madrassi and the Chinaman, because these support them in affluence. When the Burman wishes to work he gets a Madrassi to do it for him. How he finds the money to pay the Madrassi I was not informed, but all men were agreed in saying that under no circumstances will the Burman exert himself in the paths of honest industry. Now, if a bountiful Providence had clothed you in a purple, green, amber or puce petticoat, had thrown a rose–pink scarf–turban over your head, and had put you in a pleasant damp country where rice grew of itself and fish came up to be caught, putrified and pickled, would you work? Would you not rather take a cheroot and loaf about the streets seeing what was to be seen? If two–thirds of your girls were grinning, good–humoured little maidens and the remainder positively pretty, would you not spend your time in making love?
The Burman does both these things, and the Englishman, who after all worked himself to Burma, says hard things about him. Personally I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman, with twenty yards of real King's silk, that has been made in Mandalay, about my body, and a succession of cigarettes between my lips. I will wave the cigarette to emphasise my conversation, which shall be full of jest and repartee, and I will always walk about with a pretty almond–coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and I will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of Egypt's best brand.
Seriously, the Burmese girls are very pretty, and when I saw them I understood much that I had heard about—about our army in Flanders let us say.
Providence really helps those who do not help themselves. I went up a street, name unknown, attracted by the colour that was so wantonly flashed down its length. There is colour in Rajputana and in Southern India, and you can find a whole paletteful of raw tints at any down–country durbar; but the Burmese way of colouring is different. With the women the scarf, petticoat, and jacket are of three lively hues, and with the men putso and head–wrap are gorgeous. Thus you get your colours dashed down in dots against a background of dark timber houses set in green foliage. There are no canons of art anywhere, and every scheme of colouring depends on the power of the sun above. That is why men in a London fog do still believe in pale greens and sad reds. Give me lilac, pink, vermilion, lapis lazuli, and blistering blood red under fierce sunlight that mellows and modifies all. I had just made this discovery and was noting that the people treated their cattle kindly, when the driver of an absurd little hired carriage built to the scale of a fat Burma pony, volunteered to take me for a drive, and we drove in the direction of the English quarter of the town where the sahibs live in dainty little houses made out of the sides of cigar boxes. They looked as if they could be kicked in at a blow and (trust a Globe–trotter for evolving a theory at a minute's notice) it is to avoid this fate that they are built for the most part on legs. The houses are not cantonment bred in any way—nor did the uneven ground and dusty reddish roads fit in with any part of the Indian Empire except it may be Ootacamund.
The pony wandered into a garden studded with lovely little lakes which, again, were studded with islands, and there were sahibs in flannels in the boats. Outside the park were pleasant little monasteries full of clean–shaved gentlemen in gold amber robes learning to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil by chatting furiously amongst themselves, and at every corner stood the three little maids from school, almost exactly as they had been dismissed from the side scenes of the Savoy after the Mikado was over: and the strange part of it all was that every one laughed—laughed, so it seemed, at the sky above them because it was blue, at the sun because it was sinking, and at each other because they had nothing better to do. A small fat child laughed loudest of all, in spite of the fact that it was smoking a cheroot that ought to have made it deathly sick. The pagoda was always close at hand—as brilliant a mystery as when first sighted far down the river; but it changed its shape as we came nearer, and showed in the middle of a nest of hundreds of smaller pagodas. There appeared suddenly two colossal tigers (after the Burmese canons) in plaster on a hillside, and they were the guardians of Burma's greatest pagoda. Round them rustled a great crowd of happy people in pretty dresses, and the feet of all were turned towards a great stoneway that ran from between the tigers even to the brow of the mound. But the nature of the stairs was peculiar. They were covered in for the most part by a tunnel, or it may have been a walled–in colonnade, for there were heavily gilt wooden pillars visible in the gloom. The afternoon was drawing on as I came to this strange place and saw that I should have to climb up a long, low hill of stairs to get to the pagoda.