mountains, on the summits of which an army of opal
clouds is enthroned, Shwegu is thrice lovely.
Henceforth, till it reaches the Third Defile, the
river s course is uneventful, save where, encircling many
islands, it receives from China the many-mouthed
homage of the Shweli. Yet it never ceases to be
beautiful. At evening the sun sinks behind the clear-
A T SHWEGU FA IR
cut amethyst hills in a blaze, of gold, and the hues
of sunset pervade the still reaches, slowly changing
like chords of divine music till they pass imperceptibly
away into the dusk of twilight. Later, the stars shine
out in the clear winter sky, and their light, like
quivering spear-points, plays on the face of the waters,
hastening on to their union with the sea. The Great
Bear, climbing the heavens, points coldly northward,
176
where imagination pictures the snows of teons lying on
the summits of mountains on which man has left no
footprint. Near by, the lights of a small village die
out one by one, and a great and brooding silence
falls upon hillside and plain. It is midnight on the
Irrawaddy.
THE THIRD DEFILE
Below the picturesque village of Male, enclosed in a
red-thorn stockade, the river for the third time in its
course between the confluence: and the sea forces a
right of way through hilly country. Male wTas once
the resting-place of a fugitive queen, and for a short
time served as a royal capital. I n later days it was the
Burmese customs-station on the upper river, and in
the last days of 1885, when the kingdom of Burma
was hastening to its end, a fleet of the king’s warboats
arid steamers lay at anchor at Male, in wild
hopes of a French advent across the frontiers of
Tonquin. But the French never came, and the last of
the house of Alompra was already on his way into
exile, ■ followed by his weeping wife and a stricken
court, before His Majesty’s itinerant ambassadors in
Europe had concluded their wanderings in search of an
alliance. Leaving Maid; the river, confined between
low hills, flows in tranquil splendour under the shadow
of the Shwe-u-daung, whose bare serrated peak and
sharp declivities rise majestically into the sky, like
Spanish hills beyond Gibraltar. The Shwe-u-daung,
nine thousand feet in height, is the outer citadel of that
VOL. I. 177 N