fortress of magnificent mountains in the chambers of
which are treasured the finest rubies of the world.
Sixty miles inland, in the beautiful Mog6k valley, are
the famous ruby mines of Burma. The road is rough
and steep, and for five months each year impracticable
for wheeled traffic. At best, it is hard going for the
long trains of bullock-carts, which creak and toil along
its ruts, laden with machinery for the mines and all
the requirements of a colony of Englishmen, planted in
a secluded valley sixty miles from a highway of communication.
But the traveller on horseback, lightly
equipped, can make the journey in two days.
Mogok itself, surrounded by magnificent peaks like
the Pingubaung, seven thousand feet in height, and
apt to b.e transfigured at Sunset in a glow of red fire
suggestive of their priceless contents, is unique' in its
seclusion and its world-known fame.
Below the village of Thabeitkin— the port of Mogok,
on the Irrawaddy— there is a charming island pagoda
and monastery. Once, and it is not many years ago,
the monastery was tenanted by an abbot and his monks
and acolytes. Every year, at a great annual festival,
the country-side came over in long boats and dugouts,
and the pagoda platform was gay with the brilliance
of a Burmese festival. Monastery spires and columns,
the chapels of the Buddha, and the slopes of the island
pagoda, were renovated and gilded with the lavish gold
of Burmese Buddhism. In the still waters of the river
between the island and the near shore, dogfish, tame
and gentle from years of immunity, came each day to
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be fed by the monks, and at the year’s festival, to
be decorated with leaves of gold by the followers of
a religion the highest attribute of which is its tenderness
for all created life. For the traveller, the pagoda of
Thihadaw, with its singular appanage, was one of the
most interesting spectacles to be met with on the upper
river. But a few years have wrought a change which
is not without its symbolism. The island pagoda set
in the heart of the
Third Defile is
still beautiful ; ■ but
the fingers of decay
are busy with
its monastery roofs
and spires. Their
halls and closets lie
emp t y and deserted.
The waters
of the river aré
TH IH A D AW PAGODA, TH IR D D E F IL E
slowly but certainly
eating into the fence of wood and stone, built in an
earlier decade to protect the island, and time must
bring destruction. The monastery fish, no longer fed
by its. tenants, no longer protected by their presence
from secular attack, have grown wild and timid, and no
artifice will now induce them to come when summoned
by the familiar call. It is believed that the island,
consecrated to . religion, can never be flooded, however
high the river may rise. The pagoda is still firm on
its base, its buildings are still habitable ; and yet it is
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