silence. And I experience that strange and rare
emotion, of looking on at a world of which I form
no part j a new world of blue mountains, and wide
river, and placid calm, and unknown peoples, into which
I have dropped by some mysterious chance.
From Sampenago a sheltered way leads through
the village of Wethali, where lives a colony of Assamese,
the descendants of five hundred men-at-arms who came
over in the reign of Bodaw-phaya with the brother of
the King of Assam.
Among the races who throng, during the winter
months, the streets of Bhamo town, the Kachin with
his embroidered bag slung under one arm, ' his broad
half-naked rtfo/i thrown across his back, is not the-least
conspicuous; He comes- down from the hills -with
vegetables and fruits, and such sundries as a'tiger-skin,
some gold-dust, or a spinel pidked up in a watercourse,
and barters these in Bhamo' for the civilised commodities
he desires.
On the outskirts of the town, facing the highway,
stands the Kachin Waing, or caravanserai. It is not
the kind of place in which Haroun-al-Raschid might
have sojourned, for it consists'of little more than an
open shed in a yard enclosed by a bamboo fence. Yet
it is possessed of a primitive interest. The Kachin,
who carries his few necessaries with him, is content
with such shelter as a bare roof may afford, and it is
here in the Waing that he sleeps and feeds during his
brief visits to the town. Sometimes I go out there
in the early morning, while the night mists still brood
208
over the low pasture-lands o f Bhamo, to see him making
ready his breakfast. A small earthen pot is hung
like a gypsy kettle over a fire of slender twigs, and
seated before it, surrounded by the baskets of fruit
and vegetables he has brought down to sell, he leisurely
peels a pile of onions, dropping them one by one into
the simmering pot, in which a handful of small fry are
already stewing. His fellow near him pares small
TH E SHAN ENCAMPMENT
faggots, with dexterous dah strokes for the fire. From
a basket of miscellaneous articles he draws forth neat
cylinders of bamboo, containing salt and condiments,
and finally a short cylinder cut from the giant wabo,
and containing drinking-water filled the previous day
at a mountain stream. The sooty pot is then removed
from the fire, and the company settle down to their
meal, with a savage, phlegmatic indifference to observation.
The same process is going on throughout the
vol. 1. 209 p