Waing, and I pass out by a small mat cottage at the
gate (where a small clerk sits compiling trade statistics),
with the feeling of having emerged from a bygone and
primitive existence.
Far away at the other end of the town is the Shan
Waing, even more primitive in the hospitality it offers ;
for here the Shan and the Panthay who frequent it
are all encamped out on the open plain. Yellow masses
of straw lying scattered about contrast with the blue
clothes of the muleteers at work, packing sacks with
dried fish and salt. I see them there seated in the
open, chatting and laughing hoarsely, far into the night,
in groups collected round blazing fires. Out of the
dusk loom pack-saddles, piled in heaps to make a shelter,
and pack-animals herding close together from instinct.
.Overhead the stars gleam bright in the clear winter
sky, and a few paces away the river flows darkly past,
with a hurtling murmur against the high mud cliffs.
CH A P T E R X
T H E R O A D TO C H IN A
PA S T the Kachin Waing, and Bhamo Fort, where
of nights the bugles blow and the King’s health
is drunk in regimental messes, the road to China takes
its dusty way through a great forest of noble trees and
dense underwoods, the blue mountains ever beyond.
Here the long caravans defile, and strange people take
their way— the talF Yunnanese on his saddle mule, the
Panthay with his string of beasts led by the gaung With
his clanging bell, the Shan with his red salt-laden cattle,
the Kachin driving harnessed pigs to market, the
trooper with his rifle at his saddle-bow and chain-
armour on his shoulders, the Head of the District on
his blood Arab, the little clerk with his pen behind
his ear. Before some of those who travel to-day, there
lies a long rough journey into China. My own way
is a shorter one— to Sinlum-kaba.
This place, with its long name, is the summer retreat
from Bhamo. It stands upon a crest of the Kachin
hills six thousand feet above the sea, and it is good
to go out to it, for it is a place with the atmosphere
o f a new world— a place of beginnings. Its wooded
knolls are being cleared to-day, for the first time it
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