river makes a splendid curve, and the waste of waters
looks like the opening of a sea.
At Henzada the people are busy at prayer, and
the chant of the worshippers is borne in measured
cadence over the dark face of the river. Within, the
raised highways are lined with the trays of Burmese
maidens, whose clear brains were meant for the business
of life, as their eyes, dark and lustrous, were
assuredly meant for love. Near at hand the rollicking
Chinaman does a roaring trade at the eating-houses
and liquor-shops. Small boys play at marbles on the
highway in the thick of the traffic. The wind blows
where it lists, amongst the stately palms and the
tinkling summits of monasteries and fanes.
The late evening brings us to Myanoung. And
this is what Myanoung looks like at evening, on a day
in the rainy season.
Lofty embankments protect it from the river floods.
Tall palms rise up in procession about these highways,
and cluster in stately groups beside the water.
The embankment highway, escaping from the tenements,
cleaves its way through the country-side, parallel
to the river. Marshy hollows, the relics of some
inundation, flank it on the one side, a muddy cattle-
track, scored with the hoof-prints of the' driven beasts,
runs below it on the other. Vast spaces, emerald-
green with rice, stretch away to the feet of the blue
mountains, which shut out the western sea from the
home of the Burman. Up there in their fastnesses,
elephants in herds roam unmolested through the primeval
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