competition of inferior and cheaper races from India,
and of the superior Chinese now crowding up from
the Straits, the Burmese personality runs in some
peril of extinction. There is no longer 'a Court to
form the heart of any national feeling ; there is no
longer, it would seem, any motive in keeping the race
supreme in its own country ; and there is lacking in
the people that sternness which might alone, in the
absence of such fostering influences, help to maintain
their idiosyncrasy intact. It will be seen, then, that I
am concerned with an interesting people at a very
interesting period in their history.
Of these mountains, which reach down like the
fingers of a hand from the great arm of the Himalaya
to make the country of Burma, the first are the Aracan
Yoma, known to the main stock of the Burmese, race
as the Mountains of the West. On one side of them
there lies the sea (the Bay of Bengal)— on the other
the river Irrawaddy. The habitable land along their
sea-swept threshold is known as Aracan— the home
of a great branch of the Burmese race. The mountains
themselves are inhabited by a kindred people known
as the Chin ; more numerous, more warlike, more
organised in the north, where the width of the
mountains is greater, than in the south. East of them
lies the valley of the Irrawaddy, the true Burma, the
spacious cradle of the race. This valley is shut in
still further on the east by the Shan highlands, which
spread away in waves to the Salwin river. They
provide a home for the Shan, a race that long struggled
6
with the Burmese for the possession of the valley, but
has ended by holding the lesser heritage; of the Shan
plateau under the suzerainty of .Burma. Beyond the
Saiwin lie Siam and the Far Eastern territories of
France,
T E A K LOGS R E A D Y FOR TH E TO R R EN T
The valley of the Irrawaddy, narrow and confined
in the north, opens out at Mandalay, the capital of
the race, and widens as it reaches the sea. It culminates
in one of the finest of deltas. South of
Mandalay the parallel valley of the Sittang has its
being, the outcome of the low range of Pegu hills