The Silken East <•-
The road follows the spine of the hill, and such
roads in a mountain country never fail to attract the
traveller upon them. This one is no exception to
the rule. It winds through grass-lands bordered by
dense forest, and it looks as though a giant’s plough
had passed over it, making this single furrow over
the mountains. Every blade of the tangled myriads
is sown with dewdrops. Noble vistas unfold on
either hand; wide hillsides bathed in sunlight ;
patterned aisles of teak, and swooning avenues of
cane; and last of all, most beautiful to a human eye,
the silver loops of the Mahtoon river, in the far populous
valley below.
F - • :
CLOUDS ON TH E MAHTOON R IV ER
Leaving the crest at last, the road plunges into pools
and rivulets, and gloomy halls of forest blind to the
sun, and so comes to the red roofs and palm-clusters
of a Burmese hamlet. The spires of Mindon gleam
across the river, which we cross in a ferry-boat.
It is the river that accounts here for the presence
of man. Its valley levels yield him food, its waters
are a link for him with the outer world. But for the
Mahtoon, the burden-bearer, all that the eye looks
upon now from the hilltops of Ye-gyan-zin, finding
it good because it is human, might still have remained
a pathless wilderness. Upon a day in the misty past,
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* A Side Issue
A T MINDON