Villages are numerous along the banks; monastery
spires, thatched cottages, and here and there a pagoda
in the Pagan style lend diversity to the landscape!
White-winged boats, laden with the produce' of the
valley, speed down-stream under stress of a northerly
wind, to , the mightier traffic of the Irrawaddy. Haystacks
on piles, like great bee-hives, built high to protect
them from the floods, strike a new and individual note.
Sandy spaces, left
bare by the shrinking
river, are strewn
with logs and derelict
trees. Here
the people are busy
with d ra g g in g
chains and cattle
and, trunk after
trunk, the harvest
o f the flood is
borne away into
the mist.
STERN-WHEELER ON THE CHINDWIN
The navigation of the river in its lower courses
is hazardous and difficult. All the way since dawn, I
have listened to the leadsman’s song. For it is the
turn of the year, new channels have been forming all
the flood season, and all is yet new and unknown. I
am travelling in the first stern-wheeler of the season,
the skipper on the bridge has a reputation to lose, and
the company is intolerant of mistakes. But for me,
who am but an idle traveller below, there is much
392
The Chindwin
EARLY TRIBUTARIES
entertainment. The almost noiseless paddles, the
summer day, the white processional clouds, the drowsy
blue of the nearer hills, make serene travelling for any
one not freighted with responsibility.
The trees, undone by the floods, lie like Goliaths
on the sandy banks. - The walls of the islands in our
course are striped with strange patterns where the
blowing wind makes furrows in the unresisting sand.
Fragments of them fall all through the day into the
river, as though to reverse the very process which
called them into existence. -Ceaseless change, ceaseless
unrest, is the character of these Eastern rivers,;