notwithstanding that they attain to heights of superficial
calm.
As we go, a quartet of peaks, like the Pyramids in
Egypt, rise up on the river’s horizon. Dark blue,
masses of foliage, and intense yellow-green strips of
rice, line the rich foreshore; overhead there is a
blue cloud-puffed sky. In the fields the people toil,
and yellow-robed monks pass in procession amongst
the palms. The country is slightly more broken and
undulating in the west, ending on the river in high
mud cliffs. The quartet loom bigger and nearer, and
a long wave of low hills comes down to the river. The
village of Hnaw-Kado greets us, facing an unbroken
line of palms.
At sunset, in the short half-hour before the dark,
there is a beautiful climax to the day, in wide spaces
of pink sky, shadowy purple hills, and a great reach
of waters blending these two colours and spreading
unbroken from shore to shore. It is no longer the
Chindwin or any definite tract; but a rich and splendid
page in the book of the world's beauty. The dark
tufted palms cut against the sunset blaze, the wide
reach of waters, the blue pyramidal, isolated hills, recall,
if anything, the Nile.
We anchor for the night in mid-river, and as the
stars began to shine, the skipper comes down, red-eyed
and tense-featured, from his day’s toil. He has been
up on the bridge since early dawn, his eyes straining
through the hours over the river spaces. This is the
most anxious season in the year for him. Thirty
TRIBUTARIES