the peasantry, freighted with the harvest of three million
acres ; and here more energy and wealth are concentrated
than in any other equal area in the city. Between
January and May this back-water palpitates with life ;
and day after day and through the night the rice is
husked here in the giant mills which stand upon its
banks. Here launches rush up and down with frantic
energy, cargo boats lie thick as flies upon the water,
TH E PU ZUN -DAUN G CR E EK
and sampans sweep up in an unbroken stream. The
passing of the rice season brings the creek some
measure of repose, and of a misty evening at such
times it has often recalled to me, from its character
of isolation rather than from any similarity in detail, the
Canale di San Pietro, as one comes upon it fresh from
the Public Gardens. It is dominated at its far end by
the superb beauty of the Shway Dagon. The creek
curves round the foot of the hill on which the golden
92
pagoda is built, and as one ascends it, the whole view
gradually swings round. It is an engrossing transition
from the pride of action, the modern pulsing of life,
the symbols of wealth and civilisation that crowd
the estuary of the stream, to the stark slime of the
tide-uncovered banks, the loneliness and the primitiveness
of the upper reaches ; it is a swift passing from
the twentieth to the first century. A thatched hamlet
lifts its roofs above the plain ; on the edge of the
low water a fisherman toils at his nets ; a canoe
with two occupants goes by ; a party of naked lads
wallow in the slime of the foreshore, taking the mud
baths to which the twentieth century is ■ returning.
Such are the symptoms of life along its upper courses-;
but loneliness is the character of the Puzun-Daung
above the territory of the mills, and the, land, washed
and left soaking by the daily tide, seems scarcely yet
to have emerged from its subaqueous infancy.