Burmese territory, after the war, and it became a
question as to which branch of it was to be the boundary.
The island of Bilu-Gyun, with an area of one hundred
and seven square miles, was the stake at issue. The
rival diplomatists resorted to the simple device of tying
two cocoanuts together and sending them adrift on the
main river. At Martaban, where the two branches
divide, these cocoanuts for a moment remained stationary
; then they were caught up by an eddy and swept
to sea down the western channel, and Bilu-Gyun became
British.
Turning away now from all that lies to the west,
I see from my splendid vantage-point how this process
of transition from water to land has been already
accomplished. For here, where chequered rice-fields
now turn up their patterns to the sky like some
tesselated pavement; where monasteries now shelter
under clusters of drooping palms, where villages and
hamlets smile, and rivers, the Gyaing and the i\ttaran,
wind across the landscape in ribbons of silver and blue,
there once moved, if one may believe the testimony of
the earth, the implacable sea. One feature of that
bygone day still survives, a landmark of the past, as it
is of the present. For the curious isolated hills, that
rise up abruptly from the level plain, were once, in
reality islands, and the sea swept round them, and the
blind waves roared in their caves.
Book VIII
T H E SA LW IN
E n V o y a g e— P h a -a n— T h e C a v e s o f P h a -g a t— To S hw e g u n -
S h w e g u n— P r im it iv e T r a v e l— T h e L a s t S t a g e