hills rise up in its place, changing in form with every
moment of our advance, as Gibraltar does before the
TH E CAEM OF TH E SALWIN
eyes of the ocean traveller; and in the blinding sunlight
all detail of delicate tracery is lost in the one
supreme beauty of form.
After this we take a quiet way, with something
of a sense of physical rest, with somewhat of desire
to prepare for the next great spectacle, until we come,
as the evening falls, to the last splendid passage between
Pha-an and Shwegun. Dark blue hills curve up to
right and left on the western shore, like the claws of
a crab, holding between them a mountain of palest blue,
that towers up to a high pyramidal peak. Every detail
of this mountain picture is reproduced with fidelity
in the motionless calm of the river, d imber-craft lie
under the near banks, and. piles of rescued logs, and
622
the huts of the timber-salvors. As we come nearer
to Shwegun, the river faces the east again, and in
the far distance, fresh and more stupendous peaks and
battlements tower up against the misty sky.
And, as I write this, it is midnight, and the
white moonlight is flooding a voiceless world. The
swooning palms are still ; the river appears to have
attained immortal calm. From the dense jungle behind
the house of Shwegun, no sound proceeds. It is as
though I had strayed upon the threshold of a physical
Nirvana.