-»> Primitive Travel
limestone. As the sun nears the horizon, we turn into
the mouth of the Yunzalin, and anchor for the night
under the hamlet of Kawkarit.
And here it may be noted that the personality of
the Sal win is wholly distinct from that of the Irrawaddy
and the Chindwin. Its distinguishing features are its
fantastic and tremendous limestone hills ; its rapids and
rocky islands so near the se a ; its mystic and half-tragic
character ; and throughout all, its undertone of homely
beauty.
Although at Kawkarit it is only some seventy miles
distant from the sea, although for seventy years it has
been under the influence of British civilisation, it retains
even here its character of a remote and savage river,
flowing through but half-known lands. Its people are
mainly Karen, shy, sullen, and difficult of access. The
stillness of its forests is unbroken by the hum of the
telegraph wire, and no engine has ever throbbed above
Shwegun. There is only a weekly post, which achieves
with difficulty twenty miles a day, and it takes longer
to cover the short distance from Shwegun to Pha-pun,
the headquarters of the district, than it does to travel
from Edinburgh to Moscow. Yet in this very isolation
there resides its particular charm ; for it takes the
traveller into great solitudes, along almost silent highways,
into a land of primitive people ; and the means
of travel are such as men were used to, when the world
was young.