wonderful to look at, and they tell the whole tale, if
one could read it, of the river’s life. . Each whirl and
dimple has its immediate cause, in some hollow worn
with years of strife, some sharp dagger of rock, some
crag or boulder far out of sight. For the river here
is of great depth and velocity. But for its depth, it
would be hard to believe, as one stands and looks
down on it from the rocky heights, that it has come
already a journey of fifteen hundred miles or more.
And its first discoverer, as he found his way up its
clear green waters, past rocky islands and narrowing
ways, into the heart of the grim defiles and turbulent
mountains that encompass it here, might well have
believed that he had come to within a measurable distance
of its source.
We turn back in the late evening, with slow and
measured oars, and I sit, where fit is my custom, at
the boat’s prow, the clear impenetrable water a yard
below. It is a narrow seat impending over great deeps
and implacable whirlpools; and there is nothing beyond
it but the wonderful landscape of blue mountains and
quiet waters ; for all the rest of my world on the boat
is behind and out of sight. The moon rises, a yellow
orb patterned with her dead lands and sea against
the lavender of the sky. Her light makes a silver
pathway down the long river; shadows of cliffs and
crags lie motionless upon the surface; and as we
sweep down by grace of the current,-the men rest on
their oars, and all is still, save the faint cheeping of
crickets from the woods. One draws nearer, by some
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ABOVE YIN BAUNG