At Pha-pun there resides the administrator of the
vast territory known as the Salwin Hill Tracts. Here',
there is a court-house for the dispensation of justice—a
building that is half jail, half fortress, built within a
stockade on the hill—-a hospital for the sick, and house
accommodation for a forest officer, an engineer, a doctor,
and a policeman. The settlement can lay claim besides
to a few short roads, lined with avenues of planted trees,
sure sign that it has been in British hands some years ;
a few shops kept mainly by Chittagonians, in which
Western luxuries are sold at prices that would sound
extravagant to any one who had not been poled up the
long journey from Moulmein ; a wooden mosque for the
use of the lying but pious Chittagonian ; and a public
ground that resounds of mornings to the tread of Shan
and Karen yokels learning their drill and the English
voice of command of the Afridi instructor, and of
evenings to the laughter of the.same people at playfUp
minus the instructor-l|and the thud of an English
football. The discipline at both ends is improving, and
if the baggy-trousered recruit looks, questionable as "a
soldier, let it be said that he looks, when stripped, the
beau ideal of an athlete made for sport.
A few yards/ away from the official settlement,
stands the mission-house of the American mission to the
Karen. The missionary has been absent for a year
and the affairs of the little community are managed by
its elders. They hold a service on Sundays, and the
friendly airs of their hymns, coming across the little strip
of jungle that divides them from the white community,
v o l . n . 6 7.3 s