sent word to the Karen villages in the hills that I
was going through ; and the police inspector furnished
me with two constables, one of whom had once before
made the journey. The other was a typical “ fat boy,”
with a laughing face and a radical love of ease, which
came to be sorely tried during our progress over the
hills. For three days I had been detained at Pha-pun
by fever, the penalty of the Yunzalin ; but on
February 14th I was ready to start.
At this, if at any time of the year, I was entitled
to hope for fine weather; but heavy rain overtook me
soon after I had topped the first line of hills, within
six miles of Pha-pun. There is nothing more melancholy
than tramping through a sodden jungle, with
fever in one’s bones, and no definite prospect of shelter
for the night; and it seemed to me, as I toiled painfully
behind my party, that I had embarked on a very
foolish enterprise. Happily, as the day wore on I
found shelter in a wayside hut, and settled in it for
the night
I awoke the following morning feeling ill and dull,
as one does who wakes after a late night and broken
sleep in a closed room; but there had been no late
night here, and the room was as clean and airy as any
of nature’s own sleeping-places. It was the fever that
was still in my system, at war with the quinine I had
taken during the past week, and morning and evening,
during this journey I had to continue the struggle,
till the fever was finally vanquished.
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