wild cat, startled from its lair, bounded into the undergrowth.
The pathway was carpeted in places with the petals
of tree-flowers, scarlet, and pale heliotrope, and crinkled
white and pink. From time to time a forest stream,
clear, shallow, and silver-tongued, crossed my path.
Footprints of men and elephants graven on its crisp
sandsj betel-vines growing up some stately tree, a
Karen tree-ladder, struck the human note in a tremulous
minor key. As I progressed, the bamboos became
supreme, and for miles I tramped in their company
alone > ascending hills, walking for awhile along their
crests, descending, and again da capo, with no sign of
the outside world, but such as came from an occasional
glimpse of some sun-clad hill-slope, blue in the distance.
Hills in fa,ct lay all about me, and views of an extensive
world, but forbidden to me in my bamboo tunnel.
In time I came, out of it, and into a fire-track,
wide as a national highway, punctuated by cairns and
cross-posts with the Government mark upon them. So
I knew that I had come within the radius of the
Forest Act, and at a cross-road I came upon a kyaw-.
nya-sa or public notice, printed in Burmese and^ signed
by an Englishman, forbidding all travellers between
January and June to smoke by the wayside, or others
wise bring about a jungle^fire and so endanger His
Majesty’s teak plantations. Under this notice, a party
of Shan travellers sat taking a passing rest; amongst
them, a monk, a woman, and an infant of two years
of age. The rank and file of the party smoked
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placidly from English pipes, unashamed and unconscious
of the terrors of the law detailed in the
document over their heads.
About noon I came to the river of May-wine, my
resting-place being just beyond it. The indigenous-
TH E BAMBOO AISLES OF TH E FOREST
traveller is not for a moment stayed by such an obstacle.
His loose trousers swing up with the facility of a
stage-curtain, and his tattooed limbs descend into the
water. Even as I arrived, a party in this guise, with
packs across their shoulders, and oiled-silk hats flapping
in the sun, was fording the stream. It is another