precipices and ruddy downs fringed by dark woods.
The country here is of a titanic order, and an impression
of sombre grandeur pervades it at this season.
At Shwe-Nyaung-Bin there is another outpost,
which stands on the crest of a conical hill, set in the
midst of an amphitheatre of mountains. It is good in
the heart of this wilderness, in the gathering- dusk, o o ’
to hear the quick enlivening peal of the bugles of
England. There is no British soldier nearer than
Shwebo, sixty miles away, but there is much in a
great tradition. From Shwe-Nyaung-Bin, the road
descends to the river of Kin. Dark peaks here
rise up into the clouds as if from the bowels of the
valley. One ot these, darker and more rugged than
the rest, is surmounted by a pagoda in ruins. In the
valley bottom there are rice-fields, and by the edge
PACKMEN CROSSING AT KIN
762
HKABINE
of the little river, red with silt, slumbers the village of
Kin. Under the jack-trees, on the river’s fringe, sit
through the noon the blue-coated muleteers, and all
day long packmen cross and recross the little stream.
Kin was of old notorious for its dacoits, and many a
traveller bound for Mandalay with jewels for the court
has been waylaid and killed in its neighbourhood. Of
a later period of lawlessness, there is record in a stone
by the wayside raised to the “ Memory of Jemadar-
Adjutant Devi Sahai Misr and Sepoy Javala Singh, of
the Ruby Mines Military Police Battalion, who fell in
action with dacoits near this spot on December 18th,
T889.”
From Hkabine on to Capelan is a matter of ten
miles by the cart-road. The cobbled mule-track is