cook, bland, indefatigable, plies his calling, a Ciro in
partibus. Of a morning these houses fill with motley
crowds of Burmans, Shan, Panthay, Meingtha, Paloung,
and Lishaw, who crowd round the little tables, and
feed in groups, bowl to chin, their feet perched high
on the narrow stools. It is a replica, with the
difference of place and people and ways, of the scenes
that characterise any French or Italian town between
the blessed hours of. the midday meal. The company
is -jovial, and loud hoarse laughter peals from the
crowded interiors out into the sunlit road. Blue is the
prevailing colour,
from the pale hue
of the Chinaman’s
much-washed coat
to the dark indigo
of the Meingtha
woman’s lofty
turban.
It is a great tide
of life that sweeps
in here on these
fifth days of. the
year. The people
of the hills begin
to come in on the
previous evening
and nearly all of
those who have to
in t h e s t r e e t s come a long way
sleep over-night at Mog6k, so that the day of prelude
to the bigger day, has a name to itself—Zay-beit-nay—
“ The Eve of Market Day.” The permanent shops
are kept open all through the week ; the shops of the
haberdashers and the tinmen, of the sellers of Gautamas
and htis, of goldBeaf and parasols, and the booths o f
the little pedlars. At one end, in a quiet side street,
is a long range of tea-shops, where green and pickled
tea is sold in the dusky interiors by Shan and Paloung.
Lastly, there is the covered bazaar. The.shimmer of ^
hundred delicate colours of silk, the coming and going
—the va-et-vient—of many races in the half-lit interior,
while the sun blazes without, make of it a spectacle for
the most fastidious eye.
( i i ) TH E STRANGE WORLD OF TH E DIG G ER
Following on by the roadside, runs swiftly a stream,
yellow as any Tiber. A few yards and f step into.thq
strange world of the digger. Picture a soil, yellow and
scarred with countless pits, honeycombed like a burrow';
and at each pit’s mouth, a rubbish heap. Overhead,
an intricate array of bamboos, like the tracery of
dahabeahs at the Kasr-el-nil, and in the background
blue mountains, alpinous, shimmering in the sun like
steel. Set in this mise-en-scene are the miners : people
in blue clothes and yellow parasol-like hats; people in
loose trousers, showing legs tattoed with the figures of
tigers and dragons; a people lithe of limb, small of
stature, with muscles of iron. The process of mining
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