-*> Mog6k
day it rains a little, and the clouds gather in fantastic
glory over the heads of the mountains, and make
splendid cushions for the sun. When the hillsides are
not green, they are a deep red, which glows in the
evening sunshine, or purple when they are far away.
The colouring is superb.
The town itself teems, as I have shown, with curious
life, and a great many races congregate in this little
valley, hidden amongst the hills. From the green
recreation ground, soon to be mined by the company
for rubies, there comes of an evening the thunder of
the polo-players, and the changing fortunes of the game
are followed with keen interest by a motley crowd
pressing against the palings. In a little pavilion the
European ladies of the settlement assemble. At the
far end of the ground, chinlone, the graceful football
of the Burman, is played simultaneously with cricket
and polo. Down the white road beyond the farther
palings, a Chinaman sprints on his bicycle, his pigtail
flying in the wind ; while his wife, her small feet crushed
into doll-like shoes, makes her way across the grass
as if she walked on stilts. Even the polo-players are
a strange medley of cavalry officers from India, of ruby-
sorters and mining experts, the doctor, the magistrate,
and the policeman, with a Sikh trooper thrown in to
make a team. So it comes about that the young man
sent from a London office to be a sorter of rubies ends
by becoming an expert player at the most fashionable
game in the world.
Beyond the polo-ground, its triple roof rising high
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