taung-gya cultivator; the white skeletons of burnt trees
standing gaunt and bare in the rough, rakish-looking
fields. It is a bad, wasteful system, and it can never
be made the basis of any racial progress ; yet it must:
be difficult for men to break from this restless life ;
for it has its joys, its recurring excitement, its novelty,
It is the antithesis
of the life of an
E n g lish villager,
living upon an immemorial
site.
At Auk Taung
my journey ends.
It is a small village,
newly come
into e x is t e n c e .
There are blade-
marks on a ficus
its sense of freedom, its little toil.
elastica of great size and many columns ; the only relics
of a former settlement. The people here are Shan,
with the figures of mountaineers, short, broad, and
immensely muscular.
As I wait here, under the high mud-cliffs, the sunlight
passes, and the night comes, dark and still. The
village falls into deep slumber. A cricket beats his
kettledrums from a neighbouring tree. The plaint of
the nightjar is borne across the dark.
Even these pass.
A great silence falls upon the world.
But the river, knowing no pause, moves on, and the
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TH E GOVERNMENT YACHT
stars in their courses come and go. These two alone
stand for life.
Late, towards dawn, the fading crescent of the moon
climbs up like a tired pedlar, over the low eastern hills,
followed by the morning star.