od3/£^d5 
 
 
 GfKiGGS 
 
Odds and Ends 
 
 FROM 
 
 Pagoda Land 
 
 By 
 
 William C. Griggs, M. D. 
 
 Author of 
 
 Shan Folk-Lore Stories from the Hill 
 and Water Country 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 2lmctican JSaptidt publication Societis 
 
 1906 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 
 • Two Copies Received 
 
 1 NOV 24 1906 
 
 OIASSOA XX5.,N0. I 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright 1906 by the 
 American Baptist Publication Society 
 
 Published October, 1906 
 
 Ifrom tbe Society's own press 
 
Introduction 
 
 The man who attempts to study the 
 Oriental finds himself face to face with a 
 very difficult, albeit a very interesting prob- 
 lem. The OrientaPs idea and ideals ; his 
 ways of looking at men and things and his 
 valuation of them are so different from those 
 of his Western brother, that the latter often- 
 times finds it impossible to understand him. 
 As Kipling has truly said, ** For East is East 
 and West is West, and never the twain shall 
 meet." In fact, I have sometimes thought 
 that the longer one lives in the East the less 
 confidence has he that he understands his 
 dark-skinned neighbors. 
 
 It is for this reason that I have refrained 
 in this little volume from considering ab- 
 stract questions, which I leave to the savant ; 
 besides, the busy medical missionary has 
 little time to spend in such study. Instead 
 I have tried to show what the common, 
 everyday life of the native of Burma is, so 
 far as I have been able to judge it after a 
 twelve-year residence in his country. For 
 iii 
 
UntroDuctton 
 
 some years I have been in the habit of 
 jotting down any interesting or humorous 
 incident it has been my fortune to meet, 
 and this little book is the result. "Odds 
 and Ends " it is true, but I hope they will 
 prove both interesting and instructive, and 
 give a faint idea of the Burman, the Shan, 
 and the beautiful country they live in. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1906. ^^ Q^ Q^ 
 
 IV 
 
Content0 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE .... 7 
 
 II 
 EVERYDAY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS .... 61 
 
 III 
 ODDS AND ENDS OF TRAVEL 103 
 
 IV 
 A FEW MISTAKES 157 
 
 V 
 
 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK 173 
 
 VI 
 
 " NATS," " HPEAS," AND CHARMS . . . 2II 
 
 VII 
 THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE 251 
 
 GLOSSARY • • • • 275 
 
 V 
 
Cbaracterietice of tbe people 
 
OMEBODY has said that if one 
 wishes to see the city in which the 
 greatest number of different nation- 
 alities dwell together in peace he must go 
 to Singapore. I think, however, that he is 
 wrong, and that there are more different 
 kinds of people living in the large cities of 
 Burma, especially in Upper Burma, than in 
 Singapore. 
 
 First and foremost, of course, comes the 
 Burman, for years the conquering race, and 
 now, although conquered by the superiority 
 of British arms and valor, still proud of his 
 history. He looks upon his neighbors, the 
 Shans, Kachins, and natives of India, as 
 men of inferior races, and only bows before 
 the all-conquering Anglo-Saxon because he 
 has to. 
 
 The Burman makes his home on the rich 
 plains, close beside the rivers, for he is a 
 great waterman, while the Karen, the 
 Kachin, the Chin, and other races live upon 
 the hills, and the Shan, the tribe most nearly 
 related to the Burman, builds his villages in 
 9 
 
©D&6 anO iBnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 the valleys between the mountains in what 
 he picturesquely calls the " hill and water 
 country." 
 
 Lured by high wages and plenty of work, 
 multitudes of natives of India have crossed 
 the Bay of Bengal and landed in Burma, 
 which has been overspread by them like 
 locusts on a field. In the cities one meets 
 with them in crowds, huddled together, 
 usually in the poorest quarters of the town, 
 the ** ghettos '* of Burma, in fact. Along 
 the railroads, upon steamships, and at any 
 place where coolie work is to be had, the 
 native of India is very much in evidence. 
 Then too, the Chinaman has poured in from 
 the north, till the Burman, good-natured, 
 easy-going, and improvident, runs the risk 
 of being crushed between the upper and 
 nether millstones. The native of India, the 
 kallah as the Burman calls him, does 
 not care anything for the country. All he 
 wants is to make money, which he hopes 
 to take to his home and live upon in com- 
 fort during the rest of his days. To do this 
 he is willing to live in a shack or a hovel; 
 eat but just enough to keep soul and body 
 together ; will beg in the most unblushing 
 manner, and never give out a single copper 
 piece more than he is obliged to. It is im- 
 
 lO 
 
Cbaractecistics ot tbc ipcople 
 
 possible to imagine a greater contrast than 
 that existing between the low-caste native 
 of India and the Burman in whose land he 
 has made his temporary home. 
 
 The Burman is a cheerful, careless fellow, 
 who follows at least one Christian precept, 
 for he ** takes no thought for the morrow," 
 and is content if he has sufficient to last 
 through the day in hand. His habit has 
 grown to a great extent, I think, from the 
 ease with which he can make a living. The 
 country is so fertile that he has merely to 
 scratch the ground to get a harvest ; his 
 wants are few, and he prefers to live from 
 hand to mouth in an easy, slipshod way, 
 than to heap up treasures and know not 
 who shall enjoy them. He spends as he 
 gets and depends upon his children to sup- 
 port him during his old age. ** Why should 
 I work any harder,'* he asks, ** when I 
 have enough to eat and to wear and a 
 family to look after me when I am old ? " 
 Well, why should he ? 
 
 He is very tolerant of others' religious 
 beliefs and does not bother himself with 
 what they believe in or worship. In this 
 he again differs greatly from his neighbors 
 across the seas, the intolerant followers of 
 the prophet, who would to-day, if they 
 II 
 
©DDd anD BnOd trom ipago^a ILanD 
 
 dared, raise the crescent flag and offer the 
 Koran or death to their conquered enemies, 
 and the Hindu who hates the Mohammedan 
 as cordially as the Mohammedan hates him. 
 
 The Burman is well-made physically and, 
 although not so tall as some of the natives 
 of India who have emigrated into his land, 
 is much better built and stronger. He is 
 rather dark, with jet black, straight hair ; 
 eyes of the same color, and but very little 
 hair upon his face. He does not shave 
 these few hairs, but pulls them out with a 
 pair of tweezers, and it is a common sight 
 to see a man with his face screwed up — for 
 it must hurt — sitting with a small mirror in 
 his left hand and his right armed with the 
 tweezers busily engaged in pulling out the 
 whiskers from his chin. 
 
 The Burman is nothing if not polite and 
 his language allows a great scope in using 
 polite phrases. In Shan, for instance, there 
 are half a dozen ways of saying " I,*' graded 
 according to the rank of the speaker and 
 the person spoken to, running all the way 
 from a very arrogant ** I " down to **the 
 slave of our lord's head." 
 
 A patient coming to the dispensary always 
 asks for ** just a little ' ' medicine. A funny 
 thing happened awhile ago. A woman 
 
 12 
 
Cbaracteri0tlc0 ot tbe People 
 
 came from a village quite a long distance 
 up the river and she wanted enough medi- 
 cine to last for several days. She wished 
 to be polite, of course, and it would not be 
 polite to say, ** Please give me a lot of 
 medicine, as I have come from a distant 
 village," so she asked for ''myan myan ga 
 /^," literally, ** a great little." Myan me2iX\s 
 a large amount, doubling the word intensi- 
 fies its meaning, and ga le means a little 
 amount. 
 
 Titles are given in great profusion, and 
 to call a man your lordship or **our lord " 
 is the proper way to address a superior. 
 The wife of a man living in a jungle village 
 up the river was very sick — dying, they 
 feared — and she assuredly would have died 
 had I not been able to step in in time to 
 save her life. The husband evidently 
 wished to give me a unique title when he 
 came later on to pay his respects and thank 
 me for my ** act of grace and compassion," 
 as he termed it. He had called me *'payah " 
 (lord) before and that did not satisfy him, 
 so now he said, ** You are a Jesus Christ 
 payah from heaven." This sounds blas- 
 phemous, of course, to Western ears, but 
 it was not to him. There is a great dif- 
 ference between lord and Lord and be- 
 13 
 
®DD0 anD BnDs ftom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 tween god and God. It goes without say- 
 ing that I told him that I could not allow 
 him to say such a thing as that and tried 
 to make him understand that there is but 
 one Lord and God and that all others are 
 gods in name only. 
 
 In the "old Burman days," as the time 
 before the British occupation is called, this 
 custom of giving of titles was carried to a 
 great excess, especially when addressing 
 the king. I really do not know — I doubt 
 whether anybody does — just how many 
 titles he had, but some of them were 
 strange, even ludicrous. The word ** gold- 
 en" was attached to almost everything 
 he used. Thus, **to approach the golden 
 foot" meant to be honored by receiving 
 an audience by the king. In Shan the very 
 word king means, **the lord of the golden 
 palace.'' 
 
 The insignia of royalty was a white 
 umbrella, nobody but the king and the im- 
 mediate members of the royal family being 
 allowed to carry an umbrella of that color, 
 so one of the king's titles was *' Lord of the 
 White Umbrella." He reveled in the dis- 
 tinction of being "King of Kings, Lord of 
 the Universe, Son of the Sun, Lord of the 
 Moon and Planets, Owner of Innumerable 
 14 
 
Cbaractecietics of tbe people 
 
 Herds of White Elephants, Beloved of the 
 Nats (fairies)," and so forth. 
 
 I think, however, the strangest title was 
 given to my pony. The wife of the man 
 who looked after it came to me one day and 
 told me that *' his lordship " had been given 
 so much to eat that he had kicked a hole in 
 **his lordship's" door! Even the pony 
 became noble by carrying a white man. 
 
 One title among the Shans always strikes 
 a new-comer as odd. One of the most 
 respectful terms of addressing an elderly 
 female is **old woman," so if you were to 
 say, ** If this old woman will do so and so I 
 shall be much obliged," you would not, as 
 at home, have been guilty of offering an 
 insult, but, on the contrary, would have 
 been most polite. 
 
 Without doubt the most marked charac- 
 teristic in the native of Burma, of whatever 
 race he may be, is his love of *' following 
 custom." The ** customs of the fathers " 
 must be followed whether they are good or 
 bad. **We have a custom" is a phrase 
 heard upon every hand. You ask why is 
 this or that done in this or that way, *' It is 
 custom," you are told. Everything must 
 be done according to custom, and should a 
 Westerner, knowing that a certain thing 
 15 
 
Qtf^e anD JBnt>6 ttom iPaaoOa XanD 
 
 could be done better or more easily in 
 another way, try to make a native do it 
 according to his (the Westerner's) idea, he 
 is sure to arouse all the stubbornness which 
 lies in an Oriental's make-up, and the grum- 
 blings would more than counterbalance the 
 benefits. 
 
 I once had occasion, if ever man did, of 
 finding out the truth of this. Upon start- 
 ing work at Mongnai, in the Southern Shan 
 States, in 1891, it was necessary, of course, 
 to build a house. We lived several months 
 in a zayat or rest-place built in a monastery 
 compound, but this was very unpleasant, 
 to say the least. But the building of that 
 house ! What a weary, weary work it 
 was I A person writing home afterward 
 said he had never seen such a house in 
 America — I should hope not I A Western 
 farmer would be ashamed to run up such a 
 shack to cover his cows with, he said, and 
 while this was quite true, if the gentleman 
 had known the amount of brain fag, not to 
 mention the strain upon a Christian temper, 
 that ramshackle house had cost, he would 
 have modified his statements somewhat. 
 
 I found it was customary to plant a post 
 in the ground and measure it afterward 
 and, if it proved too long, to cut off a part 
 16 
 
Cbaractcriatics ot tbc ipcople 
 
 of it with a mallet and chisel instead of 
 sawing it with a saw. I discovered also 
 that it was custom to build the roof with 
 eaves that would come within a few feet 
 of the ground, and when I objected to this 
 the head carpenter gravely informed me 
 that a house could not be built in any other 
 way — the eaves must come down to within 
 the proper length. It was custom — that 
 settled it — and, besides, whoever heard of 
 building a house, except the saubwa^s, in 
 any other way > So, while I was away in 
 the jungle the large beams which support 
 the eaves — I do not know what the tech- 
 nical name for them is — were actually cut 
 ** according to custom '* and nailed in place. 
 I was quite nettled when I saw what the 
 carpenters had done during my absence, 
 but I told them that it simply meant more 
 work for them because I had made up my 
 mind to have the house built as I wanted 
 it, Shan custom or no Shan custom. So 
 early next morning I stood by till the head 
 carpenter had cut off the end of one of the 
 beams to the length I desired ; then, con- 
 gratulating myself upon my success, I went 
 home to breakfast. But I had not gauged 
 the resources of that head carpenter cor- 
 rectly, for while I was eating my breakfast 
 B 17 
 
©&D5 anD JBnt>3 from ipagoDa XanD 
 
 he took the piece of wood I had seen cut off 
 and nailed it into place again, so that when 
 I returned I found the eaves were once 
 more ** according to custom." 
 
 The head carpenter saw that I had lost 
 all patience and was as mad as the tradi- 
 tional wet hen, and so he asked me what 
 difference it made how the eaves were 
 built. Why did I wish to have them short ? 
 I told him that one reason was the low eaves 
 would shut out the view of the beautiful 
 mountains around us. The man had been 
 sitting upon the ground chewing betel-nut, 
 evidently congratulating himself upon the 
 fact that he had circumvented the new 
 teacher, but he was so surprised at my 
 reply that he rose to his feet and looked at 
 the mountains as earnestly as though he 
 had never seen them before in all his life. 
 ** Beautiful mountains ! " he said. " Beau- 
 tiful mountains ! Wants his house built in 
 such a strange manner because he wants 
 to see the beautiful mountains I" It was 
 so funny he laughed and even called his 
 fellow-workmen to tell them the joke. Who 
 ever heard of beautiful mountains, any- 
 way ? The idea was far beyond his com- 
 prehension. He could not understand why 
 any sane person should wish to look at 
 i8 
 
Cbaractecistics ot tbe IPeople 
 
 common, everyday mountains. He could 
 do nothing but laugh. 
 
 He grew grave again, however, when I 
 ordered him to cut off that offending beam 
 once more, and flatly refused to do so. 
 Finally he said he would quit working rather 
 than build a house not according to custom. 
 He was as good as his word too, for after a 
 little further talk he gathered up his tools. 
 His fellow-workmen followed his example 
 and they all left the compound for their 
 homes. 
 
 I was now in a dilemma. If these men 
 would rather go on strike than transgress 
 the canons of their traditions, I knew no 
 other carpenters in the city would take up 
 the work. There was but one thing to do, 
 and that was to go and see the native 
 prince and ask him to order the men back. 
 This he did, saying he would punish them if 
 they gave me any more trouble. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the saupa^ himself 
 cannot compel a person to act contrary to 
 custom. A man in Mongnai once called 
 me hurriedly to come and see his boy, who 
 had wounded himself severely by falling 
 upon the point of a knife which he carried 
 without any sheath in his bag under his 
 
 1 Sau pa (Shan), sau bwa (Burmese), a native prince. 
 19 
 
®DD0 anO J£\\t>3 from iPagoDa 5LanD 
 
 arm. I then found that numbers of small 
 boys in the city carried similar knives in 
 their bags, so the next time I visited the 
 "palace" I told the prince about it and 
 said I thought it would be a good thing if 
 he were to issue an order forbidding small 
 boys to carry such knives, but although he 
 acknowledged that the custom was a bad 
 one, yet because it was custom he could 
 not change it. *'Our fathers and grand- 
 fathers carried such knives when they were 
 children," he said, and it was therefore 
 custom. There was no getting around that. 
 
 The Shans carry swords with handles 
 half as long as the blade. These swords 
 prove very useful during journeys in the 
 jungle, one of their uses being to chop down 
 firewood for making fires at night. The 
 handles of these laps, as they are called, 
 are usually made of bamboo wound around 
 with plaited strands of rattan. They are 
 very poor, however, for the blade-shank is 
 merely stuck in and so imperfectly fastened 
 that a good blow will often make the blade 
 and the handle part company. 
 
 A friend of mine once asked a Shan why 
 
 he did not make the handle of his sword 
 
 shorter, and put a button at the end which 
 
 would keep it firm and secure, but the man 
 
 20 
 
Cbaractetistic0 of tbe People 
 
 shook his head and gave the usual reply 
 that it was custom to make them thus. 
 ** What was good enough for our ancestors 
 is good enough for us/* he replied, quite 
 satisfied that the last word possible upon 
 the subject had been said. 
 
 The women are even greater sticklers for 
 custom than the men ; they are also harder 
 to reach. This is true even among the 
 ** purdah " women, wives of natives of 
 India. Although these women are kept 
 prisoners within their homes, yet in spite 
 even of this they cling to their old tradi- 
 tions more strenuously than their sons and 
 husbands. The men go out into the world, 
 rub shoulders with men of other faiths and 
 customs ; more important still, they meet 
 Western civilization and its leveling influ- 
 ences at every turn, and are influenced, 
 sometimes unconsciously, it is true, but 
 influenced they are without doubt, and if it 
 were not for the counter-influence exerted 
 along the old lines by their women at home 
 they would drift even farther than they do. 
 Thus we see the strange phenomenon 
 that the greatest supporters of caste 
 and the old heathen customs among the 
 natives of India are the greatest sufferers 
 from these oppressive customs. Fortu- 
 
 21 
 
®DO0 anD jenD6 ttom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 nately there is no caste system among the 
 natives of Burma ; the Burmese women are 
 as free as the men. 
 
 Not only are the Burmese women free, 
 but they are great traders, driving better 
 bargains and possessing better business 
 heads often than the men. I know many 
 women who will go several days' journey 
 up the river in a boat, buying all the rice 
 that is to be had, bring it down to their 
 homes and hold it for a rise in price, in fact, 
 "engineer a corner," while their husbands 
 remain at home, look after the babies, and 
 keep the little store in the front of the 
 house. 
 
 Burma should be, in fact, a veritable 
 paradise for the " women's rights " woman. 
 One can see a score of Burmese women, 
 any day in the week or any hour of the 
 morning pass along the road in front of the 
 mission house, carrying a paddle upon their 
 shoulders with a big basket of rice at either 
 end. These women have risen long before 
 daylight, loaded their boat with rice, pad- 
 dled it down the river for miles; have car- 
 ried their heavy loads over sand-banks, up 
 the steep river-bank, into bazaar ; have bar- 
 gained for the best price possible and later 
 in the day will pole their boat, loaded 
 
 22 
 
Cbaractcristics ot tbe ipeople 
 
 down with bazaar goods, up the river to 
 their village in the jungle. They had 
 already helped to plant, to transplant, to 
 reap, husk, and sift this rice too. 
 
 Women very often act as brokers, es- 
 pecially in the sale of jewelry. In Burma 
 banks, except in the great cities and among 
 foreigners, are practically unknown. The 
 government conducts a savings bank in 
 connection with the post-office, but the vast 
 majority of Burmans do not use it or even 
 know anything about it. Instead, if a man 
 has any large amount of money he wishes 
 to hold, he either buries it or buys jewelry, 
 usually bracelets, rings, or precious stones. 
 If he wishes to use any money he sells a 
 ring, a ruby, or a diamond, as the case may 
 be, exactly as a business man in America 
 draws a check upon his bank account. This 
 way of holding his wealth not only feeds 
 his vanity and love for display but makes 
 it easy to hold it in comparative safety, 
 much easier than in hard cash. There is 
 one bad feature, however, about it, and 
 that is in case he needs money he some- 
 times has to dispose of his jewelry at a loss ; 
 people, knowing his needs, take advantage 
 of his position and refuse to buy except at 
 a price much below the real value, 
 23 
 
®DD0 anD BnOa from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 These transactions make a broker or go- 
 between necessary, and this broker is usu- 
 ally a woman. I have often seen one of 
 these women with several hundred rupees' 
 worth of rings, gold, or rubies upon her 
 hands and arms. They visit the homes of 
 would-be buyers, conduct the bartering and 
 chaffering, and sell the jewels, taking as 
 their share of the bargain a small broker- 
 age fee. !n spite of this freedom, however, 
 the men sometimes find it necessary to 
 assert their authority over their wives by 
 means of a stick or the sole of a shoe. 
 
 A very funny story was told me by one 
 of the earlier missionaries to the Shans. 
 During the hot season all the missionaries 
 in a certain station went to the hills to 
 escape the terrible heat of a summer on the 
 plains, and upon returning to their work at 
 the beginning of the rains it began to be 
 whispered around that one of the chief 
 pillars of the Shan church, a deacon and a 
 preacher, in fact, had been guilty of beating 
 his wife during a family quarrel. 
 
 The deacon was thereupon haled before 
 the missionary, who labored with the man, 
 laying stress upon the fact that his being a 
 deacon made his misbehavior all the worse ; 
 he ought to set a good example, etc., and 
 24 
 
Cbaracteri0tic0 ot tbe people 
 
 wound up by saying that he would have to 
 be disciplined by the church. 
 
 This was, of course, a terrible thing, but 
 the case became simply alarming when the 
 deacon asked who would try him for his 
 offense. **Why the church, of course," 
 he was told. " Good," he replied, ** but I 
 might as well tell you now as later that I 
 am not the only church-member that beat 
 his wife while you were upon the hills, in 
 fact, every one that has a wife did it ; the 
 only ones who did not were boys who have 
 none ! " 
 
 So the case against the deacon was 
 dropped, but not before one of the younger 
 men came to the missionary and said, 
 *' Teacher, you tell us we must not beat 
 our wives ; now, soya, if I tell my wife to 
 do a certain thing and she will not do it, if 
 I am not allowed by the church rules to 
 give her a whipping, will you please tell me 
 what I am to do 7 " Query. 
 
 Doctor Henderson, of Mongnai, also tells 
 a funny story of one of his people. This 
 man declared the Bible said it was right 
 and proper for a man to beat his wife, and 
 when asked to produce chapter and verse 
 said, " Does not the Bible say, ' A rod for 
 a fool's back ' .? " 
 
 25 
 
©DOS anO BnOs from ipagoDa XanD 
 
 The Burman is, of course, superstitious ; 
 every ignorant person is, of whatever rank 
 or race he may be. It is because of this 
 that schools and Western education are 
 such levers for uprooting superstitions, old 
 almost as the race. Burmans, keen as they 
 are at bargaining and trade, and in many 
 other ways, can along certain lines be easily 
 imposed upon. For example : A few miles 
 above Bhamo is a large village in which is 
 a pagoda badly in need of repairing, but the 
 necessary money not being forthcoming, a 
 priest suddenly discovered that a miracle 
 had happened or rather was happening each 
 day at a certain hour. Every idol was 
 sweating daily ! Of course the news was 
 hastily brought to the city and forthwith 
 hundreds went out to see the perspiring 
 god, and to tell their friends upon their re- 
 turn that it was really a fact. There was 
 no denying it. Hundreds saw the sweat 
 run down the idols, marveled, prayed, and 
 incidentally made offerings, which greatly 
 aided the priests in their design in renova- 
 ting the pagoda, monastery, and compound. 
 Of course the solution of the mystery was 
 easy. The idols were seated in niches, it 
 was toward the close of the cold season, 
 the nights were still very chilly and the 
 26 
 
Cbaracterl0tiC6 ot tbc ipeople 
 
 idols, of course, became very cold indeed. 
 Along by eleven or twelve o'clock, how- 
 ever, the sun gained great power and water 
 was condensed upon the smooth, shining 
 faces of the idols. It was useless, however, 
 to offer such an explanation to the great 
 mass of people ; it was laughed to scorn 
 and practically the whole city was thor- 
 oughly convinced that a wonderful miracle 
 had been wrought in the village and that 
 great merit could be gained by visiting the 
 pagoda and praying before the idols there. 
 
 Some years ago news came from Lower 
 Burma that an idol had spoken to a very 
 holy priest and had prophesied that the 
 British were about to leave the country and 
 the king of Burma would " receive his own 
 again." The rumor was so persistent that 
 it was investigated by a government official 
 and, it is needless to say, was proved false, 
 but almost every Burman that heard it took 
 it for truth and believed it implicitly. 
 
 The jungle people, especially the Shans 
 upon the hills, are suspicious and not given 
 to trust strangers. I have heard men be- 
 longing to the government public works 
 department, engaged in building roads, say 
 that when they first entered a district they 
 had to pay the wages of the coolies night 
 2^ 
 
®Dt)0 anO J6nD0 trom iPasoDa XanD 
 
 by night directly the day's work was done, 
 otherwise every coolie, thinking he would 
 receive nothing for his work, would quit 
 and return to his village. Poor fellows ! 
 they had for years been accustomed to be 
 cheated by their own rulers so that it is no 
 wonder they expected the white men to act 
 in the same way and that at least some of 
 the money ** would stick to the palm " of 
 the officials. 
 
 Among the jungle people especially every- 
 thing out of the common or difficult to 
 understand is looked upon as supernatural 
 and therefore worthy of suspicion. Soon 
 after we arrived at Mongnai in the Southern 
 Shan States, several native chiefs came to 
 visit us. Among the wonderful things in 
 our house was a sewing-machine and my 
 wife spent quite a long time in exhibiting 
 its marvels. She commenced by simply 
 sewing two pieces of muslin together, and 
 loud were the praises bestowed upon the 
 machine. It sewed so fast, and so smoothly, 
 and so evenly ! A thing good to marvel at ! 
 Wonderful, was the universal opinion, but 
 when my wife put on the tucker, the friller, 
 and the fandangle-maker their wonder knew 
 no bounds. One chief especially — he was 
 a Tounthu and not a Shan, by the way — was 
 28 
 
Cbaractcri6tic0 ot tbe ipcople 
 
 so much impressed that after looking at it 
 for a while he edged further and further 
 away and finally jumped up and left the 
 house. 
 
 As he did so he exclaimed, ** Teacher, 
 you must excuse my leaving in such a 
 hurry, but this machine is such a wonderful 
 thing, it does so many strange things, each 
 one stranger and more wonderful than the 
 last, that I am not sure what it cannot do ; 
 it might hurt me, and so as I have some 
 business — I'll leave now," and he did, 
 neither would he afterward enter our house. 
 
 Of course it must be distinctly under- 
 stood that this happened upon the Shan 
 hills, far away from the railroad, and more 
 than a dozen years ago. The sewing- 
 machine is a very common sight in the 
 cities ; in fact the Singer Sewing Machine 
 Company has agencies in a number of large 
 towns both in Upper and Lower Burma. 
 
 The Shan is a born trader. He will start 
 from his home with several buffalo hides 
 and carry them for several days' journey 
 over the mountains to the city, and sell 
 them there, netting a profit, after cost of 
 food, etc., has been deducted, of perhaps 
 three or four annas a day (six to eight cents) 
 and yet the same man would not do coolie 
 29 
 
©D&6 anD BnD0 tcom pagoDa XanD 
 
 work day after day for the customary hire 
 of eight annas (sixteen cents) for a day's 
 worl<, although the labor required would be 
 no harder than carrying four malodorous 
 buffalo hides over mountains and across 
 plains for four or five days — buffalo hides 
 are no light weight either when they are 
 green. Every man to his taste, and that is 
 Shan taste. 
 
 Fortunately there is a great deal of humor 
 in the make-up of the native Burman and 
 in this he again differs from the native of 
 India, that is, the native as we find him in 
 Burma. I remember once going out into 
 the jungle several miles upon my bicycle, 
 and as the day was very hot I rested for a 
 while upon the side of a bank beneath the 
 shade of a tree, and while there a num- 
 ber of Shans from Nam Kham came along, 
 and seeing the machine lying at the side of 
 the road stopped to look at it. One of their 
 number had been to Bhamo before and was 
 proud to show off the knowledge gained 
 there. He told his friends that the strange- 
 looking thing was really a carriage that, 
 although it was composed of but two wheels, 
 really and truly ran upright. He did not 
 know just how the foreigners managed to 
 do it, but they did; it was another proof of 
 30 
 
Cbaractcristics ot the ipcoplc 
 
 the wisdom and skill of the wonderful 
 kallahs. 
 
 He was much surprised when I joined in 
 the conversation, and said he did not know 
 that I spoke Shan ; his friends were from 
 the jungle, he said, upon their first visit to 
 the city, and he was glad they had a chance 
 of seeing one of its wonders so soon. Then 
 I explained to them how the bicycle stood 
 upright and ran along and finally said : 
 
 '* Now, this is the best of ponies. It can 
 run so fast that no Shan pony could catch 
 it ; it never shies, never gets frightened, 
 never runs away; yet I do not have to feed 
 it; I give it no paddy, no hay, no bran, not 
 even water. What do you think of that 
 for a horse? " 
 
 The old man looked at the wheel, then 
 with a smile, he said : 
 
 ** It is true as your lordship says, you 
 never feed it, still, don't you think it looks 
 very thin? " 
 
 There is one characteristic about every 
 inhabitant of Burma, whether natives of 
 Burma or India, and that is they are afraid 
 of exceeding their orders; they will do 
 nothing except what is expressly ordered. 
 For example : Some years ago we were 
 traveling from Rangoon to Toungoo by train. 
 31 
 
©DD0 anD j£nt>0 from ipagoDa XanD 
 
 We soon found that the train was running 
 much behind time and asked the conductor, 
 or *' guard " as he is called, what the trou- 
 ble was. He told us that the engine then 
 hauling the train had been built to burn 
 wood, but they were experimenting with 
 Burmese coal instead, and as it did not 
 make so much steam as the wood, they 
 could not get as much speed out of the lo- 
 comotive, and so we crept along till we got 
 to a slight rise a few miles south of our 
 destination when we were stalled com- 
 pletely. After an hour's wait the engineer 
 was able to get up enough steam to climb 
 the rise and we came limping into the sta- 
 tion a couple of hours after everybody had 
 gone to bed. 
 
 The first thing I saw when our train en- 
 tered the station was another locomotive 
 with the steam whistling out of the vent 
 pipe, and enough in the boiler to pull a 
 train twice as heavy as ours. I asked the 
 station-master what that locomotive was 
 doing there. ** That is to take the train on 
 from here to Yemathin," he said. **Did 
 you not know that we were stalled seven 
 miles out?" I asked. *'Of course,'* he 
 replied. ** The train was signalled as hav- 
 ing left the last station and I knew it was 
 32 
 
Cbaractcctstica ot tbc people 
 
 stuck somewhere, most likely at the 
 bridge." " You did, and here was this en- 
 gine nearly blowing itself up with steam, 
 why on earth did you not send it to us to 
 help us out of our difficulty? " 
 
 The station-master looked at me as 
 though he thought I was crazy. ** I dared 
 not send that engine south," he said, ** it 
 would have been as much as my place was 
 worth. I am not ordered to send that lo- 
 comotive down but up.** ** That's the dif- 
 ference between my country and yours," 
 I said. *' Why, my friend, if you allowed 
 an engine to stand idle when you knew a 
 train was in trouble you would have lost 
 your position and served you right too." 
 
 It is the same thing everywhere. Almost 
 every official is afraid to do certain things 
 which obviously ought to be done, for fear 
 of being " rapped over the knuckles " by 
 his superior. Nobody ever wishes to do 
 anything upon his own authority; nobody 
 ever wants to shoulder a responsibility if he 
 can push it off on somebody else. 
 
 Our school receives grants from govern- 
 ment, and we sometimes have a lot of 
 trouble because something is not quite in 
 order or according to the laws sacred to red 
 tape. Once in a while a figure is not en- 
 C 33 
 
©t>D0 anD JBnbe from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 tered or a column has not been filled out or 
 some silly little thing is the matter. Then, 
 although the bills have been paid month 
 after month for years, that special bill is 
 sent back with a printed list of objections, 
 as long as your arm, with the one objection 
 which the bill suffers from marked with a 
 cross. This often means a lot of official 
 correspondence, and a great expenditure of 
 paper, ink, and postage, not to mention the 
 strain upon one's temper, when a little 
 horse-sense would have settled it all. 
 Dickens' story of the Circumlocution Office 
 and how not to do it often comes to one's 
 mind, and one wonders why Great Britain 
 brought such shackles of red tape with her 
 when she started out to conquer the Orient. 
 Like most Orientals the native of Burma 
 is ashamed of any sort of menial work, or 
 what he considers menial work. I have 
 known a Eurasian boy ashamed to carry a 
 bottle to the dispensary to get medicine, 
 although he was not ashamed to take the 
 medicine for nothing. He would be ashamed 
 to carry a suit of clothes in a bundle from 
 the tailor, although he had not paid for 
 them, neither did he intend to. A person no 
 sooner gets a little money or a good posi- 
 tion than he suffers an acute attack of 
 34 
 
Cbaractcristics ot tbe ipcople 
 
 ** swelled head." Cannot do this, cannot 
 do that, cannot do the other ! He must 
 have somobody **to follow" him when he 
 goes out, has any number of hangers-on 
 around his house whom he feeds and keeps 
 in laziness; in fact becomes a patron in the 
 old meaning of the term. 
 
 A native cannot understand a person 
 digging in his garden, for instance, or doing 
 any form of manual work for the pleasure 
 there is in it. Mr. Hanson, one of our mis- 
 sionaries, told me a few weeks ago that his 
 literary work kept him at his desk for so 
 many hours a day that he felt the need of 
 more exercise, and accordingly took a hoe 
 and did a little gardening each evening. 
 One night, just as he was finishing, a native 
 officer belonging to the regiment of sepoys 
 stationed at the fort came to him and see- 
 ing him engaged in digging his own garden 
 asked him how it was that he, a white man, 
 could not afford to call a gardener to keep 
 it in order for him. The fact that a man 
 should like to do such work was beyond 
 his comprehension. 
 
 This idea is not confined to persons born 
 
 in Burma either, for the white man catches 
 
 the disease. Men who at home blacked 
 
 their shoes every morning of their lives, 
 
 35 
 
©DDs anD BnDa from pagoDa XanD 
 
 soon after getting to Burma cannot even 
 put their shoes on in the morning or kick 
 them off at night, but have to call their 
 servant to do it for them. 
 
 A man in charge of the police in one of 
 the Upper Burma districts once showed me 
 a bicycle he had just brought from home. I 
 asked him whether he had ridden much in 
 England, but he said, no, it was too much 
 bother cleaning the mud off the wheel when 
 he got back to his house : *' A fellow has 
 to do that sort of thing himself at home, 
 don't ye know," he said. Here was a man, 
 then, who had to clean the mud off his own 
 bike in England, but he compelled Burmans 
 to kneel when they spoke to him, and 
 ** piled on the agony " like a duke. 
 
 After a stay in Burma one looks at many 
 expressions found in the Bible in an entirely 
 different manner ; many things can be un- 
 derstood which at home appeared strange. 
 For example. The dog of the Bible is not 
 the faithful, brave friend that he is in Amer- 
 ica, but the snarling, cowardly, pariah dog, 
 with all the bad traits of his cousin at home 
 but very few of the good ones. 
 
 ** Take a present in thine hand " ; how 
 often we read that expression in the Bible, 
 and how often do we see the act here. It 
 
 36 
 
Cbatacteri6tiC6 ot tbe people 
 
 is customary to take a present when visit- 
 ing a superior, not necessarily as a bribe, 
 but as " custom." 
 
 **Take thy shoes from off thy feet," 
 commanded God, and to-day when enter- 
 ing Moslem mosque, Hindu temple, Bud- 
 dhist monastery, or Christian church, the 
 worshipers leave their shoes outside. 
 
 The American Baptist Publication Society 
 publishes a Sunday-school Lesson Picture 
 Roll illustrating the Sunday-school lessons, 
 and we have used them for years in our 
 school. In writing to the Society once I 
 asked why they did not make the men in 
 the picture take off their sandals before 
 entering the temple. Here, for example, 
 was the picture of a priest entering a syna- 
 gogue with his sandals on ! For a man to 
 enter a Christian church with his hat on 
 and smoking a cigar would be much less 
 profanation than that shown in the picture. 
 Just as we take off our hats upon entering 
 a house, so the Burman leaves his shoes 
 upon the front step. 
 
 The Burman dress is very picturesque. 
 The men wear a gay-colored silk handker- 
 chief twisted around their heads, a linen 
 jacket, and a silk skirt, usually pink. The 
 everyday skirt is called a lotm gyei, but 
 37 
 
O^^e anD BnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 upon high days and holidays the Burman 
 wears a ptsoe, which is so long that after it 
 has been put around his waist the end can 
 be twisted over his neck and yet leave 
 enough to hang over his arm. 
 
 His shoes are of two kinds ; one a sort 
 of slipper without any back, just a toe- 
 piece and a sole, and the other a sandal, 
 the sole of which is made either of leather 
 or wood, with straps to hold it on. These 
 straps pass between the great toe and the 
 others, cross the front of the foot, and are 
 fastened one to each side of the sole. 
 
 The women on common days wear a 
 skirt very similar to the men except that it 
 is draped a little differently, but upon holi- 
 days they wear a tamain which is nothing 
 but a large, oblong piece of silk fastened 
 at the waist, but opened down the front, 
 leaving the limbs below the knee exposed. 
 They wear a white linen jacket, and instead 
 of twisting a silk handkerchief around their 
 heads like their brothers, they wear it 
 around the neck with the ends flowing. 
 They have a very pretty custom of making 
 wreaths of flowers and wearing them in 
 their hair. 
 
 The Shan women who live in the South- 
 ern Shan States dress like the Burmese 
 
 38 
 
Cbaracteristlcs of tbe people 
 
 women, but up North the dress is very 
 different, being made of dark blue cloth, 
 sometimes with broad stripes of other colors 
 up and down the skirt. They wear a turban 
 of blue cloth also. 
 
 The two most distinctive marks of a Shan 
 man's dress are his hat and his trousers. 
 The former is made of plaited straw, and 
 is a great, flapping concern with a brim a 
 foot wide, and is worn perched upon the 
 very top of a tall turban. His trousers are a 
 sight to behold too. Imagine a sack some- 
 what wider at the bottom than the top; cut 
 off the two bottom corners for the wearer 
 to put his feet through, tie the mouth of the 
 sack around the man's waist and you know 
 what a pair of Shan trousers look like. 
 They are made so baggy that the part that 
 should be the seat often touches the ground. 
 
 Men and women both wear earrings 
 among the Shans ; the men, however, 
 sometimes having but one ear pierced. 
 These earrings are usually round, the 
 smaller kinds looking when in place some- 
 thing like a stud or shirt button, but some- 
 times the holes are so large that a man can 
 thrust a lead pencil through them. I have 
 frequently seen Shans carry the stump of 
 an unfinished cigar in the hole in their ear. 
 
 39 
 
®OD0 anD JSnDs trom pagoDa XanO 
 
 After firing a forty-five caliber revolver, 
 coolies have often begged for the empty 
 shells to be used as earrings. Among the 
 Burmese women some earrings are very 
 valuable, as many as a score of pearls or 
 rubies being set in one ring. The natives 
 of India (women) wear nose-rings, but for- 
 tunately that custom is unknown among 
 the Burmans. 
 
 Every Burman and Shan boy is tatooed 
 from above the waist to below the knee. 
 The color is blue, and represents dragons, 
 griffins, and other fabulous animals, with 
 scrolls, flowers, etc. In addition to this 
 among the Shans it is common custom to 
 have the back and breast tattooed. This 
 must be a painful operation to say the least. 
 The boy is placed upon the ground and the 
 figure to be tattooed is drawn in pigment 
 upon the skin ; then a friend takes his seat 
 upon the small boy to keep him down and 
 keep him still and the tattooing commences. 
 The instrument used is generally made out 
 of a section of small bamboo, and inside 
 this works a needle with a chisel-shaped 
 point. The boy naturally howls a little 
 during the operation, but it is custom, and 
 each boy is proud of his tattooing and so 
 keeps up a brave front. 
 40 
 
Cbatactcristtcs ot tbe people 
 
 Tobacco-smoking is carried to great ex- 
 cess in Burma. Everybody smokes — men, 
 women, and children. The usual cheroot 
 is a mixture of tobacco leaves and small 
 chips of the tobacco stalk. The latter is 
 dried separately in the sun, mixed with the 
 shredded tobacco leaves, and the whole is 
 rolled up in a cover of corn shucks, making 
 a cigar eight inches long. An immense 
 number of these cigars is smoked. Upon 
 the hills pipes are used, and I once saw a 
 child at its mother's breast with a pipe in 
 its hand which it had been smoking. 
 Children are sometimes not weaned till 
 they are three years old, which was about 
 the age of this child as nearly as I could 
 guess. Of late years the American cigar- 
 ette has invaded the country, and on 
 account of its cheapness has become 
 immensely popular. 
 
 Betel-nut chewing is another universal 
 habit. The nut is the fruit of a beautiful 
 palm, and is about the size and shape of a 
 nutmeg. A small piece of the nut is cut 
 off by an instrument something like a pair 
 of nut-crackers, except that it has a cut- 
 ting edge. The little piece of betel nut is 
 placed in the center of a green leaf upon 
 which a little lime has been spread ; this 
 41 
 
©D06 anD EnD6 trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 lime is slacked and powdered till it is about 
 the same consistency as butter; then a 
 piece of gum, red in color and astringent 
 like alum, is added, the leaf is rolled up, 
 and the whole placed in the mouth and 
 chewed. The saliva expectorated is blood- 
 red, and makes a very ugly stain wherever 
 it is spit. The teeth of the chewer are also 
 blackened, and when used to excess the 
 lime and astringent gum act upon the 
 gums so that they contract, the teeth often 
 become loose, and in severe cases even 
 drop out. 
 
 Fortunately the opium habit is not so 
 prevalent in Burma as in China ; still many 
 Burmans are addicted to its use. This is 
 especially true of Upper Burma, so close to 
 China. Many men smoke a little and are 
 not opium drunkards ; still, the habit once 
 formed is very, very hard to break. Some 
 observers say it is never broken, and I must 
 confess I have never personally seen a case 
 where a man has given up the habit for good. 
 I have seen many, many cases in which 
 men claimed to have given it up, but they 
 took it upon the sly, not smoking, perhaps, 
 as that can be readily detected, but eating 
 opium pills instead ; the effect was prac- 
 tically the same. Opium acts upon the 
 42 
 
Cbaracteristics ot tbe people 
 
 moral part of a man ; he will steal, lie, do 
 anything, in fact, to get his daily smoke, 
 and if he really cannot get it his condition 
 is pitiable in the extreme. 
 
 Unfortunately drunkenness is increasing 
 to an alarming extent in the towns of 
 Burma. This is directly due to British 
 influence. In the old days this vice was 
 practically unknown among the Burmans, 
 and it has been introduced by the Anglo- 
 Saxon conquerors. The Karens, Kachins, 
 and other hill tribes, it is true, have always 
 been addicted to the use of alcohol, but not 
 the Burmans, who looked down upon these 
 hill people as being little better than savages. 
 Now, however, there are grog shops all 
 over Burma, and many Burmans, especially 
 the younger ones, use it, and the habit is 
 spreading. Several boys who used to be 
 in my school now use alcohol constantly. 
 This is a blot, a very great blot, upon 
 England's fair fame. 
 
 The officials and other European resi- 
 dents set a very bad example. Almost 
 every white man drinks, many to excess. 
 I once saw at a durbar in the Southern 
 Shan States an official high in the civil 
 service trying to persuade native princes 
 to drink champagne and whisky, and when 
 43 
 
©DDs anO BnOs from pa^ioDa %nn^ 
 
 they would not, he huighed at tliem. 
 Imagine the intluence of that man ! 
 
 There is no ceremony among the Bur- 
 mans which is solemn ; at least 1 have 
 never seen one. Even religious rites have 
 no solemnity as we understand the term. 
 Men and women kneeling before idols with 
 their hands clasped, stare around them 
 while they mumble over their prayers ; 
 offerings of rice placed before idols are 
 often eaten by pariah dogs and crows be- 
 fore the backs of the worshipers are turned ; 
 even funerals are devoid of solemnity. 
 When a person dies it is true the women 
 shriek, beat their breasts, and tear their 
 hair, but only for a short time, then the 
 whole house is turned into a show-room 
 with the dead body in the center and 
 friends congregate and play, feast, laugli, 
 and joke till the funeral procession is 
 formed. Then everything is noise and 
 confusion. Alen shout and rush hither 
 and thither ; the very bearers of the cot"tin 
 joke among themselves and when at last 
 they get to the cemetery, from the row of 
 unfeeling Buddhist priests to the man in 
 the ox-cart who hands out bottles of lem- 
 onade to whoever asks for it, everything 
 is noisy, grotesque, and to Western e\'es 
 44 
 
Gbacactecl0ttc0 of tbe people 
 
 almost indecent. So much for the Burman 
 and his cousin the Shan. 
 
 An entirely different man is the Kachin 
 who lives upon the hills of Upper Burma. 
 One may see their villages perched upon 
 the very summits of what in the distance 
 appear to be almost inaccessible hills. For 
 generations this tribe was a thorn in the 
 side of the Burman government. Like the 
 Highlanders in old Scotland, they made 
 forays into the plains, burned villages, 
 stole cattle, killed right and left, and then 
 retreated to their mountain fastnesses 
 carrying their plunder with them. The 
 Burmans were powerless to punish the 
 Kachins. Of course, semi-occasionally 
 they sent troops out in pursuit of the 
 raiders, but such expeditions amounted to 
 practically nothing; in fact sometimes they 
 did more harm than good. A great many 
 gongs would be beaten, a few shots fired, 
 perhaps, but that was all. Then the Bur- 
 man soldiers would return to the city where 
 they were safe behind their stockades, while 
 the Kachins would descend upon some other 
 unfortunate village in another direction. 
 Occasionally, however, the Burmans would 
 be able to ambush their enemies, then there 
 45 
 
©DOS anD BnD6 from iPa^oDa XanO 
 
 would be something more than a mere fight, 
 there would be a massacre. 
 
 Of course, under British rule, this has 
 all been stopped. Raids have ceased and 
 the lawless mountaineers have been taught 
 that they cannot now pillage a village with 
 impunity as in the old days. Nay, worse 
 than that, they have to pay taxes to the 
 government, something they would have 
 laughed at had it been demanded by the 
 Burmans a quarter of a century ago. But, 
 and a very large but too, " You English do 
 not fight like the Burmans did,'' grumbled 
 a Kachin chief once. " In the old days 
 when we heard the Burmans were coming 
 we would build a stockade across the 
 mountain pass, then when the enemy put 
 in an appearance we would fire a few shots 
 and he would go back again, but even if 
 some of your men are wounded or even 
 killed, it does not make any difference to 
 the rest of you, but you come rushing on, 
 shouting and firing till you jump clear over 
 our stockade ! Ah, there's a very great 
 difference between you and Burmans." 
 
 The Kachin has learned to respect the 
 mounted infantry, and the mountain bat- 
 tery still more. Carried upon the backs of 
 mules, the guns of the battery are trans- 
 46 
 
Cbaractert0tic0 ot tbe ipeople 
 
 ported over the mountains, then set up, 
 sometimes upon the top of another hill, far 
 out of reach of Kachin bullets ; then shells 
 drop into the village and behind the stock- 
 ade, explode, and do an immense amount 
 of injury, while the hill men are helpless 
 and can do nothing to retaliate. 
 
 Like all hill tribes the Kachin is intensely 
 clannish and also very revengeful. He will 
 treasure up the memory of a slight for years 
 till he has a chance of carrying out his 
 revenge. In the old days blood feuds were 
 common, so common in fact that if one 
 met a Kachin anywhere and were to ask 
 him where his home was the man would 
 always lie and give the name of another 
 village because he feared the person that 
 addressed him might belong to a tribe with 
 which his own was at feud. 
 
 It might be over a foolish, childish thing 
 too, that is, foolish in our eyes, but not as 
 the Kachin looks at it. A few months ago 
 Rev. and Mrs. Hanson, Kachin missionaries 
 in Bhamo, took a jungle trip over the hills, 
 and upon her return, Mrs. Hanson told my 
 wife of an experience in one of the moun- 
 tain villages. Upon their arrival at this 
 particular village all the people received 
 them gladly except the wife of the chief, 
 47 
 
©DO0 anD JEnD0 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 and she would not say a word to Mrs. Han- 
 son, although she talked with the other 
 members of the party. Although the chief 
 and everybody else chatted around the fire 
 in the largest house in the village this 
 woman maintained a dogged silence in spite 
 of everything that Mrs. Hanson could do or 
 say. Of course something was wrong, but 
 the difficulty was to find out what it was. 
 Finally it was discovered that the woman 
 thought that Mrs. Hanson was the wife of 
 another missionary. A dozen years before 
 this Kachin woman had come down from 
 the hills on a visit to Bhamo and had been 
 rudely treated, as she thought, by the wife 
 of one of the missionaries, and for all these 
 years she had nursed this grudge in her 
 heart. When she was assured that she 
 had made a mistake and that Mrs. Hanson 
 was what she really claimed to be, there 
 was no more trouble and she became as 
 friendly as her neighbors. 
 
 Here is another story : Years ago an old 
 woman came from her home in the moun- 
 tains to visit friends that had come down 
 upon the plains to live. During her visit 
 she was taken sick and died. The villagers 
 thereupon killed a cow as an offering to 
 the nats (fairies), wrapped her body in a 
 48 
 
Cbaracteri6tlc6 ot tbc people 
 
 blanket, bought a gong to beat during the 
 funeral rites and, in short, acted the part 
 of good neighbors to the dead woman. 
 When the bill was sent to her sons, how- 
 ever, they refused to pay, and this fact 
 was 'Maid up against them'* by the men 
 who were compelled to put their hands into 
 their pockets to pay for the cow, blanket, 
 and gong. 
 
 In course of years the grandson of the 
 old woman became a teacher in the Kachin 
 Mission School at Bhamo and wished to 
 marry the granddaughter of the head man 
 of the village where the old woman had 
 died; but when, according to Kachin cus- 
 tom, he sent a friend to ask for the girl's 
 hand, he was told by her grandfather that 
 he must pay for that cow, gong, and blanket 
 before they would even listen to his suit. 
 
 After a man is dead we usually ** let his 
 faults die with him," but among this strange 
 hill people, if the dead man dies a debtor the 
 fact is proclaimed to every wayfarer that 
 passes by his grave, for his tomb cannot be 
 completed till every debt has been paid by 
 his family. Years may pass but the grave 
 remains unfinished, nay, it may fall a prey 
 to white ants and be destroyed first be- 
 cause his sons will not or cannot settle his 
 D 49 
 
^DDs ant) lBnt>6 from U^agoDa Xan5 
 
 debts. Should they be paid in full, how- 
 ever, the grave will be completed with ap- 
 propriate ceremonies and the man is at last 
 ** buried'* as the Kachin puts it, although 
 he may possibly have been beneath the 
 ground for years. 
 
 The revengeful spirit of these moun- 
 taineers shows itself very early and some- 
 times very unexpectedly too. Upon the 
 Kachin mission compound was a boy in the 
 mission school who had for years been 
 taught, fed, and clothed by the mission. 
 He was guilty of some fault — I do not know 
 just what it was — and was warned that the 
 next time he did it he would be punished. 
 Before long he committed the same offense 
 and was sent by his teacher to the mis- 
 sionary for punishment. He went to the 
 Mission House, but first slipped into his 
 own room, got a knife, and as the mis- 
 sionary came out upon the veranda, at- 
 tacked him with it, although as he after- 
 ward said, he knew he deserved a good 
 whipping. 
 
 Of course the Kachin is intensely igno- 
 rant. Like his cousins, the Karens in Lower 
 Burma, he had no written language till Mr. 
 Hanson, of our mission, devised an alphabet, 
 wrote a grammar, and reduced the language 
 50 
 
Cbaracteristics of tbc f>eople 
 
 to writing. This ignorance is profound. It is 
 hard, impossible in fact, for a Westerner to 
 appreciate how deep it really is even after 
 living among them for years. Like all igno- 
 rant people too, they are suspicious and 
 liable to think that one is trying to fool 
 them when talking upon a subject they are 
 not familiar with. Mr. Hanson told me 
 that some months ago Mr. Roberts, the 
 senior Kachin missionary in Bhamo, was 
 with him upon the hills during an eclipse of 
 the moon. The natives, in great excite- 
 ment, rushed about beating gongs, shout- 
 ing, and making hideous noises, trying to 
 frighten away the great frog which at times 
 of eclipse is supposed to be engaged in the 
 rather difficult task of eating the moon. 
 After everything was over, the frog fright- 
 ened away and the moon saved, Mr. Han- 
 son tried to explain to them the real condi- 
 tion of affairs, but when they heard that 
 the world was round, that people lived all 
 around it upon the outside and yet did not 
 go sliding away off into space, they showed 
 clearly that they did not believe any such 
 foolishness, and after the talk, when the 
 missionaries were supposed to be sound 
 asleep, one of them heard a Kachin remark 
 in aloud whisper to a friend at his side, "My, 
 51 
 
otitis an& iBnbe from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 but those missionaries know how to lie, 
 don't they ? " 
 
 The dress of a Kachin man is practically 
 the same as a Shan's, only dirtier. The 
 women wear a piece of cloth, which is 
 wrapped around their waist and laps in 
 front. Their jackets are made of blue cloth 
 decorated with lines of shells or common 
 bone buttons. The most remarkable part 
 of a Kachin woman's dress, however, is her 
 girdle, which is made out of a great number 
 of rattan rings. It is worn outside the skirt, 
 and I have never been able to make out 
 just why she encumbers herself with it, for 
 it certainly is not pretty, and it is still more 
 certain that it serves no useful purpose. 
 The wearer would tell you it was custom 
 to wear it. That settles it and admits of 
 no argument or change either. 
 
 The Kachins are very dirty. It would 
 be difficult for an American to understand 
 just how dirty they are. They often go for 
 months without bathing, and their clothes 
 — I am afraid of being charged with exag- 
 geration were I to write just what they look 
 like ; and the smell is even more striking. 
 Still it must be kept in mind that, while the 
 Burman builds his village upon the banks 
 of a river and a moment or two is generally 
 52 
 
Cbacactcrl0t(c0 ot tbe ipeople 
 
 sufficient to carry him to it for a bath, the 
 Kachin builds his home upon the very top 
 of a mountain. The nearest spring is often 
 a mile or more away from his village and 
 sometimes several hundred feet below, with 
 nothing but a path, steep nearly as the side 
 of a house, between him and it, and up this 
 path all water has to be carried. It is small 
 wonder, then, that the Kachin is chary of 
 using water under such conditions. 
 
 One of the most ludicrous scenes in Burma 
 is to see a Kachin in bazaar. His jacket and 
 trousers are most likely much the worse for 
 wear because, since their purchase months 
 before, they have never been put into water 
 save when their owner has been caught 
 out in a rainstorm or has had to v/ade 
 through a river, yet he is very likely to 
 have a great turban of white muslin, yards 
 long, which has been twisted around his 
 head, on top of the old one, which has 
 changed in color from its original white to 
 a deep slate color, closely verging toward 
 the hue of Lehigh coal. 
 
 Burma is the richest province in the 
 Indian empire, and in it wages are very 
 much higher than in India proper, the con- 
 sequence being that many thousands of the 
 53 
 
©ODs anD BnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 natives of India have emigrated to Burma, 
 where they act much like the Italians in 
 the United States. These hallahs, as the 
 Burman calls them, have spread all over 
 the land. They do a large amount of coolie 
 work ; the fighting races enter the army 
 and the police ; others open stalls in bazaar, 
 drive ox-carts or gharries^ and act as serv- 
 ants to Europeans or even rich Burmans 
 and Chinamen, They are messengers at 
 court, durwans or watchmen of bunga- 
 lows, porters on the railroads ; and a hun- 
 dred other positions are filled by these 
 natives of India. They bring their religion 
 and many of their customs with them too, 
 so that there is a mosque for Mohammedans 
 and a temple for Hindus in every large town 
 of the province. 
 
 One of the most interesting classes among 
 the natives of India is the bahoo or 
 clerk. A large percentage of subordinate 
 government positions is filled by these 
 bahoos. The post-office, the courts, the 
 government telegraph, commissariat, the 
 public works department, and the subordi- 
 nate grade of the Indian medical service all 
 offer positions to him. He often hails from 
 Bengal and is then distressingly polite and 
 takes himself very seriously, especially if 
 54 
 
Cbaractcristics ot tbc ipcople 
 
 he has graduated from an Indian university. 
 In such a case he just loves to wallow in 
 polysyllables and never uses a short word if 
 he can possibly use several long ones. For 
 example, I once received a note which said : 
 
 Sir : I have the honour to take the liberty of for- 
 warding herewith, per bearer, the exhausted recep- 
 tacle for your considerate replenishment. 
 
 In simple English, he sent a bottle and 
 wanted it refilled, but preferred to use what 
 he thought a much grander way of making 
 his request. 
 
 Some of his brethren, however, have not 
 been fortunate enough to receive a univer- 
 sity education, but that does not prevent 
 them from spilling ink upon every possible 
 and impossible occasion. The following is 
 a gem from the pen of a man in Bhamo : 
 
 Father : Your sweeper Cauda Singh is suffering 
 badly by Asthma a cough. When he sneeze The 
 Cough fells from brain does not come out, by 
 gethering at Chest he Cannot breath & is in great 
 difficult 
 
 Kindly give some medicine as I hear your name a 
 very kind and gracious Father 
 
 Here is another which was written to me 
 by an ofificial in the post-office and falls 
 about midway between the two extremes, 
 55 
 
©DOS anO JEn^e trom pagoDa XanO 
 
 but still shows the craze for using long 
 words when shorter ones would do the 
 work better : 
 
 Sir : The patient is rather better and much im- 
 proved now. We are very grateful to your honour 
 for the kind support accorded him. When you come 
 over other particulars will be intimated. 
 
 I beg to remain, sir, your most obedient servant, 
 
 A baboo, to use Thackeray's words, 
 *' dearly loves a lord," and, as lords are 
 scarce in Burma, he gives every title he 
 can think of to whomsoever he writes. 
 
 '' Honoured Sir," ** Most Respected Sir," 
 *' Your Honour," and ** Most Honoured Sir" 
 are the most common ways of addressing a 
 letter, but last week I received a new title 
 and was called ** Your Reverendship." Be- 
 ing a missionary seems to some people's 
 minds to entitle a man to be called ** Rev." 
 although he has never been ordained, so 
 that letters addressed to ** The Rev. Dr. 
 Griggs " are common enough, but the very 
 height was reached when a note came with 
 " The Rev. Dr. William C. Griggs, Esq., 
 M. D.," on it. Human ingenuity could not 
 twist another title out of me. 
 
 Baboo English has been the subject of 
 many and many an Indian joke, and it 
 
 56 
 
Cbaracterietics of tbe people 
 
 certainly is very funny. Natives of India 
 have a great habit of using the parti- 
 ciple instead of the verb, ** eating" for 
 '* eat," "running" instead of "run," etc. 
 "Plenty" too, is an overworked word. 
 " Plenty good," "plenty bad," and so on. 
 
 A " boy " comes into the dispensary and 
 says, "Head paining, sir." Then you 
 know that he is not very sick, but if he 
 says, " Head plenty paining, sir," you may 
 feel sure he feels "plenty bad," while the 
 superlative degree is reached when, with a 
 woe-begone face he groans, " Head too 
 much plenty paining, sir." 
 
 The word "too" is also used strangely. 
 " It is too bad " must not be understood in 
 its American sense, for it means it is "very 
 bad." A man became very hard up and 
 brought around a petition setting forth that 
 he was out of work, had a large family, 
 had no money but many debts, as well as 
 countless other woes, and begging "the 
 charitable-minded gentlemen of the city 
 and community " to help him get to Man- 
 dalay, where he was promised work. 
 
 I had attended his wife during a severe 
 
 sickness, so going, I suppose, upon the 
 
 Irishman's explanation of one good turn's 
 
 deserving another, he brought his subscrip- 
 
 57 
 
©DDs auD BnDa trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 tion list to me. I gave him a few rupees, 
 and he then took his way to the house of 
 another missionary. This gentleman did 
 not know him and said so, upon which he 
 said, *' Oh, Doctor Griggs knows me too 
 well." He did not mean this, of course, 
 in the way in which an American would 
 take it, though as it turned out afterward 
 it should have been taken in just that way. 
 
 One class of natives of India, usually 
 called the ** shopkeeper " class, contains, 
 I think, some of the most expert rascals in 
 the world. Cheating has become a fine 
 art with them, and there is nothing they 
 sell which must be taken at its face value. 
 My wife has several times sent to bazaar 
 for thread and found part of it had been 
 used, although at first sight it looked like a 
 full spool. Mr. Rockefeller's oil cans will 
 sometimes have a minute hole in them 
 through which quite a large amount of the 
 oil has been drawn off and water put in its 
 place, a crude way of ** watering oil stock." 
 
 Some months ago I ran short of quinine 
 in the dispensary because the steamer upon 
 which was a fresh supply ran upon a sand- 
 bank in the river, so I was obliged to send 
 to the bazaar for some. The bottles seemed 
 a good deal lighter than usual, I thought, 
 
 58 
 
Cbaractetlstics ot tbe IPcople 
 
 and yet the tin-foil capsules over the corks 
 appeared to be intact. When I came to 
 examine more closely, however, I found 
 that they had been carefully removed, the 
 paraffin beneath had been melted, and the 
 cork withdrawn. Nearly one-third of the 
 quinine had been extracted and the balance 
 well shaken up to make it look all right, a 
 comparatively easy thing to do, seeing how 
 light quinine is. The cork had then been 
 replaced, the paraffin carefully smoothed, 
 and the capsule replaced so skilfully that it 
 required careful looking to detect the fraud. 
 
 59 
 
lEveris^bai? Sigbte an^ Sounbe 
 
II 
 
 HE Burman is a trader, and buying 
 and selling-places are therefore 
 much in evidence. They run all 
 the way from the big bazaars covering a 
 large space of land, with concrete walks, 
 iron roofs, and hundreds of stalls, such as 
 one sees in the great cities, down to a row 
 of crazy sheds made of crooked bamboo 
 posts and thatch that has long since passed 
 its term of usefulness, or the front of a 
 house upon the floor of which are ex- 
 posed for sale a few bunches of ancient 
 bananas of doubtful look, a little curry stuff, 
 and a few articles of hardware *' made in 
 Germany." 
 
 Away off upon the Shan hills, bazaar is 
 held once in every five days. Here it is not 
 only the trading-place, but is where every- 
 body gathers from all the villages for miles 
 around, coming in with coolie baskets laden 
 with produce and, what is of almost as great 
 consequence, with minds thirsting for the 
 latest news or scandal, which is retailed 
 together with the goods offered for sale. 
 63 
 
Qt>t>6 and j£nDd from ipagoDa Uand 
 
 Set apart is a place where gambling is 
 carried on, and many a Shan leaves behind 
 him all the money he gained from the sale 
 of the goods he brought to bazaar ; the 
 very coolie baskets they were brought in 
 often remaining too, and sometimes even 
 his blanket and sword. In Burma proper 
 gambling is not allowed, fortunately, by 
 the government, and '* gambler's row" 
 does not exist; but in the Shan country, 
 where native princes still rule the people 
 under British protection and guidance, 
 gambling booths are as much a part of 
 every bazaar as those where rice, betel 
 nut, or cloth is sold. 
 
 A new-comer to Burma usually pays an 
 early visit to the bazaar, but in the major- 
 ity of cases it is not soon repeated. If one 
 wishes to enjoy his beefsteak for breakfast, 
 or the roast for dinner, it is advisable not 
 to go to the place where they are sold. 
 The smells one meets with there are very 
 pronounced, especially in that part of bazaar 
 where nga pe is sold. This nga pe is, per- 
 haps, the most universally used dainty in 
 Burma ; it enters into every meal, in fact, 
 without it a meal would not be complete ; 
 still, from a Western standpoint the smell 
 is quite too strenuous. Nga pe is made of 
 
 64 
 
JSvcrBs^aB Siflbts anD SounDs 
 
 fish. They are split open, and after the 
 bones have been taken out, are spread 
 upon mats till they are extremely strong, 
 then they are packed into bamboo baskets 
 and pressed till the mass becomes like jelly 
 and smells — well, like nga pe. Sometimes 
 it is dried till it looks like a mixture of 
 chipped glue and dust, but it does not smell 
 the same ; even glue is innoxious when com- 
 pared with nga pe. Now, if the reader will 
 bear in mind the fact that in large bazaars 
 there are often great heaps of nga pe^ he 
 will not be surprised to learn that the air is 
 malodorous. 
 
 After the bazaar the next most common 
 sight, perhaps, is a pwae, or feast. Pwaes 
 are of many kinds. One of the most in- 
 teresting is the dancing-doll pwae. The 
 men who work these dolls are extremely 
 skilful, especially when one takes into 
 account the crude surroundings. First of 
 all a platform is built, usually of bamboo, 
 and a curtain is hung above it lengthwise, 
 leaving a narrow ledge in front, but wide 
 enough at the rear of the curtain for men 
 to walk upon. A canopy is hung above all ; 
 at night a band is stationed in front ; the 
 stage is lit up and the dolls are made to 
 dance upon the ledge before the curtain. 
 E 65 
 
Fine strings are fastened to their heads, 
 elbows, hands, etc., and by their means 
 they are made to dance, kneel before kings 
 in supplication, fight, go through the most 
 complicated movements possible ; in fact, 
 they act out whole dramas. 
 
 Besides these there are plays in which 
 men and women act. These are long and 
 tedious, that is to Western ideas, but the 
 Burman never wearies of them, although 
 they sometimes take four or even five 
 nights to finish. They are usually given 
 by a person in search of popularity or 
 merit, and in that case are exhibited free 
 of cost ; anybody can sit down and enjoy 
 the play, the whole of the expenses being 
 borne by the man who has ** called" the 
 players. They are often held at feasts, 
 when a child is to be made into a priest, or 
 on any holiday. 
 
 A rough stage is set up in an open lot ; 
 the background is made of mats decorated 
 with pictures, shawls, or anything that can 
 be borrowed ; the ever-present band takes 
 up its station in front ; mats are spread 
 upon the ground for the spectators to sit 
 upon, a special place being reserved for the 
 man who gives the play, and at dark it 
 commences and continues all night, and for 
 66 
 
as many nights thereafter as the pocket- 
 book or the credit of the benefactor will 
 stand the strain. 
 
 People come and go ; they smoke, chew, 
 laugh heartily at the buffoon and thoroughly 
 enjoy themselves, having as good a time, 
 probably, as an American would have in a 
 grand opera house, although theirs is open 
 to the sky, has nothing between them and 
 the ground but a mat, has no tinsel, no 
 footlights — except sometimes a few smoky 
 lamps strung along the stage — no curtain, 
 and no scenery. 
 
 Hundreds of people often attend these 
 free exhibitions, and the immediate neigh- 
 borhood not only has lots of fun, but with 
 an eye to business even turns it into profit. 
 Fires are lit in the street and food is cooked 
 and sold to the spectators, who often come 
 from long distances to look on. A very 
 favorite delicacy is a kind of glutinous rice 
 mixed with native sugar and several other 
 things, the composition of which I have 
 never been able to fathom. This is mixed 
 up into a sort of pudding, put into short 
 lengths of bamboo, and roasted. When 
 cooked the bamboo covering is split off 
 with a knife, leaving nothing but a thin 
 coating of the inside of the bamboo no 
 67 
 
©DDs anD BnDs trom ipagoOa XaiiD 
 
 thicker than a sheet of tissue paper. This 
 is peeled off just as at home one peels off a 
 banana skin, and the cooked rice inside is 
 eaten with great relish. 
 
 The music one hears at these pwaes cer- 
 tainly deserves a little notice. Gongs, 
 drums, and a kind of horn, together with 
 cymbals and clappers — the last made out of 
 split bamboo — are the chief instruments, and 
 if they do not produce melodious sounds 
 when judged by our ideals, they yet make a 
 great deal of noise. To use a Wall Street 
 expression, if Burman music is short on qual- 
 ity, it is at least long on quantity ; in fact, 
 the noise sometimes degenerates into a din 
 in which the man with the gong seems to 
 try and drown the sound of the horn and 
 the musician behind the latter holds his 
 own so well that the notes are simply 
 ear-splitting. 
 
 One instrument is unique. It is com- 
 posed of a frame, richly carved and orna- 
 mented, round, and about six feet across. 
 This is placed upon the ground, the musi- 
 cian taking his place in the middle. Around 
 the inside of this frame are arranged a num- 
 ber of gongs of different sizes and tones and 
 they are struck with two sticks, one in each 
 hand of the performer. It looks very funny 
 68 
 
JCverB*Dai2 Stgbts anD Sounds 
 
 to see a man, as a friend of mine said, 
 "sitting inside liis instrument," pounding 
 away as fast as ever he can, twisting and 
 turning to get at his gongs. 
 
 The Shans often have a number of gongs 
 hung upon a bamboo and as each gong has 
 a different tone a chord is produced when 
 they are all struck together which is often 
 very pleasant. But it is monotonous in the 
 extreme ; for two or three boys will strike 
 and strike and strike again, giving out the 
 same notes each time, and keep this up for 
 hours, yet they never seem to tire of the 
 music. 
 
 I have never seen a country, not even 
 Japan, where street parades are so beauti- 
 ful as in Burma. The air is so clear, and 
 the sunshine is so bright that this of itself 
 lends a charm to beautiful colors. Long 
 strings of girls walking in single file, with 
 baskets containing fruit done up in banana 
 leaves upon their heads, form a pretty pic- 
 ture indeed. The jackets are almost always 
 of white linen and the dresses of silk, pink 
 or red usually, sometimes yellow ; the jet 
 black hair and showy silk handkerchiefs 
 around their necks form a picture that 
 would send an artist raving with delight. 
 
 At the Water Feast these processions are 
 
 69 
 
^^t>e anD JBnt>6 txom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 especially beautiful. Then the girls and 
 boys rise early, go to the river and fill their 
 chatties, or bowls, with water, and after form- 
 ing into line walk to the pagodas where 
 they throw water over the idols. Later on 
 they throw water over each other and a 
 great amount of fun results. 
 
 The Burmans do not as a rule make good 
 household servants and therefore most of 
 the " help," as we would say at home, are 
 natives of India. First and foremost comes 
 the white-robed, turbaned Madrassi. He 
 is a " boy " if he has passed his seventieth 
 birthday. His knowledge of colloquial Eng- 
 lish is wonderful, and if a person's pocket- 
 book is only long enough to stand the strain, 
 he makes a grand servant. 
 
 For generations his ancestors have been 
 servants and this has gone on so long that 
 he actually seems to have inherited a spe- 
 cial aptness to cook, and wait on table, and 
 — to cheat ; for without exception he is the 
 greatest pilferer yet evolved. Butter and 
 tea and coffee and sugar evaporate in the 
 most remarkable manner. A joint comes 
 upon the table for dinner, a cut or two are 
 taken from it and the balance disappears 
 without leaving a trace. If " master " 
 drinks (he always does in Burma if he is 
 70 
 
jevergs^Oais SiQbts anD SounOs 
 
 not a missionary), brandy and whisky bot- 
 tles empty themselves mysteriously leav- 
 ing, like the celebrated one in ** Pickwick 
 Papers,'* *' nothing but the cork and the 
 smell '* ; and goods for which an anna was 
 paid in bazaar, through the simple process 
 of carrying them thence to the cook-house, 
 gain so greatly in value that they are 
 charged ** missus *' two annas. 
 
 Still, if, as I said before, one's purse can 
 stand it, the Madrassi makes an incom- 
 parable servant. He revels in big dinners, 
 and will grudge no pains in making one a 
 success ; he will spend hours and hours 
 decorating cakes or making ** fancy fixin's " 
 and the air with which a Madrassi butler 
 waits upon table would put the most pom- 
 pous English servant in the shade. 
 
 The dhohie is also an importation from 
 India. He wears out clothes and inci- 
 dentally washes them. In order to see 
 him at his work of destruction it is neces- 
 sary to go to the river's bank or the edge 
 of a tank. Here the big bundle of dirty 
 clothes is thrown upon the ground, and 
 several garments selected to commence 
 operations with. He twists them into a 
 sort of rope and wades into the river till the 
 water reaches his knees. Next he dips 
 71 
 
©DDs anD :i6nD6 ttom pagoDa XanD 
 
 them in the river till they are thoroughly 
 soaked. Near-by is a large, flat stone partly 
 embedded in the sand, or the trunk of an 
 old tree, the top of which has become pol- 
 ished by previous exertions on his part. 
 Into the water again goes the rope of clothes, 
 then he swings it above his head and brings 
 it down, swash, upon the stone with all his 
 might. He gives a queer little grunt every 
 time, a sort of vicarious offering, for the 
 clothes would groan if they only could. 
 Then over his head go the clothes again, 
 down they come once more, swash, swash, 
 swash ! He pauses every once in a while 
 just long enough to give them another soak- 
 ing and shift his grip a little, then once more 
 he starts and thud, thud, thud, go the 
 clothes till they are clean — and one stage 
 nearer the rag-bag. 
 
 The hheestie also hails from the farther 
 side of the Bay of Bengal. He is the 
 water-carrier, and can be seen plodding 
 slowly along with a goatskin full of water 
 upon his back. He makes one think of 
 Bible pictures as he labors past, but this 
 sort of hheestie is doomed ; the goatskin 
 is passing away, before what? You would 
 guess a long time and then not get it right 
 for you would probably not think it likely 
 72 
 
JBvcvQ^^^^ SiQbta anD Sounds 
 
 that Mr. Rockefeller is slowly but surely 
 changing a custom older than the very 
 Bible itself, but it is a fact. The goatskin 
 is disappearing before the tin can, and now 
 the water-carrier usually brings you water 
 not as he used to in a skin sack, but over 
 his shoulder now is a coolie stick and at 
 either end of this stick hangs a large can 
 which, when it left America, was full of 
 Standard oil. In fact, these cans have be- 
 come a standard for judging a great many 
 things in Burma, and are often used to 
 measure grain and oil and other things. 
 
 The syce must not be left unmentioned 
 or unnoticed when talking of servants. 
 He too, is a native of India. His work is 
 to attend to the pony ; he is, in fact, the 
 groom, and is one of the most remarkable 
 runners you would meet with during a 
 journey around the entire world. After he 
 has saddled his master's pony and helped 
 the *' sahib *' to mount, he trots along be- 
 hind the horse ready, at a moment's notice, 
 to render assistance if needed, or be at the 
 bridle the moment the rein is drawn. These 
 men will run for great distances, and not 
 only that, but they often carry the polo 
 stick or the tennis racket which the rider 
 wishes to use at the end of his ride. 
 73 
 
©DOS anD l£ni>e from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 The barber, usually a Mohammedan, plies 
 his trade in the open street. A fellow-be- 
 liever wishing his head shaved or his beard 
 trimmed takes his seat upon the ground and 
 the barber sits before him. Unmindful of 
 the crowds passing and repassing, he takes 
 a few drops of water from a little brass pot 
 and dampens the head of his customer — his 
 victim, I had almost written ; then without 
 any soap, he commences to scrape, and he 
 works away till his job is finished in a most 
 workmanlike style. He is rewarded with a 
 few copper pieces ; his customer marches 
 off and he is ready for ** Next ! " 
 
 A *' box wallah," or in plain English a 
 hawker or pedler, often puts in an appear- 
 ance with silks, silver trinkets, embroider- 
 ies, and curios for sale. One must learn 
 how to buy from him, however. It is a 
 work of art and patience as well to make 
 a purchase. After he has spread his silks 
 over the veranda floor, and you, or rather 
 your wife, has made her selection, she asks 
 the price. .He names a sum at least twice, 
 more often thrice, what he would be will- 
 ing to sell it for, and then comes a great 
 deal of chaffering and beating down. Sup- 
 pose, for example, he says twelve rupees. 
 You laugh at him and ask him what the 
 74 
 
JBvctBsOaB SiQbts anD Sounds 
 
 " proper " price is, not the ** first asking " 
 price, but he assures you that he gave 
 eleven rupees and a half, and only expects 
 to make one single, solitary eight-anna 
 piece upon the transaction. You know that 
 he is telling a lie and laugh his story to 
 scorn, so he looks at your wife and says, 
 ** What will missus give? Missus make 
 proper price." ** Four rupees," says your 
 better half promptly. Now it is the 
 hawker's turn to laugh and he folds up his 
 goods as though that ended the bargaining, 
 but you will notice that he does not put 
 them back into his box or bundle. After a 
 great deal of talk in which he assures you 
 that he is a very poor man and that you are 
 very rich and great, and will not miss a 
 rupee or two, he comes down a little in his 
 price, a rupee at a time, each time that he 
 lowers his price protesting that he is losing 
 money, but your wife remains firm. Finally 
 in apparent desperation he draws a rupee 
 from his pocket and offers to gamble. ** You 
 toss me whether you pay five rupees or 
 seven," he says. Of course, as you are a 
 missionary, you shake your head at this ; 
 then he holds up the piece of silk, shakes 
 it, shows you how beautiful it is, assures 
 you again that he is a very poor man and 
 75 
 
®DD0 anO BnDs ttom ipagoOa XanD 
 
 did not make a rupee in profit the day be- 
 fore, then he tosses it toward you and says : 
 **ril sell it for six." Your wife may per- 
 haps raise her price eight annas (half a ru- 
 pee) and with many groans he says that 
 he will let it go for five and to end the 
 chaffering you give in. 
 
 He swears solemnly that you have given 
 him four rupees less than he paid for it and 
 that the only hope he has of making up his 
 loss is by asking ** plenty big prices" at 
 every other house at which he will call that 
 day, but if you tell him that you do not 
 wish to cheat him and offer to give the 
 goods back to him if he will return your 
 money he shakes his head and says he likes 
 to be cheated ; that is his way of doing 
 business. 
 
 These box wallahs have one peculiar 
 superstition. When they start out upon 
 their rounds in the morning they must 
 either make a sale in the first house in 
 which they open their pack, or have bad 
 luck throughout the entire day, and rather 
 than make no sale they are willing to sell 
 an article — preferably an inexpensive one 
 in this case — at a real loss, and so keep 
 their good luck. 
 
 The ** coffee wallah " is another common 
 76 
 
Bven2s:&ai8 Sifibts anD SounDa 
 
 sight upon the street. Like the barber, he 
 is usually a follower of the prophet and 
 turns his face toward Mecca and bows pro- 
 foundly each night when the muezzin 
 mounts the minaret of the mosque and 
 calls the faithful to their prayers. 
 
 He carries a coolie stick over his shoulder 
 at one end of which is a hanging tray cov- 
 ered with cups and saucers. This is bal- 
 anced at the other end by a basket in which 
 is a large iron chattie or cooking-pot full of 
 hot coffee, with a charcoal fire burning 
 beneath. He walks slowly through bazaar 
 or the principal streets, ready at a moment's 
 notice to sit upon the ground and dish out a 
 cup of coffee to a customer. 
 
 His great rival in business is the Chinese 
 chow chow man. The Celestial carries a 
 much more complicated trading outfit, how- 
 ever. At each end of a bamboo coolie stick 
 is a sort of table, or rather number of tables, 
 one beneath the other, something like a set 
 of shelves joined at the corners. Upon 
 each are a number of dishes containing 
 mysterious looking chow. It would be a 
 very difficult matter to guess of what each 
 dish is composed, perhaps a hopeless task, 
 but his customers have no fear apparently ; 
 they sit upon the ground and eat, using the 
 
®DD0 anD ;6nO0 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 chop sticks belonging to the outfit and which 
 are at each customer's service, without any 
 qualms either of conscience or stomach. 
 No wonder that almost every native has 
 dyspepsia ; the only wonder is that any are 
 free, and as a matter of fact the number is 
 very small. 
 
 Once in a while an Indian snake-charmer 
 puts in an appearance with his shallow 
 baskets full of cobras, his pipe, and his 
 snake-stone. He is usually a great fraud. 
 The fangs have all been drawn from his 
 snakes so that they are harmless, and any- 
 body could handle them with impunity. 
 He plays upon his pipe and makes them 
 ** dance," as he calls it, or in other words 
 sway back and forth while his flute squeaks 
 a discordant noise called by courtesy a tune. 
 
 He finally handles one snake which turns 
 upon him and is supposed to bite his hand. 
 He pretends to suffer great agony as well as 
 fear. He grasps the hand bitten, wrings it, 
 groans aloud, and twists as though he had 
 the colic. Between groans and grunts he 
 opens a very dirty cotton bag and from it 
 takes a small flat stone. This stone cures 
 the wound the snake did not make, as an 
 Irishman might put it. He spits upon one 
 side of the stone and presses it to the place 
 7^ 
 
Bvcri2*&ai2 QiQbte anD Sounds 
 
 where the cobra is supposed to have stung 
 him. The effect is instantaneous ; the 
 groans cease, his twisting also stops, and in 
 a few minutes, the saliva having dried, the 
 stone falls from his hand and lo, no wound 
 is there, not even a mark, nothing but dirt, 
 although it must be confessed there is a 
 good deal of that. 
 
 The crowd gathered around to witness 
 the performance, however, sometimes takes 
 the pantomime for solid truth and is much 
 impressed. Scores of children stand and 
 gape and wonder, with a little fear too, on 
 their faces ; even the babies tied to the 
 backs of their big sisters seem to enter into 
 the wonder. Poor little urchins, some of 
 the elder children that carry them are not 
 much more than babies themselves or very 
 much larger than their charges, and it is 
 wonderful how many babies there are ; for 
 almost every woman's back is decorated in 
 the same manner. 
 
 When a Burman woman wants to carry 
 her child, she bends forward till her back 
 is at right angles with the rest of her body ; 
 then upon it she puts her child. A shawl 
 is thrown over the baby and the ends 
 brought in front of the mother's chest, over 
 one arm, and under the other ; then the 
 
 79 
 
©OD0 anD BnOs trom iPagoDa 3LanD 
 
 woman straightens up and her baby is fast 
 upon her back, with nothing visible but a 
 small head with coal black hair and eyes of 
 the same color. The woman works, sits 
 down, gets up, chats, smokes, cooks, and 
 eats, and the baby's head wobbles and 
 shakes as though it would come off, but it 
 is never hurt apparently and looks quite 
 happy in spite of the shaking. 
 
 Death visits all countries, and is no more 
 a respecter of persons in Burma than in 
 America, and the funeral procession is one 
 of the most unique sights one sees in the 
 land of the pagoda. The cofifin is always 
 highly decorated. It is covered with bright- 
 colored paper, usually with gilt braid tacked 
 along the edges, and often has pictures, 
 brightly colored, pasted upon the sides and 
 lid. The coffm is made in the street before 
 the house where the dead body lies in full 
 view of every passer-by. It is made of 
 rough boards nailed together, often with 
 wide gaps between, but the bright-colored 
 paper or cloth covers up all these defects, 
 and when finished it is, to Burman eyes at 
 least, a thing of beauty. 
 
 In order to convey it to the cemetery it 
 is placed upon a bier made of bamboos, 
 gaily decorated with flags, streamers, silk 
 80 
 
}6veri2*&ai2 Siflbts anD Sounds 
 
 handkerchiefs, and gaudy paper panels 
 upon which figures of men, women, and 
 nats have been drawn. These biers are 
 often a dozen feet high and the coffin is 
 perched several feet above the shoulders of 
 the men carrying it. Sometimes the bier is 
 built upon a sort of car and is drawn to the 
 cemetery by scores of men and women, 
 friends of the dead. 
 
 The head of the procession is always 
 formed by coolies, walking two and two, 
 each couple bearing between them a bam- 
 boo pole upon which is hung a large number 
 of presents, jackets, blankets, robes, fans, 
 food, mats, etc. These are for the priests 
 and are carried to the different monasteries 
 after the ceremonies are over. 
 
 Next comes a band of musicians with 
 horns, fifes, gongs, and clappers making a 
 tremendous din ; then comes the procession 
 proper, men, women, and children all mixed 
 up without any order ; laughing, shouting, 
 and joking, with no more solemnity than 
 though they were on their way to the 
 circus. 
 
 Seven days afterward there is a great 
 
 commotion in the house from which the 
 
 funeral started. Fires are made in the 
 
 street and great pans of food are cooked 
 
 F 8i 
 
©DOS anD J6nDs from iPagoDa XanO 
 
 over them. This is the funeral feast, a 
 large part of it going to the monasteries, 
 but the neighbors and beggars, of course, 
 come in for their share of the good things. 
 If the relatives of the dead man should omit 
 holding this feast, the ghost of the departed 
 would, without any doubt whatever, return 
 to its old home and haunt it and his old 
 companions as well. 
 
 Except in the larger cities where they are 
 under the charge of the municipality and 
 therefore have an Englishman at the head, 
 the Burman cemetery is nothing more than 
 a piece of waste land. Vegetation is very 
 dense in Burma, and after the rains the 
 bushes which have grown luxuriantly dur- 
 ing the wet weather are sometimes chopped 
 down, sometimes not, but that is the extent 
 of the work expended on it ; nothing is 
 done to keep it in order and I know no 
 more desolate sight in the wide world than 
 these broken pieces of ground littered with 
 the fragments of old biers which have been 
 thrown upon the graves and left to rot and 
 decay. The tattered ends of gaudy paper, 
 the ends of bamboos, and around all the 
 coarse grass and ugly weeds — the most 
 dismal sight in all Burma. On the Shan 
 hills I have seen graves which have been 
 82 
 
)6vcri2sDai2 Sights anD Sounds 
 
 torn open by dogs, the flimsy coffins broken, 
 and the dead bodies eaten. My wife and 
 myself once disturbed a number of dogs at 
 such a ghastly repast, and one, as it darted 
 away towards the village carried a skull in 
 its mouth to feast upon afterwards. 
 
 The English cemetery presents one very 
 strange sight — that is, strange to a new- 
 comer, though one soon gets used to it- 
 graves already dug and waiting for their 
 occupants. In a tropical country the fune- 
 ral must necessarily follow very quickly 
 after death. In case a cholera epidemic 
 pays the city a visit — unfortunately not a 
 rare occurrence — there is occasion for even 
 more speedy interment, but under ordinary 
 circumstances should a person die during 
 the morning he is buried at sunset and, 
 should he die during the night, he is carried 
 to his last home at sunrise and so the grave 
 ready-dug is a necessity. 
 
 I have been much struck by the fact that, 
 as the old saying has it, ** prejudices die 
 hard." Take the Bhamo cemetery, for 
 example. The center is reserved for the 
 *' Church of England," the Episcopalians, 
 as we would call them in America, mem- 
 bers of the Established Church ; but if a 
 man during life has been a dissenter he is 
 85 
 
Ot>t>0 ant) lBnt)S from iPasoDa XanD 
 
 buried "alongside the wall " in the worst 
 part of the cemetery. The first funeral I 
 witnessed in Bhamo was that of an Ameri- 
 can miner who had come to Burma hunting 
 gold. He was buried among the dissenters 
 and the native Christians, members of the 
 Baptist church, and a few months ago an 
 English soldier was laid away near the 
 miner. This man was not buried near his 
 comrades because in life they had ** fol- 
 lowed the big drum " to parade service and 
 listened to prayers read by the chaplain in 
 ** church,'* while he, poor fellow, had gone 
 to ** chapel" and listened to a Methodist 
 minister, therefore he was not counted 
 worthy of filling a grave in " consecrated " 
 ground. This is an old English custom now 
 happily obsolete, I believe, in England, 
 where broader and more charitable views 
 have prevailed over old-time prejudices, 
 but it still flourishes in at least one city in 
 Burma if not in others. 
 
 Among the large number of natives of 
 India that live in Burma are many Moham- 
 medans. There is a mosque in every large 
 city and near it a raised platform or minaret 
 which the muezzin ascends at certain hours 
 to call ** the faithful " to prayers. I once 
 saw a minaret which was made from the 
 84 
 
}8veri2*Dai2 Sigbts ant) SounOe 
 
 trunk of an old tree, the platform at the top 
 being reached by a small ladder made of 
 bamboo, which leaned against the trunk. 
 Each evening at sunset we saw the priest 
 mount this platform ; then, with his opened 
 hands raised, he called in a peculiar, high- 
 pitched tone which could be heard for a 
 wonderfully long distance. 
 
 Upon hearing the summons every good 
 Mohammedan ceases his work, spreads his 
 mat, turns his face toward Mecca, and prays. 
 Should he be in his shop, in bazaar, or upon 
 the street, it makes but little difference. 
 He stands, raises his hands, bows, kneels, 
 and goes through the prescribed formula in 
 as unconcerned a fashion as though he were 
 alone in his house. 
 
 The Mohammedan priest calling his fol- 
 lowers to prayer has a counterpart among 
 the Burmans. Every night at dusk the 
 Buddhist priests enter the idol-houses and 
 chant prayers before the idols. Just before 
 this happens a man — almost always an old 
 one, who wishes to gain the reputation of 
 being a very holy personage — takes a three- 
 cornered gong in one hand and a mallet or 
 short, heavy piece of wood, in the other, 
 and marches slowly along the principal 
 streets, striking the gong as he goes. Upon 
 
 85 
 
(^DDd anD iBnDa trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 this signal the old women leave their houses, 
 bearing glasses or cups of flowers upon 
 their heads, and rosary in hand, make their 
 way to the idol-houses, where they devoutly 
 sit behind the priests, their hands clasped 
 before their faces in adoration, earning merit 
 which will help to atone for the sins com- 
 mitted during the day. One very rarely 
 sees any but very old women going thus 
 evening by evening to the idol-houses. 
 The younger people practically never attend 
 save upon some special occasion such as 
 feasts or when they wish to get something, 
 when they will go with offerings night after 
 night and listen to the yellow-robed, shaven 
 priests. After the ceremony is over — it 
 does not last very long — the old women 
 return to their homes to gossip and smoke. 
 One strange sound often heard at night 
 is singing, or, rather, chanting. In the old 
 days there were, of course, no lamp-posts 
 in the cities ; in fact, there are none now 
 except in the towns under a municipal 
 government, so that, except on moonlight 
 nights, the streets were pitch dark soon 
 after sunset. This afforded an excellent 
 opportunity for barefooted thieves to stalk 
 unwary passengers, so there was a law that 
 after a certain time at night every person 
 86 
 
jBvcvQ^tfdi^ Sigbts anD Sounds 
 
 abroad must sing at the top of his voice and 
 thus show he was an honest citizen, not 
 afraid of anybody's knowing his where- 
 abouts and, although now in the cities lamps 
 line the streets, the old custom has not en- 
 tirely fallen into disuse, and one often hears 
 at night a man passing along the street 
 singing at the very top of his voice. 
 
 One of the commonest sights is that of 
 persons kindly carrying a search-warrant 
 through a friend's hair. The patient sits 
 in the sunlight so that the operator can see 
 to do his work well, lets down his or her 
 hair, and the search commences. The ver- 
 min found are sometimes not killed — such 
 an act would be against Buddhist law — but 
 are dropped upon the ground and allowed 
 to crawl away. 
 
 The Burmans are not dirty. They are, I 
 think, the cleanest of Orientals. They 
 bathe daily and often wash their clothes, 
 but everybody, men and women, wear long 
 hair and, as they always bathe in cold 
 water, it is impossible to keep their heads 
 free from vermin. 
 
 Among the lower classes — the coolies, 
 for instance — body vermin are very com- 
 mon, so that during a jungle trip, when the 
 caravan halts for a rest, the coolies have a 
 
 87 
 
®DD0 anD BnDs trom pagoDa UanD 
 
 habit of pulling off their jackets to hunt 
 through the seams. During our first jungle 
 trip, when my wife saw the coolie who 
 carried our bed engaged in this necessary 
 occupation she said "it made her shiver,'* 
 and it must be acknowledged it does not 
 look nice, but strange to say, although we 
 took many trips the first two years we were 
 in Burma and, although my work carries 
 me into all sorts of houses and all sorts of 
 places, clean and dirty, yet in fourteen 
 years I have never found vermin upon my 
 clothes. They seem to be discriminating. 
 
 The staple food of the Burman is rice. 
 A rice field, or paddy field as it is usually 
 called in Anglo-Indian colloquial, is a very 
 different affair from a wheat field at home. 
 There are two kinds of fields, and two kinds 
 of rice are raised, the highland and the low- 
 land, the former being much harder and 
 less nutritious than the latter. 
 
 When a Kachin wishes to make a rice 
 field he selects a mountainside, and during 
 the dry season sets fire to the jungle cover- 
 ing it, the ashes from the burnt trees being 
 the only dressing upon it. Then upon the 
 side of the hill, often almost as steep as the 
 side of a house, he sows his paddy, which 
 in due time is reaped and the jungle allowed 
 
Everi2*Dai2 Slgbts anD Sounds 
 
 to grow again. Next year he selects an- 
 other site, and thus he goes on, burning 
 and planting, planting and burning, till in 
 the course of a few years the first field has 
 become covered once more with trees all 
 ready to be burnt again. It would be dif- 
 ficult to conceive a more wasteful method, 
 but who cares? Not the Kachin, that is 
 certain. The territory is wide, the hillsides 
 numberless, and the jungle dense. Besides, 
 " the easiest way is always the best way " 
 in the East. 
 
 Lowland rice growing among the Bur- 
 mans is, however, a very different affair. 
 Rice demands a large amount of moisture ; 
 in fact, it is planted and sprouts in mud. 
 The field is divided and subdivided into 
 numberless smaller fields, each separated 
 from its neighbor by raised banks or ridges 
 of earth. These banks are made for the 
 purpose of holding the water with which 
 each field is flooded. 
 
 The Burman plow is a primitive affair. 
 In Upper Burma it is usually nothing more 
 than a sharp, heavy stick with one handle, 
 and does little more than scratch the ground 
 as it is dragged along by a couple of powerful 
 buffaloes. This is hard, heavy work, as the 
 animals and the man behind them some- 
 
 89 
 
©ODs anD iBn^B from iPagoDa XanO 
 
 times sink at every step almost up to their 
 knees in mud. But at last the plowing is 
 finished and the seed is sown. Soon the 
 green stalks of the paddy plant appear, 
 and then comes another laborious task, 
 for each plant is pulled up by the roots, 
 tied into bundles, and then transplanted 
 from the "nursery" into the big, wide 
 field. Imagine working in a paddy field all 
 day long up to one's knees in mud and 
 water, with a fierce tropical sun beating 
 down and the smell from water, mud, and 
 manure rising in clouds. Imagine this and 
 then you will not be surprised to hear that 
 the men and women that do this work get 
 fever and rheumatism. 
 
 Birds play havoc with the ripening grain, 
 and many are the devices used to scare the 
 marauders off. The scarecrow, of course, 
 is one. Strings are also stretched across 
 the fields, and pieces of bamboo and rags 
 tied to them flutter in the wind. Another 
 favorite way, especially among the Shans, 
 is to split bamboos for almost their entire 
 length. The solid end is buried in the 
 ground, several bamboos being planted in 
 different parts of the field, and to the split 
 end of each, near the top, a string is fas- 
 tened and carried across the field to a hut 
 90 
 
J6vcrB*Dai2 Sigbts anD SounOs 
 
 in which small boys take their station. 
 They draw these strings, pulling the split 
 ends of the bamboo far apart, then letting 
 go the string suddenly, the two sides of the 
 bamboo come together with a report loud 
 enough to frighten away any bird with 
 average nerves. As each string in turn is 
 pulled it sometimes sounds almost like a 
 volley of small arms. 
 
 Instead of these wooden clappers the 
 boys are sometimes armed with bows made 
 out of bamboo, but instead of shooting 
 arrows they use small round pellets made 
 of clay baked in the sun till they are as 
 hard as stone. Boys become wonderfully 
 expert with these weapons, and woe betide 
 the bird that does not fly when they make 
 their appearance. 
 
 After the paddy has been reaped, 
 threshed, and ground it is brought into the 
 cities as rice and sold. Vast quantities of 
 paddy also go to the rice mills of Rangoon, 
 where it is prepared, graded, and exported 
 to Europe and Egypt. 
 
 One part of the process of turning paddy 
 into rice is very interesting. The husks 
 are pounded off the paddy, and this breaks 
 a large number of the grains, so that some 
 are large and some but small pieces of ker- 
 91 
 
©DD6 anD BnDs from iPagoOa XanD 
 
 nels. The separating of the whole from 
 the broken rice is usually done by girls and 
 women. A large flat tray is used, and sev- 
 eral handfuls of the mixed grain are placed 
 upon it ; the tray is round with a raised 
 edge, is made of bamboo, and is called a 
 san hyah. Several handfuls of the mixed 
 grain are placed upon it, and then the girl 
 takes it in both hands and tosses the rice 
 in the air, skilfully catching it upon the 
 tray again as it falls and moving it so that 
 the large, heavy grains fall to one side 
 and the broken pieces upon the other. 
 Then with a dexterous turn of her wrist 
 she tosses the good rice into a basket at 
 her side and throws the broken grains upon 
 a large mat at her feet. 
 
 Some of the animals of Burma are cer- 
 tainly worthy of a place in this chapter, 
 and first and foremost comes the pariah, 
 usually known as the **pi" dog. A trav- 
 eler once said that the **pi" dog had all 
 the faults and failings of his race and none 
 of the good ones to balance the account. 
 He receives no ** bringing up " as does his 
 relative in America, but from the time his 
 eyes are opened he has to learn to run and 
 dodge stones, and he has to learn too, 
 almost as soon to forage for himself, for 
 92 
 
although his mother and his brothers and 
 sisters nominally belong to the person liv- 
 ing in the house they claim as home, that 
 person does not consider it his duty to pro- 
 vide food for him. If the dog of highest 
 degree in America had to live under similar 
 conditions he would speedily degenerate into 
 the snapping, snarling, ugly-tempered, and 
 yet withal cowardly brute, called a ** pi." 
 
 The cheekiest, most impudent, and yet 
 the smartest animal that walks, runs, 
 crawls, or flies, is the Burman crow. As 
 fearless as the "pi" is cowardly, and as 
 smart as the dog is dull, the crow is one of 
 the greatest pests in Burma. He is every- 
 where. He steals a livelihood, and yet 
 does it in such a cool, impudent manner 
 that one has to admire him, although he is 
 often the cause of a great amount of bad 
 temper and even bad language. 
 
 The crow will steal the breakfast from 
 the plate as the boy is carrying it from the 
 cook-house to the dining-room ; he will 
 boldly fly off with a chop from the dining- 
 room table, or steal a cake or a crust from 
 the baby's hand as it sits on the ground. 
 The man that, like Pharaoh's baker of old, 
 carries baskets of bread upon his head is 
 obliged to cover his basket with a cloth or 
 93 
 
©DDs anD 36nD0 from ipago^a Xan& 
 
 he would have no wares to sell in a very 
 few minutes after leaving his house. I 
 have seen a crow knock the lid off a pot 
 and steal potatoes which were cooking in 
 it over the fire, and if crows were only 
 strong enough they would steal the tradi- 
 tional red-hot stove and not turn a feather ; 
 of that I am confident. 
 
 A few weeks ago the cook placed a silver 
 spoon on the dining-room table and went 
 into the kitchen ; a moment after he came 
 running in and cried out that a crow had 
 flown away with it. Sure enough there 
 sat a crow upon the top of a jack-fruit tree 
 with something shining in his mouth, and 
 after he had been pelted and driven from 
 tree to tree in the compound by a squad of 
 schoolboys, he dropped his prize and one 
 of the boys brought the teaspoon triumph- 
 antly to my wife. 
 
 Crows are wise too. For example, see 
 that dog eating a bone on the veranda? He 
 is gnawing away very contentedly, but 
 gives a growl and lifts his head threaten- 
 ingly as a crow alights upon the railing, 
 and turning his head very much to one 
 side gives a loud, long, deep caw. The 
 dog knows full well that his bone is in 
 danger. He has lost many a sweet morsel 
 94 
 
B\>cr^=Dai3 QiQhte anD Sounds 
 
 and tidbit ere this, so he growls more 
 angrily than ever as a second crow joins 
 the first upon the railing, turns his head to 
 one side with a sly look, and gives a deep 
 croak as his friend had done. 
 
 Now comes an exhibition of team play on 
 the part of the two crows. One alone could 
 not possibly get the bone away from its 
 owner, but the two can do it easily, and 
 although the dog has often been fooled be- 
 fore in exactly the same way, he falls a 
 victim to the wiles of his enemies as easily 
 as when first the trick was played at his 
 expense. 
 
 Crow number one continues to sit upon 
 the veranda railing and give a croak or two 
 of approval as his friend flies behind the dog 
 and begins to peck at him. The dog growls 
 and shows his teeth but that does not worry 
 his tormentor in the least ; crow number 
 two continues to deliver his pecks on the 
 dog's back and his companion continues his 
 approving croaks till dog-nature can stand 
 it no longer and whirling around he attacks 
 his tormentor in fury. Here is the oppor- 
 tunity waited-for on the part of crow num- 
 ber one ; he swoops upon the bone from 
 his perch on the railing, at the same time 
 giving a final triumphant croak, and flies 
 95 
 
Qt>t>6 ano JBnt>6 from ipaeo&a 3Lan& 
 
 away with the bone in his beak to the top 
 of a tree, whither he is followed by crow 
 number two who has, of course, easily made 
 his escape from the dog, and both fight 
 for possession of their booty, while their 
 victim howls, barks, and snaps in unavail- 
 ing anger. 
 
 But although crows are so smart they can 
 be easily deceived too. When a Burman 
 wishes to set out a load of fish in the sun 
 to dry he takes a make-believe bow with 
 an arrow tied to the string and points the 
 end toward the mat upon which his fish 
 are drying, and the crows, thinking it is a 
 trap and the fish merely a great bait, will 
 give it the widest possible berth — the fish 
 are as safe from them as though they were 
 locked up in an iron, burglar-proof safe. 
 Sometimes the fisherman ties some strings 
 across and across, a few inches above the 
 mat, leaving often a loop to dangle in the 
 air ; this plan is just as effectual as the bow 
 and arrow. 
 
 The Burmans have a saying, "The crow 
 is a thief, the hawk is a highwayman, but 
 the vulture is a ' su daw gaung^ " (a very 
 virtuous person, a saint, in fact). The vul- 
 ture gets his good character from the fact 
 that he never takes life, but feeds entirely 
 
 96 
 
JBvcc^tibsi^ SiQbte anD Sounds 
 
 upon dead animals, while the crow and the 
 hawk do not hesitate to kill anything they 
 can tackle successfully. 
 
 Still, although the crow is a nuisance, 
 there are two sides even to the crow ques- 
 tion. Crows do the work that scavengers 
 do at home, and it would be very unpleas- 
 ant to live in a Burman town without them 
 and the pariah, for the latter are scavengers 
 too. Odds and ends of food, burnt rice that 
 sticks to the edges and bottoms of cooking- 
 pots, and the skins of vegetables and fruit 
 are thrown in front of the houses or through 
 cracks in the floor, as the easiest way of 
 getting rid of them. Then the crow, ever 
 on the watch, carries away what in a few 
 hours would be a decaying, germ-breeding 
 mass. Oh, yes, the crow, in spite of his 
 exasperating voice and pilfering ways is 
 a very useful member of Burmese life, a 
 sort of blessing in disguise — sometimes very 
 thoroughly disguised. 
 
 Burma is the land of ants ; they just 
 overrun the country. Red ants, black ants, 
 and white ants ; big ants, little ants, and 
 middling-sized ants. They live in the jun- 
 gle, in the garden, and in the house ; in fact, 
 to enumerate the places where they live 
 would b-e like telling in what places the 
 G 97 
 
©DD0 anD JBnDs trom iPagoDa 5LanO 
 
 frogs were found during the plagues of 
 Egypt. They climb up the posts, run over 
 the floors, and climb up the legs of the 
 tables. The meat-safe or cupboard has to 
 be made with legs, one end of which must 
 be set in small dishes full of water, other- 
 wise the food would soon become black 
 with ants. If one should kill a roach or a 
 beetle at night, by morning myriads of these 
 little creatures will have put in an appear- 
 ance and will drag it across the floor, up 
 posts a dozen feet or more high, and away 
 into their storehouse, often situated under 
 the roof between the joists of the floors. 
 A few grains of sugar spilled from the table 
 at meals call out swarms of ants, so many, 
 in fact, that they form a regular army 
 marching and counter-marching till they 
 are ruthlessly swept away by a broom, and 
 then some of them revenge themselves by 
 running up the handle and biting the hand 
 and arm of the man holding it. 
 
 The white ants, however, are the most 
 destructive. They will eat anything in a 
 house except stones and cast-iron. A piece 
 of pine wood left out of doors will be rid- 
 dled in a few hours. They eat the bottoms 
 of the house-posts which are set in the 
 ground, and play havoc generally with wood 
 
 98 
 
of almost every sort. It is because they do 
 not eat teak as readily as some other kinds 
 of lumber that makes that wood so useful 
 in building purposes in Burma. 
 
 When a house is built the bottoms of the 
 posts are smeared with tar or earth oil, but 
 even this does not preserve them indefin- 
 itely. After a few years the white ants 
 attack them, and when that happens it is 
 the beginning of the end of that post. I 
 have taken a knife or a screwdriver and 
 broken a hole into the heart of a post as 
 big around as myself, the wood cutting as 
 easily as punk. Originally this post was 
 as hard as oak but had become just honey- 
 combed by these destructive little crea- 
 tures. The damage they do is ridiculously 
 out of proportion to their size, for although 
 they are but little larger than the general 
 run of ants the results of their work cost 
 many thousands, nay, lacs of rupees in the 
 course of a few years. 
 
 Bees are very prevalent in Burma and 
 some of them build their homes in most 
 wonderful places. There is one kind of 
 bee that builds its nest out of mud in any 
 hole that strikes its fancy, and fills it with 
 caterpillars for its grubs to feed upon after 
 they are hatched. Holes in posts, or where 
 99 
 
 tore 
 
©DD0 anD JSnDB trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 a nail has been pulled out are favorite 
 spots ; so are keyholes and the corners of 
 rooms, but the very strangest place of all 
 that I have yet seen was in my stethoscope. 
 One morning I placed the instrument to my 
 ears to listen to a patient's heart but to my 
 surprise could not hear a sound. The 
 stethoscope looked all right and yet I could 
 not hear with it. Finally I blew down one 
 side, or rather tried to blow, for I found it 
 was plugged up, and a sliver of bamboo 
 showed that an enterprising bee had spent 
 the afternoon previous in filling up the 
 tubes as nests for her little ones. Unfor- 
 tunately for her the work was thrown away 
 and she had to start over again in a new 
 place, but it did not improve the stethoscope. 
 When one first comes to Burma one is 
 always interested in the gekkoes or house 
 lizards. These little fellows run over walls 
 and ceilings, sometimes as many as a dozen 
 in a single room. They are welcome too, 
 for they feed upon flies and other insects 
 and thus help to keep them down. There 
 is a kind of large lizard that lives in houses 
 and which sometimes reaches a foot or two 
 in length. It is called a tauc tau because 
 its cry sounds very much like dauc tau ! 
 or like a very affected person saying doctor ! 
 
 100 
 
JBvcri3*&ai2 Sigbta anD SounO0 
 
 A very funny story is told of one of our 
 medical missionaries. He arrived in Ran- 
 goon and was taken to the house of another 
 missionary and at night was awakened by 
 hearing the most blood-curdling moans. 
 ** Oh — oh — oh — dauc tau ! dauc tau ! dauc 
 tau ! oh — — 1 " 
 
 He thought it was a native who could 
 speak but broken English, and so he sprang 
 out of bed and shouted, ** Hullo ! here I am, 
 what do you want ? What's the matter .? " 
 Nobody answered, so thinking the sufferer 
 had fainted he shouted for his host who 
 came running out of his room in a fright. 
 The doctor declared there was somebody in 
 mortal agony that had called him and to- 
 gether they made the rounds of the house, 
 but of course in vain. 
 
 The older missionary said the doctor must 
 have had nightmare and advised him to 
 sleep upon his side instead of on his back, 
 but the latter declared he was positive he 
 had heard groans after he woke up and 
 was just as sure somebody had called 
 ** doctor." 
 
 Suddenly through the silent house the 
 groans rang out again. '* Oh — oh — oh, dauc 
 tau! dauc tau!'* ** There," cried the doctor 
 triumphantly, ** what do you make of that ? 
 
 lOI 
 
®J)D0 anO BnD6 from iPaaoDa XanD 
 
 Didn't I tell you there was a sick native 
 around somewhere ? " 
 
 The old missionary smited a little, led the 
 way to a big fan that was fastened upon 
 the wall by way of decoration, moved it a 
 little, and away went a huge lizard. 
 
 ** There's your sick native, my boy," he 
 said, pointing to the lizard, and although 
 that happened years ago, the doctor has 
 never heard the last of the story and 
 probably never will. 
 
 102 
 
®t)&0 an^ jenb0 of ^Travel 
 
Ill 
 
 HE mighty river Irawadi, running 
 through Pagoda Land from one end 
 to the other, is the great water high- 
 way of Burma, but I will leave the globe- 
 trotter to describe steamer travel, as well 
 as the railroad, for they two constitute 
 about all he usually sees, and instead will 
 say a little of journeys up narrow creeks, 
 along byways in the plains, and over the 
 jungle-covered mountains which run for 
 several hundreds of miles through the 
 country like a huge backbone. 
 
 To tell the truth, it generally means very 
 hard travel when passing over these hills 
 and mountains of Burma; the **hill and 
 water country," as the Shan pictur- 
 esquely calls his home. The Indian gov- 
 ernment has built magnificent roads in 
 many directions ; some of the finest high- 
 ways I have ever seen are in Burma, and 
 great credit is due the Department of 
 Public Works for the engineering skill dis- 
 played in surveying and building them, but 
 unfortunately one cannot always keep to 
 105 
 
Qt>t>B anD BnD6 ttom iPaaoDa XanD 
 
 these government roads with their easy 
 grades, their mile-posts, and their rest-bun- 
 galows, but has to strike out from them 
 into the jungle where there is nothing but 
 the old Burman paths, a very different 
 proposition. 
 
 One can travel along these great govern- 
 ment highways with the minimum of dis- 
 comfort. The grades are usually so easy 
 that an ox-cart can travel over them. Mile- 
 posts along the wayside tell the traveler 
 what distance he has covered, and bunga- 
 lows in which he can sleep will be found 
 every dozen miles or so. 
 
 Upon his arrival at a rest-bungalow the 
 traveler is met at the compound gate by 
 the janitor, or durwan, as he is termed, 
 who is almost always a native of India. 
 The durwan salaams and leads the way to 
 the bungalow where one finds bedsteads, 
 crockery, tables, chairs, and a punkah and 
 a framed copy of rules — nothing is done in 
 India without that. This bungalow and its 
 furniture are kept up by the government 
 for the accommodation of passengers, the 
 vast majority of whom, of course, are offi- 
 cials, but the non-official European is al- 
 lowed to occupy the building and use the 
 furniture upon payment of a nominal fee, 
 io6 
 
®DD6 anD BnD6 ot XLxavcl 
 
 usually one rupee for each person per day 
 (thirty-three cents). 
 
 In a land where the hotel, save in two or 
 three of the largest cities, is practically un- 
 known, and where one has to carry every- 
 thing he needs upon a journey, it is hard 
 to estimate how great a convenience these 
 good roads and rest-bungalows are. The 
 man who invented the easy chairs found in 
 the latter deserves to be canonized, for he 
 did a great deal more good than many of the 
 saints who at present adorn the calendar. 
 
 The usual mode of traveling over the 
 hills of Burma is on pony-back. The Shan 
 pony is a wonderful little animal and, so 
 far as I know, for its size, is the pluckiest 
 and hardiest sort of horse-flesh. He is small 
 but wonderfully plucky and as sure-footed 
 as a goat. I remember a small piebald be- 
 longing to Mrs. Mix, of our mission. I nick- 
 named him Barkis, because he was such a 
 willing little beast, and although he had a 
 heavy load to carry, he always kept in the 
 van of the procession and would step along 
 with a choppy, mincing gait, and keep it 
 up too, where many another and larger 
 pony would have given in. 
 
 Poor little Barkis once "arrived at great 
 trouble," as the Shans put it. Mrs. Mix, 
 107 
 
®t>t>6 anD JEnDg trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 my wife, and myself were traveling through 
 the jungle on our way to Mongnai, and as 
 we had to cross over a wide plain and then 
 climb a steep mountain, we thought we 
 would save our ponies during the morning 
 so that they would be able to help us later 
 on when we came to scale the mountain. 
 We were traveling along the top of a ridge 
 beside which, every once in a while, lay 
 a buffalo-wallow. These wallows are big 
 holes filled with mud and water, in which 
 buffaloes lie for hours with nothing but the 
 tips of their horns and the ends of their 
 noses showing above the mud. They are 
 sometimes large enough to hold several 
 animals at once. One of these wallows 
 lay right across our path, and some thought- 
 ful Shan had placed the trunk of a small 
 tree over the chasm, forming a sort of rough 
 bridge. For a bare-footed native, even 
 though he might be loaded with two heavy 
 baskets, it was as good and safe as Brook- 
 lyn bridge, but to a white man with shoes 
 on the round trunk looked formidable, es- 
 pecially when one thought that a miisstep 
 would send him floundering into a mud- 
 hole the exact depth of which was mere 
 conjecture. However, if we did not cross 
 the bridge it would mean making a detour 
 io8 
 
®0D5 anD lSr\t>6 of travel 
 
 of almost half a mile, so we decided to risk 
 it, and got to tlie further side in safety. 
 Then we were treated to an impromptu 
 circus act. The boys, with my wife's 
 pony and my own, had gone around the 
 mud-hole and were then about a quarter of 
 a mile away, but the boy in charge of 
 Barkis was much too lazy to follow their 
 example. Instead he had started to lead 
 the pony across the bridge, and just as we 
 reached firm ground in safety, we looked 
 back and saw boy and pony about one- 
 third of their way across the bridge. It 
 was, of course, impossible to turn back 
 then and, as Mrs. Mix put it, " we just 
 waited for the catastrophe." 
 
 Barkis came along as easily and as dain- 
 tily as though walking the tight rope was an 
 everyday affair with him, but just as he got 
 to the middle of the bridge a great horse-fly 
 alighted upon him just forward of the girths. 
 He stopped and bit at it, but that did not 
 relieve him for, evidently forgetting where 
 he was standing, he raised his hind foot to 
 knock his tormentor off. I have no doubt 
 he killed the fly, but the gymnastic feat 
 was too much for him ; he overbalanced 
 himself and fell from the bridge into the 
 wallow with a stupendous splash. Alas, 
 109 
 
©DDs atiD JBnt>s from pagoDa XanO 
 
 poor Barkis ! Even as we watched he dis- 
 appeared from view, and the next instant 
 the very tip of a white nose appeared above 
 the mud, and that was all. He floundered 
 out upon the right side, however, shook him- 
 self, and appeared quite composed and 
 even dignified, although in one minute he 
 had changed from a piebald to a red pony, 
 for, save the tip of his nose before-men- 
 tioned, he was as thoroughly covered with 
 red mud as though he had been plastered. 
 Bridle, saddle, everything was covered ; but 
 what poor Mrs. Mix groaned about most 
 was the fact that her Shan bag was tied to 
 the saddle and was, of course, filled with 
 mud, and her toothbrush lay right at the 
 bottom. It was a melancholy affair in 
 very truth. 
 
 In any book upon Burma the word 
 ** zayat " frequently occurs. These zay- 
 ats are really sleeping and resting-places 
 for travelers, and are usually attached to 
 Buddhist monasteries. They are religious 
 buildings in so much that it is an act which 
 gains merit to build one, and every Bud- 
 dhist Lent the people " ascend the zayats," 
 as the Shans term it, and often sleep there, 
 this also being a meritorious act. 
 
 They are usually the simplest building 
 no 
 
: o 
 
 , o 
 
®DD6 anD JBnt)0 ot travel 
 
 possible. Imagine a floor raised a foot or 
 two from the ground, with posts to support 
 a roof, and you know what a zayat is. The 
 floors and posts are usually of teak wood, 
 although the former is sometimes made of 
 split bamboo. The roof is either thatched 
 or made of boards. Some zayats are highly 
 decorated with carved work, some are mere 
 huts, and they range all the way between. 
 
 These zayats are the hotels of Burma, 
 that is, if it is possible to have a hotel with- 
 out host, servant, attendant, or furniture. 
 A traveler arrives at one after marching all 
 day ; the coolies throw his bed upon the 
 floor; the cook takes the cooking utensils 
 out of one coolie basket and the food out of 
 another, then with the aid of a few stones 
 he makes a cooking-place upon the ground 
 near-by, so that the one building serves the 
 purpose of kitchen, dining-room, parlor, and 
 afterward bedroom as well. 
 
 As before mentioned, these zayats are 
 usually built in a monastery compound ; 
 pagodas are near them, and upon every 
 pagoda hangs a large number of little bells, 
 and their ringing as the evening breeze 
 passes by is sometimes the only notice, 
 save the distant bark of a pariah dog in the 
 village, that the traveler is near the end of 
 III 
 
©DD0 anD JSnOs from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 a long day's journey ; and many a time, 
 weary, hungry, and thirsty these sweet- 
 sounding little bells have heralded the news 
 that we were near rest and food. To this 
 very day I never hear the sound of pagoda 
 bells without thinking of Doctor Luther, 
 for many years a missionary in our society. 
 He used to say that their tinkle was the 
 sweetest and yet the saddest music in the 
 world, for it meant that a darkened soul 
 was groping after light. 
 
 Before one commences a journey it is 
 necessary to "call coolies." A traveler 
 must take his bed with him, of course. 
 This is usually a sort of comfortable, two 
 or three inches thick, made of quilted cot- 
 ton, and a blanket or two. These rolled 
 up in a bundle and covered with a rubber 
 sheet form half a burden, being carried at 
 one end of a coolie stick. Food also has to 
 be carried. Canned beef — bully beef as 
 the Anglo-Indian has it — rice, of course, 
 canned biscuits, canned vegetables — if you 
 can afford such a luxury — a bottle of curry 
 powder, a can or two of condensed milk, 
 coffee, tea, etc. In short, everything likely 
 to be required upon the journey must be 
 carried, save, perhaps, paddy for the ponies 
 and once in a while rice. The last two can 
 
 112 
 
Ot>tf6 anD lEnDs ot travel 
 
 sometimes, not always, be bought at vil- 
 lages through which the traveler passes ; 
 the bazaar gives fruit in season, oranges 
 and bananas being the chief, and some- 
 times too, one can get a few pumpkins and 
 mustard leaves to help make curry. 
 
 In order to carry this outfit coolies are 
 necessary. Karens, Kachins, and other 
 mountain people carry one basket upon 
 their backs, with a strap going across the 
 forehead, but the Shan uses a coolie stick, 
 which is a stout bamboo about five feet 
 long. This coolie stick, or kan as it is 
 called, is passed through the handles of two 
 baskets which balance, one at each end ; a 
 bamboo peg is stuck in to hold them steadily 
 when climbing up the steep mountain 
 passes, and the coolie stick with its double 
 burden is raised to the shoulder with one 
 basket in front and one behind the bearer. 
 
 The amount which constitutes '* cus- 
 tom " for a Shan coolie to carry is ten viss^ 
 a viss being a little more than three pounds, 
 a load thus weighing about thirty-three 
 pounds, and a coolie grumbles if he is ex- 
 pected to carry more than this, and very 
 often objects to going at all ; but when 
 carrying his own goods when going to 
 bazaar or to Lower Burma he will carry 
 H 113 
 
(^DO0 anD jBnt>6 from ipagoDa XanD 
 
 much more, a strong coolie shouldering as 
 much as twenty viss, or more than sixty- 
 six pounds, carrying this load, it must be 
 remembered, over mountains rising from 
 three to nearly seven thousand feet, and 
 that too over trails which a white man finds 
 it difficult to climb unloaded. The coolies 
 from just over the borders of China, where 
 there are a large number of Shan villages, 
 will carry even more than this, their loads 
 sometimes being twenty-three or twenty- 
 four viss. 
 
 I have many a time heard Doctor Gush- 
 ing, our senior Shan missionary, say that 
 he envied the coolie the ease with which 
 he travels. He carries a chattie made of 
 earthenware in which to cook his rice, he 
 has a bag which looks like a footless hose, 
 open at both ends, which he fills with raw 
 rice and ties around his waist, he has one 
 blanket to cover him at night, a little betel- 
 nut to chew and a little tobacco to smoke, 
 and a large sheet of coarse native paper to 
 sleep on, the whole outfit weighing but a 
 few pounds, and with this he starts off and 
 marches all day long. At night he cooks 
 his rice, spreads his paper bed upon the 
 floor of a zayat, covers himself over head 
 and ears with his blanket, and goes to 
 114 
 
Ot>^s an& lBnt>6 of ^Travel 
 
 sleep. Next morning he folds up his sheet 
 of paper, sticks it in his girdle, ties his rice 
 bag around his waist, slips his long sword 
 under his arm, together with a small bag 
 containing his betel-nut box and his pipe, 
 shoulders his burden, and away he goes. 
 He starts before or soon after sunrise and 
 travels for several hours ; then he cooks his 
 rice by the side of a stream, smokes and 
 chews, and has a nap, then he starts again 
 and walks till sunset. If he comes to a 
 river which has to be forded he simply 
 tucks his trousers up beneath his girdle and 
 wades through ; of course, he has bare 
 feet, and in a few minutes after he has 
 gained the farther side his legs are dry. 
 Even if the river is so deep that the water 
 comes up to his waist it is a small matter. 
 His trousers become soaked, it is true, but 
 as they are made of thin cotton cloth they 
 soon get dry and he does not mind a little 
 thing like that ; he is used to it. 
 
 Jungle travel, although at times very 
 hard and fatiguing, is also very interesting. 
 After the day's march to camp out in the 
 open jungle is, to say the least, interesting. 
 If one cannot reach a village and sleep in a 
 zayat it is necessary to camp out. A spot 
 near a stream is chosen, if possible beneath 
 115 
 
©&D0 anD BnDa from iPasoba land 
 
 a large tree. Little huts of brushwood are 
 hastily built by the coolies, water is drawn 
 and rice cooked, then green bamboos are 
 thrown upon the fire. As these bamboos 
 burn the sap between the joints boils, and 
 after a while explodes with a report as loud 
 as that of a Fourth of July cannon cracker. 
 This is done to scare away any tiger that 
 might happen to be prowling about. 
 
 The firelight plays upon the great trees 
 with their masses of deep black foliage ; 
 off in the jungle one hears the hoarse, dis- 
 cordant scream of the wild peacocks, and 
 the call of the barking deer sounds from 
 the deepest glades. All night long the fire 
 burns and flickers, and never mind how 
 often one may wake and look around there 
 is sure to be a coolie or two moving about 
 the fire ; I have sometimes wondered how 
 they got enough sleep. 
 
 Crossing rivers is oftentimes a great 
 bother, especially if one starts out too soon 
 after the rainy season, before the rivers 
 and creeks have resumed their usual cold- 
 weather proportions. Most of the streams 
 have fords where one may cross upon 
 horseback, but now and then it is neces- 
 sary to swim the ponies from one bank to 
 the other. At such places, if the road is a 
 116 
 
®DD0 anD J£n^3 ot Zmvcl 
 
 much-traveled one, there is a ferry and 
 native boats, the ferryman carrying over 
 passengers and goods for a few pice^ while 
 the horses or oxen swim over. Sometimes, 
 however, the ferryman is absent at bazaar 
 or tending to some other business or asleep, 
 making one think of Elijah's taunt to the 
 priests of Baal, for certainly one can stand 
 upon the far side of the river under such 
 circumstances and shout and shout and 
 shout with no better results than came to 
 the priests on Carmel. Even the report of 
 a revolver-shot fired in the air will not 
 always be successful in arousing him ; then 
 it is necessary for a coolie to swim across 
 and commandeer the ferryman's boat, 
 bringing it to our side, and then to ferry us 
 over without the owner's aid. Sometimes 
 the latter person arrives upon the scene just 
 as we reach the end of our trip, in which 
 case he demands toll just as though he 
 had brought us over. He contends that the 
 boat is his, that we ought to have waited 
 a little longer — time is no object with a 
 Shan, he cannot understand why the white 
 man should always be in a hurry — and he 
 is therefore entitled to his fee. This occa- 
 sions a vast deal of discussion between the 
 ferryman and our coolies, usually ending 
 117 
 
©DD0 anD iBnDs from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 in a compromise, part of the usual price 
 being given liim, and we part with mutual 
 grumblings. 
 
 Sometimes, however, there is no ferry- 
 boat to be had, and it is then necessary to 
 cross upon a raft. This raft is nothing but 
 a bundle of bamboos, not even an oar 
 being in sight, nothing but bamboo poles, 
 and the current is often quite swift. This 
 condition of affairs sometimes gives rise to 
 quite an exciting passage, but the bamboo 
 is wonderfully buoyant, and the trip from 
 bank to bank is usually made in perfect 
 safety, though beds and bedding sometimes 
 come to grief by getting a ducking during 
 the passage. 
 
 The baggage of officials is usually car- 
 ried by pack-ponies or mules or by ele- 
 phants. Often too, they take with them 
 an escort of sepoys or native-of-India sol- 
 diers, but judging from personal experience 
 I should say that the escort is more bother 
 than it is worth, the principal use of the 
 sepoys being, apparently, to quarrel with 
 the Burmans or Shans through whose coun- 
 try they pass ; at the present time it is as 
 safe to travel through Burma, so far as 
 natives are concerned, as in America. 
 
 The elephant is a wonderful beast and 
 ii8 
 
©DD6 anD )Bn^0 ot Zvavcl 
 
 carries a heavy load, but it is not nearly so 
 tough as a pack-mule or pony and requires 
 more looking after. There is a strange 
 antipathy between elephants and ponies — 
 the elephant scares the pony and the pony 
 the elephant. I remember once while rid- 
 ing through a thick jungle in the Southern 
 Shan States that I suddenly almost rode 
 into a big elephant that had been coming 
 toward me but had been hidden by a turn 
 in the path. He was loaded with trunks 
 and boxes of different kinds belonging to 
 the general commanding the district, who 
 was upon a tour of inspection and had that 
 day left the fort to which I was riding. 
 
 I shouted a warning to the mahout or 
 driver, but before he could do anything the 
 elephant, thoroughly scared at my sudden 
 appearance, whirled around faster than it 
 seemed possible for so huge a beast to turn 
 and darted off full speed through the jungle, 
 bearing down brushwood and small trees 
 as he ran and blazing his path by shedding 
 boxes at every few yards. At least one 
 case of wine reached a destination never 
 intended for it, and I have often wondered 
 what the general said that night when the 
 elephant reached camp and he saw what 
 condition his kit was in. 
 119 
 
®J>Dj5 an^ lEnOa trom paooDa XanD 
 
 In his way the Shan pack-bullock is as 
 unique an animal as the Shan pony. He 
 is strong and, if slow, covers a good many 
 miles as a day's march and carries a heavy 
 load. Salt, ngapiy manufactured goods from 
 Germany and England, and American ker- 
 osine oil go over the mountains to Shan 
 country carried by oxen, and peanuts, rice, 
 and other grain are brought into Burma by 
 the same means. 
 
 In the old days, during the rule of the 
 Burman kings, several caravans traveled 
 together and the drivers were armed to the 
 teeth to protect themselves from highway- 
 men and the savage tribes that infested the 
 hills and gained a livelihood — a good one 
 too — by robbing Shan caravans. The older 
 drivers tell stories of regular battles, though 
 these were probably very rare. The na- 
 tive of Burma, of whatever race he might 
 belong to, does not fight that way. He 
 likes to ambush his enemy and shoot him 
 from behind without bringing any undue 
 risk or danger upon himself. 
 
 In those days the owners of caravans 
 had to pay taxes to every petty chief 
 through whose territories they passed. The 
 *Mord of the oxen," if he hailed from the 
 Southern Shan States, usually reckoned 
 
 120 
 
©000 anO BnD0 ot tltavel 
 
 upon making three journeys a year. The 
 first and part of the second paid for the 
 taxes levied upon him during the year ; 
 the balance of trip number two paid for the 
 wear and tear of his cattle, etc., and the 
 third was his profit. 
 
 Now, however, since English rule has 
 come, the dues have been done away with ; 
 roads are much improved so that the wear 
 and tear has been much reduced ; the 
 highwaymen have been driven away and 
 the fierce hill tribes awed into subjection, 
 so that these are happy days for the Shan 
 ox-owner, far different from those his father 
 knew or he himself, for that matter, if he 
 has been in business for twenty years, and 
 he gains a substantial profit upon each trip 
 instead of upon one only. 
 
 The equipment of a pack-bullock is simple 
 in the extreme. He carries a large basket 
 upon either side. About one-third from the 
 top of the basket is a hole upon each side 
 and a strong stick is passed through them 
 so that they hang upon either end. A 
 couple of cushions are placed upon the back 
 of the bullock and these prevent galling 
 from both baskets and stick. A band of 
 leather or woven rattan passes over the 
 chest to keep the baskets from slipping off 
 
 121 
 
©DDs anD BnOs from ipaooDa XanO 
 
 when going up hill and a crupper serves 
 the same purpose when going down hill, 
 and that is all. But in spite of its simplicity 
 it answers its purpose admirably and the 
 baskets and their contents usually reach 
 their destination in safety and without a 
 tumble save when the oxen are frightened 
 — they are easily driven into a panic — and 
 when that happens they dash off into the 
 jungle like the general's elephant and their 
 burdens twist and speedily fall to the ground 
 or are torn off by the branches of trees or 
 underbrush. 
 
 At night the caravan is collected. Two 
 bullock-men approach an animal and, put- 
 ting their shoulders beneath the ends of 
 the stick which protrude a foot upon either 
 side, lift the burden up an inch or two, at 
 the same time unfastening the crupper. 
 The bullock lowers its head and backs out, 
 leaving its burden resting upon the men's 
 shoulders. The baskets are lowered to the 
 ground ; the two cushions, wet with sweat, 
 are placed upon top of them to get dry, and 
 the bullock wanders off into the jungle to 
 get his supper. 
 
 The halts are made at regular resting- 
 places, where caravans have stopped from 
 time immemorial. Here the ground is 
 
 122 
 
©000 anD JSnDs ot travel 
 
 studded with short, stout bamboo pegs, and 
 at evening, when the bullocks return from 
 their foraging, each one in turn is tied by a 
 rope to one of these pegs to prevent his 
 straying away during the night and thus 
 furnishing a meal to a hungry tiger. The 
 men make little booths or huts by sticking 
 four sticks into the ground, tying cross 
 pieces to them and covering the top with 
 brushwood. They crawl into these shelters 
 after lighting a big fire, at which one man 
 keeps guard all night. 
 
 There is one bad point about these ox 
 caravans, however, and that is they some- 
 times play havoc with jungle roads. It is 
 custom to travel during the cold and hot 
 seasons, as I think I have before mentioned, 
 but sometimes the temptation to make an 
 extra journey is too great to be resisted 
 and the " lord of the oxen " decides to risk 
 getting back before the rains begin and trav- 
 eling is made impossible for some months. 
 The result is that the caravan sometimes 
 gets caught by the rains and has to travel 
 over a road made soft as mush, with a mud- 
 hole every few yards to vary the monotony. 
 The oxen, heavily laden, go plodding on. 
 At each step they make they sink over 
 their hoofs in soft soil or mud. Ox after 
 123 
 
©DDs anD BnD0 from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 ox passes, each sinking a little deeper than 
 the one he followed, till at last deep ruts 
 are formed running across and across the 
 road, from one side clear to the other, about 
 a foot or eighteen inches apart. After the 
 rains are over the sun bakes the road dry, 
 so that when the next cold season comes 
 the whole pathway for miles looks like a 
 corduroy road, only instead of the trunks 
 of trees the earth itself has become ridged. 
 
 As oxen are short-steppers, these ridges, 
 as before stated, are about eighteen inches 
 apart, while the ruts between them are 
 sometimes a foot deep, so that when a pony 
 passes over such a road he has either to 
 place his feet laboriously at the bottom of 
 each rut, making slow, hard work of it, or 
 he has to mince along, stepping from ridge 
 to ridge like a circus horse walking upon 
 casks, with the chance of slipping down a 
 deep ridge into the rut and spraining his 
 ankle or knee, something that happens not 
 unfrequently. 
 
 Some of the roads over which these cara- 
 vans wend their way season after season 
 are very old. For hundreds of years such 
 caravans have been in the habit of passing 
 over them. A curious proof of this is found 
 in some of the mountains where the passes 
 124 
 
Qt>t>6 anD )6nD0 of travel 
 
 are narrow. These hills are often com- 
 posed of sandstone, and tracks, just wide 
 enough for a loaded ox to pass, have been 
 worn into the solid rock itself. These tracks 
 are ' — [_j — ' shaped. The bot- 
 
 tom, or smaller part, is where the ox walks, 
 while his baskets have, in course of time, 
 worn a path upon either side of him. I 
 once measured one of these tracks and 
 found that the baskets had cut their way 
 through a foot and a half of rock. How 
 long it took may be conjectured, but it must 
 have been a great while. 
 
 In the Bhamo district the Chinese cara- 
 van is seen as often as the Shan. Instead 
 of bullocks they have mules or very small 
 ponies. Poor things ! They are very dif- 
 ferent from the plump, contented-looking 
 pack-bullocks. A Chinaman is without 
 mercy and loads his mules with just as 
 much as they can stagger under. Cotton 
 is a favorite load. It comes from Myingyan 
 by steamer and mules then carry it into 
 China, Bhamo being the place where it is 
 transferred from river steamer to caravan. 
 If one takes a side view of a mule loaded 
 with cotton all that can be seen is a nose in 
 front and four, usually crooked, legs be- 
 neath, the rest of the animal being com- 
 125 
 
®DD0 anD jBnt>0 trom iPagoOa XanD 
 
 pletely covered and hidden from view by 
 an immense bundle of cotton upon either 
 side. The pack-saddles are very often 
 badly padded and this causes great sores, 
 several — each as large as a man's hand — 
 being frequently seen upon the back of one 
 mule, but such a state of affairs does not 
 worry the Chinaman ; he loads his mules 
 and drives them, sores or no sores. 
 
 The leading mule of a caravan is often 
 fantastically decorated. Huge rosettes of 
 red cotton adorn his halter, while a red flag 
 with a great, black character painted upon 
 it is thrust through each bundle of cotton. 
 Could the mule be gifted with the power 
 that Balaam's mount had, however, he 
 would surely say he would prefer a little 
 less rosette and a little better pack-saddle. 
 
 To see a Chinaman start out on a journey 
 is an awe-inspiring sight. His pony is sad- 
 dled, of course. Then a blanket is strapped 
 above it ; then a bed is fastened on top of 
 the blanket ; then come divers suits of 
 clothes which will be required upon the 
 journey and are laid layer upon layer ; 
 then last of all another blanket or two is 
 tied on top of all, making the whole con- 
 cern a foot or two thick. Upon this the 
 Chinaman, with his whip tied to his wrist, 
 126 
 
©DD0 an& iBnt>3 of travel 
 
 and his head roofed over with a hat as big 
 as a fair-sized parasol, climbs cautiously 
 and slowly till he mounts the summit, then 
 he sticks his heels, not his toes, into huge 
 rattan stirrups which are often but a few 
 inches below the level of his horse's back, 
 and rides slowly off, looking like a man 
 riding upon the top of a miniature haystack 
 gifted with locomotive powers. If Chinese 
 mules were not the most patient animals 
 in the universe, John would get a spill 
 every few yards, but fortunately for him — 
 the Chinaman, that is, not the mule — the 
 latter jogs along and nothing save an earth- 
 quake or a locomotive could discompose 
 him. 
 
 While speaking of the subject of travel it 
 would not be fair to leave out the Burman 
 ox-cart, for in Lower Burma, with the ex- 
 ception of the rivers and the railroads, the 
 ox-cart is the most popular agent for carry- 
 ing goods. It is used almost exclusively in 
 transporting goods in cities, and in the jun- 
 gle, upon the plains, or over graded cart- 
 roads upon the mountains it is the cheapest 
 way to take goods from one place to an- 
 other. The ox-cart is not a thing of beauty, 
 but what it lacks on the score of good looks 
 it more than makes up in usefulness, and if 
 127 
 
©DD0 anO JBnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 the old saw, ** Handsome is that handsome 
 does " is true, then, without any doubt, it 
 is good-looking as well. 
 
 It may be well to say first what an ox- 
 cart has not. It has no springs, it has no 
 iron in its construction except the tires and 
 the boxes of the wheels, nay, it is not so 
 very long ago that there was no iron even 
 in the wheels which were then solid. Four- 
 teen years ago, when I made my first trip 
 to Upper Burma, a large percentage of carts 
 still had solid, tireless wheels, but these 
 have now practically all disappeared and 
 are at present seen in remote districts only. 
 The axle of the ox-cart is made of wood 
 and the body rests squarely upon it, so that 
 if one has to pass over a road in which 
 there are many ruts he should not choose 
 an ox-cart as a conveyance ; still, upon 
 smooth roads there are many worse modes 
 of traveling. 
 
 In shape the ox-cart resembles roughly a 
 capital V. The angle is in front where it 
 joins the yoke which it crosses at right 
 angles. This yoke is merely a round piece 
 of wood with two pegs at each end running 
 through it, one on each side of the neck of 
 each ox. The bottom or floor of the cart 
 is usually made of stout strips of bamboo 
 128 
 
®J)D6 anD BnDs ot travel 
 
 fastened firmly together with rattan. Strong, 
 heavy pegs of wood bind the cart to the 
 axle while the yoke is joined to the front 
 of the cart with rawhide. This is put on 
 green and when dry makes, as might be 
 expected, an exceedingly strong joint. A 
 low railing runs along each side of the body 
 and a cover of bamboo matting is some- 
 times arched overhead as a protection 
 against sun or rain. 
 
 A team of two oxen is used in drawing 
 these carts. There is practically no harness 
 unless the yoke and pegs should be so 
 called. The Burman ox, like his relative 
 in India, has a large hump upon his shoulders 
 and it is before this hump that the yoke 
 rests, in fact, I am not sure that the yoke 
 has not caused this hump, for the ox has 
 been a beast of burden from time immemo- 
 rial in the East. There is a rope which 
 passes beneath the neck of each ox, but no 
 weight, of course, comes upon that. A hole 
 is bored in the nostril of a draft ox and 
 through this a loop of cord is passed which 
 is carried up and fastened behind the horns. 
 A single rein is tied to this but it is not 
 much used in driving, the driver depending 
 mostly upon his stick to guide his team. 
 It is wonderful what loads these carts will 
 I 129 
 
©000 anO jen06 from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 carry and over what roads the patient 
 bullocks will draw them. 
 
 The government roads make the life of 
 an ox much easier than it was during the 
 old Burmese times, but when one travels 
 in the jungle proper he is, to all intents 
 and purposes, so far as roads are con- 
 cerned, back in pre-British times. These 
 jungle roads are simply tracks which wind 
 along, twisting and turning, as though the 
 man who first made the way was drunk 
 and did not know where his oxen were 
 taking him. Often one comes to a nullah, 
 or dry bed of a stream, the sides of which 
 are very steep. Should a person new to 
 the country look at the path crossing such 
 a place it would seem impossible to go to 
 the other side with a loaded cart. The 
 Burman thinks differently, however. He 
 holds his lines firmly in one hand and with 
 the other flourishes a stick and yells at the 
 top of his voice. He is aided by every on- 
 looker too, for everybody that happens to 
 be near at the time joins in to help make a 
 regular chorus of yells. 
 
 Down plunge the oxen as though nothing 
 on earth could prevent their falling upon 
 their noses and turning complete somer- 
 saults; but although the ox is a clumsy- 
 130 
 
®DJ>0 anD JBr\^0 of Zvavcl 
 
 looking beast he is really very sure-footed. 
 Down they rush with a tremendous clat- 
 ter ; the cart jolts and jumps and bumps 
 and is almost lost sight of amidst the clouds 
 of dust raised by the heels of the oxen. 
 It is a miracle that goods and passengers 
 are not thrown out in a heap, but they very 
 rarely are, and in the vast majority of cases 
 reach the top of the farther bank in safety, 
 even though well shaken-up during the 
 passage. The impetus gained by the descent 
 carries them half-way up the other bank ; 
 then comes the strain to finish the other 
 half. The yells increase ; the driver shouts 
 and gesticulates like a maniac ; the oxen 
 get their heads down till their noses are 
 but an inch or two from the ground and 
 heave and strain as up, up, up they go till 
 a final shout of triumph from the driver 
 tells that the top has been reached. 
 
 The Burman is usually very kind to his 
 oxen and feeds them well, so that they look 
 fat, sleek, and in good condition. It is 
 always easy to tell when a pair of oxen 
 belongs to a native of India. In the latter 
 case they are almost always thin, and what 
 is even a surer sign, their tails are crooked. 
 This is caused by a very cruel habit which 
 the native of India has always, but the 
 131 
 
Qt>t>Q anD BnOs trom iPagoDa XauD 
 
 Burman very rarely indeed. Instead of 
 striking his oxen to urge tliem forward, the 
 native of India seizes their tails and twists 
 them, thus causing great pain. Sometimes 
 the joints are dislocated, which makes the 
 tails hang crookedly and I have even known 
 the bones to injure the nerve so that gan- 
 grene takes place, the end of the tail falling 
 off and leaving nothing but a stump behind. 
 ** The dark places of the earth are full of 
 the habitations of cruelty." 
 
 I have heard, but cannot vouch for its 
 truth, that some Burmans believe that if 
 they are cruel to their oxen, in some future 
 birth their positions will be reversed ; the 
 man will be an ox and the ox will be a man, 
 and that coming together the former animal 
 will ** take it out" of his former master 
 with interest. It makes a good fable if 
 nothing more. 
 
 Travel in Burma is now generally of the 
 humdrum order. In the old days "before 
 the war," when the country swarmed with 
 organized bands of robbers whose custom 
 was to ambush travelers and shoot at them 
 from behind, the opposite was the case ; 
 but still, even now, there is sometimes a 
 spice of danger, once in a while a good deal. 
 
 Some ten years ago I was called to see a 
 132 
 
®OD0 anD BnDs ot travel 
 
 young British officer at the fort at Bampone, 
 about a dozen miles from Mongnai, where 
 I was stationed at that time. The officer's 
 servant came to say that his master was 
 very sick, so off I set post-haste to see 
 what the trouble was. It was necessary 
 to return that night, however, and as it was 
 afternoon before I started, I did not stay at 
 the fort very long, as I wished to get back 
 to the mission house before dark. On the 
 return trip my pony went lame, and to my 
 sorrow night fell while I was leading him 
 by the bridle four miles from home. 
 
 The cause of my anxiety was the fact 
 that a young elephant, not properly trained, 
 had broken away from one of the mahouts 
 in the service of the saubwa (native prince), 
 and had developed into a regular rogue. 
 He had taken up his residence in a wood a 
 short distance from one of the city gates, 
 and had inaugurated a reign of terror. He 
 chased coolies bringing goods into the bazaar 
 in broad daylight, and when they threw 
 their baskets upon the ground in their panic 
 the elephant would coolly rifle them of their 
 contents ; what was good to eat he ate and 
 what he could not dispose of in this way he 
 destroyed, trampling it under foot or tear- 
 ing it with his tusks and trunk. He had 
 133 
 
®^^6 anD BnD0 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 already killed seven men, but the saubwa 
 would not have him killed, hoping later on 
 to catch him, which I may say he afterwards 
 did. Pending this happy termination of af- 
 fairs people lived in danger of their lives. 
 
 Fortunately, before he went off on his 
 rampage, a wooden bell had been fastened 
 around his neck, and this gave a little 
 warning of his approach during daylight, 
 but at night while engaged in his favorite 
 pastime of stripping gardens it was difficult, 
 even when the bell was heard, to place him 
 exactly. He had made our side of the city 
 his "stamping-ground" too — worse luck — 
 a stamping-ground in more senses than one, 
 and as it was necessary for me to cross 
 over a mile of foothills which lay between 
 the mission house and the last range of 
 mountains, and as I was liable to meet 
 the rogue at any moment, it was a very 
 uncomfortable feeling to experience. 
 
 Had he happened to be around that night 
 this book would certainly never have been 
 written, and another mound of "mission- 
 ary dust " would have been raised in Burma, 
 for it would have been impossible to escape. 
 Fortunately, after what seemed to me one 
 of the longest journeys I ever made, I heard 
 the tinkle, tinkle of the pagoda bells, sure 
 134 
 
©DOS anD BnDs of XTravcl 
 
 signal that the city was at hand, and 
 in a few moments entered the mission 
 compound. 
 
 I recall another unpleasant night journey 
 that I once took. One evening word was 
 brought to me that my little girl, just one 
 year old, and then staying with her mother 
 upon the mountains, was very sick, in fact 
 was unconscious when the messenger left. 
 It was just getting dark when the letter 
 arrived ; the house where the child was, 
 stood upon the top of a mountain more 
 than four thousand feet above the Bhamo 
 plain and thirty-nine miles away. I had a 
 pony, of course, but as there was no moon 
 it was necessary to have a light and some- 
 body to carry it, as it would be impossible 
 to travel along narrow jungle paths without 
 one. 
 
 I found a Kachin guide and set out, not 
 without a good deal of argument, however. 
 The Kachin objected to travel at night, but 
 when he found the usual argument of ** to- 
 morrow will do just as well as to-day " was 
 not strong enough to prevent my starting, 
 he said that several tigers had taken up 
 their abode in the jungle through which we 
 would have to pass and that he was afraid 
 to go. 1 pulled out a big forty-five Colt 
 135 
 
©DD0 anD BnDs from pagoDa ILanD 
 
 and asked him if that would not fix any- 
 thing we were likely to meet that night, 
 and so after a good deal more talk we at 
 last set out. One great inducement that I 
 offered was the paying of an amount equal 
 to six days' wages for that one night's work, 
 and as that meant enough money to keep 
 him in idleness for a month at least, it was 
 well worth a little risk. 
 
 We had not traveled very far before my 
 pony went lame, so there was nothing to 
 do but get off and lead him. It was quite 
 uncanny. Soon after we struck the foot 
 of the mountains my guide pulled out his 
 long sword and held it naked in his hand. 
 Just why he did so would be hard to say, 
 for it would be a very small tiger indeed 
 that would be overawed by a Kachin sword. 
 He begged me too, to carry my revolver in 
 my hand, which I did, more to please him 
 than anything else, for a revolver, save in 
 the hands of a very skilful shot — some- 
 thing I am very far from being — is of little 
 use against a tiger, which is a yellow and 
 black streak of lightning when it springs 
 upon its prey, and a man might be thrown 
 down and carried off into the jungle dead 
 with a pistol in each hand. 
 
 Then the pony got frightened. He stood 
 136 
 
®DD0 anD iBnOs ot travel 
 
 still and refused to budge ; then suddenly 
 he lowered his head and tried to bolt, and 
 if I had not taken the precaution to get a 
 good grip upon the reins would have dashed 
 off headlong down the hillside before one 
 could count ten. This frightened the Kachin 
 still more. He knew a little Shan, so that 
 I was able to talk with him, and in a fright- 
 ened whisper he said, "That horse smells 
 a tiger, we shall be killed and eaten sure," 
 then he walked just as close to me as I 
 would allow, one of the most thoroughly 
 scared men I have ever seen. Fear is con- 
 tagious too, and although I laughed at my 
 guide and soothed the pony, yet when I 
 heard a tremendous crash and then a rush 
 through the jungle, while I knew it was 
 nothing but a frightened deer, to my ex- 
 cited fancy it sounded as though it must 
 have been caused by an elephant at the 
 very least. 
 
 We pushed on till we had covered more 
 than twenty miles and had climbed a couple 
 of thousand feet, then the guide gave out 
 and said he could march no more without 
 sleep. I was weary too, but too anxious 
 to rest, let alone sleep, so 1 said I would 
 mount guard and he could take a nap for 
 fifteen minutes and we would then push on 
 137 
 
©DOS atiD BnD6 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 again. He forthwith laid himself upon the 
 path just where he was, with his head 
 upon his folded arms, and was asleep in 
 ten seconds ; but if he fell asleep easily he 
 made up for it in the difficulty of waking 
 up, for I shouted and shook, shook and 
 shouted, till at last I managed to get some 
 sense into his head. He grumbled a great 
 deal at the shortness of his nap, declared 
 his feet were so sore that he could not 
 walk, and so forth and so forth, but finally 
 consented to rise and we set off once more, 
 the threat that I would go forward and 
 leave him alone being the chief argument 
 to get him upon his feet once more. 
 
 We had not gone more than a mile or 
 two when we saw a light a little bit ahead, 
 and upon getting closer discovered it to be 
 a Kachin camp. This was the last straw 
 to my guide ; he just simply said he would 
 go no further if I offered him three times 
 the amount I had. He wedged himself in 
 between two fellow-countrymen who had 
 made their beds upon a heap of dry grass, 
 and I saw it would be necessary to travel 
 the balance of the journey without him. 
 By this time, however, the road was much 
 more open. It did not lie through the 
 dense jungle as it had for so many miles, 
 138 
 
®&D0 anD BnDs ot XTravcl 
 
 but over hillsides which had been burned 
 by Kachins when mailing paddy fields, but 
 best of all there was a little gray light 
 toward the East which showed that day- 
 light was not very far off, so I left him 
 behind and finished the journey alone, and 
 arrived at the end of my march at about 
 ten o'clock in the morning. This was, I 
 think, the most unpleasant short trip I 
 ever made. 
 
 In 1891 Doctor Gushing, Mrs. Mix, my 
 wife, and myself went to Mongnai in the 
 Southern Shan States to open up mission 
 work there, and after a short time Mrs. 
 Mix and Doctor Gushing returned to Lower 
 Burma leaving us to hold the fort alone. 
 
 Everything went well for a few months 
 and then my wife was taken sick with an 
 attack of appendicitis, and it became neces- 
 sary to carry her to the railroad and after- 
 ward take her home to America. It was a 
 terrible journey, such a one as I pray I may 
 never again have to take. It was in the 
 middle of the rains ; for days together it 
 rained incessantly, and the wet clothes 
 taken off at night and hung up to dry above 
 a smoky fire, were soaked again a few 
 minutes after the start from the zayat next 
 morning. A rubber sheet had been fas- 
 139 
 
©DDs anD SnDs trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 tened over the stretcher in which my wife 
 was carried and, thanks to this, she was 
 the only person who could boast of a dry 
 thread at the end of each day's march. 
 
 Often it was impossible to carry the 
 stretcher along the usual paths — they were 
 not wide enough — and so we had to chop 
 our way through the jungle, sometimes not 
 covering more than a mile after four or five 
 hours' hard work ; sometimes we had to 
 wade up streams knee or waist-deep, which 
 had taken the place of the dry beds over 
 which one would travel in comfort during 
 the dry season. The villagers were busy 
 in their paddy-fields and did not want to 
 leave their work to carry the stretcher 
 from village to village, and ran away unless 
 closely watched. 
 
 At last to our great joy, mine I ought 
 rather to say, for Mrs. Griggs was uncon- 
 scious a great part of the time, the tops of 
 the houses at Fort Stedman appeared, and 
 we entered the compound of the rest-bunga- 
 low. We had left our cook beside a hedge 
 by the roadside, dead drunk, several days 
 before ; the syce had also disappeared ; we 
 were wet, dirty, and almost exhausted, but 
 the ladies of the regiment stationed there 
 acted the part of the good Samaritan to us ; 
 140 
 
®DD0 anD EnDs ot ^Travel 
 
 they sent their servants to cook for us ; 
 and, in short, put us under a debt of 
 gratitude we shall never be able to repay. 
 
 Bright and early next morning we started 
 out along a broad government road with 
 eight coolies carrying my wife, and others 
 to carry the provisions and other neces- 
 saries, all under contract to go to the rail- 
 road with us. But our trials were not all 
 over yet. There is a stretch of country to 
 be traveled between Fort Stedman and 
 Thazi, where one strikes the railroad, 
 which at that tinie was absolutely without 
 a habitation for three days* journey, save 
 for the rest-bungalows every dozen miles. 
 When we had traversed half of this dis- 
 tance and were four or five miles from the 
 next bungalow and two days from the 
 nearest village, the coolies who had been 
 grumbling for some days, suddenly went 
 on strike. They set the stretcher in the 
 middle of the road and coolly said they 
 would go no farther. I told them that it 
 was a case of life and death ; that my wife 
 must get home or she would die ; but it made 
 no difference, they said they were tired and 
 would carry no farther — not one single step. 
 
 Then I got angry, and I think such anger 
 would be entered by the recording angel 
 141 
 
©DDs auD BnD0 trom iPafloDa UanD 
 
 under the ** and sin not " column. Step- 
 ping into the middle of the road between 
 the coolies and Fort Stedman I drew my 
 revolver, the same old Colt that years 
 afterward comforted the heart of the Kachin 
 guide before-mentioned, and said : 
 
 ** Now, see here. Last night I showed 
 you how this weapon shoots. You saw the 
 hole the bullet made right through the 
 trunk of a small tree. Now run, all of you, 
 but six will never reach home. Which one 
 will be the first ? '' 
 
 They looked at the muzzle of that gun 
 and, I suppose, seeing that I meant business 
 quickly decided it would be policy to pick 
 up that stretcher again and move on, and for 
 the balance of the day's journey I marched 
 in the rear carrying the cocked revolver in 
 my hand. 
 
 So far so well, but after getting to the 
 rest-bungalow, the Burmese Bible-woman 
 who helped the Karen nurse look after my 
 wife came to me and said : 
 
 "Soya, the coolies have been talking in 
 Burmese; they did not know that I could 
 understand them, and so I listened. They 
 said they were afraid to run away in the 
 daytime for they felt sure you would do as 
 you said and shoot them, but they intend 
 142 
 
©DD0 ant) jEnDs ot XTravel 
 
 running off in the middle of the night, and 
 as you do not know their names nobody at 
 the prince's court would be able to pun- 
 ish them for breaking their contract and 
 leaving you in the lurch." 
 
 Here, then, was a dilemma indeed. Two 
 days away from the nearest village and 
 every coolie with plans laid to desert us. 
 I walked out of the compound and down 
 the road a little to think it over by myself. 
 At any other time I would have enjoyed 
 the view, which was magnificent. Great 
 mountains hemmed us in upon every hand, 
 their sides covered with trees from top to 
 bottom ; the setting sun lit up a great 
 valley hundreds of feet below, and painted 
 the sky above us a thousand colors, but I 
 was too worried and anxious to care about 
 the beauties of the scenery; in fact, I was 
 at my wits' end. I could not march all 
 day and sit up all night to watch the 
 coolies ; what was I to do ? 
 
 The evening breezes shook the leaves 
 upon the trees and hummed through the 
 telegraph wires which followed the road 
 from the plain to Fort Stedman, now far, 
 far to our rear, and as I heard the sound, 
 quick as a flash along the wires a plan 
 shot into my mind. 
 
 143 
 
®DD6 anD )£nD6 trom iPagoDa ILanD 
 
 I hurried back to the bungalow and 
 called the coolies. They came, sullen at 
 being defeated in their plans, and yet at the 
 same time I thought I could detect a gleam 
 in their eyes which showed they were con- 
 fident, even then, of getting their own 
 way. I had placed my pistol upon the 
 table before calling them, and pointing to 
 it, I said : 
 
 " Listen. You threatened to run away 
 to-day although you have signed an agree- 
 ment to carry my wife to the railroad. 
 You know what Shan custom is ; two men 
 sometimes carry a sick friend or at most 
 four, but in order to make it easy for you I 
 have called eight of you. You know too, 
 that the English governor will punish you 
 if your prince does not, should he hear the 
 report that you deserted me in this out-of- 
 the-way place. Now listen carefully. In 
 the daytime you dare not run away, but 
 this woman here is a Burman and she 
 understood what you said in Burmese just 
 now." 
 
 The men looked at each other sheepishly 
 at this but made no reply. 
 
 **Now, look here," I exclaimed, point- 
 ing out of the door. "What do you see 
 there ? " 
 
 144 
 
®dD0 an& l6nD6 ot ^Travel 
 
 ** That is a telegraph wire/' one of them 
 replied. 
 
 **How long does it take to send a 
 message along that wire ? " I demanded. 
 
 " Why, not a second," the same replied. 
 
 Now I had counted upon their knowing 
 this much and also upon their ignorance of 
 the fact that a person could not send a 
 message along the wire save from a tele- 
 graph station and I found I was right. The 
 coolies thought that I could **shin'* up a 
 telegraph pole and presto ! the news would 
 be at the governor's house at Fort Stedman 
 immediately. It was an unusual specimen 
 of the little knowledge again. 
 
 **Very well, then," said I, with all the 
 dignity I could summon up to my aid, " run 
 away if you wish to-night when it is dark ; 
 I shall not sit up to watch you ; but let me 
 give you a little advice : don't return to 
 your homes, the order to have you arrested 
 will be there ahead of you. You know 
 what that means. Now go and think over 
 it." . 
 
 I saw a twinkle in the eye of the Bible- 
 woman, but she was loyal and kept silent, 
 although I must acknowledge when I saw 
 the effect of my ** bluff," and how deject- 
 edly the men filed out of the room, it was 
 K 145 
 
©D&0 anD iBntfS trom ipafloDa XanD 
 
 hard work to keep a straight face. It was 
 enough, however ; bluff though it was, it 
 worked, and next morning the coolies were 
 up bright and early ; they made better time 
 that day than upon any other previous day 
 and I did not have to even hint at force, 
 but several times during the march I saw 
 them glance up at that little strand of wire 
 and then say something to each other. I 
 do not doubt but what they thought the 
 white foreigner a wonderful man. As for 
 myself, I said nothing ; I merely smiled, a 
 good, big, broad smile — not a bit smaller or 
 narrower because I dared not show it upon 
 my face — it was inside. 
 
 One of the most unpleasant experiences a 
 traveler can have is to get his bed and bed- 
 ding wet. A ** jungle-bed " is really a thick 
 cotton comfortable, and it, together with 
 blankets, each morning is rolled up in a rub- 
 ber sheet before starting, and although the 
 fogs upon the Shan hills are very heavy and 
 soak one's clothing like a mild shower of 
 rain, yet if the rubber sheet is properly tied, 
 the bedding inside remains dry. Some- 
 times, however, in crossing a stream the 
 coolie carrying your bed makes a misstep 
 or goes into a hole, carrying the bed with 
 146 
 
®D&0 anD JBntfB ot travel 
 
 him ; then no rubber sheet will keep out 
 the water, and you arrive at the end of a 
 long day's march with the prospect of at 
 least a damp bed to sleep on. 
 
 The coolies light a big fire and the things 
 are spread around to dry, but a great deal 
 of dirt and smoke go along with a small 
 amount of heat, so that your bed is always 
 made dirty, often scorched in places and 
 wet elsewhere — an uncomfortable sort of 
 patchwork. 
 
 I remember spending one night under the 
 floor of an old bungalow. Some reader 
 may, perhaps, wonder why we went under 
 the floor. Well, the reason was there was 
 no roof to the bungalow, and as clouds, big, 
 black, and threatening, were coming up 
 rapidly, we made up our minds to crawl 
 under the floor, hoping that it would afford 
 us at least a little protection. The bunga- 
 low was made of bamboos, but the white 
 ants and " borers " had worked industri- 
 ously at it ; the wind had blown off the 
 thatch roof, and every post stood at a dif- 
 ferent angle. The floor was about three 
 feet above the ground upon which we spread 
 our beds. It — the floor — was made of split 
 bamboos, and when the rain came protected 
 us as much as a great sieve. We — the 
 147 
 
O^bs anb JBnbB tcom iPasoDa XanO 
 
 missionaries — covered ourselves with our 
 rubber blankets, while the coolies squatted 
 together beneath their big hats and covered 
 themselves as well as they could with their 
 thin cotton blankets. 
 
 I was so dead-tired with the day's march 
 that not even the rain could keep me awake 
 the whole night, but I frequently woke up 
 after dreaming that I was a boy once more 
 and my companions were covering me with 
 sand, to fmd that the water had collected 
 in all the little hollows of my rubber sheet 
 and weighed several pounds at least. A 
 movement was sufficient to change that 
 state of affairs, fortunately. 
 
 The next morning we could all truthfully 
 say we were drenched to the skin. Every- 
 thing we owned was soaked through and 
 through except the cooking-pots, and they 
 were wet both sides — inside and out; but a 
 few hours' march and a few hours* sunshine 
 dried everything, and not a soul became 
 sick. 
 
 One thing that makes traveling upon the 
 mountains hard is the fact that the temper- 
 ature takes very sudden changes. I have 
 frequently started out of a morning when it 
 has been so cold that there was a slight 
 white frost upon the grass, which would be 
 148 
 
®DD5 anD BnDs ot (Travel 
 
 loaded with moisture as cold as ice-water — 
 this would be upon the top of a mountain ; 
 we would descend to the valley and here it 
 would be uncomfortably warm, so warm 
 that the thin coat of khaki would feel a lit- 
 tle too much for comfort, while an overcoat 
 had been none too heavy early that morn- 
 ning before daylight. This, as a friend at 
 home once said, *' was enough to wear out 
 a thermometer." It tends to wear out the 
 missionary as well. 
 
 The intensity of the cold upon these 
 mountains cannot be gauged by a thermome- 
 ter, either, for the air is so damp that it 
 feels much colder than the same degree at 
 home. The sudden changes of cold to heat 
 and back again to cold all in one day's ex- 
 perience is much harder to bear than a 
 steady heat or a steady cold. Many a time 
 upon the mountains I have worn a heavy 
 overcoat and yet felt cold, and yet the cool- 
 ies carrying my bed and provisions have 
 been clothed in but two garments, trousers 
 and jacket, made out of cotton, with some- 
 times a cotton blanket, no larger than a good- 
 sized shawl at home and not half so warm, to 
 cover them at night. Thus dressed and with- 
 out shoes they would march through grass 
 laden with white frost and beneath trees 
 149 
 
©^tf6 anD JEnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 dropping water as cold as the frost. How 
 they stood it was a mystery to me, and yet 
 they did not appear to suffer much more 
 than I did. 
 
 Under such circumstances it is easy to 
 understand the admiration which our thici< 
 woolen clothes caused among these half- 
 naked Shan coolies. They gazed enviously 
 at my sweater, thick and warm, as well as 
 the long overcoat I wore, and above all at 
 the thick woolen blankets that covered us 
 at night. One and all they declared they 
 were the most " handsome " things they 
 had ever seen ; in fact they had never im- 
 agined it possible to make such warm, 
 beautiful blankets. What lucky, fortunate 
 people we were to possess them ! 
 
 It must be understood that these changes 
 of temperature happen upon the mountains. 
 White frost is never, of course, seen upon 
 the plains, where it is never so cold as upon 
 the hills, and I often congratulate myself 
 that my work does not now carry me into 
 the " hill and water country " as the Shan 
 calls his home. 
 
 And yet many of the sights upon the hills 
 are so beautiful that they more than counter- 
 balance the inconveniences suffered. The 
 fogs, so cold and damp, are at the same 
 150 
 
®DD6 anD JSn^s of travel 
 
 time often very beautiful. Starting soon 
 after daylight on a cheerless morning and 
 marching after shivering coolies through 
 long, damp grass, often waist-high, is not 
 very exhilarating ; it feels like walking, as 
 it is, in fact, through the clouds, but as the 
 sun gains power the mist-clouds upon the 
 very tops of the mountains lift, and one can 
 see peak above peak and peak beyond peak, 
 rising out of what looks like pure white 
 snow. The bottoms of the mountains and 
 the valleys are filled up with white masses 
 and billows of mist ; then slowly the clouds 
 disperse and the beautiful valleys appear 
 and disappear as the mist rises or is blown 
 about hither and thither by the wind ; some- 
 times whole seas of clouds are rolled and 
 tumbled about, hiding and then disclosing 
 a panorama too beautiful to be described in 
 words. 
 
 How would you like to drink out of a cup 
 five feet long ? That is what you might 
 have to do were you to take a trip to the 
 hills of Burma. These — what should they 
 be called } Well, these water-carrying 
 utensils are made out of large bamboos. 
 One is cut down and five feet or so of the 
 largest end is cut off ; the knots inside are 
 
®DD0 anD BnD0 trom iPaaoOa XanD 
 
 broken down and the cup, bucket, or pipe, 
 whichever the reader chooses to call it, is 
 ready for use. 
 
 I remember very well the first time I saw 
 one. It was evening and we were nearing 
 the end of our day's march, when I heard 
 a great whooping and shouting, and a dozen 
 small boys from a monastery school near-by 
 dashed across the path. Each one carried 
 a section of bamboo upon his shoulder and 
 was making his way towards the river. My 
 companion at that time was an Englishman, 
 an old pensioner, who had lived in Burma 
 many years and had once been a soldier in 
 the British army, and as he seemed to know 
 most everything about the country, I asked 
 him what the boys were doing with those 
 bamboos. 
 
 " They are going to fetch water for the 
 monastery," he replied. 
 
 Then I watched them fill their bamboos 
 at the river and return, much slower this 
 time, for their loads were heavy. As they 
 neared us they stopped to look at us, as 
 much interested in us as I was in them, and 
 Wright — my companion — calling to one of 
 the boys, said he was thirsty and would 
 like a drink. 
 
 The youngster — he had two bamboos by 
 152 
 
©DDs anD BnDs ot travel 
 
 the way — propped one against the trunk of 
 a tree and takhig hold of the middle of the 
 other tilted it, and Wright, putting one end 
 to his mouth, took a good, long pull, after- 
 wards declaring it was the best drink he had 
 had for days. 
 
 I was very thirsty too, and the sound of 
 the water gurgling in the long bamboo 
 sounded very tempting, so I took my friend's 
 place and imitated him as well as I was 
 able. I tilted the bamboo as I had seen him 
 do but no water would come ; I tilted still 
 more but although I could hear the water 
 inside gurgling away I could not coax out a 
 single drop. 
 
 ** Be careful ! " cried Wright, " the water 
 sometimes comes with a rush when it does 
 come," so more carefully than ever I tilted 
 the bamboo just a little wee bit more. Then 
 I got my drink, a whole bucketful, but out- 
 side instead of inside, and I jumped away 
 from the treacherous bamboo wet to the 
 waist. I fought shy of bamboo-joints after 
 that for a good while, but at last got so used 
 to them that I was able to drink without 
 taking a bath at the same time. 
 
 So much space has been used in telling 
 of hill travel that the river and river travel 
 run a great chance of being left out alto- 
 153 
 
®DDs anD BnDs from lpa90t)a XanD 
 
 gether. In some ways river travel is the 
 easiest kind ; certainly it is the laziest for 
 the passenger who has nothing to do but sit 
 still and be poled along the bank if one is 
 going up-stream ; while coming with the 
 current, nothing is done by the boatman 
 either, save keeping the boat head-on, allow- 
 ing it to be carried along at a rate which 
 varies with the seasons of the year. 
 
 The Burman is a born waterman. He 
 learns to swim almost as soon as he learns 
 to walk, and is expert and fearless. In 
 handling boats too, he is graceful as well as 
 skilful. He paddles his boat sitting or 
 standing, with his face toward his destina- 
 tion ; exactly opposite to our method of 
 handling anything save a canoe. 
 
 Burman boats vary in size, from those 
 that are so narrow that as a man once told 
 me, ** he had to part his hair in the middle 
 for fear he would overbalance the boat," 
 all the way up to a vessel which rejoices in 
 a sail and is four or five feet across. 
 
 Although these larger boats have sails yet 
 they are rarely used, the Burman depend- 
 ing upon his pole. This is a long bamboo 
 — almost everything else in Burma is a 
 bamboo — and is thrust into the river bank, 
 the man standing in the bow of his boat. 
 154 
 
©ODs anD BnD6 ot travel 
 
 The boatman seizes the other end of the 
 pole, places it against his shoulder and 
 commences to walk aft, thus forcing the 
 boat in the opposite direction just as fast as 
 he walks. 
 
 Cotton boats are larger than the general 
 run. They take the cotton from the river 
 steamers and carry it up the Tai Ping River 
 and other small creeks. This makes a 
 very heavy load, and to meet this emer- 
 gency two boats are firmly lashed together, 
 a deck is placed over all and the cotton 
 loaded upon it from gunwale to gunwale. 
 A dozen polers are sometimes required to 
 drive such a vessel up-stream. The way 
 this is done is unique. There is no room 
 upon the deck of the boat itself, so a narrow 
 platform of bamboos, the entire length of 
 the boat, is fastened outside upon a level 
 with the deck. The polers take up their 
 station at the bow end of this platform, 
 standing as closely to each other as possi- 
 ble, then every man puts his pole in the 
 mud and they all walk aft just like a single 
 man while the boat slowly takes it way up 
 the river, following every twist and turn of 
 the bank. 
 
 There are also boat-houses in which 
 whole families live. These are sometimes 
 155 
 
®DD0 anD )EnD6 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 made of two boats with a floor laid upon 
 them ; sometimes bamboos support the 
 house which otherwise much resembles an 
 ordinary land house. 
 
 A very common sight upon the river is 
 a raft. Sometimes these are composed of 
 teak logs, sometimes of a great many bun- 
 dles of bamboos. These are guided on 
 their voyage down river by great sweeps, 
 but as the current is very sluggish the rate 
 of speed is, of course, very slow. A small 
 hut is built at one end for the accommoda- 
 tion of the raftmen, and in it they cook, 
 eat, and sleep. These bamboo rafts often 
 start far up the river and come slowly down, 
 taking weeks to make the journey, till they 
 reach Lower Burma where the bamboo is 
 sold, the crew returning by steamer or train. 
 
 156 
 
H Jfevo flnt0tafte0 
 
IV 
 
 HE easiest thing in the world is to 
 make a mistake," even in America. 
 There is no word in English which 
 signifies easier than the easiest, unfortu- 
 nately ; if there were I would use it when 
 speaking of the ease with which one makes 
 mistakes in Burma. Certainly *' they are 
 worse and more of them." 
 
 Some mistakes which a man makes, espe- 
 cially during the first year or two in the 
 country, are only ludicrous, and one often- 
 times laughs at them afterward as though 
 the joke had been at somebody's else ex- 
 pense ; some mistakes, upon the other hand, 
 prove very embarrassing, nay, they may 
 even do a lot of harm before they are cor- 
 rected. Fortunately, however, the vast 
 majority can be classed under the kind first 
 mentioned and produce nothing worse than 
 a laugh or a passing mortification. 
 
 At first the most numerous mistakes arise 
 from an imperfect knowledge of the lan- 
 guage of the country. Shan, for instance, 
 is a tonal language, so that the same 
 159 
 
OD06 anD JBn^e txom paaoC>a XanC> 
 
 word may mean a most surprising, and at 
 the same time puzzling number of things, 
 each being represented by a different tone; 
 so that, as there are rive tones and some of 
 these tones are further divided into the 
 closed, the open, and the intermediate 
 sound — though not all, fortunately — a person 
 may get the right word, and yet his chances 
 are fifteen to one against getting the right 
 tone. Of course the sense and context 
 often show the native what the missionary 
 ought to have said but did not. For in- 
 stance, mail means a horse, a dog, the 
 shoulder, to be mad, or to come, according 
 to the tone you use — or ought to use. 
 
 It is said that the wife of one of our Shan 
 missionaries for a long time always called 
 out "dog, dog, dog," instead of **come, 
 come, come ! " 
 
 The difference in Shan between a physi- 
 cian and a tobacco-pipe is not much ; it is 
 merely a tone, the same word does duty 
 for both. I have more than once heard a 
 man read of the wife of Jesus Christ instead 
 of the mother. There is nothing in the 
 written word to show which is meant al- 
 though in speaking there is a considerable 
 difference ; often the context here would 
 not help matters either. 
 i6o 
 
B jFcw flltstahcs 
 
 Soon after I reached Mongnai, in the 
 Southern Shan States, I received word from 
 home that a box of seeds was on its way 
 from America. The sau pa (native prince) 
 had quite a nice garden, of which he was 
 very proud, and knowing how pleased he 
 would be to get some American seeds, I 
 called a preacher and told him to go to the 
 hau (palace) and let the sau pa know the 
 seeds were coming and that I would give 
 him some directly they arrived. I saw the 
 preacher looked rather surprised, but he 
 said he would go. 
 
 " You can tell him," I added, as he went 
 out of the door, **that when they come 1 
 will show him how to plant them." 
 
 The man looked astounded, and repeated 
 after me, "Plant them ? '' 
 
 ** Yes, plant them,'* I cried, ** what else 
 would you do with seeds ? Don't you 
 always plant seeds ? " 
 
 **Why, no," he replied slowly, ** they 
 will rust." 
 
 It was now my turn to look surprised and 
 I saw there was a misunderstanding some- 
 where. ** Plant them," repeated the 
 preacher to himself ; then a smile broke 
 over his face, he nodded and said, " You 
 mean little round things which we plant in 
 L i6i 
 
®DD0 anD JEnDs from ipaaoDa XanD 
 
 the ground and which afterward grow and 
 become flowers, don't you ? ** 
 
 **Of course I do,*' I replied, ** that is 
 what I have been telling you for the last 
 five minutes.*' 
 
 The smile on the old man's face deepened 
 into a broad grin ; then he shook his head, 
 and said, ** No, teacher, you did not say 
 seeds, you said this," and he pointed to a 
 knife in his girdle. No wonder he was sur- 
 prised to be told that I was going to give 
 some knives to the sau pa, and still more 
 when told he was to plant them in the 
 ground. 
 
 At another time I gravely told some Shans 
 that in our country in the cold season I had 
 often seen a foot or two of raw native sugar 
 upon the ground everywhere as far as the 
 eye could reach. 
 
 ** Where did it come from ? " asked one 
 of the listeners. 
 
 **Why, it falls from the clouds just as 
 rain falls here," I replied. The men gasped 
 in astonishment and I smiled at their 
 wonder. 
 
 The same old preacher was sitting at my 
 side ; he coughed a little apologetic cough 
 and then said : 
 
 ** The teacher makes a slight mistake. 
 162 
 
21 3Few flQi0take0 
 
 He does not mean raw sugar, he means 
 snow.*' 
 
 Then I laughed, but I was glad the old 
 preacher happened to be there because the 
 visitors were men from the city who fre- 
 quently came to the meetings, and at some 
 time the story of Ananias might perchance 
 be told in their hearing, and they might 
 then remember my sugar story and wonder 
 why the same fate had not overtaken me. 
 
 Burmese is, to a certain extent, a tonal 
 language also, as it has accents — the long 
 and the short as they are called — but these 
 accents are not so pronounced, nor are there 
 so many of them, as in Shan, and yet the 
 unwary are very likely to make foolish mis- 
 takes too. To this very day I do not know 
 the difference between a monastery and a 
 cat; one is and the other isn't, but which it 
 is I can never tell. 
 
 The Burmese word for carriage isya tah ; 
 for fire, me; and when Doctor Judson trans- 
 lated the Bible, he called the chariot of fire 
 that took the prophet Elijah to heaven a 
 meya tah. When locomotives were intro- 
 duced into Burma there was, of course, no 
 word for them, and so one had to be coined, 
 and the steam-engine is called a fire-car- 
 riage, a meya tah, so that a few years ago 
 163 
 
®DD3 an& BnD3 from iPaiioC»a Xan^ 
 
 when the hiternational Sunday-school les- 
 sons were taken from the Old Testament 
 and the story of Elijah came around, it was 
 necessary to explain to some of the Sunday- 
 school scholars that the great prophet did 
 not go to heaven in a railroad train, as some 
 of them naturally supposed, hi fact, one 
 small boy asked the teacher ** how they 
 fixed the tracks! " 
 
 What I consider the most remarkable 
 specimen of exegesis I have ever heard 
 came from the lips of an old Shan man one 
 Sunday afternoon. He was preaching, and 
 took for his subject the account of the sheet 
 let down from heaven as Peter saw it in his 
 dream. In substance this was what he said: 
 
 ** My younger brethren : Peter was asleep 
 one day upon the top of a house, as was 
 his custom, and whilst sleeping he had a 
 dream good to marvel at. He dreamed that 
 a great blanket was let down from the sky 
 by its four corners, and inside this blanket 
 were a great many animals — animals of all 
 sorts, good and bad. Then Peter heard a 
 voice, which said : * Peter, oiV, arise, kill 
 and eat.' 
 
 **Now, my younger brethren, you must 
 not forget that before Peter became a 
 Christian he was a heathen, just like you 
 164 
 
B 3Fcw /Bbtstaftes 
 
 and me. He had always feared to kill any 
 animal for food because he thought that he 
 would be punished for so doing by being 
 sent to hell and having to live there thou- 
 sands and thousands of years and after- 
 wards suffer several thousand re-births as 
 an animal. Just as you and I once were, 
 you see. So what did Peter say ? Why 
 he said : * No, Lord; I cannot kill these ani- 
 mals. It is not lawful. I have never killed 
 an animal in my life. I am not brave 
 enough to do such an act as that.' 
 
 ** Then God spoke out of heaven and 
 said : ' Peter, oie^ don't be afraid to kill 
 them. When you were a heathen man, 
 Peter, you feared to kill an animal for food, 
 but you are a Christian now and so you 
 need not fear.' 
 
 " Now, then, what does this lesson teach 
 us } Why, it teaches us that we need not 
 be afraid to kill animals for our food and 
 eat them afterwards in our curry. It is not 
 a sin, although the heathen man says it is, 
 so let us eat meat curry without fear. It 
 is because of this that our religion is called 
 the * chicken-killing religion'" (i.e.y a re- 
 ligion that permits its worshipers to kill 
 chickens and eat them ; Buddhists are sup- 
 posed not to take life in any way). 
 165 
 
®DD6 anD BnDs trom iPafloOa 3LanD 
 
 Once I was out walking with Doctor 
 Gushing, the greatest authority on Shan 
 and the translator of the Bible into that 
 language. An old woman came walking 
 toward us and the doctor inquired politely 
 where she had been to, about the only 
 salutation there is in Shan except, ** Where 
 are you going to ? " She answered, as I 
 understood,**! have been to a Shan's 
 house.'* As there were a few hundred 
 houses in the city and all were inhabited 
 by Shans, I thought the answer very vague, 
 to say the least, and asked Doctor Gushing 
 if he did not think so too. He smiled and 
 said: ** That old woman said she had been 
 to the house of a dead man," Then I re- 
 membered that a Shan man and a dead 
 man differed but in tone, the word was the 
 same, and I felt like saying, although I 
 did not for fear of shocking the doctor, 
 " Gonfound those tones, anyway." 
 
 A good many years ago one of our mis- 
 sionaries and his wife took a trip through 
 the Southern Shan States. In those days 
 traveling was often a dangerous business, 
 so that it was necessary to watch the camp 
 all night long, and the doctor, his wife, and 
 a Ghristian Shan arranged to take turns in 
 performing this duty. One night the doctor 
 1 66 
 
21 3Few ^I6taftc0 
 
 said he would take the first watch, the 
 preacher was to take the second, and the 
 missionary's wife the third. They had but 
 one timepiece between them and that had 
 met with an accident and was useless, so it 
 was arranged that the doctor's wife should 
 call everybody when a certain star appeared 
 above the top of the mountains; that would 
 be about an hour before sunrise. They 
 wished to get an extra early start as they 
 had a very hard day's travel before them. 
 
 Everybody except the doctor, therefore, 
 turned in, rolled themselves up in their 
 blankets, and went to sleep. It is very 
 monotonous work that, watching a sleeping 
 camp with nothing to do ; the doctor was 
 wearied too, with a long day's tramp, and so 
 — we must tell the truth — after a while he 
 nodded, nodded again, and then was as 
 sound asleep as anybody else in the camp. 
 He awoke at last with a start, and as he 
 looked up, there, hanging right above the 
 mountain peak, was the star — he had slept 
 all night long 1 
 
 His wife congratulated him upon the way 
 he had kept watch, and yet she was glad 
 she had missed her turn too. She told him 
 several times that she considered it quite a 
 joke upon him, and then they prepared 
 167 
 
®DD0 anD SnDs from ipa^oOa XanO 
 
 to start upon their journey. The coolies 
 grumbled at getting up so early ; they said 
 it had been a very short night and that it 
 was not custom to get up so long before 
 daylight; but the doctor was firm and, in 
 spite of their grumbling, off they went 
 through the dark forest. 
 
 They had not traveled very far before 
 they saw some flickering lights in the dis- 
 tance, which proved to be torches in the 
 hands of Shan coolies. "They too have 
 made an early start," observed the doctor ; 
 then when the new-comers were within 
 speaking distance, he said: "Are you on 
 your way to bazaar, friends ? " 
 
 The coolies paused, then the foremost 
 said: "Going to bazaar? Why, no; we 
 are coming from bazaar and are on our way 
 home; we hope to arrive there soon." 
 
 " What made you start so early? " asked 
 the missionary. 
 
 "Early? " echoed the coolies in chorus, 
 looking wonderingly at the white man. 
 "What do you mean by early? It is late 
 at night, six hours after sunset." 
 
 The doctor looked at his wife, then they 
 both looked at the star. There it shone, 
 brilliant as ever; but it was the wrong one ! 
 
 Some of the funniest mistakes I have 
 i68 
 
B 3few mtstaftes 
 
 ever met with have been made by boys in 
 our school while learning English. 
 
 Some time ago one wrote : ** The enemy 
 was driven off in a picnic," meaning, of 
 course, ** panic." Another boy, in answer 
 to a question in plane geometry, said : " A 
 postulate has a ruler and a pair of com- 
 passes with which to draw straight lines 
 and circles." 
 
 I once told some of the larger boys to write 
 an account of one of the miracles recorded 
 in the New Testament. He chose the feed- 
 ing of the five thousand, and among other 
 things said: ** Christ made the people sit 
 down upon the grass; then he ate them all," 
 instead of saying, ** Then he fed them all." 
 
 In English dictation, a few days ago, the 
 following sentence occurred, ** The mayor 
 said the king shook hands with him," and 
 one of the scholars wrote, " The mayor said 
 the king should hang with him." 
 
 The following is a paraphrase of part of 
 one of Byron's poems, ** The Destruction 
 of Sennacherib's Army." 
 
 These are the verses as the poet wrote 
 them : 
 
 For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the 
 
 blast, 
 And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; 
 169 
 
®DD0 auD BnDs ttom iPagoDa 3LanD 
 
 And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, 
 And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew 
 still. 
 
 And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
 But through it there rolled not the breath of his 
 
 pride ; 
 And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf. 
 And cold as the spray of the rock-beaten surf. 
 
 This is the way one of the boys para- 
 phrased it : 
 
 The Angel fly on the wind 
 
 And passed through the face of the soldiers 
 
 The soldiers are shaked their body and die. 
 
 The horse died with a wide nose 
 The horse died here and there 
 The horse lay dead with water which came from its 
 mouth when we seen it was very tired. 
 
 A small native of India recorded the fact 
 that, ** Half a bread is better than no loaf." 
 
 Every Monday morning the teacher of 
 each class sends up a list of the schoolboys 
 absent the day before from Sunday-school 
 with the excuses offered. Here is a sample: 
 
 **He said that he got a sore on his left 
 paw and could not walk well." 
 
 English is — I am at a loss as to what ad- 
 jective ought to be put here. It is certainly 
 the most trying, puzzling, and difficult lan- 
 170 
 
U 3Fcw /IRi6taftC6 
 
 guage to teach as well as to learn. Witness 
 the following : 
 
 The teacher of one of the classes told 
 his boys that " oxen " is the plural form of 
 **ox/' That very afternoon when the 
 home lessons were written upon the board 
 to be copied by the pupils the following 
 sentence in Burmese was set to be trans- 
 lated into English : " There are six foxes 
 in that field," and every boy in the class 
 wrote in his exercise book that night, 
 ** There are six foxen in that field." Well, 
 why not? If six oxes are six oxen, why 
 should not six foxes be six foxen? 
 
 Last week a boy in one of my classes 
 said, ** He was a truly man." I corrected 
 him, of course, showing that "true" was 
 an adjective and ** truly " an adverb and so 
 could not qualify a noun. The boy turned 
 over a few pages of his reader till he came 
 to this sentence, " Vaseo Nunez sent back 
 all his sick and weakly men"; then he 
 said, ** If a * truly man ' is wrong, why do 
 you say a * weakly man'?" Then of 
 course there had to be a long explanation 
 to show the difference between *' weak " 
 and ** weakly," a difficult thing enough 
 when dealing with Burmese boys. 
 
 There is one mistake which every West- 
 171 
 
©J>D6 artO iBnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 erner makes upon coming to the Orient. 
 That is he tries to hurry natives, but it is 
 of all mistakes the most fatal ; it cannot be 
 done. Kipling, I think it is, wrote a poem 
 once of a young man who came to India 
 from England and tried to do this ; when 
 he found it was an impossibility he worried 
 — and finally was carried one evening at 
 sunset to the cemetery, and the natives of 
 India whom he had tried to drive (Western 
 style) sat around the tombstone and smiled. 
 A man in the Orient must remember the 
 Oriental rendering of one of our own prov- 
 erbs : ** Never do to-day what you can 
 put off till to-morrow." 
 
 172 
 
flUcMcal flni06(onari? Morft 
 
At even' when the sun was set, 
 The sick, O Lord, around thee lay ; 
 
 Oh, in what divers pain they met, 
 Oh, with what joy they went away ! 
 
 P^OTlEDICAL missionary work in Burma 
 Ir^ H ^^^ never received the attention it 
 I RjdffiiS I is entitled to. Our own mission 
 (the American Baptist Missionary Union) 
 has never been so much in favor of this 
 special line of work as some other mission- 
 ary societies, so that to-day but eight fully 
 qualified medical missionaries are accredited 
 to Burma, and of these, six are in the Shan 
 department. Yet I know of no means bet- 
 ter qualified to get in touch with the people, 
 to allay suspicion, deaden opposition, and 
 batter down prejudices. 
 
 In Bhamo we have a little hospital, the 
 " Bessie Richards Memorial," built in 
 memory of a cousin of my wife, who 
 started a Shan Mission Circle among the 
 young women of the Nicetown Baptist 
 Church, of Philadelphia, which has aided 
 in our work for over thirteen years. It has 
 175 
 
©DO0 anO JBnt>6 trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 two rooms each i8xi8, separated by one 
 I2xi8 ; also a veranda 9 feet wide. The 
 walls are made of bamboo plastered and 
 whitewashed and the roof partly of corru- 
 gated iron, partly of thatch. It has been in 
 use for eight years, except when we were 
 at home on furlough. 
 
 Unfortunately we have never been able 
 to have much of an indoor department. It 
 costs a great deal of money to run a hos- 
 pital, even a small one, and so we have had 
 to content ourselves by using it simply as 
 a dispensary or outdoor department. 
 
 Every morning from six till nine the hos- 
 pital is open and I attend to the needs of 
 patients. Every person upon entering is 
 given a ticket with a number written upon 
 it in Burmese and English, and when his 
 turn comes enters the south room where I 
 see him and give medicine. A preacher is 
 always in attendance ; every person that 
 can read Burmese is given a tract and the 
 preacher talks with patients waiting their 
 turn. 
 
 The dispensary is entirely supported by 
 voluntary contributions ; no one is asked 
 to give a pice, or a cent. A box is placed at 
 the door with a notice that patients can 
 place within it whatever they please. Then 
 176 
 
fllcDical flQl00ionatB XlDlorh 
 
 I make quite a large number of visits to the 
 houses of the sick, and the money paid for 
 these visits is added to that taken from the 
 box. A great many people also bring pres- 
 ents ; bananas, rice, Chinese hams, cakes, 
 and scores of other things ; when they can 
 be used in the dispensary they are of course 
 so used, if not we take them ourselves or 
 for the boarding department and place the 
 amount to the dispensary account. 
 
 During last year (1903), we received in 
 this manner over seven hundred and sixty 
 rupees (^256.00). This money paid for 
 twenty-five thousand four hundred and 
 forty-six prescriptions or dressings — the 
 number given out during the year. Four- 
 teen thousand two hundred and fifty-seven 
 attendances at the dispensary were given 
 and six hundred and eighty-nine visits made 
 to patients' homes. Besides this one hun- 
 dred and seventy-nine minor operations 
 were performed, and ten major, the latter 
 under ether. Six fractures were also re- 
 duced, one compound and one double. Two 
 jungle trips were made to reach desperate 
 cases and three hundred and fifty-four daily 
 clinics held. This constitutes an aver- 
 age year's work and costs the Missionary 
 Society directly about fifty cents. 
 M 177 
 
®DO0 ant) J6nD0 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 When at home I was often asked what 
 diseases are the most common in Burma. 
 Fever, malarial fever, without doubt is the 
 most common, and is answerable for more 
 deaths probably than any other one disease. 
 People in America were so often surprised 
 at this and would say : *'What! malaria 
 kill people?" But Burman fever and 
 malarial fever at home, at least in the 
 Eastern States, are two very different 
 things. 
 
 Burma could not be improved upon, from 
 the standpoint of a malarial bacillus, if it 
 had been made to order. It is hot, there 
 are vast jungles, a heavy rainfall during the 
 monsoon, and lots of pools in which mos- 
 quitoes can breed and afterward do their 
 deadly work. It is simply impossible, with 
 our present means, to kill off these mos- 
 quitoes or destroy their breeding-places es- 
 pecially in Upper Burma, and while this 
 state of things continues there is no chance 
 of stamping out malarial fever. 
 
 Bhamo offers a fair example. There are 
 in the city a large number of nullahs, or 
 hollows, dry in the hot season but full of 
 "dead** water in the rains. The water 
 from the river also backs up into them and 
 stays there just long enough to kill part of 
 
 178 
 
/HbeDical /nbissionar^ "QClorft 
 
 the vegetation with which they are cov- 
 ered ; then the river falls, the rain ceases 
 for a few days, and the sun comes out 
 scorchingly hot ; what better paradise could 
 a mosquito wish for ? 
 
 Of course cholera pays us a visit almost 
 every year. The first season I was in the 
 country I spent at Toungoo in Lower Bur- 
 ma, and there I saw my first epidemic of 
 this terrible disease. At that time there 
 were three American Baptist mission 
 schools in the city — the Shan and Burmese, 
 the Bghai Karen, and the Paku Karen. 
 
 Cholera appeared as usual near bazaar 
 and the news was of course brought to us 
 immediately. The helpers were badly 
 frightened and they had reason for their 
 fears too. Cholera is a terrible disease 
 and acts with great quickness ; it is also 
 horrible to witness, but four hours being 
 sufficient to reduce a strong man to a wreck 
 with sunken eyes, shriveled hands, and 
 upon the very verge of death. Dr. John- 
 son, the Karen missionary, was upon the 
 mountains, and so the work of looking after 
 all three compounds fell to my lot. The 
 Burmese school and compound were across 
 the street from the house we were living 
 in, separated from the Bghai Karen com- 
 179 
 
Q^t>6 anD JBnt>6 from pasoDa XanD 
 
 pound by a police station. Several sepoys 
 died in this station-house, and this natu- 
 rally added to the fears of the native Chris- 
 tians. As I was new to the country and 
 had never seen cholera before I felt worried 
 and anxious too. 
 
 Everybody knows that cholera comes, 
 practically always, through contaminated 
 drinking-water. Now, if the water supply 
 could be kept pure, one might snap his 
 fingers at cholera, so I hoped to be able to 
 fight the disease because we had a good 
 brick and concrete well in each compound 
 and did not have to get our drinking-water 
 from the river, providing also, of course, 
 the children living on the compounds did not 
 go to bazaar and get food not properly 
 cooked, which had been made with germ- 
 contaminated water. 
 
 I called up a preacher from each com- 
 pound and put all the children under their 
 care, making them responsible. *' No child 
 goes to bazaar," was the rule issued. I 
 made a rigid inspection every day till I was 
 relieved by Dr. Johnson, and had the satis- 
 faction of handing over to him a clean com- 
 pound. The S. P. G.*s (English Episco- 
 palians) and the Roman Catholics suffered 
 so severely that they had to close their 
 1 80 
 
fnieDtcal flQigsionaris Wioi\{ 
 
 schools and send their children home ; ours 
 were absolutely free. 
 
 When this epidemic was at its height the 
 Chinese residents imported a special god 
 to drive away the ** cholera devil." The 
 Chinese, by the way, always suffer more 
 from cholera than any other race in Burma; 
 this being due to their abuse of opium. 
 The **god" was a picture, mounted upon 
 a kind of platform which was carried upon 
 men's shoulders. Every evening at dusk 
 the Chinamen went to the joss-house for 
 their god, then it would be carried through 
 bazaar, stopping before each house in which 
 a person was sick or where a man had died. 
 The bearers howled and yelled and danced 
 before each of these places, while the picture 
 rolled and tossed like a ship in a storm. 
 Long strings of firecrackers were set off, 
 gongs were beaten and pandemonium 
 reigned — and the cholera went on. Often 
 the very men who had helped to carry the 
 god around at night would be carried to the 
 cemetery next morning. 
 
 We have just passed through an epidemic 
 in Bhamo, and the means used by the 
 Burmans to drive out the nats (spirits) 
 which cause the disease were as crude as 
 the Chinamen's. At dusk a small fire was 
 i8i 
 
®t>t>6 anD J£nt>6 trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 lit before each house ; a piece of the clothes 
 of the victim was burnt, and as the smoke 
 ascended it was confidently believed the 
 disease would leave the sufferer and follow 
 the vapor toward the clouds. Men and 
 boys beat tin cans, frantically yelling and 
 screaming at the same time at the very top 
 of their voices ; women seized brooms, and 
 yelling as loudly as their husbands and 
 brothers, brushed at walls and ceilings to 
 drive out the cholera nats — and the next 
 morning as I made my rounds to see cases 
 taken sick during the night, I stepped 
 over the ashes of the fires lit in vain the 
 evening before. 
 
 Long streamers made of thin muslin were 
 tied to slender bamboos and fastened to the 
 tops of trees ; Buddhist priests paid visits 
 to different parts of the city and mumbled 
 Pali words ; women went by scores and 
 hundreds to trees in whose branches evil 
 spirits are supposed to live, and prayed be- 
 neath them, begging the nats to take pity 
 and go away — and the epidemic went on. 
 People laughed when I told them to boil 
 their drinking water ; that, they declared, 
 was the height of absurdity ; the disease 
 was caused by evil spirits, not by foul 
 water. 
 
 182 
 
There is not so much surgery in Burma 
 as one would expect. For one thing, there 
 is so little machinery in the country that 
 accidents, save broken bones from falls, are 
 comparatively rare ; then too, the Burman 
 dreads the knife. Sometimes, though, 
 patients are anxious for an operation. 
 
 A funny thing once happened along this 
 line. A Kachin came to me asking for 
 help. He was, without any doubt, the 
 ugliest native I have ever seen. He had a 
 harelip, and not only was his upper lip 
 divided, but the fissure ran up into his 
 nostril ; three or four fangs protruded 
 through it also, and the roof of his mouth 
 was cleft as well. 
 
 After getting him upon the table I pulled 
 out these horrible teeth and sewed the two 
 sides of the fissure together, and the opera- 
 tion proved later to be quite successful. 
 Just before he was discharged he asked to 
 look in a glass so that he might see himself; 
 we got a small mirror and handed it to 
 him. I have never, in all my experience, 
 seen a man so tickled as was that Kachin. 
 He twisted his face into the most horri- 
 ble grimaces, first to one side, then to 
 the other, **to see if it was mended good 
 and strong *' ; then he grinned from ear to 
 
 183 
 
©DD0 ?nD BnD6 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 ear and rubbed his finger over the place 
 where the fissure had been. Finally he 
 asked one of his friends who was standing 
 near for a little betel-nut, and after chewing 
 it went to the railing of the veranda and 
 spit the juice into the compound with great 
 glee ; then he returned, looking as proud 
 as a small boy in his first long pants, 
 and said earnestly, **Just see, I can spit 
 now ! I have never been able to do it 
 before." 
 
 He was then all haste to get over to the 
 Kachin compound and show off his new 
 good looks to friends. Mrs. Hanson, of the 
 Kachin Mission, saw him, but before she had 
 time to compliment him upon his changed 
 appearance he cried : 
 
 ** Ah, I shall surely be able to get a wife 
 now 1 None of the girls would look at me 
 before. They said I was too ugly, but 
 they cannot say that now ! " 
 
 Any one can practise medicine in Burma. 
 In fact, every white person has to, more or 
 less. The servants come as a matter of 
 course when they are sick and ask for 
 medicine ; the scholars in the school have 
 to be looked after also, and during jungle 
 trips, santonine for worms, quinine for 
 fever, cough mixture, and other simple 
 184 
 
fHlcDical ^isstonarg Moth 
 
 remedies are included in the jungle kit 
 as a matter of course. 
 
 Among native Burmese doctors there is 
 no real knowledge of the cause of disease. 
 They are ignorant of anatomy — even of a 
 rudimentary sort — and the same can be 
 said of physiology and hygiene. Medicines 
 are compounded and given not only by the 
 mouth and nostrils but are sometimes stuffed 
 into the ears. I once saw a man trying to 
 drive ** strength medicine" into a woman 
 by placing it upon the top of her head and 
 then blowing at it through his hands. 
 
 Some years ago a man, a native of India, 
 opened a shop in bazaar and posted a sign 
 in Burmese, English, and Urdu, stating that 
 he was an eye doctor and could cure every 
 case of eye disease that came to him, even 
 though the patient had been totally blind 
 for years. Of course his shop was just 
 thronged and, after bleeding every patient 
 of all the money he had brought along, he 
 took strips of paper upon which a verse 
 from one of the Vedas had been written 
 and pasted it across the forehead of each 
 foolish dupe, telling them at the same time 
 that these verses had miraculous power, 
 strong enough even to bring back sight to 
 blind eyes. 
 
 185 
 
®DJ)0 anD J6nD6 trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 Talking of bleeding reminds me that 
 bleeding in another sense, that of taking 
 blood from the veins instead of money 
 from the pockets of patients, is still prac- 
 tised upon the Shan hills among the Ka- 
 chins and, I believe, in some parts of hidia. 
 The way a Shan doctor bleeds is to take a 
 cleft stick in which has been tied a sharp, 
 three-cornered piece of glass. This is used 
 instead of a lancet. The patient stands 
 erect and the surgeon selects a vein in one 
 of the legs and, by holding his finger upon 
 it and thus stopping the flow of blood, makes 
 it become prominent. Then he spits upon 
 the sharp end of his lancet and places the 
 piece of glass upon the vein; then with a 
 sharp blow from a small stick he drives his 
 lancet into the vein and starts the bleeding. 
 He once more spits on his instrument and 
 operates upon another vein, so that when 
 he is through the man will have sometimes 
 as many as half a dozen little streams of 
 blood slowly running down his legs. When, 
 in the estimation of the doctor, enough 
 blood has been extracted, he claps upon 
 each wound a little plaster of leaves of a 
 small lump of partly-chewed tobacco and 
 thus stops the bleeding. As it is not 
 thought necessary to wash the patient's 
 1 86 
 
/nbeDical nilissionars mocft 
 
 leg before operating nor the lancet either 
 before or afterward, save for the spitting 
 above referred to, and as both leg and 
 lancet of course are dirty, it will not prove 
 surprising to hear that many of these 
 wounds suppurate and cause ugly sores. 
 
 A very favorite application for wounds 
 of all sorts is soot. Fires are made in 
 houses upon a hearth and, as there is no 
 chimney, the smoke escapes through the 
 thatch roof and deposits a thick crust of 
 soot upon the rafters. It is soot from these 
 rafters that is used and, as it is greasy and 
 sticky and is oftentimes plastered on with 
 a liberal hand, it is very difficult to get it 
 off so as to properly cleanse a wound in 
 order to put a clean dressing on. In fact, 
 in the case of burns, where the wound is a 
 large one, it is impossible to cleanse it at 
 one dressing ; one has to be content to 
 ** get off the worst of it " and trust to the 
 softening influence of ointment to finish it 
 next time. 
 
 Burns, by the way, are very common, 
 especially among children. As before men- 
 tioned, fires are made upon a hearth, which 
 consists of a square of earth a few inches 
 thick, usually set in the middle of a room, 
 with no protection around it. Cooking 
 187 
 
Q^^6 anD :6nD0 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 pots of hot rice or boiling water often are 
 spilled over children, or the little ones trip 
 and fall into the fire and burn themselves 
 severely. 
 
 Smearing over the wound with soot or 
 grease is all that is done by way of treat- 
 ment ; so that the wound, of course, is not 
 only a long time healing, but what is worse, 
 great scars are formed, which contract and 
 cause terrible deformities. Arms are some- 
 times joined to forearms. I have seen the 
 leg fastened to the thigh for almost the 
 whole of its length and the chin so bound 
 down to the chest that the mouth could not 
 be closed, while the eyelid had grown so 
 fast to the cheek that it could not be shut. 
 
 If the Burman is ignorant, the lower 
 castes of natives of India are even more so 
 and, what is worse, they are horribly dirty. 
 It would be impossible for an American to 
 understand or realize just how filthy they 
 are. Their ignorance is not only appalling 
 but sometimes heartrending. I remember 
 just before I went home on furlough last 
 time being called to the house of a sweet- 
 meat seller living in bazaar. His son was 
 very sick, he told me in his broken Bur- 
 mese — would I not take pity on them and 
 go and see him } I went, of course, but 
 1 88 
 
fBlcWcal nilt66lonari2 Morlt 
 
 when I saw the condition the poor child 
 was in, used as I am to seeing horrible 
 sights, it made me shudder. 
 
 The boy had had a little sore upon his 
 cheek, the father said ; he had scratched 
 it and made it bleed. Of course the boy's 
 fmger-nails were foul and he poisoned the 
 wound, which spread and spread till it had 
 eaten away all the flesh from one-half of 
 the lower jaw and more than half of the 
 upper. The father had applied medicine 
 to the sore. He was a Hindu and therefore 
 had great faith in cows, so he had taken 
 some cow-manure, mixed it with a little 
 lime and tobacco, and put that on the 
 wound. 
 
 A glance showed that it was impossible 
 to cure the boy. The bones were lying at 
 the bottom of the wound, perfectly white 
 and bare, with no covering upon them at 
 all ; but I hoped to be able to give the poor 
 little fellow a few hours of comparative 
 comfort. I therefore told the father that 
 he must bring his son to the hospital right 
 away and I went on ahead to get ready. 
 
 The first thing I did was to send out for 
 
 a cigar. Now, smoking is '* one of the 
 
 things a fellow cannot do," as Kipling puts 
 
 it — that is, if the fellow is a missionary, 
 
 189 
 
©DDs anD BnDs from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 and the native helper looked surprised 
 when I made the request, but I knew the 
 operation was a little too much on the 
 dissecting-room order, and a good cigar 
 would be a very comforting adjunct. I 
 put the cigar in the end of a pair of artery 
 forceps, so that I would not have to touch 
 it with my fingers, and went ahead. Do- 
 ing what .'* Why, taking live maggots out 
 of that boy's face! They lay in the recesses 
 of the wound, scores and scores of them — 
 big, white, fat maggots — and when I had 
 finished I found that I had filled a teacup 
 one-third full. And yet people at home in 
 America say, ** Why do you send medical 
 missionaries to the East .? *' Why ? That's 
 why! 
 
 I was called once to a house not a hun- 
 dred yards from the one last-mentioned, to 
 see a woman who was supposed to be dying. 
 Her husband came rushing into my house 
 and assured me his wife was nearly dead, 
 breathing her last, he said ; so although it 
 was noon and the thermometer on the 
 veranda registered one hundred and four 
 degrees, I jumped on my bicycle and rode 
 as hard as I could to the man's home. 
 
 A little baby had been born to the woman 
 that morning, and the custom in Burma is 
 190 
 
^cDical fnli66ionan2 Morft 
 
 that after a child is born, never mind how 
 hot the weather may be, a large fire is built 
 close beside the woman who is kept in a 
 constant sweat for several days. If she 
 should stop sweating for a moment there 
 would be grave danger; in fact, death would 
 speedily come. The unhappy woman had 
 really fainted from pain and intense heat, so 
 that a bucket of cold water thrown upon 
 the glowing embers of the fire would have 
 been the best treatment, sufficient to cure 
 her in fact ; but according to an old hag sit- 
 ting near, the real trouble was that every 
 drop of blood in her body '* had ascended " 
 to her brain and must be driven back again 
 to its proper place in her body, or she would 
 die and that in a few minutes. They had 
 tried to drive it back, two or three said, but 
 they had not been successful ; so that it 
 depended upon me. If I could persuade this 
 unruly blood "to descend" the patient 
 would get well ; if not, well, then she would 
 die. 
 
 I took out my hypodermic syringe and 
 gave her an injection, and in a few moments 
 had the satisfaction of seeing her open her 
 eyes, and soon after she was as comfortable 
 as it was possible for any one to be in such 
 a condition. I hardly know whether I should 
 191 
 
®DD6 anC) )Bn^6 from paaoDa XanD 
 
 say as comfortable as possible, for it was, 
 as I have said, one hundred and four de- 
 grees on our veranda ; I would hardly like 
 to say what it was under that grass roof 
 with the room packed to overflowing with 
 men, women and children and babies, not 
 to mention the great fire burning away in 
 the middle. But there was something worse 
 than that. 
 
 There was a burning smell in the room, 
 a strange smell like that of burning meat, 
 so I asked one woman what they were cook- 
 ing and advised them to look to it as it was 
 being burnt and would certainly be spoiled. 
 They looked surprised and said they were 
 not cooking anything ; it was noon and 
 " evening rice '* would not be put over the 
 fire for several hours. 
 
 I noticed that an old woman was holding 
 something upon the patient's head, and 
 when I asked what she was doing she said 
 she was trying to drive the blood down. 
 Just at that moment the woman took up a 
 pair of iron tongs, and thrusting them into 
 the fire, pulled out an earthenware pot 
 about as large as a breakfast coffee-cup, 
 which was red-hot. She took part of an 
 old dress and dipped it into water, wrung it 
 out, placed it upon the patient's head, then 
 192 
 
fHleDtcal fmissionarg Work 
 
 with the tongs she clapped upon that the 
 red-hot chattie and kept it in place with a 
 thick wad of wet cloth above all. Then 
 the mystery of the burning flesh was made 
 clear. It was not roasting pork as I thought, 
 but the woman's head that was burning ! 
 In the excitement the cloth beneath this 
 almost red-hot chattie had become dry and 
 the pot itself had burned through not the 
 cloth only but the woman's hair, skin, and 
 scalp, right down to the bone, and a few 
 days afterwards there was a great, ragged, 
 wound upon the top of her head as large as 
 the palm of my hand, and I could touch 
 bone with my probe wherever I placed it 
 within the burned area. 
 
 I am afraid this will be called a chapter 
 of horrors, and so it is, I freely acknowl- 
 edge, but if it is horrible simply to read of 
 such things, what must it be to suffer them ? 
 I have thus written to answer the question 
 so often asked at home : ** Why are medical 
 missionaries sent to Burma by the Chris- 
 tian churches of America? " Why.? Have 
 I answered that question to the reader's 
 satisfaction.? 
 
 There is no Good Samaritan in Buddhism 
 or Hinduism either, and one sermon of 
 works, relieving fever-stricken, pain-racked 
 N 193 
 
®DD0 anD JEnD0 tcom ipaaoDa XanD 
 
 bodies is sometimes worth a score of ser- 
 mons merely preached ; at least, that has 
 been my experience. 
 
 It is often pitiable to see the dense super- 
 stition in which people are buried, especially 
 the women. Some months ago I was called 
 to see the wife of a soldier, a Sikh woman, 
 who was in a desperate plight. A baby 
 had been born early in the morning and 
 yet, although it was then getting dark, she 
 was still in trouble ; the midwife, also a 
 native of India, did not know what the mat- 
 ter was, so they sent for me, and I found 
 the woman had twins, and only one had 
 been born. An operation was necessary, 
 and she had been sick so many hours that 
 when at last the second child was born it 
 was, to all appearances, dead. Immedi- 
 ately the midwife grabbed a brass dish in 
 one hand and one of my instruments in the 
 other and began banging them together, 
 making a horrible din. I objected to my in- 
 strument being employed in this manner, 
 as she was pounding with it upon the edge 
 of the dish vigorously, so I took it away 
 from her ; but a stick of fire-wood was sub- 
 stituted and the pounding continued in 
 order ** to bring life into the child," as she 
 explained. 
 
 194 
 
jfflbeDical fHl(06tonari3 TlClotft 
 
 Often at night as one passes through the 
 city one will see a great glare of light which 
 will be found to come from a number of 
 candles, often several score, the reason for 
 the illumination being that some person in 
 the house is sick, and these candles are 
 burnt as a sort of sacrifice in hopes of his 
 being cured. 
 
 At home the physician is expected to 
 make a diagnosis of the case to which he is 
 called ; here, however, the patient saves 
 him the trouble, for he comes, knowing just 
 what the trouble is, with a request that we 
 give him **good medicine " to cure it. 
 
 For example, here is a man who has come 
 to the morning clinic at the dispensary. 
 " What's the matter? " you query. 
 
 *' I have a tumor," he says ; " sometimes 
 it is small, sometimes large. It starts here," 
 (pointing to the lower part of his abdomen) 
 *'and it rolls around, rolls around, turning 
 over and over till it reaches my throat, and 
 then it feels as though it were about to 
 choke me." 
 
 This tumor pays not the slightest at- 
 tention to anatomy ; things like the dia- 
 phragm, lungs, and other organs, offer no 
 obstruction to it ; it rolls along its course 
 setting all anatomical knowledge at de- 
 195 
 
©ODs anD )Bnt>6 from ipago^a XanD 
 
 fiance. Of course, the man has no tumor 
 at all, he has dyspepsia ; but to tell him 
 that would make him think that you were 
 not only ignorant but unsympathetic as 
 well ; so you let him think he is harboring a 
 tumor of the somersault variety, and try 
 to cure his dyspepsia, and if you are fortu- 
 nate enough to do so — a difficult thing 
 enough — you cure his tumor at the same 
 time. So you put up ''good medicine," as 
 requested, in an old condensed -milk can 
 which he has brought for the purpose, and 
 he withdraws while you call out ** Next ! '* 
 
 *' What's the matter with you ? " 
 
 **0 saya, I have been sick a long time 
 with pain all over my body." 
 
 ** Oh, yes, I remember, you came here 
 some time ago." 
 
 *'I did, sqya, and you gave me some 
 medicine which cured it ; but I made a mis- 
 take yesterday, and that brought all the 
 trouble back. I ate some chicken." 
 
 A Burman will eat hard-boiled rice with 
 curry so hot it must taste like a political 
 torch-light procession going down his throat ; 
 with this he will take a little putrid fish and 
 smack his lips over it, but should he be 
 foolish enough to take a little chicken he is 
 deadly afraid it will make him sick. 
 196 
 
fnleDfcal HQtssionarg llClorft 
 
 Another interesting thing. The kitchen 
 of a Burman house has a floor made of split 
 bamboos, and between its crevices — and 
 there are sometimes more crevices than 
 floor — all the refuse is thrown for the dogs 
 and crows to eat, so that right beneath the 
 house is a hole, always partly filled with 
 stale water and decaying vegetable matter. 
 This harms the Burman not a jot, but just 
 let a native of India cook his food near-by, 
 using ghee or native butter to fry it in, and 
 every Burman that passes will cover up his 
 face and nose to keep away the smell, and 
 should they be attacked by any disease, 
 from malaria to consumption or cholera, 
 that frying butter is blamed for it. I re- 
 member a woman — one of the members of 
 our Burman church — assuring me that her 
 child got fever from smelling food which 
 was being fried in butter. 
 
 Here comes a great scuffling from the outer 
 room, then a native of India enters, comes 
 stiffly to ** attention," raises his hand in a 
 military salute with great unction, then re- 
 treats quickly to the waiting-room and re- 
 turns once more, this time piloting a movable 
 bundle of clothes. It is not a ''tail figure 
 all in white," but a short, squat figure all 
 in white, which has to be guided as though 
 197 
 
©DOS anO BnD5 trom iPaaoDa XanD 
 
 it was about to play blind man's buff, and 
 was being placed in position for the game 
 to commence. 
 
 Imagine a big sheet, in the center of 
 which is a round hole about the size of a 
 small tea-plate, laced back and forth with 
 tape. Place this sheet so that the laced 
 opening is squarely above her head ; make 
 the garment long enough to trip her up in 
 front, and drag upon the ground behind, 
 and full enough to hang around her so that 
 she looks like an equilateral triangle with 
 the apex rounded ol^, and you have a good 
 idea of what the wife of a Mohammedan 
 native of hidia looks like when she rides 
 abroad in a closed gharry (native carriage) 
 which has had all the windows closely shut 
 and a jealous husband opposite to her in 
 the dark. 
 
 From some hidden recess she pushes forth 
 a hand, covered almost from wrist to elbow 
 in thin, silver bracelets — that is for one to 
 feel her pulse, difficult enough to do with 
 the bracelets getting in the way, and yet 
 that's all one has to go by in making a 
 diagnosis, so far as physical signs are con- 
 cerned, but by judicious questioning of the 
 husband — the wife keeps silent or at most 
 whispers out the answers to her husband 
 198 
 
flUcOical nUiesionarg THUorft 
 
 who repeats them, she never answers di- 
 rect — one is able to strike a clue which is 
 often sufficient to put one on the right tracl<. 
 Some medicine is given, instructions are 
 gone over two or three times ; her husband 
 salutes again, grabs his wife by the elbow, 
 turns her about-face, and out she stumbles. 
 "Next!" 
 
 The next is another native of India, but 
 a very different sort of man from the last. 
 He is a Hindu, and hates the Mohammedan 
 like poison, and it may be said is hated by the 
 Mohammedan quite as cordially. This man 
 speaks beautifully ; his English is purer 
 than many and many a person born in 
 Boston or Philadelphia ; he has been edu- 
 cated in an Indian university, perhaps, and 
 so far as book learning is concerned, could 
 hold his own with a graduate of any of the 
 smaller American colleges. And yet, under 
 this veneer he carries his old prejudices. 
 How do you know ? Look at the bottle in 
 his hand ; it is partly filled with water. 
 What for } Why to mix his medicine with. 
 He will not drink water from the pitcher 
 you have been using all the morning. Why 
 it would break his caste, or, as he puts it, 
 "it is against the caste rules." This man 
 who has studied logic in a university does 
 199 
 
®DD6 anD BnDs tcom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 not see the foolishness in supplying water 
 to mix the medicine with, when at the same 
 time he is willing to use the drug which has 
 come out of a bottle from which thousands 
 of doses have been given and which has 
 been filled and refilled scores of times. 
 
 This prejudice, for it is really nothing 
 more, is a great difficulty in dealing with 
 certain natives of India. They are forever 
 parading their caste rules. They cannot 
 do this, they cannot do that, they cannot 
 do the other thing, because it is against 
 their caste. They have no hesitancy in 
 breaking these rules when it comes to a 
 case of profit and gain ; they will cross salt 
 water ; they will mix in business transac- 
 tions with men of lower castes ; they will 
 rub shoulders with them upon railroad cars, 
 steamboats, in offices and in stores, and 
 yet, every once in a while, they will spring 
 these caste rules upon you in a most 
 exasperating manner. 
 
 Such a man comes to you for aid in the 
 dispensary ; you give him the necessary 
 medicine, then he says: *'What shall I 
 eat ? " When I first came to Burma I com- 
 menced in such cases to tell them what 
 they should eat exactly as I would have 
 told an American at home, but I soon had 
 
 200 
 
firieDical nUissionacs Morh 
 
 to stop that. For instance, I would say : 
 
 ** Take a little chicken broth and ," but 
 
 before I could get any further the patient 
 would make a little bow and give a slight 
 shrug and say, " I am very sorry, sir, but 
 I cannot take that, it is against my caste 
 rules," and so one might go on saying this 
 or that only to find out in the end that he 
 could eat no animal food at all, with the 
 exception, perhaps, of milk. Another man 
 would consider the eating of a piece of beef 
 a greater sin than murder ; another cannot 
 eat beef but can eat mutton ; another can 
 eat goat-flesh and chicken, but nothing else ; 
 another man will not even drink tea because 
 it is necessary to cook the water and that 
 might kill some animal within it. So 
 now, when a native of hidia says, ** and 
 about diet ? " I always ask : ** Well, what 
 can you eat, anyway ; tell me first, and then 
 I will tell you what you can and what you 
 should not "; this saves a great deal of time 
 and bother too. Fortunately there is no 
 caste among the natives of Burma ; he is 
 not troubled about food, but is like the 
 king's fool — eats anything that is good. 
 
 This statement, however, should be 
 qualified with reference to milk. Very few 
 Burmans like milk. It "turns against 
 20 1 
 
©DD0 anD EnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 them" as the saying is, and a native of 
 Burma feels about drinking milk much as 
 an American would if ordered to drink 
 warm blood. Milk is practically never used 
 as an article of food, and when taken in sick- 
 ness I have more than once seen it cause a 
 violent diarrhoea, very difficult to control. 
 Sweet, condensed milk, not diluted with 
 water and drunk, but spread thick upon a 
 slice of bread or a biscuit is regarded as a 
 great dainty. 
 
 It might be interesting to note in passing, 
 perhaps, that comparatively few Burmans 
 suffer from consumption, while natives of 
 India who drink large quantities of raw milk 
 often come to the dispensary with well- 
 marked symptoms of this disease. There 
 are, of course, many other causes to be 
 taken into consideration ; but I am confident 
 the drinking of unboiled milk is a great 
 cause of this terrible disease. Of course 
 the milk must come from a diseased cow, 
 but in Upper Burma at least there is, so far 
 as I have ever heard, no inspection whatso- 
 ever of cow-stables or herds of milk-giving 
 cows. But to return to the clinic. 
 
 This time a Burman comes in leading a 
 child by the hand. One glance at the poor 
 little thing is sufficient to show how useless 
 
 202 
 
fHleDical flQtssionac^ THUocft 
 
 medicine is in her case. Both eyes are 
 sightless, covered with thick, white scars ; 
 the eyelids, without lashes, are thickened 
 and drawn out of shape, and the child is 
 quite blind. 
 
 ** How long ? " you ask. 
 
 ** Two or three years," replies her father. 
 
 ** Where do you live?" is the next 
 question. 
 
 ** At Goon Kha," (a village a mile or two 
 up the river). This man has known all the 
 time about the dispensary in the city, so 
 you ask : 
 
 ** Why did you not come before ? " 
 
 **Oh," he replies, *' at first the child's 
 eyes were so sore she did not want to come 
 out into the light ; then afterwards I put it 
 off from day to day and month to month 
 till now." 
 
 And thus it goes. Nep pin gah (to-mor- 
 row) is the curse of Burma. " I will do 
 it to-morrow," '* I will go to-morrow," 
 always, always to-morrow, and so nothing 
 is done that can possibly be put off till the 
 next day. 
 
 Some years ago I read a very clever arti- 
 cle in one of the popular magazines, I forget 
 which one — the *' Century " I think it was, 
 but am not quite sure. It was written by 
 203 
 
®0D6 anD jenDs trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 a young Japanese and was called Top- 
 sey-turveydom ; it contrasted Japan with 
 the United States, and the way things were 
 done in Japan with American methods; but 
 I often think Burma is quite as much upside 
 down as Japan, in some things more. 
 
 Especially is this true in cases of sick- 
 ness. At home the patient is, of course, 
 kept as quiet as possible. **The doctor 
 orders that nobody is to see the patient " ; 
 how often do we hear that at home ? 
 In Burma, however, a sick-room is the 
 gathering place of the community. The 
 patient lies in the middle of the room upon 
 his mat and is surrounded by friends, day 
 and night, and the more dangerous the 
 attack the greater is the gathering. Nor is 
 it a quiet, orderly one. Everybody, men, 
 women, and children chatter and smoke ; 
 everybody gives his or her ideas as to the 
 disease, its cause, and proper treatment ; 
 there is bustle in preparing food for visitors 
 that have come from a distance to see the 
 sick man, and all is confusion. A more 
 opposite condition to an American sick-room 
 it is impossible to imagine. 
 
 I once counted ninety people gathered in 
 one house, almost all piled into one room, 
 waiting for me to come and say what I 
 204 
 
flDeDical flQissionars Morft 
 
 thought of a case. The entire room in 
 which the patient lay was filled to over- 
 flowing with people sitting upon the floor, 
 wedged together, their knees drawn close 
 up under their chins to take up less room, 
 and only a narrow lane left from the door 
 to the mat in the center upon which the 
 sick woman lay. Down this lane I was 
 conducted to where, close beside the mat, 
 stood a chair, ostentatiously placed ready 
 for me to take my seat. It had been bor- 
 rowed for the occasion, by the way, from a 
 friend ; the people of the house did not 
 possess one, but it is considered such bad 
 form to ask a white man to sit upon the 
 floor like a native that whenever I make a 
 visit there is always a kalah tine (liter- 
 ally, ** a thing a foreigner sits on ") ready- 
 placed for my use. 
 
 The poor woman was dying of consump- 
 tion and it was necessary to examine her 
 chest, which was done to the great interest 
 of the crowd. A question addressed to the 
 patient would be answered by perhaps a 
 score of friends, and as they almost always 
 disagreed it was difficult to sift out the truth 
 from a mass of contradictory statements. 
 
 Outside upon the veranda were piles of 
 yellow robes, tins of biscuits and con- 
 205 
 
©DOS anD BnDs from iPafloDa XanO 
 
 densed milk to be offered to the priests in a 
 near-by monastery. A feast was being 
 cooked in the compound, part to be sent to 
 the monastery with the robes and part to 
 be eaten by the visitors. People were run- 
 ning from pot to pot ; fires were crackling, 
 smoke rising, children rushing hither and 
 thither, their parents scolding at the top of 
 their voices, and in the center of all, gasp- 
 ing out her life, lay the poor patient in 
 whose behalf all this was being done. 
 
 The native of Burma is very hysterical 
 and easily affected by surroundings or, as it 
 is technically termed, ** suggestion. '* Then 
 the crowding of the sick-room as I have 
 already described with sympathetic friends, 
 each pitying the patient and saying how 
 sick he is and how much he suffers, 
 heightens this influence. 
 
 I have frequently been called by a man 
 who, with tears in his eyes, has told me a 
 person was dying ; I have reached the 
 house and found a score of excited women 
 leaning over the patient, calling her by 
 name to come back and speak to them, 
 while they tore their hair, screamed, and 
 beat their breasts like distracted creatures, 
 and upon a mat would be a rigid form, stiff 
 and to all appearances unconscious if not 
 206 
 
micDical rmtssionar^ Morft 
 
 dead. It was, however, nothing but hys- 
 teria, and the worst of the screamers having 
 been sent out — much against their will, be 
 it said — and the balance calmed and quieted, 
 the apparently dead woman has before long 
 been brought around. What a field for so- 
 called ** Christian science ! " To cure some- 
 thing that never existed — to use an Irish- 
 man's phrase. But putting joking aside, 
 although it is ** nothing but hysteria," such 
 cases require a great deal of tact, in fact, 
 more tact than medicine. 
 
 The very first case I had in Burma was 
 that of a woman said to be dying of hydro- 
 phobia. I found out afterwards that the 
 dog which had bitten her was not mad ; she 
 thought it was, however, and that was just 
 as deadly for she actually frightened herself 
 to death — she died a few hours after I 
 saw her. 
 
 Upon the Shan Hills there is one kind of 
 evil spirit which is supposed to live in the 
 grass by the roadsides, and as travelers 
 through the jungle pass by the place where 
 it lies in ambush it utters a terrible scream 
 and springs for the person's throat. If the 
 traveler is wise he keeps his mouth shut and 
 gets nothing but a bad scare, for the spirit 
 flies off disappointed at the ill success of its 
 207 
 
®&D6 anD jBn^e trom iPagoOa XanD 
 
 scheme, but if, on the other hand, the man 
 becomes so frightened that he opens his 
 mouth to cry, the spirit seizes the oppor- 
 tunity of popping into his mouth, darts 
 down his throat and soon kills him. So 
 great is the dread of these evil spirits and 
 so firm is the belief that their entrance 
 into a person's body is surely fatal that 
 men who suppose themselves attacked 
 really die. Their case is hopeless, they 
 say, and they lie down and die of sheer 
 fright. 
 
 When a medical missionary first com- 
 mences work he may be regarded with 
 suspicion, but if he is at all skilful and 
 conscientious and above all has tact and 
 kindly feelings he soon wins the confidence 
 of the Burmans. The last-mentioned char- 
 acteristic, however, counts for more than 
 all the rest, save, perhaps that of tact. 
 Any man can be reached through his heart 
 quicker, not to mention more satisfactorily, 
 than through his brains ; and the Burman, 
 the Kachin, the Shan, and the Hindu are as 
 other men in this respect, and their con- 
 fidence once gained it is given freely. Some- 
 times, in fact, it is almost embarrassing. 
 For instance, I once had a man brought to 
 me with an eye that looked like a raisin ; he 
 208 
 
had been blind forty years, he told me, had 
 had an arrow shot into it when he was a 
 boy, but a friend whom I had cured had 
 assured him that that did not make any 
 difference, I could cure him, and what was 
 more, could give him a new eye. Poor 
 fellow ! he went away a very disappointed 
 man. His friend had heard, I believe, of 
 artificial eyes, something, however, I did 
 not have in the dispensary. The artificial 
 eye, through report, had probably grown 
 into one that could see. 
 
 Speaking of artificial eyes makes me think 
 of a Shan preacher I used to have. This 
 man had an artificial tooth and often mys- 
 tified the jungle people by opening his mouth 
 and showing them that he had a straight 
 row of teeth, then by rubbing his hand 
 over his lips, he could make the tooth dis- 
 appear and reappear at will. I used often 
 to think of the story of Rider Haggard — in 
 ** King Solomon's Mines," I think it is — 
 where a man saved his life by taking a set 
 of false teeth in and out. Our preacher was 
 as proud of his artificial tooth as a peacock 
 with two tails, but alas, pride goeth before 
 destruction, this time not merely in a figura- 
 tive sense, for that tooth was simply worn 
 out by taking it in and out showing off 
 209 
 
®DD5 anD J£nt>6 from iPagoDa XanD 
 
 before admiring friends, and the last time 
 I saw the preacher there was a woful 
 gap between his teeth and their artificial 
 companion was no more. 
 
 210 
 
if 
 
 mats," "IHpcas," anb Cbarms 
 
VI 
 
 *'NAT" (Shan hpea), is a Bur- 
 mese word, the meaning of which, 
 as given in Doctor Judson's dic- 
 tionary is, ** A kind of god, a being superior 
 to man and inferior to Brahmas, some of 
 whom inhabit the inferior celestial regions, 
 and others have dominion over different 
 parts of the earth and sky." 
 
 Belief in and fear of these nats or evil 
 spirits is universal throughout Burma. In 
 the case of hill tribes, such as the Kachins 
 and the Karens, it is the only religion they 
 possess, if such a belief can be dignified by 
 the name of religion ; but even with the 
 Burmans, although they are Buddhists, the 
 fear of these spirits is almost as great, and 
 offerings are constantly made to them. 
 
 An officer in the police, then stationed at 
 Toungoo, in Lower Burma, told me the 
 following anecdote : He had in his service 
 an orderly, a Shan, who had been in the 
 police department for years. Shortly be- 
 fore he told me the story the officer had 
 been at a small village a few miles north of 
 213 
 
©DD0 anD J£ntf6 tcom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 Toungoo, where there were several prison- 
 ers, and as there was no prison there it was 
 necessary to bring them down to the city 
 by train. They were securely handcuffed 
 in pairs and entrusted to this old Shan or- 
 derly, who went with them aboard the 
 south-bound train. 
 
 Now, if this old man had been content to 
 simply take his prisoners safely to their 
 destination, and deliver them to the jail 
 officials as ordered, all would have been 
 well, but he was very fond of what a friend 
 of mine calls "frills," and wished to im- 
 press upon the minds of the unfortunate 
 prisoners under his care what a smart man 
 he was. He had often seen conductors — 
 guards they call them in Burma — drop off 
 the train without waiting for it to stop, and 
 he thought that by following their example 
 he would be able to show how clever he 
 was and how used he was to traveling by 
 train, so while the cars were still in motion, 
 just as the train pulled into the station, he 
 turned his face toward the rear car and 
 gave a tremendous leap. 
 
 The poor old policeman was encumbered 
 with a sword, several bundles, and an earth- 
 enware chattie^ and when some coolies stand- 
 ing near had helped the would-be great 
 214 
 
**1Flat0," **lHpea0," atiD Cbarms 
 
 man to his feet, had picked up his sword 
 and bundles, some of them from the track, 
 he looked at the pieces of his earthenware 
 chattie ruefully, whilst he rubbed a bump 
 upon the back of his head with one hand, 
 and with the other stanched the blood 
 flowing from his nose. 
 
 He swore the other policemen to silence, 
 but the joke upon the poor old orderly was 
 too good to keep, and before long not only 
 had it been told to the balance of the men 
 at their village post, but the story reached 
 the ears of the inspector, who demanded 
 why he had done such a foolish thing 
 as jump off a train in motion. The old 
 man, however, was ready with an excuse. 
 Putting on a look of great wisdom, he 
 replied : 
 
 **My lord, you must understand that 
 many, many years before the English came 
 to Burma there was a great nat, one of the 
 greatest in our country, that had his habi- 
 tation in a large tree near the gate of 
 Toungoo. This tree was cut down to make 
 way for the railroad, and the nat, to his 
 great disgust, was obliged to seek a new 
 home. Your lordship will, of course, un- 
 derstand how angry the nat was at such 
 treatment, and he determined to revenge 
 215 
 
Qt>t>6 anD lBnt>s trom iPagoDa UanD 
 
 himself upon people who rode in trains 
 whenever he had the chance. To this end 
 he follows the trains for many miles, and 
 often seizes unfortunate passengers and 
 throws them off the cars. 
 
 " This was what happened to your slave. 
 I was standing upon the platform of the car, 
 just getting ready to alight when the train 
 should stop, when this nat seized me by 
 my two shoulders and threw me violently 
 to the ground. Your slave is but a man, 
 and when a demon seizes his shoulders, as 
 this one did mine, what is he to do ? Be- 
 cause of this, although I broke the sheath 
 of my sword, tore my jacket, and raised a 
 bump upon my head, which feels as big as 
 a cocoanut, I do not feel that I have dis- 
 graced myself or have done aught to be 
 ashamed of." 
 
 These evil spirits are supposed to cause 
 sickness. A man falls sick, and his friends 
 believing the sickness is caused by a nat, 
 offer gifts beneath a nat tree. Shans usually 
 paint a bamboo or two white, and place them 
 beneath the tree. If this does not work a 
 cure presents of a little greater value are 
 offered, such as betel-nut, a few bananas, a 
 little boiled rice, or even a little tobacco, 
 and in severe cases a small house made of 
 216 
 
bamboo, or a zayat, is built beneath the tree 
 in which the nat is supposed to live. 
 
 If this is not sufficient to coax the evil 
 spirit out of the sufferer's body there re- 
 mains one other expedient, that of driving 
 him out ; and Buddhist priests are called 
 upon to do this service. Usually a small 
 platform, raised a foot or so from the ground, 
 is built of bamboos or anything that comes 
 readily to hand. It is covered with mats, 
 most of which have been borrowed from 
 friends, and a curtain is hung up at the 
 rear of the platform to shield the priests 
 from the wind. Plants and flowers are 
 oftentimes arranged to make an effective 
 setting, and last of all, but not least by any 
 means, betel-nut boxes are placed handy, 
 together with dishes full of large cheroots. 
 This is done outside the house in full view 
 of everybody ; in fact, all the neighbors 
 join in and help ; practically everything in 
 Burma being done on the co-operative plan. 
 
 At evening the priests put in an appear- 
 ance. A small boy bearing an immense 
 palm-leaf fan follows each, and each priest 
 takes his place upon the platform, sitting 
 upon the mats spread for his comfort, and 
 retiring behind his fan is supposed to be 
 soon lost in meditation. After a while they 
 217 
 
©DD0 anD BnDs from iPagoOa 3LanD 
 
 begin chanting texts and passages from the 
 law, while the oldest men and women in 
 the quarter devoutly count their beads and 
 * make hay while the sun shines ' by wor- 
 shiping the holy men, and thus lay up a little 
 merit which will always come in useful. 
 At length the priests rise and stalk back 
 to their monasteries followed by coolies 
 carrying the gifts from the friends of the 
 patient. 
 
 A sort of witchcraft is closely allied to 
 the belief in nats. Burmans believe that 
 nails, bits of leather, pieces of bone, rags, 
 and other things can be conjured into a 
 man's body by an enemy aided by a witch. 
 
 I remember a carpenter with a phlegmon 
 of his hand coming to me for treatment 
 soon after my arrival in Bhamo. The 
 whole hand was much swollen ; he had had 
 no sleep for several nights, and was com- 
 pletely worn out with pain and want of 
 rest. I persuaded him to let me open his 
 hand, and after a large amount of pus had 
 been evacuated I called our Karen nurse to 
 dress the wound. Two openings were 
 made so as to secure good drainage, and in 
 flushing out the cavity from which the pus 
 had been drained, a large mass of stringy 
 tissue protruded from the lower wound. I 
 218 
 
told the nurse to seize this with a pair of 
 dressing forceps, which she did, and gently 
 pulled the mass out. The carpenter looked 
 at it attentively for a moment or so, then 
 he said : 
 
 ** Ah, I knew somebody who had owed 
 me a grudge had put something in my hand 
 to make it sore and there it is, sure enough ; 
 now I shall get well quickly." 
 
 Some of these spirits live in banyan 
 trees, and beneath their spreading branches 
 may often be seen model houses, model 
 zayats, and the plates which have held 
 offerings of rice and other food. 
 
 A young British officer told me a good 
 story about a nat tree. He was in charge 
 of a post on the Shan Hills, and close to his 
 fort a rifle range had been ordered built. 
 As the district was very mountainous the 
 site selected was the only available one for 
 some miles. He noticed that a fine, large 
 tree was growing close to the three-hundred- 
 yard line, and as he was a lover of nature 
 he decided to let the grand old tree stand 
 till the range was finished, and not cut 
 it down till the very last minute possible. 
 The butts were therefore built ; the range 
 laid out and leveled ; the different distances 
 measured off, and everything ready for the 
 2ig 
 
®DD0 anD BnDs trom iPasoDa XanD 
 
 inspection of his superior officer, save the 
 felling of the tree ; then he reluctantly 
 gave orders that it was to be chopped down. 
 
 Near-by was a Shan village, the residents 
 of which had taken great interest in the 
 leveling of the range, the building of the 
 butts, the measuring, etc., but at the first 
 blow of the axes against the great tree 
 they came rushing out of their houses like 
 a swarm of angry bees from a hive and 
 drove the coolies off. 
 
 Then the young officer discovered that a 
 nat, or a hpea as the Shans called him, 
 lived in that tree, and dire results would 
 happen should it be cut down. 
 
 This put the young man in a very un- 
 enviable position. Government money 
 had been expended upon the range and yet 
 it was useless with a big tree blocking up 
 the way ; upon the other hand, chopping it 
 down would surely raise a riot and he was 
 afraid of being hauled over the coals if that 
 happened. What was he to do ? He 
 thought till his head ached and he felt like 
 kicking the Shans, his men, and himself ; 
 but with all his thinking he could see no 
 way out of his difficulty. He was just 
 about ordering out a party of sepoys to 
 protect the coolies while chopping down the 
 
 220 
 
tree, this course appearing to be the less 
 evil of the two, when a baboo, a native of 
 India, who had lived in Burma many years, 
 waited upon him and told him that for a 
 consideration of fifty rupees he thought he 
 could settle things satisfactorily to every- 
 body. 
 
 The money was gladly given. The 
 baboo put half of it in his own pocket, 
 then taking the balance he made a visit to 
 the house of the heng or headman of the 
 village. He impressed upon this man the 
 fact that the great Indian government cared 
 naught for such little things as hpeas or 
 demons, never mind how much the Shans 
 might dread them ; that when that govern- 
 ment gave an order it must be obeyed, 
 hpeas or no hpeas, and that if his people 
 tried to prevent the chopping down of the 
 tree, his lordship, the officer in charge, 
 would call out a party of troops to guard 
 the coolies, and in that case, if they still 
 persisted, somebody would get hurt. 
 
 Upon the other hand, the government, 
 and the officer too, was kind, and did not 
 wish to bring ill-luck upon the villagers by 
 destroying the tree and thus making the 
 nat angry, and he finally asked if there 
 were not another banyan tree near at hand 
 
 221 
 
Ot>oe anD JEnDa from ipagoDa XanD 
 
 which was not honored by having a nat 
 dwelling within its branches. Could not 
 the headman prevail upon the hpea to shift 
 his quarters ? 
 
 This was a happy thought, but the head- 
 man was not very sanguine upon this point. 
 There were, of course, other trees, ban- 
 yans too, in which no hpea resided, but 
 still, the thing was against custom ; it had 
 never been done before ; they must make 
 a feast and that would cost money ; the 
 villagers were very poor too. 
 
 Here at last was the baboo's chance, one 
 too good to be lost, and when the artful fel- 
 low brought forth twenty-five rupees and 
 said this great sum could be used in buying 
 necessaries for just such a feast, the horizon 
 became distinctly brighter. The headman 
 took the money and promised to call nat 
 doctors and priests from the great city near. 
 They came, of course ; rice and curry was 
 cooked, not to mention other good things, 
 and so people came in crowds from city and 
 villages, all eager to see his lordship the 
 hpea change his quarters. 
 
 A procession was formed, the men in the 
 lead carrying a beautiful little sedan chair 
 made of bamboo strips. Under a tree a 
 few hundred yards away a cute little house, 
 
 222 
 
also made of bamboo strips, had been built. 
 His lordship was asked to graciously permit 
 his most humble servants the honor of car- 
 rying him from his old residence to the new 
 one which he was assured was much better. 
 He consented — at least the headman said 
 he did ; anyway, drums were beaten, gongs 
 were banged, and the procession marched 
 from one tree to the other and nothing 
 dreadful happened the next morning when 
 the coolies chopped the tree down ; the 
 only conclusion possible, therefore, was 
 that the headman was right and that his 
 lordship the hpea had consented to vacate 
 in favor of the Indian government. Thus 
 are Orientals governed. 
 
 Some of these nats are supposed to spend 
 their time in guarding lakes and tanks. 
 Thirty years ago. Doctor Gushing, the sen- 
 ior Shan missionary, but at the time of this 
 writing president of the American Baptist 
 College in Rangoon, and Mr. Kelly, a prom- 
 ising young missionary, were traveling in 
 the Southern Shan States. Having been 
 without fresh food for some time, Mr. Kelly 
 upon arriving at a small lake took his gun 
 in hopes of getting a shot at a bird. He 
 was fortunate enough to bring down a wild 
 fowl but it fell into a lake just beyond his 
 223 
 
©DD0 auD BnDs ttom iPagoDa 3LanD 
 
 reach. He was about to pull off some of 
 his clothes to swim out and secure his bird 
 when the coolies that accompanied him 
 crowded around begging him not to do so. 
 They said a hpea guarded the lake ; a very 
 wicked specimen too, and he would be so 
 enraged at a man's first of all shooting a 
 bird near his domains and then capping 
 everything by swimming into the lake to 
 get it, that the white foreigner would surely 
 be pulled under by the angry spirit and 
 drowned before their eyes. 
 
 Of course the young American laughed 
 at such a fairy-tale as that, and tossing 
 aside his coat entered the lake. He took a 
 few strokes and had almost reached his bird 
 when he suddenly threw up his hands and 
 disappeared beneath the surface of the 
 lake. 
 
 The bravest deed I have ever heard of 
 a native of Burma doing was done then. 
 Among the followers was a man named 
 Ing Tah. He had been born and raised 
 amongst the superstitions of his people, of 
 course — he was a Shan — and although he 
 had become a Christian a few months 
 before, there must have been in his heart, 
 without a doubt, a great dread of the evil 
 spirits he had been accustomed to fear and 
 224 
 
worship since his childhood, and yet this 
 man bravely volunteered to enter the lake 
 and dive for the body of the young mission- 
 ary. He dived several times, and each 
 time he disappeared the other coolies con- 
 fidently expected him to share the fate of 
 the white man, but at last he discovered 
 the body and found also that the feet had 
 become entangled in some water-plants 
 growing upon the bottom. 
 
 The young missionary was buried near 
 the bank of the lake in which he had lost 
 his life, and Doctar Gushing had to return, 
 bearing the heavy tidings to his young 
 widow in Lower Burma ; a sorrowful jour- 
 ney surely. A small tree was planted at 
 the head of Kelly's grave and twenty 
 years after, when the writer visited the 
 place, the sapling was found to have grown 
 to a tree of mighty girth, a landmark for 
 miles across the plain. The story of the 
 white man's death has passed into the his- 
 tory of Shan country, and every man 
 knows of the American teacher whom the 
 hpea dragged to his death beneath the 
 waters of Naung Se Wit. 
 
 In a former chapter I have told of the 
 journey I took with my sick wife from 
 Mongnai ; it may not be uninteresting, per- 
 P 225 
 
©DJ)6 anD J6nD0 tiom pagoDa XanD 
 
 haps, to tell the cause of her sickness from 
 the Shan standpoint. 
 
 Poor food had really more to do with it 
 than any other one thing ; it was at that 
 time impossible to get fresh meat in bazaar 
 except at rare intervals, although meat 
 from animals which had died a natural death 
 was to be had almost every bazaar day ; 
 the people at first would not even sell us 
 chickens because they feared that we 
 would kill and eat the chickens and their 
 late owners might in some manner receive 
 part of the punishment meted out to people 
 guilty of taking animal life. We were 
 therefore husbanding our store of canned 
 goods, as we knew it would be impossible 
 to replace them during the rainy season 
 then upon us. Under the circumstances I 
 thought it might prove a good plan to try 
 and get some fish. The river did not look 
 at all promising, and after trying it I found 
 it justified its looks. After a couple of 
 hours' patient waiting I did not get a single 
 bite. Just south of the mission compound, 
 however, was a tank in which I had seen 
 quite a number of fish and so I determined 
 to try my luck there. 
 
 I had hardly thrown my line into the 
 water before I noticed a number of men 
 226 
 
who had been bathing at the lower tank 
 come running toward me, calling to their 
 companions as they came, and before many 
 minutes had elapsed the entire coping around 
 the tank upon three sides was lined with 
 men and women, although they seemed to 
 shun the side upon which I had taken my 
 seat. I was then new to the country or it 
 would not have been necessary for me to 
 ask why they stared at me so, but at that 
 time I had no idea what the attraction was, 
 so I said : 
 
 ** What are you looking at ? " 
 
 *' We are waiting to see you go into the 
 tank ! " answered a man. 
 
 ** Go into the tank ? Why should I go 
 into the tank } " I asked. 
 
 *' Because the hpea will pull you in," 
 they cried in chorus. 
 
 This was a good chance to talk, so I told 
 them that if a man was a Christian there 
 was no need to fear hpeas. ** You say 
 your hpeas are strong," I continued, ** but 
 I will now show you that I am stronger. 
 Now wait and see." 
 
 They did wait and, what is more, they 
 
 confidently expected to see me go toppling 
 
 over into the tank sooner or later and meet 
 
 the same fate that poor Kelly had met 
 
 227 
 
©OD0 anD JBnt>3 trom IPagoDa XanD 
 
 twenty years before, and they went away a 
 very disappointed crowd of men and women. 
 
 That afternoon my wife was taken vio- 
 lently sick and it became necessary to get 
 her home as quickly as possible. The 
 news spread through the city like wild-fire, 
 and every wiseacre shook his head and 
 said, ** I told you so." They believed that 
 the spirit had sent this punishment upon us 
 instead of drowning me in the tank. This 
 was the universal verdict. 
 
 Some time ago, Doctor Henderson, who 
 relieved me at Mongnai, had a case of ap- 
 pendicitis and told the patient that she had 
 the same trouble as ** Mamma " Griggs had 
 had. The woman was scared almost to 
 death and protested most solemnly that she 
 had never fished in the tank. One exam- 
 ple was quite sufficient, she declared, and 
 no man or woman would risk life in doing 
 such a foolhardy thing as that, especially 
 when fish was so cheap in bazaar. If 
 the hpea would punish a white man so 
 severely, what, indeed, would be the 
 punishment meted out to a Shan ? 
 
 One of the most curious places, if not 
 the most curious place in which a nat is 
 supposed to live is in the front part of an 
 ox-cart. 
 
 228 
 
I remember soon after coming to Burma 
 that a party of us took a journey from the 
 railroad far into Shan country. All our 
 goods came in the train from Lower Burma, 
 and I was busy a whole morning bargain- 
 ing with ox-cart men at the station to take 
 us about a day's journey, at the end of 
 which we would transfer our goods to 
 mountain-carts or, rather, carts with oxen 
 used to mountain travel. 
 
 After the bargain was completed the load- 
 ing began. Practically everything we had 
 had been packed into coolie baskets, each, 
 with its contents, weighing five viss (about 
 eighteen pounds), so that these baskets 
 took up a great deal of room in the bottom 
 of a cart and yet made a very light load. 
 
 Some small bundles and baskets had 
 been left over and there was a good deal 
 of squabbling among the cartmen as to 
 where these baskets should be placed. 
 They jabbered and talked as only Burmese 
 cartmen can jabber and talk, and after a 
 while, seeing they appeared no nearer a 
 settlement of the dispute than at first, I 
 snatched up one of the baskets from the 
 ground and placed it on one of the carts 
 just a little forward of the place where the 
 driver would afterward take his place. It 
 229 
 
®OD0 anD Bnt)0 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 was only a small basket and the man would 
 have been able to see over it and yet sit 
 comfortably and drive his oxen easily at 
 the same time. 
 
 As I placed the basket on the cart every 
 man jumped to his feet and cried out ex- 
 citedly that I must remove it or not a man 
 would "follow." I was astounded for a 
 moment or two, but then I remembered 
 how complex are their customs ; that a 
 man cannot do this or that or the other 
 thing, although in Western eyes it may 
 appear trivial or unimportant, so I asked 
 what the trouble was. 
 
 The head coolie, a Shan, then said, 
 ** Teacher, there is not room for that basket 
 there." 
 
 '*Not room!" I cried; "what do you 
 mean by * not room ' } There is plenty of 
 room. The cartman can sit behind it. It 
 does not come up to his knees. He can 
 see over it and be comfortable." 
 
 " It is not a case of the cartman's being 
 comfortable," replied the coolie, "but of 
 offending the hpea." 
 
 While the coolie had been talking to me 
 the cartman had lifted the basket from his 
 cart and placed it upon the ground. Then, 
 turning toward me, he said : 
 230 
 
**1Flat0,'' ^'Mpeas,'' anD Cbatms 
 
 ** If the teacher does not know I will tell 
 him. Just in front of the driver's seat lives 
 a nat who guards the cart. If we feed him 
 before we start on a journey and do not 
 crowd him he remains good-tempered, but 
 if we were to place that basket where you 
 wanted it to go it would incommode him. 
 He would become angry and play all sorts 
 of tricks upon us. The cart would break 
 down before we had gone a mile ; the oxen 
 would fall sick ; we would all get the fever ; 
 in short, bad luck would arrive for every- 
 body and everything in the caravan. No, 
 the basket cannot go there." 
 
 It was, of course, no use arguing, so the 
 contents of three or four carts had to be 
 rearranged to make room for the trouble- 
 some baskets before we could start on our 
 journey. 
 
 These inquisitive busybodies of fairies 
 interest themselves even in the building of 
 houses. The first building put up under 
 my care was at Mongnai, in Shan country. 
 The post-holes were dug, the bottom of 
 each post was burned to make it bitter and 
 protect it from white ants, and the next 
 thing in order was to raise it. 
 
 I went out early one morning to see the 
 carpenters do this, and the first thing I saw, 
 231 
 
®DD0 anD BnOg trom pagoDa XanD 
 
 close to the house-site, was what looked 
 like a little table with tall legs, made of 
 bamboo, and upon it was placed a little rice, 
 with a few bananas and a little betel-nut. 
 A small bunch of bananas was tied with 
 rattan to the top of each post as it lay upon 
 the ground all ready to be hoisted into 
 place. 
 
 I called the head carpenter — a Shan, of 
 course — and asked him what these bananas 
 meant, and he answered that they were an 
 offering to the hpeas, and assured me that 
 if something of the kind was not done the 
 nails would turn to worms between their 
 fingers, the hammers and hatchets would 
 mash and cut their fingers, the posts would 
 fall and crush them and other disastrous 
 things would happen, all brought about by 
 these miserable hpeas. 
 
 A Westerner may perhaps smile at such 
 superstition and say " How foolish ! " Of 
 course it is foolish, worse than foolish, but 
 the carpenters believed it — hpeas were very 
 real beings to them — and what is more, 
 every man in the country, from one end to 
 the other, except the Christians, shares 
 their belief. The Burman is as superstitious 
 as the Shan. I found that out when, years 
 afterward, I started building the Bessie 
 232 
 
**inat0,'' *'1Hpea5/' anD Cbacms 
 
 Richards Memorial Hospital in Bhamo, for 
 the Burman carpenters acted in exactly the 
 same way. 
 
 When the schoolhouse — also in Bhamo 
 — was built, as it was a much larger and 
 more expensive building, and as the gov- 
 ernment had made a grant in aid of it, 
 Chinese carpenters were called, and as the 
 first post went up the Chinese contractor 
 set fire to a circle of little candles he had 
 previously placed in the ground, while in 
 the quarters of the carpenters close by, a 
 whole bunch of punk incense-sticks smoked 
 before the shrine of their spook ancestors. 
 And so it goes throughout the whole country 
 from China to the sea. 
 
 These nats and hpeas have an unfortu- 
 nate habit of being revenged upon persons 
 that have unwittingly provoked them. If 
 a man meets misfortune the nats are often 
 blamed for causing it. If the hens do not 
 lay or if eggs mysteriously disappear after- 
 ward it is because some nat has been 
 offended and is now taking his revenge, 
 and so on through an endless succession of 
 petty trivial troubles. 
 
 Anything that is out of the ordinary is 
 easily explained by attributing it to a nat. 
 A phonograph is a nat. Some Burmans 
 233 
 
©OD0 anD EnDs tcom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 from a jungle village once came to hear our 
 graphophone. Of course they were aston- 
 ished, and when they heard songs, bands, 
 solos, and choruses all come out of one 
 trumpet, they decided that a nat was inside 
 and did the talking. Even when we pro- 
 duced a record and explained that a Burman 
 had sung into the horn, and endeavored to 
 make the method plain to them, they shook 
 their heads and said it could be nothing but 
 a nat ; nothing else would have sufficient 
 wisdom to do such a marvelous thing. 
 There was no getting around such reasoning 
 as that, so we gave it up. 
 
 The highest flattery a Burman can give 
 is to call a person a nat. Sometimes after 
 a difficult operation, after the patient has 
 been etherized, after a great gaping wound 
 has been made, after this has been sewn 
 up and the patient come out of the ether, 
 they have asked him : ** Did you feel no 
 pain, none at all, none whatsoever.? " and 
 when the patient has assured them he felt 
 nothing, they have shook their heads and 
 said : " Your lordship is not a man, you are 
 a nat." Higher praise than that they could 
 not give. 
 
 The question is sometimes asked, " Are 
 there no good nats } " 
 234 
 
** Oh, yes," the natives say, ** there are 
 good nats as well as bad, just as there are 
 good men as well as bad. But you see they 
 do not hurt us, and so we do not bother 
 about them ; we do not feed them. What's 
 the use .? It would be just that much good 
 food or money's worth thrown away; so 
 we feed and worship the bad ones only in 
 hope that we will be able to keep them 
 from getting angry with us, and to concili- 
 ate them should we be so unfortunate as to 
 make them angry." 
 
 Besides these common everyday nats 
 there are others, much more terrible but 
 rarely met with. They are, indeed, the 
 bugaboos of our own childhood days. The 
 worst is an awful spirit with a dragon's 
 head, the claws of a vulture, the wings of 
 an eagle, and the body of a lion ; a com- 
 bination capable of considerable action, and 
 if the tales told about them in the folk-lore 
 of the Shan hills are to be relied upon, they 
 act up to their powers. Their food is hu- 
 man flesh and a good deal of it. Then there 
 is the beeloo, a giant as tall as a palm 
 tree. This being rejoices in a dog's face 
 with fangs as long as an elephant's tusks. 
 He does not walk or run, but jumps, spring- 
 ing a quarter of a mile at each leap, some- 
 235 
 
®D06 anD JBnt)3 tcom IPagoDa XanD 
 
 times bounding even further wlien in chase 
 of a plump man or woman upon whom he 
 has his eye. 
 
 Fortunately for the inhabitants of the 
 mountains these breeds seem of late years 
 to have become as extinct as the dragons 
 of Greece or the giants of Ireland, and their 
 only use now appears to be to fill up im- 
 portant parts in stories, the drama, and 
 decorations to monasteries, except, per- 
 haps, to scare disobedient children, a state 
 of affairs eminently satisfactory, especially 
 to fat and chubby children and young vir- 
 gins for whose tender flesh, in years gone 
 by, these monsters appear to have had a 
 great fondness and an inordinate appetite. 
 
 The belief in and fear of nats, hpeas, 
 and kindred spirits, is really the old religion 
 of Burma which Buddhism has never sup- 
 planted, and when one leaves the plains 
 and ascends the hills one finds that the 
 further he travels the less hold Buddhism 
 has upon the people and the greater the fear 
 of nats, till, upon the borders of China, and 
 among the Kachins, Chins, and other hill 
 tribes, it constitutes, as before mentioned, 
 the entire religion of the people. Idols are 
 not to be seen ; monasteries with their yel- 
 low-robed priests are left behind, and in- 
 236 
 
stead nat priests, nat altars and the remains 
 of nat feasts are universal. 
 
 Still, even among the Shans, who are big- 
 oted Buddhists, so great is this fear that I 
 have frequently seen men, clad only in cot- 
 ton trousers and cotton jacket, sit shivering 
 upon the ground, or sleep shivering upon a 
 sheet of coarse paper by way of a bed, and 
 nothing above them but a thin cotton 
 blanket, while there was white frost upon 
 the ground, and yet close by, lay broken 
 boughs and branches, just the stuff to make 
 a good roaring fire with, and yet they lay 
 unused. Why? Because a hpea was sup- 
 posed to live in the tree they fell from, and 
 not a coolie dared collect an armful to make 
 a fire. Such is the bondage in which the 
 people, especially the hill people, live. 
 
 Closely allied to the subject of nat-wor- 
 ship is that of charms. The native of 
 Burma has a vast number, and he places 
 implicit faith in them. A tragic example of 
 this occurred a few years ago in Mandalay. 
 A Buddhist priest proclaimed himself to be 
 a prince and relative of Thebaw, the last 
 king of Burma. He also claimed to have 
 the power of making his followers invulner- 
 able by means of charms which he tattooed 
 upon their bodies, so that if necessary they 
 237 
 
®DD6 anD lSnt>6 from iPagoDa 3LanD 
 
 could become invisible to their enemies; 
 swords could not wound them, and bullets 
 aimed at them would turn to worms. Un- 
 fortunately he was able to gain such an 
 ascendancy over a number of men that 
 they consented to assist him in storming 
 the palace, so that he could seat himself 
 upon Thebaw's throne, after which they 
 confidently expected that every white man 
 would flee the country and the old Burman 
 rule be restored. 
 
 Fort Dufferin, in which the palace is 
 situated, at that time contained a battalion 
 of English troops, a whole regiment of 
 sepoys, and a mountain-battery (native 
 troops), and yet these foolish Burmans, 
 armed only with swords and spears, rushed 
 the gate of the fort and killed a soldier, a 
 woman, and an onlooker or two. Of 
 course, they were speedily overpowered. 
 Some were shot, some were afterward 
 hanged, and some were sentenced to long 
 terms of imprisonment, but such is the 
 faith of Burmans in such men as this priest 
 that another would have comparatively lit- 
 tle trouble to raise followers, and he would 
 be believed in and followed as readily with, 
 unhappily, the same results ; unhappily, 
 that is, so far as his dupes are concerned. 
 238 
 
One of the strangest of charms is used 
 in Shan country. It is supposed to make 
 the person submitting to it invuhierable in 
 the time of battle ; it is supposed to enable 
 him to climb a banana tree without causing 
 it to bend beneath his weight, and confer 
 several other wonderful powers. 
 
 The person wishing to possess this charm, 
 together with a nat saya (nat doctor), goes 
 into the jungle, where a hole is dug in the 
 ground. The man stands in this hole and 
 the earth is then filled in all around him up 
 to his neck, so that nothing is visible but 
 his head. His friends then cut down a long 
 bamboo, split it lengthways, and by knock- 
 ing out the joints, make it into a gutter. 
 Four sticks are also chopped down and 
 fastened together in two pairs in the shape 
 of an X. These are used as supports to the 
 split bamboo, at one end of which the soya 
 stands, and the other is put into the patient's 
 mouth. 
 
 The nat doctor then goes off by himself 
 into the jungle where he prepares some 
 *' medicine," the ingredients of which are 
 a profound secret. This medicine is made 
 up into balls, about the size of a boy's 
 marbles, and are rolled, one after another, 
 along the split bamboo into the man's 
 239 
 
®DDa anD JBn^e trom ipagoOa ILanD 
 
 mouth. He must bolt each one as soon as 
 it passes his lips ; if he chews one bolus the 
 good of the charm is immediately destroyed. 
 After all the medicine has been taken the 
 man is freed from his prison and goes on his 
 way rejoicing, quite confident that it is not 
 possible to wound him by any weapon made 
 by man. 
 
 The commonest charm in Upper Burma, 
 perhaps, is the needle charm. A common 
 steel needle is broken in halves; the skin 
 of the arm is pinched up between the 
 thumb and fmger, and the pointed end of 
 the needle is thrust beneath the skin. 
 Usually these needles, being small, do no 
 harm ; they become lodged parallel with 
 the muscles or between them, but occasion- 
 ally they work their way close to a joint 
 and then cause trouble as they then inter- 
 fere with its action and have to be cut out, 
 which is sometimes quite a difficult thing to 
 do ; they are so small it is often difficult to 
 locate them exactly. 
 
 Upon the Shan hills one often sees m.en 
 with small black lumps along the neck, in 
 front of the large muscle just to the side 
 and behind the wind-pipe. These are 
 pieces of silver and range from the size of 
 a pea to a small bean. A slit is made in 
 240 
 
**1Flat0/' **Mpca0/' anD Cbarms 
 
 the skin, the silver, beaten flat and smooth, 
 is slipped into the cut and worked with the 
 fingers away from the wound which is then 
 allowed to heal up. The silver is, of 
 course, often dirty, and this causes inflam- 
 mation in which case the wound becomes 
 foul and the silver sloughs out leaving be- 
 hind it an ugly scar. 
 
 Some years ago I found in the school- 
 room a square piece of tin, ruled with lines 
 forming smaller squares and crossed by 
 other lines at an angle. There were some 
 strange characters scratched upon it also. 
 I asked one of the boys what it was, and 
 after a good deal of hesitation, for he 
 seemed ashamed to tell, he said that it 
 was a charm made to hang around the 
 neck, and would protect the wearer in a 
 fight by preventing his being shot or cut. 
 
 Of course I laughed at it and the boys 
 did too, but I could see that even in spite 
 of years of teaching in a mission school, 
 all of them, even the teacher, had a sneak- 
 ing sort of faith in it. Then I asked them : 
 
 ** If you hung this around your neck and 
 a man were to shoot at you, what would 
 happen ? " 
 
 ** Oh, the bullet would swerve, it would 
 not go straight," replied a boy ; he was a 
 Q 241 
 
©DD0 anD JBntfS trom iPagoOa XanD 
 
 new pupil and firmly believed in what he 
 said. 
 
 ** Come into my study/' 1 said, "and 
 we will put this wonderful bit of tin to the 
 test." 
 
 A dozen boys came crowding in ; then 
 I went to a corner where an air-gun was 
 leaning against the wall, and loaded it. 
 The boys all knew that the weapon would 
 kill at a score of paces, so holding the gun 
 in my hand, I said : 
 
 ** Will any boy put this charm around 
 his neck and let me fire at him ? " 
 
 No ; nobody was willing, so I laughingly 
 asked why. If this would protect them, as 
 they declared it would, why should they 
 be afraid to put it to the test ? One 
 boy replied that the charm itself was all 
 right, but perhaps they might have been 
 guilty of making some "mistake," which 
 would undo all the good and take away 
 the protection which would otherwise be 
 afforded by the charm. 
 
 "Very well," said I, "then we will fasten 
 it up on this post and make believe that it 
 is a robber chief. Now look out." 
 
 I hung the bit of tin on the post as I said 
 this, stepped back a few paces and fired. 
 Crack ! I had missed, and the slug had 
 242 
 
**1Rat0,'' **1Hpea0,'' anD Cbarms 
 
 struck the post an inch or two above the 
 charm. 
 
 A murmur of excitement ran through the 
 crowd of boys, and I overheard one say, 
 " There, I told you ; you see it is impossible 
 to hit it." 
 
 ** Wait a minute there ! " I cried. ** I aimed 
 a little too high, and yet I missed it by but 
 an inch. If that post had really been a 
 man he would have been killed, without 
 the shadow of a doubt." 
 
 The tin was not more than three inches 
 square and I am a very poor shot, but at 
 the next trial the pellet went clean through 
 the very center of the charm and stuck in 
 the post behind. 
 
 ** Now, what would have happened if 
 that had been a real man instead of a post ? " 
 I asked. *M tell you an American gun, 
 even an air-gun, will beat a Burmese charm 
 every time." 
 
 I gave the gun to each boy in turn, and 
 each took a shot at the charm, and by the 
 time the last boy's turn came it was as 
 much riddled as the battle-flag of a Grand 
 Army post, and what was more to the point, 
 every boy, even the newest, ridiculed the 
 power of the charm ; in their eyes it was 
 then nothing but a square of tin with every 
 243 
 
Qt>^6 anD iSnDd ttom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 bit of virtue pounded out of it. It was a 
 good object-lesson, worth a score of simple 
 exhortations. 
 
 The question might perhaps be raised 
 here, suppose a man submits to having a 
 charm tattooed upon him, or buys a charm 
 made of tin, silver, or gold, and afterwards 
 gets hurt, why that does not destroy the 
 faith of himself and others in similar charms. 
 
 The answer is that it takes but a very 
 little " mistake ** to destroy the virtue of a 
 charm, and if such a man should complain 
 that he had been cheated, as the charm 
 was ineffectual, the vendor would simply 
 reply, "You have made some 'mistake' 
 and destroyed its virtue ; the charm itself 
 is all right, and if you had not made the 
 mistake would have protected you ; the 
 fault lies with you yourself." 
 
 For instance, should a man walk under a 
 house, a bridge, or any structure at all, 
 over which a woman has previously walked, 
 that act would destroy the virtue of every 
 charm he had about him. 
 
 I know a missionary in Burma who had 
 a hospital of two stories in height, and 
 wondered why nobody would enter the 
 lower floor, till after a long while he dis- 
 covered that the natives were afraid to 
 244 
 
'*1Flat0t'' **1Hpea6/' anD Cbatms 
 
 enter the bottom room although they were 
 willing enough to go upstairs ; they feared 
 for their charms. 
 
 Charms are sometimes used in case of 
 sickness and are then tied around the wrist, 
 arm, or leg of the patient ; but I have an 
 impression that this custom has been de- 
 rived from India. A few strands from the 
 tuft of hair which grows at the end of a 
 cow's tail, twisted around the arm of a sick 
 person is without any doubt at all an im- 
 portation from India, where the cow is 
 worshiped by Hindus. Often one sees a 
 small packet tied around the wrist of a per- 
 son sick with fever. If one of these packets 
 should be opened it would be found to con- 
 tain a small piece of paper, upon which 
 lines have been drawn at right angles with 
 each other so as to form squares, sometimes 
 with other lines crossing diagonally ; some- 
 times the lines are drawn so as to form a 
 hexagon, and in each of the compartments 
 is a Pali word written in Burmese char- 
 acters. In case of an abscess or phleg- 
 mon, especially of the hand or foot, these 
 charms are tied to prevent the inflammation 
 ascending the limb. 
 
 The fortune-tellers deserve to have a 
 little notice taken of them here, for they do 
 245 
 
Qt>t>3 anD l&nDa from iPa^oDa XanD 
 
 a great trade in Burma. ** When in doubt 
 consult a fortune-teller," is the rule. There 
 are lucky and unlucky days for everything. 
 Fortune-tellers are consulted not only in 
 all great crises, but for small things as well. 
 A man who was born upon a certain day of 
 the week can commence an enterprise 
 upon a special day with a mind at ease, 
 for he knows it will be successful. Should 
 he, however, commence it upon an unlucky 
 day he would assuredly fail. 
 
 A strange difference between the customs 
 of East and West comes in right here. At 
 home everybody knows the year and the 
 day of the month upon which he was born, 
 but few know the day of the week. Now it 
 is exactly the opposite in Burma. The Bur- 
 man knows the day of the week, nay, the 
 very hour when he first saw the light, but 
 could not tell you which month it was, or be 
 exact as to the year. You ask a man how 
 old he is. ** Oh, I am about thirty-five or 
 thirty-six, I don't know exactly,'* he will 
 answer. In Shan country a man's very 
 name depends upon the day of the week 
 on which he was born, certain letters of the 
 alphabet being set apart for each day, and 
 the name must commence with one of those 
 special letters. 
 
 246 
 
There appears to be a certain virtue in 
 raw tea, for it enters into a great many 
 ceremonies. When a person wishes to 
 consult a fortune-teller he takes with him, 
 in addition to the fee demanded for the in- 
 formation wished, a small amount of raw 
 tea. It is necessary to tell the fortune- 
 teller the day of the week, the hour, and 
 if possible the very minute of his client's 
 birth, also the star under which he was 
 born, and which is supposed to influence 
 his life either for good or ill. 
 
 The fortune-teller then proceeds to con- 
 struct a horoscope and calculates profoundly 
 while doing so. There are seven ** houses," 
 and after the horoscope has been drawn 
 he repeats several charms and Pali texts, 
 touching each point as he does so much 
 as in the children's game of " Dicory, dicory 
 dock," and the point upon which the finger 
 rests at the close indicates whether the un- 
 dertaking will be lucky or unlucky. The 
 rules are very complicated and have been 
 received, in large measure, from India. 
 
 I have known a man put off digging the 
 post-holes for his house from week to week 
 because the fortune-teller said that every 
 day was unlucky ; once even a surgical 
 operation was postponed a whole day, 
 247 
 
®DD0 anO BnDe trom iPagoDa QLanD 
 
 although the case was a desperate one, 
 because the day was not a lucky one for 
 bringing a man down a river. The patient 
 was a Buddhist priest and lived in a mon- 
 astery a few miles up the river. 
 
 One day I went to see a case in bazaar. 
 The patient was a girl, and it was necessary 
 to operate upon her. It was on a Thursday 
 that I saw her for the first time, and as 
 there was no special hurry about operating, 
 I said to her mother: **Now to-day is 
 Thursday ; I cannot operate to-day nor to- 
 morrow, Friday, but if you bring her to the 
 hospital on Saturday morning I will perform 
 the operation." 
 
 "Very well," replied the woman, *'I 
 will bring her as you say," then turning 
 toward a preacher who had accompanied 
 me, she said : " Thursdays and Fridays are 
 unlucky and Saturdays are lucky days with 
 the teacher, I suppose," and then I had to 
 laboriously explain that it was not a case 
 of lucky or unlucky days, but that I had 
 to teach for several hours a day in school 
 on five days of the week, and therefore 
 when a case was not urgent or promised to 
 be a tedious one, I sometimes postponed it 
 till Saturday when I did not have to teach 
 in school and therefore had more time. 
 248 
 
A few days ago the head master told me 
 that four new boys, two Burmans and two 
 Mohammedans, were coming that day to 
 join our school. They did not put in an 
 appearance, however, and when three or 
 four days passed I concluded that they were 
 like so many other boys whose parents say 
 they will send them, but put it off and off 
 from day to day and week to week, till 
 finally the boys get too old. At noon to- 
 day, however, I saw the four boys enter 
 the compound with their parents, and when 
 I asked the head master why they had not 
 come before, he smiled and said, ** This is 
 the first lucky day," so that it is necessary 
 to have a lucky day even to enter a mission 
 school. Let us hope that they will be wiser 
 when they leave it. 
 
 In the Chinese joss house in Bhamo is a 
 certain idol which is accredited with the 
 power of being able to advise its votaries 
 which will be a lucky day for caravans to 
 set out on their return to the Flowery King- 
 dom. Pig-tailed mule-drivers and travelers 
 consult it very often and abide by its de- 
 cisions. It is customary to give a fee to 
 the priest in charge of the temple in return 
 for the information, and the manner of set- 
 tling the amount to be paid is a unique 
 249 
 
®Dt)6 anD J6nD6 trom pasoDa 3LanD 
 
 one. Upon the floor near the idol is a large 
 joint of bamboo, like a wooden jar, and 
 within it are a number of thin strips of 
 bamboo marked with Chinese characters. 
 The traveler kneels upon the floor and 
 shakes the jar vigorously, till one of the 
 strips falls out and he then pays the amount 
 marked upon it. But when is not John Chi- 
 naman thrifty ? Some are marked with a 
 trifling amount, some with quite a fair sum, 
 and it is the former class which shows the 
 most wear and tear, for if the traveler sees 
 that a strip bearing a large sum upon it is 
 about to fall out, he stops his shaking and 
 the strips settle back again ; then he re- 
 commences the shaking, and by dint of 
 elbow-grease and a little twisting, manages 
 in time to drop out the coveted strip with a 
 small amount marked upon it. 
 
 250 
 
Zbc IReUglon of tbe people 
 
VII 
 
 HERE are two kinds of Buddhism 
 — tlie Buddhism of European and 
 American scholars, and the Budd- 
 hism of the people of Burma. The former is 
 totally foreign to the Burman, and should 
 any reader wish to study it he can take his 
 pick of a score of learned books on the sub- 
 ject ; but the religion therein contained is 
 a very different one from the Buddhism 
 one sees in the everyday life of the people, 
 and it is of this latter kind of which I shall 
 tell a little. 
 
 Almost the first question asked at home 
 when speaking of the religion of Burma is, 
 ** Do these people really and truly pray to 
 idols made of stone ? '* and in spite of the 
 books above referred to, in which it is 
 claimed the people do not worship the idols 
 themselves, but worship Buddha through 
 them, the answer must be, if honestly 
 answered, ** They do." 
 
 Any day one may go to Mandalay and 
 watch men carving idols. They are blocks 
 of stone, nothing else, when they enter the 
 253 
 
©DOS anD JBn^s from pagoDa XanD 
 
 shops, and what is more, they are still blocks 
 of stone when they leave ; after having been 
 carved and polished and ready for use, they 
 are idols— ^j^o^ too, and it is not till they 
 have been anointed and proper ceremonies 
 held over them that they become gods — 
 payah. It should also be noted that the 
 men who carve these idols do not gain 
 merit by so doing ; it is their business ; it 
 is the man that buys them and sets them 
 up in a monastery or pagoda that gets the 
 merit, not the carvers. 
 
 One of the saddest sights in Burma, but 
 alas ! one that can be seen any day of the 
 week, is to see a mother with her child in 
 an idol house. The child is often scared 
 at the great, white, solemn idol and screams 
 with fright, trying to run away into the 
 bright sunshine outside, but the mother 
 makes it kneel before the god, and teaches 
 it how to place its hands together and 
 **shikko," while it repeats after her the 
 formula which a Burman goes through while 
 worshiping before idols. Then the mother 
 sticks an incense stick or a lighted candle 
 before the image, or offers some other small 
 offering and then with her child goes away, 
 satisfied with having gained ** merit " for 
 herself and her little one. 
 254 
 
tTbe IReliQion of tbc people 
 
 Children, and grown-up people too, fear 
 these idols. It is absurd to say they re- 
 gard them as ** figures " only. 
 
 The sister of one of our schoolboys had 
 had several children, but each one had 
 been born dead, and for three months before 
 the last one was born she spent a good part 
 of her time going from pagoda to pagoda 
 and from idol to idol, praying that her baby 
 might live. She ran her husband into debt 
 with the offerings she made to the priests 
 and the idols. 
 
 One of the teachers in the school told me 
 that a few days ago he noticed a schoolboy 
 in a monastery compound ; the boy was 
 looking around as though trying to see 
 whether he was being watched, and think- 
 ing himself safe, he picked up a stone and 
 threw it at one of the idols, saying as he 
 did so, " Eh, you are nothing but a big 
 lump of stone after all I " He was much 
 disconcerted when, upon turning around, 
 he found the teacher smiling at him, for as 
 the former said, it looked very comical to 
 see the boy throwing stones at an idol as 
 though he was more than half-afraid in 
 spite of his words. The boy put a bold 
 face on the matter, however, and stoutly 
 maintained "that he was not frightened at 
 255 
 
©DOS anD BnDs trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 all." Mission schools, if they do nothing 
 else, teach boys that stones are stones, 
 whether they have been worshiped or not. 
 
 I recall a case which closely approaches 
 the grotesque. The Shan preacher once 
 came into the dining-room while we were 
 at breakfast, saying that a man from a 
 jungle village a few miles up the river was 
 waiting upon the veranda. He had come 
 to ask me to go and see a ** hurry case '* 
 in his home. I told the preacher that I 
 would go, and he returned to the man with 
 the message, but to his great surprise he 
 found the villager upon his knees, with his 
 hands clasped reverently before his face 
 praying away as hard as he could. 
 
 " What are you doing ? " asked the 
 preacher. 
 
 " I am praying to the teacher's god," 
 replied the man. 
 
 The preacher thought that perhaps I had 
 an image of Gautama somewhere as a 
 curio, and so looked around the shelves, 
 but seeing none, he replied, ** There are 
 no idols here." 
 
 " Why, yes there is ; there is one right 
 
 on the table with a silk umbrella over it," 
 
 replied the man, pointing with his finger to a 
 
 small round table in the middle of the room. 
 
 256 
 
^be IReKQion ot tbe people 
 
 ** Do you know what that thing is ? " 
 asked the preacher. 
 
 '* A foreign god," replied the man 
 promptly. 
 
 **God, eh?*' grinned the preacher, 
 " that's no god ; the teacher does not 
 worship idols ; that's a lamp ! " 
 
 "A lamp!" repeated the man incredu- 
 lously. ** Whoever heard of a lamp with 
 an umbrella of red silk over it .? There is 
 an image there, anyway." 
 
 " It is a lamp for all that," persisted the 
 preacher. ** See, here is where you put 
 the match in lighting it." 
 
 " So there is ! " replied the man in great 
 astonishment ; ** well, it is the most 
 wonderful lamp I ever saw; in truth, I 
 thought it was the teacher's idol which 
 he worshiped." 
 
 So far as I know, that lamp is the only 
 one extant which has been worshiped as a 
 god. It was of bronze, and the body was 
 the figure of a boy holding up the lamp 
 itself, which was covered with a large shade 
 of red silk. 
 
 The man was very disappointed to find 
 he had not gained much after all by praying 
 to **a foreign god." 
 
 One thing must always be kept in mind, 
 R 257 
 
Ot>t>6 an^ Bn^s from iPagoDa Xan& 
 
 and that is that the Buddhist worships a 
 dead god. Gautama Buddha, the last in- 
 carnation, was a king, but gave up his 
 crown and his palace, gave up even his 
 wife and children to make his home in the 
 jungle where he ** became enlightened " as 
 his worshipers put it, but one day he ate 
 too many mangoes ; this brought on an 
 attack of cholera morbus and he died — 
 went to Nigban, was annihilated, or to use 
 a Burmese figure, ** If you were to put a 
 match to a piece of paper it would burn up, 
 wouldn't it ? The smoke vanishes utterly ; 
 well, that is Nigban." Therefore the Bur- 
 man does not worship a God — a great, lov- 
 ing, tender Father as we do — neither does 
 he worship the stern Law Giver of the 
 Jews ; he worships the goodness of a man 
 who died two thousand years ago. 
 
 Buddhism is utterly pessimistic. It con- 
 demns but does not aid ; it punishes but 
 does not offer any practical way of escape. 
 The Shans have a proverb: "As surely 
 as the wheels of the cart follow the oxen 
 drawing it, so surely will punishment follow 
 crime. If you sin you will be punished," and 
 there it stops. It is as cold and unsympa- 
 thetic as the stone idols which represent it; 
 beautiful undoubtedly, but dead. 
 258 
 
Zbe IRclfgion of tbe people 
 
 Of course there is merit which a man can 
 earn as an offset to the consequences of his 
 guilt ; but merit is always the unknown 
 quantity in the equation, and it is always 
 insufficient too. 
 
 Buddhism is practically a debit and credit 
 account between heaven and a man's soul, 
 with an overwhelming balance upon the 
 wrong side. Men's sins count against 
 them ; the merit they are able to gain 
 counts for them. To gain this merit men 
 build pagodas and monasteries ; they make 
 feasts ; they do pious acts ; they buy idols 
 and pray before them and make offerings 
 to them and the priests. Every cold season 
 the traveler in the jungle sees thousands of 
 Shans wending their way from the hills 
 towards the plains. Ask them where they 
 are going and they will tell you to Man- 
 dalay, and if their money holds out, to 
 Rangoon afterward. Why .? To worship 
 and gain merit. They go. You see them 
 a few weeks afterward going back home 
 and ask them, ** Did you see the gods ? " 
 ** Oh, yes, we saw them." ** Did you 
 gain a great deal of merit?" "Yes." 
 ** Enough to take you to Nigban when you 
 die ? " They will smile and yet shake 
 their heads sadly at the same time. Not 
 259 
 
©ODs anD J£nt>6 trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 enough. In more than a dozen years I 
 have never seen one single person who 
 would acknowledge that he had gained 
 enough merit to counterbalance his sins 
 and shortcomings and take him to Nig- 
 ban, the goal of his ambitions, the land of 
 annihilation. 
 
 When a priest dies the correct thing to 
 say is, ** His lordship has gone to Nigban," 
 but everybody knows the saying is nothing 
 more than a polite fiction, and that not 
 even a priest can gain enough merit to take 
 him there. 
 
 You see the Burman believes in the doc- 
 trine of transmigration, and thinks that 
 when he dies his spirit is immediately re- 
 born, as an animal, another man, or a nat, 
 according to the amount of merit he has 
 acquired, but unfortunately when one life 
 has ended the effects of the bad deeds 
 committed during it do not end, but he 
 carries the balance of demerit with him, 
 and enters upon his new life just that much 
 to the bad, and this goes on accumulating 
 and accumulating — no wonder he feels he 
 will never reach Nigban. A good re-birth, 
 /. e., being born a good animal, is the most 
 he can expect, and not always even that. 
 
 1 often smile when I remember what an 
 260 
 
tibe IReUgton ot tbe ipeople 
 
 old Shan once said to me. He came to the 
 dispensary rather late one morning, and as 
 it happened to be a busy day, he had to 
 wait till at least fifty other patients who 
 had arrived before him had been attended 
 to. He saw each in turn come into my 
 room and receive medicine or have a wound 
 dressed. It happened also that it was 
 necessary to perform three or four minor 
 operations that morning, so that he was 
 considerably impressed. He came from a 
 jungle village and everything was new to 
 him, so that when his turn came he showed 
 plainly that he was pondering deeply upon 
 something pretty weighty. He told me 
 his trouble and I gave him some medicine, 
 then as he took the bottle he looked up in 
 my face with a serious air, and said : 
 
 "Teacher, you have done many merito- 
 rious acts this morning, do you do thus 
 every day.?*' I nodded. *' Attend to as 
 many people?" he asked. ** Sometimes 
 more, sometimes less," I said. Then he 
 rose to go, but before he left the room he 
 turned back and said, ** Teacher, you are 
 gaining a wonderful amount of merit by 
 giving away all this medicine. You will 
 surely get a good re-birth when you die. 
 Why," he concluded, more earnestly than 
 261 
 
®DD0 anD 3BnD6 trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 ever, ** I would not be surprised if you were 
 re-born an elephant ! " 
 
 When a Burman dies his friends mourn 
 as **one without hope/' for they feel they 
 will never, never see him again. There is 
 no hope of meeting, even in a distant time, 
 as with the Christian. I remember once 
 at Mbngnai standing by the side of a man 
 who had been gored to death by an ele- 
 phant. His mother was kneeling at his 
 side upon the ground, screaming, tearing 
 her hair, and beating her breast, crying that 
 her son, her only son, had gone from her 
 forever and that she would never see him 
 again. 
 
 I looked at the people gathered around, 
 and then I said : 
 
 " You believe that this man had a soul, 
 don't you ?" 
 
 They chorused assent, so I continued, 
 ** Where is it now ? " 
 
 ** Where is it now ? Where is it now ? " 
 they echoed, looking at me in great sur- 
 prise. Then one of their number, an old 
 man, said, *' Teacher, that is a strange 
 question to ask ; one good to marvel at. 
 How can we tell where his soul is ? He was 
 a pretty good boy ; he obeyed his mother ; 
 he did not steal nor smoke opium, and so 
 262 
 
V^bc IReltgton ot tbc people 
 
 we hope he has gotten a good re-birth, but 
 we cannot tell into what animal his soul has 
 entered. Who can ? " 
 
 No, they could not. At that very mo- 
 ment his soul might have commenced a 
 new stage of existence in the body of a 
 peacock, an elephant, or a horse — a good 
 re-birth — but upon the other hand he was 
 much more likely to have fared worse, and 
 might be a toad, a snake, or even an earth- 
 worm. As they said, ** Who can tell.?" 
 Mystery, all was mystery and darkness as 
 deep as death itself. 
 
 About ten years ago a woman living in a 
 village in Upper Burma lost her son from 
 cholera. A few days later while passing 
 through another village a few miles distant 
 from her own, she saw a calf, upon the face 
 of which was a mark closely resembling a 
 birthmark upon the face of her dead 
 son. She found out that this calf was born 
 upon the same day that her son had died, 
 so she immediately seized it and took it to 
 her own house, declaring that it was her son. 
 
 The owner of the animal, a native of 
 India, of course objected to this line of 
 conduct and went to the headman of the 
 village, asking him to order the woman to 
 bring back his calf. The headman called 
 263 
 
®DD0 anD BnDa trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 the woman, but when he heard her story he 
 declared that there was no doubt that her 
 son had been re-born in the body of this 
 calf, and that she was doing a merito- 
 rious act in caring for it ; in this opinion 
 he was backed up by every elder in the 
 village, and the woman went on her way 
 rejoicing. 
 
 But alas, her joy was but short-lived, for 
 the native of India went to the city and 
 entered suit in a court where the magis- 
 trate was a white man, and of course when 
 the case came up for trial the owner of the 
 calf won and the Burman woman was or- 
 dered to return it immediately. But this 
 she flatly refused to do, and when the police 
 went to her house to bring away the 
 calf by force, every villager rose to help 
 her and the police were driven away, a 
 regular riot taking place, so that it was 
 necessary to call sepoys, armed with rifles 
 and bayonets, to restore order. 
 
 Buddhism can be summed up in the 
 homely parable of the man who tried to 
 lift himself from the ground by pulling 
 upon his own boot-straps. And yet, in 
 some ways, it appeals to a man's self- 
 pride. If he progresses at all it is by his 
 own unaided efforts. He can say with 
 264 
 
TLbc IRcltflfon ot tbe iPcoplc 
 
 the king of old, " Is this not the great 
 Babylon which / have built ? " 
 
 Then there is so much parade and show. 
 The Burman does not believe in ** not 
 letting his left hand know which his right 
 hand doeth " ; upon the contrary he lets 
 the whole neighborhood know it, and gains 
 their applause. ** He has his reward," 
 surely. I know of no more self-satisfied- 
 looking man than a Burman who is about 
 to make a large offering, dedicate a monas- 
 tery or pagoda, or build an idol house. 
 There is always a long procession, practi- 
 cally everybody in the quarter taking part. 
 Drums, gongs, flutes, and bamboo clappers 
 are much in evidence, and in the center of 
 it all, walking along in dignified silence 
 amidst the noisy procession, with a white 
 linen turban tightly twisted around his 
 head, stalks the ** benefactor." Anyone 
 that has seen such a procession appreciates 
 more strongly than ever Christ's order, 
 '*And when thou givest thine alms sound 
 not a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites 
 do" — the Buddhist not only sounds a 
 trumpet, he calls a whole band to advertise 
 his good deed. 
 
 Every boy in Burma becomes a priest. 
 A great feast is made, friends conduct the 
 265 
 
©Dt)0 anD BnDs trom iPagoDa XanD 
 
 boy beneath a golden umbrella to a monas- 
 tery, his head is shaved, and other cere- 
 monies are gone through, but it is often 
 nothing more than mere form. Custom 
 demands that a boy become a priest; it 
 does not demand, of course, that he re- 
 main one, and so once in a while one of our 
 schoolboys will ask leave of absence from 
 school, and when you ask why, he will 
 reply, ** I am going to be made into a 
 priest.** The permission being given, at 
 the end of a week he returns to school 
 with a shaved head, his father is deeply in 
 debt, but otherwise there is no difference 
 in the boy or his family. He wore his hair 
 a certain way before he was " made into a 
 priest** ; he will wear it differently when 
 it grows again, that is all. 
 
 For a boy not to become a priest, at least 
 for a day or two, is a greater disgrace than 
 being sent to prison. We had a boy in our 
 school who became a Christian, but of 
 course he was a minor, and so I told him 
 that he must get the consent of his parents 
 before he was baptized. But here came a 
 hitch. He had never been a priest, and 
 his parents said he must be made one before 
 they would allow him to be baptized. This 
 the boy refused to do, and so a deadlock 
 266 
 
^be IReltQion ot tbc I^eoplc 
 
 followed which lasted for some months. 
 Finally, chiefly through the influence of his 
 grandmother, the consent of his parents 
 was gained and he was baptized ; but the 
 family "felt the disgrace keenly." 
 
 Burma, like every other country, has 
 her roll of Christian martyrs, although it is 
 not so long as some others. When the 
 Portuguese empire in India was at its 
 height, Roman Catholic priests were sent 
 to Pegu. A small church was built, but 
 the Burman king, suspecting treachery on 
 the part of the priests, raided it and burned 
 it to the ground, everybody within being 
 killed. 
 
 A few years before the war which re- 
 sulted in the annexation of Upper Burma, 
 one of our Christian natives was killed in 
 Mandalay. Who has not heard of Judson 
 who came so near giving his life in the 
 prison outside Ava ? It is true that he 
 escaped with his life, but he was to all in- 
 tents and purposes a martyr. There are 
 a few people still living who remember 
 seeing him, the ** apostle to the Burmans," 
 and I have noticed that when they, or any 
 other natives for that matter, talk of Judson, 
 they say, **Why years afterwards you 
 could see the scars left by the sores which 
 267 
 
®DD6 anD BnDs trom ipagoDa XanD 
 
 the chains wore into his legs ! " Ah, those 
 scars preached eloquent sermons. It is the 
 sufferings he endured, and the losses— his 
 wife laying down her life and he almost 
 doing so — that appeal to the people of 
 Burma, even down to to-day. Surely ** the 
 blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
 church " ; it always has been and always 
 will be. 
 
 Fortunately, under British rule all per- 
 secution worthy of the name, has been 
 done away with, but a man has still to 
 endure a great deal if he steps out from 
 the religion of his fathers and embraces 
 Christianity. We cannot understand just 
 how great the wrench must be, either, to 
 break away from life-long customs and be- 
 liefs. It is because of the fact that it is so 
 much easier for a young person to do this 
 that schools have proved so great a suc- 
 cess, and yet even young people must face 
 a storm, oftentimes a terrible one, when 
 they decide to be baptized. 
 
 I remember a young man who had been 
 a pupil in one of our mission schools in 
 Upper Burma. He said he was a Chris- 
 tian but feared to face the opposition from 
 his friends, especially his mother, who was 
 very devout and went each night to wor- 
 268 
 
Zbc IReltsion of tbc people 
 
 ship the idols and the priests. He came 
 from his native place to Bhamo, and of 
 course I became interested in him. I talked 
 with him seriously time and again, but 
 although he acknowledged that I was right, 
 and that he ought to come out boldly and 
 be baptized, he could not screw up suffi- 
 cient courage to go contrary to the wishes 
 of his mother. 
 
 At last, one night, just as I was getting 
 ready to go to bed, I heard a commotion on 
 the veranda, and upon going out I saw this 
 young man and one of our teachers. I 
 thought somebody was sick and that they 
 had come for medicine, and so asked what 
 the matter was, but judge of my surprise 
 when he replied, ** There is nothing the 
 matter, I have come to be baptized ! " 
 
 ** * Come to be baptized ! ' " I repeated. 
 ** What do you mean by coming in this way 
 late at night and saying you wish to be 
 baptized ; you have not been accepted by 
 the church even.'* 
 
 Then he explained that his mother had 
 gone away to a village a few miles down 
 the river to see a sick friend, and he wanted 
 to go out into the jungle somewhere where 
 nobody would see him, and be baptized 
 before she returned. 
 
 269 
 
Ot>t)B anO iBn^B from iPagoOa XanD 
 
 ** And when she comes back, what 
 then?'* I asked. 
 
 ** Oh, I intend keeping it a secret ; I will 
 say nothing about it to her, that is why I 
 want it done in the jungle and at night." 
 
 ** We do not want any such members in 
 our church," I said. ** If you are afraid to 
 be baptized publicly you will be afraid to 
 act as a Christian should afterwards. Of 
 course I would like you to be baptized, and 
 also to join the church, but you cannot 
 join it in that way." Then he went away, 
 and although I see him often, he has never 
 come to service since, neither does he 
 appear to wish to become a Christian. 
 
 There was a boy in our school who was, 
 I think, a Christian. He said several times 
 that he wished to be baptized, and once 
 even promised to appear before the church 
 to give in his experience. The evening 
 came and the church assembled, but the 
 boy did not come. We waited, but still he 
 did not come ; the church remained in 
 session till nearly ten o'clock, then very 
 reluctantly we gave him up and adjourned. 
 
 Next morning he told us that he got 
 
 ready to come to the service, but his sister 
 
 went into a hysterical tit, tore her hair and 
 
 her clothes, rolled upon the floor, and 
 
 270 
 
tlbe IReUdion of tbe ipeople 
 
 screamed at the top of her voice till the 
 boy weakened and promised not to come. 
 Then she immediately got well. 
 
 However, he said after a few months he 
 would try again, but the same thing hap- 
 pened. The church waited but waited in 
 vain ; his sister screamed and tore her hair 
 as before, and as before the boy weakened; 
 he could not face the storm, and so he too 
 passed into the great army of educated 
 young men who do not believe in Budd- 
 hism ; who never worship the priests ; who 
 call the idols bbcks of stone or lumps of 
 wood, and will even throw stones at them to 
 show how little they care for or fear them ; 
 and yet they are negative — they do not 
 believe in the religion of their fathers, but 
 they will not come out as Christians, and 
 so they go through life, neither one thing 
 nor the other. 
 
 There are some strange contradictions in 
 the religion of the Burman and the Shan, 
 at least they appear contradictions to a 
 Westerner, although the Burman himself 
 does not regard them as such. 
 
 I knew a man in one of the cities of the 
 
 Southern Shan States ; he is dead now ; 
 
 he had several large dogs, fierce and savage 
 
 as wolves. Everybody in the city dreaded 
 
 271 
 
©DDs anD JEnDs trom iPasoDa 5LanD 
 
 these brutes, for they had badly bitten 
 several people. I never passed the gate of 
 the compound without carrying a riding 
 crop with a long, heavy lash, and even 
 with that it was sometimes difficult to keep 
 the dogs off. 
 
 One day a man came running into our 
 compound, and said that one of these dogs 
 had gone mad, and the wife of their owner 
 had barricaded herself in the house fright- 
 ened half to death, and begged me to come 
 and shoot the dog ; her husband was away, 
 she said. I snatched up my gun and ran 
 out, but although the compound was but a 
 stone's throw from ours, before I got there a 
 man came running to meet me and brought 
 word that his master had just returned, and 
 asked me please not to come. Why I 
 Because he feared to have the dog shot on 
 his compound. Again why ? Because he 
 feared some part of the guilt incurred in 
 killing the dog might cling to him, and so 
 he would rather take the chances of a mad 
 dog biting a score of people than have it 
 shot in his compound. 
 
 And yet the strangest part of the whole 
 
 thing lay in the fact that this man, possessed 
 
 of such a tender conscience that he would 
 
 not allow even a mad dog to be killed, had 
 
 272 
 
Zbc IReligion of tbe ipeople 
 
 been — so the people in the city said — the 
 head of a band of robbers, and if he had 
 not shot men from ambush himself, he had 
 supplied the guns, the powder, and the 
 shot, and the deed had been done at his 
 order. 
 
 A man will not drown half a litter of 
 puppies when they are an hour old — that 
 would be a sin — but he will allow them to 
 starve to death. 
 
 Fish is one of the staple foods of Burma, 
 and thousands of people earn the larger 
 part of their living by catching fish. 
 Should you ask a fisherman how he, a 
 Buddhist, can spend his time in killing fish, 
 he will smile, shake his head and reply, 
 ** I do not kill fish ; they come into my 
 net and I merely pull them out of the water 
 and throw them upon the bank ; they die 
 themselves ; I do not kill them ! " 
 
 ** Things are not always what they 
 seem" in Burma, as in other countries. 
 I have heard globe-trotters go into ecstasies 
 over the pagodas and shrines. They see 
 at Rangoon the mighty Shwe Da Gon Pa- 
 goda, covered with gold from base to top ; 
 they see the Thousand and One Pagodas at 
 Mandalay, and they exclaim, " How pious, 
 how good ! They put the average Christian 
 S 273 
 
Ot>t>3 anC) BnDs trom iPagoOa XanD 
 
 to the blush/* etc., etc. But wait; one 
 must get to the reason why all these pa- 
 godas and shrines and idols were built before 
 one can be in a position to judge of things 
 properly. Well, why were these pagodas 
 built ? To uplift the people ? Not a bit of 
 it. They were built to gain merit. Why 
 does a man become a monk ? To gain 
 merit. Why does he take pilgrimages, 
 make offerings, worship idols, shrines, and 
 priests ? Why do these solicit alms and 
 swell the ranks of the mendicants who are so 
 abundant ? To gain merit— not to help any- 
 body else. Thus we see the entire system 
 is founded upon selfishness. Doing good 
 simply and solely for the sake of doing 
 good is entirely foreign to Buddhism, that is 
 Buddhism as one sees it in the everyday 
 life of the people. It is selfishness, selfish- 
 ness, selfishness — and if the corner-stone 
 of a religion be built upon self what must 
 the outcome be ? 
 
 274 
 
(BIO00ari? 
 
 Abbreviations : A. I. Anglo-Indian ; B. Burmese. 
 H. Hindustani; S. Shan. 
 
 Anna. (H.) An Indian coin worth about two cents. 
 
 Baboo. (H.) A clerk. 
 
 Bazaar. (H.) A market. 
 
 Bheestie. (H.) A water-carrier. 
 
 Boy. (A. I.) A body servant. 
 
 Bungalow. (H.) A house. 
 
 Chattie. (H.) A cooking-pot. 
 
 Compound. (A. I.) The enclosure in which a house 
 stands. 
 
 Coolie. (H.) A laborer. 
 
 Dah. (B.) {S.lap) A sword with a long handle 
 but no guard. 
 
 Dhohie. (H.) A laundry man. 
 
 Durhar. (H.) A gathering called to meet a high 
 official. 
 
 Durwan. (H.) A janitor. 
 
 Eurasian. A person of mixed parentage — Europe- 
 Asia. 
 
 Gautama. The last incarnation of Buddha ; the god 
 worshiped by Buddhists. 
 
 Gharry. (H.) A carriage or cart. 
 
 Godown. (A. I.) A place used for storing goods. 
 
 Hau. (S.) The palace of a prince. 
 
 Heng. (S.) The headman of a village. 
 
 Hpea. (S.) Sttnat. 
 
 Jungle. {H.) A forest ; the country. 
 275 
 
Kachins. (B.) A tribe of fierce mountain people 
 living in Upper Burma. 
 
 Kallah. ( B. ) A foreigner. 
 
 Karens. (B.) A mountain tribe of Lower Burma; 
 thousands of tiiese people have embraced Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Lap. (S.) Sttdah. 
 
 Mue^^in. The man who climbs the minaret and 
 calls Mohammedans to their prayers. 
 
 Nat. (B.) (S. hpea.) "A kind of god, a being 
 superior to man and inferior to Brahmas, some of 
 whom inhabit the inferior celestial regions and 
 others have dominion over different parts of the 
 earth." — Doctor Judson's Burmese- English Dictionary, 
 
 Ngapi. (B.) Putrid fish. 
 
 Nigban. The Burmese heaven. 
 
 Nullah. (H.) A dry watercourse or small valley. 
 
 Paddjf. (A. I.) Unhusked rice. 
 
 Parah. (S.)| "God" or ''lord," the word gen- 
 
 Payah. ( B. ) / erally used for an idol ; sometimes 
 used when speaking of a pagoda. 
 
 Tice. A small coin, one-fourth of an anna. 
 
 Punkah. (H.) A large, swinging fan. 
 
 Pwae. (B.) A feast ; a theatrical performance. 
 
 Sahib. (H.) *' Sir," a title of respect. 
 
 Sanbyah. (B.) A round tray used in winnowing 
 rice. 
 
 S««i^«.(B)1 A native prince. 
 
 Saupa. (S.) -^ 
 
 sZlk Ts\ ^ " Teacher," a title of respect. 
 
 Sepoy. (H.) A soldier (native). 
 
 Shans. (B.) A tribe of people, second in impor- 
 tance to the Burmans, living in the valleys of 
 Upper Burma ; they call themselves *' Tai." 
 276 
 
Syce, (H.) A groom. 
 
 "" Rogue ^^ elephant. An elephant which has been 
 
 driven out of the herd because of its bad temper ; 
 
 sometimes a partially tamed elephant which has 
 
 escaped from its owners ; always a dangerous 
 
 animal. 
 Rupee. (H.) The standard coin of the Indian 
 
 empire, worth about thirty-three cents. 
 Tounthus. A hill tribe living near Mongnai in the 
 
 Southern Shan States. 
 Zarat. (B.) A resting-place usually built in a 
 
 monastery compound ; a person gains merit by 
 
 building a ^ayat. The Shan word is ^arap. 
 
 277 
 
NOV 24 1806 
 

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