tl | 888 1 oO i mn Ji the “atte Ss SV geesas VEVigia la "+ - OM Pd nds ‘ eee Le te rey 4 Neston ty i “taney head a to SL Ren Pret Nein) s OMe Stee Pe MD ics he gy LAME Retin g any tan SU ar ie a bos ke eT aay ee bee whe Fates gy, ie Be ayire tan a EDA Rey we 7 > Fa Wate Pica a VaSde, Mate 88%, Givg ih? eed Ley haeans HEE Sp ar, Hed sage Pe ae ot ry > 449 ite AT a) nabs" Ay Ag erg NS fe Deg wS a! tas re wy ad fs WAPag ey car aa) / + if: 4 e for ee ie ae pe Ve a a) tae. a ~ 2 oh cs. ng IN FARTHEST BURMA NEW & RECENT BOOKS A Diplomat in Japan. The Inner History of the Critical Years in the Evolution of Japan when the Ports were Opened & the Monarchy Restored, Recorded by a Diplomatist who took an active part in the events of the time. By The Right Hon. Sir Ernest Satow, G.C.M.G., British Minister, Peking, 1909-5; Formerly Secretary to the British Legation at Tokio. With Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 325. net. In Farthest Burma. The Record of an Arduous Journey of Exploration & Research through the Unknown Frontier Territory of Burma & Tibet. By Captain F. KINGpDON Warp, B.A., F.R.G.S. With Illustrations & Maps. Demy 8vo. 25s. net. The Life and Explorations of Frederick Stanley Arnot. The Authorised Biography of a Zeal- ous Missionary, Intrepid Explorer é&° Self-denying Benefactor amongst the Natives of the Dark Continent. By Ernest Baker. With many Illustrations & a Map. Demy 8vo. tas. 6d. net. In Unknown China. A Record of the Observations, Ad- ventures & Experiences of a Pioneer Missionary during a prolonged so- journ amongst the wild & unknown Nosu tribe of Western China. By S. Potvarp, Author of ‘In Tight Corners in China,” &°c. &c. Many Illustrations. Two Maps. Deiny 8vo. ass. net. Among the Ibos of Nigeria. An Account of the Curious & In- teresting Habits, Customs & Beliefs of a Little Known African People by one who has for many years lived amongst them on close & intimate terms. By G. T. Baspsn, M.A., F.R.G.S. With 37 Illustrations & aMap. Demy 8vo. 45s. net. Second Edition. Unexplored New Guinea. A Record of the Travels, Adventures é& Experiences of a Resident Magi- strate amongst the Head-Hunting Savages & Cannibals of the Unex- plored Interior of New Guinea. By WILFRED N. BEAvgR, with an In- troduction by A. C. Happon, M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S. With 24 Illustrations &> 4 Maps. Demy 8vo. a5s. net. Modern Whaling and Bear- Hunting. J A Record of Present-day Whaling with Up-to-date Appliances in many Parts of the World, & of Bear & Seal Hunting in the Arctic Regions. By W.G. Burn Murvocn, F.R.S.G.S. With 110 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, 25s. net. ‘ Third Edition Prehistoric Man & His Story. A Sketch of the History of Mankind from the Earliest Times. By Prof. G.F.Scott ELtiioT, M.A.(CANTAB), B.Sc.(Edin.), F.R.S.E., F.L.S., F.R.G.S. With 56 Illustrations. ros. 6d. net. SEELEY, SERVICE & CO, LTD. pr Maru MAIDENS. Each wears a short cotton jacket and striped hand-woven skirt, with belt of brass bells. Silver hoops encircle the neck and enormous brass rings hang from the ears. a 0464 a IN FARTHEST..\ BURMA THE RECORD OF AN ARDUOUS JOURNEY OF EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH THROUGH THE UNKNOWN FRONTIER TERRITORY OF BURMA AND Wickes TIBET Ww BY Carrain F. KINGDON WARD, B.A., F.R.G.S. Late Indian Army Reserve of Officers, attached 1[116th Mahrattas AUTHOR OF ‘¢THE LAND OF THE BLUE POPPY,” ‘* BY THE WATERS OF KHAM,” &c., ec, 40465 ~ LONDON SEELEY, SERVICE ts CO. LIMITED 38 Great Russet, Street 1921 Ain i) mae! Bxtuny® ys he rreein ; 209, bine TONS MTNA / { , RT dae Ku d »G i ? vad 5 AlN DAL ? \ Ned yi a in ae Sty ft ics 4 . i VALS EY ry q it ot \ Ri pa kk ier s ¥ r ‘ : ‘ i " ' / ) ; - / ELECTRONIC VERSION AVAILABLE ana . f TO THE Hon. w. A. HERTZ, CSI. “LATE, COMMISSIONER, MAGWE i" UPPER BURMA ‘ ried to open up the Soudan, and were opened up by Fuzzies n that cruel scrub outside Suakim. . . . ” RUDYARD KIPLING ~ \ ae s oe PREFACE ANY of the illustrations contained in this M volume I owe to the kindness of frontier officers, and my thanks are especially due to Mr P. M. R. Leonard of the Frontier Service, and to Mr T. Hare of the Public Works Department, also to Mr A. W. Porter. I am much indebted to Major J. E. Cruickshank of the 1/2nd Gurkhas (late of the Burma Military Police) for assistance while I was at Hpimaw; to Mr J. T. O. Barnard, C.I.E., now Deputy Commissioner, Fort Hertz; and to Major J. de L. Conry of the Erimpuras. Finally, I must record the debt of gratitude I owe to Mr W. A. Hertz, C.S.I., late Commissioner, Magwe, Upper Burma, and to Surgeon Brooks of the Indian Medical Service, who together pulled me through a serious illness at Fort Hertz. ; F, K. W. LONDON, 1920. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE IN THE JUNGLE : : : : : 17 CHAPTER II LIFE AT A FRONTIER Fort. J : ‘ 33 CHAPTER III Tur Forest or WINDS AND WATERS ‘ : 51 CHAPTER IV FEVER CAMP. d : : : 65 CHAPTER V ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK . ‘ : - 81 CHAPTER VI IN THE TEMPERATE RAIN FOREST. ; . 96 CHAPTER VII IN THE LAND OF THE CROSSBOW : i : 110 CHAPTER VIII OvER THE WuULAW Pass eG 3 } : 126 CHAPTER IX By THE SINGING RIVER Sa ee ; , 141 CHAPTER X AMONG THE Marus . hy : , 151 CHAPTER XI THE Lone TRAIL ; . : 167 CHAPTER XII AMONG THE LisuUs ‘ " : 183 10 CONTENTS A, CHAPTER XIII SPERATE Marco. if CHAPTER XIV INITE TORMENT OF LEECHES i CHAPTER XV ‘HE PLAINS. CHAPTER XVI OUGH THE Kacuin HIL1s | CHAPTER XVII ACK TO CIVILISATION. —.. : CHAPTER XVIII imo. Vagtes / 228 244 203 395 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Maru Maidens . : : : : Frontispiece — PAGE The Mighty Mahseer . : : 25 Cane Bridge over the Ngawchang River . : : 25 A Maru Matron . é ‘ ' : : 72 Yawyin Children . ; , 88 Imaw Bum in June : 88 A Yawyin Lisu Family on the Burma Frontier . é 112 Maru Women pounding Maize . : : 152 Young Nungs_. : : ; : : 168 A Black Lisu of the Ahkyang. ; : 184 A Black Lisu Girl ; Me : a 184 Nung Maidens . __.. : Be ; 192 An Iron Smelter . ; ; : . ‘ 192 A Maru Grave . , : : . 208 A Nung Rope Bridge. 5 : ; 208 A Duleng Village : f : ; 216 Shan Girls, Hkamti Long \ ; ; 216 12 - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 13 PAGE Girl ginning Cotton . ; : 224 oak Bridge ani: : ‘ ; ive 232 Monastery, Putao Village . F ‘ é 232 ious Festival on the Hkamti Plain . as. hin Village on the Burma Frontier ; , 248 hin Raft on the Mali Hka . ; : 264 V ant Wo? BES _— er Wy CS SSH SA, SOOSHy SK LAH “PD Na f < UL pe Wie paisa [s) { sule unowl H A a WA, RAND REZ “ipod, Mae DNS \ ee TIATYT ug EL ot yi fue UE ASEH Crile Mle age SSS Vib Miri W“0™o—CWw™ CUBR Mihi iy yy | SOOO a ris RMA EG) Soe” <2 > el ee eS 2 1]22 4,0 Os 7 E 1B. 60 RY aa NZ - Q: = . SULUDHES | 32 m NY; = K<_D> iy Ag = Sy Lh Wy, ah UY CZ i Nyy 4 \ \\\ E- . NN a Mi rt o v S The confluence ° a .) rw Avs fs & A é ms O Marsey x : ONTARIOC THE BURMESE HINTERLAND » an almost unknown tract between the rivers Mali kha and ’Nmai kha, still unadministere ‘¢ Triangle, Showing the The Author’s route . . d. la S ” - ‘IN FARTHEST BURMA CHAPTER I y IN THE JUNGLE ‘T= fateful year 1914 found me back in Burma ready to pursue my botanical researches in another direction. Throughout 1913 I had continued those investiga- tions, begun in 1911, of the flora of North-West Yun-nan, to which reference is made in a previous work *—investigations carried into South-East Tibet on the one hand and as far as the frontiers of re- -motest Burma on the other. I now determined to see something of the Burmese hinterland from within. In coming to this decision I was partly influenced by recent events on the North-East Frontier, which besides drawing my attention to a previously un- explored region had made access to it easier than hitherto, . For several years past the nebulous country where Burma, China, Tibet and Assam meet had been the scene of political collisions which threatened to blaze up in the firmament of Indian frontier politics as an 1 The Land of the Blue Poppy, by F. Kingdon Ward. Cambridge University Press, 1913. B 17 18 IN THE JUNGLE | incandescent body of uncertain behaviour. When at last out of this growing welter things resolved them- selves, the climax was soon reached in the British occupation of Hkamti Long, a small plain surrounded by high mountains some two hundred miles north of Myitkyina. Here, completely cut off from their relations in the south by savage tribes inhabiting the densely forested mountains which enclose the plain on all sides, have dwelt for centuries an isolated colony of Shans, numbering to-day only a few hundred families, Just previous to this occupation, the more immediate valleys to the east and north-east of Myitkyina on the Burma- Yun-nan frontier had also been brought under the direct control of the Burma Government and the frontier for some distance north delimited; and it was primarily in this direction—namely, up the valley of the ’Nmai hka, or eastern branch of the Irrawaddy and its tributaries—that I proposed to carry on my work. The ranges of the extreme Burma-Yun-nan frontier, which are crowned by peaks 13,000 feet high, belong to the same mountain system as the Sino-Tibetan ranges farther north, where I had started my explora- tions, and, as will be subsequently pointed out, may even be in direct communication with them. I therefore planned a visit to the mountain ranges ‘of the North-East’ Frontier, on the borders of Yun-nan, to be followed if practicable by an extended recon- naissance up the Burma-China frontier and across to the newly occupied post at Hkamti Long, whence I hoped eventually to reach Assam. How this programme was only partly carried out IN THE JUNGLE 19 in the face of sickness, the unimaginable difficulties of this terrible country and the crowning thunderbolt which fell on Europe in August, 1914—of which, how- ever, I knew nothing until 23rd September, when I was yet twenty-four marches from the railway—is related in the following chapters. Towards the end of April I left Rangoon for Myitkyina, the northern terminus of the Burma rail- way, 720 miles distant, whence I had started for China IN 1913. , Although Bhamo, 600 miles from the sea, is con- sidered the head of steam navigation on the Irrawaddy, small launches can and do ascend the famous first defile above Bhamo in the dry season, when the water is low; and from Myitkyina, where the river broadens out again, it is possible to ascend another twenty miles to the confluence of the Mali hka and the ’Nmai hka, nearly 1000 miles from the sea. Beyond the confluence, how- ever, steam navigation is impossible either up the ?Nmai hka, the eastern branch and true source stream of the Irrawaddy, or up the western branch, called the Mali hka; but whereas the former is an enormously tempestuous river rushing along at the bottom of a deep cleft in the mountains, comparable in all respects with the great Tibetan rivers such as the Mekong and Salween, and hence unnavigable for any kind of craft, the latter is navigable for shallow draught country boats at least as far north as ’N sop-zup, and for Kachin rafts a good deal farther. Little did I realise that some of the military police officers I now met in the Myitykina club would, ere a year had passed, lie dead in France with the glorious epitaph, “Killed in Action,” inscribed over their graves, 20 IN THE JUNGLE while others, still happily living, would be veterans in war. We crossed the Irrawaddy, whose waters had risen suddenly in the course of a night, to Waingmaw on 3oth April, but on the following afternoon I returned to Myitkyina, leaving my caravan waiting for me at Waingmaw, and did not get back again till nearly mid- night. Leaving Myitkyina after dinner, I hired a country boat and by the light of a crescent moon we dropped down with the current. It was cool and rest- ful out here on the bosom of the great river. In the west the setting moon hung poised over the ebony mountain ranges, throwing a band of silver across the water which danced and frolicked under the bluff where the current ran swiftly. The stars, reflected deep down in the placid stream of mid-river, twinkled brilliantly, and the warm scent of the jungle filled the air. There was no sound save now and again the slapping of saucy waves against the side of the boat and the crooning song of the Burman perched in the stern steering—the boatman forward,.who completed the crew, had dropped off to sleep as soon as he had paddled us out into mid-river. So I lay back and drank in the beauties of the night. How wonderful it would be to go on drifting, drifting down the stream always; but the thought was momentary, there was stern work ahead. I could not afford to live ina dream world, and when the boat grated on sand under the high bank at Waingmaw I came out of my reverie. On 2nd May we started down the straight road through the half-leafless monsoon jungle to the Shan — village of Wauhsaung, where the road branches. I IN THE JUNGLE 21 had with me twelve mules, looked after by three Chinese muleteers, hired in Myitkyina, who would take me as far as Hpimaw; and two Chinese servants of my own, one from distant Li-kiang, who had accompanied me to Burma on my return from Yun-nan a month before, and one from Myitkyina, who spoke a Jittle Burmese and might, I thought, be useful on the frontier for that reason, though as a matter of fact we were very soon beyond the range of any Burman- speaking people. The name of the former was T‘ung- ch‘ien, that of the latter Lao-niu, or “old cow,” to translate it. At Wauhsaung we turned aside from the main road via Sadon to T‘eng-yueh, for my destination was not - Yun-nan, but the frontier region itself, and I intended to follow the frontier northwards, keeping on the Burma side, till I reached mountains of sufficient altitude to support a true alpine flora, Two years before we should, after leaving Wauhsaung, have found ourselves on a jungle path, with unbridged rivers; but in 1912 a good mule road had been made by the Public Works Department as far as Hpimaw, the last occupied post on the frontier, fourteen stages from Waingmaw. The journey divides itself very naturally into two parts. For the first seven stages the road keeps to the low-lying country and foot-hills in the valley of the _*Nmai hka, closely following the river, which is generally visible, or at least audible; then it leaves the main river and, crossing a high ridge, winds up and down amongst the tangled jungle-clad mountains lying between the *"Nmai hka and the Salween-Irrawaddy watershed, whose crest marks the frontier, eventually el / 22 IN THE JUNGLE following the valley of the Ngawchang hka, a big tributary of the 7>Nmai hka.,' On 3rd May we marched seventeen miles to a small Shan village, where I slept in the local Buddhist temple, a plain bamboo hut thatched with palm leaves, and distinguished from the residential huts chiefly by several umbrellas suspended from the roof over an altar adorned with two wooden Buddhas. ‘The road through the forest was monotonously level all the way, and I saw few flowers save one or two orchids in the grass by the wayside, and a sturdy pyramidal Curcuma with lemon-yellow flowers concealed beneath a scale armour of pink-tipped bracts which grows commonly in open forest glades throughout Upper Burma. It was only a few miles to the military police post of Seniku, perched on a hill above the Tumpang hka, where we arrived at midday on the 4th. Herel was only too glad to rest in the excellent bungalow pro- vided, for the heat was oppressive. In the afternoon a breeze sprang up, and through the growing mistiness- vast clouds could be seen taking shape. The view from the bungalow over the Kachin hills, with the silver streak of the 7Nmai hka gleaming below, is very fine; in the distance the faint outline of mountains can be discerned. Huge columns of black smoke rose into the air from the burning jungle, which roared and crackled all round us; it was being burnt for clearings, and though it seems a sin to destroy in a few hours what it has taken perhaps centuries to build up, still man must be served. On 5th May, after crossing the Tumpang hka, a con- 1 The word hka, which is of frequent occurrence, is the Kachin word for river. ; ! \ IN THE JUNGLE 23 tinuous roar filled our ears, and at last we glimpsed the "Nmai hka through a screen of bamboos; later on we came right down to it, a powerful river, rushing swiftly amongst the rocks, In the distance high mountains were beginning to lift up their heads. The monsoon jungle was full of strange noises, which ceased. mysteriously as soon as one stopped to listen. A rustling of dry leaves— lizards scampering about under the bamboos; a depre- cating cough overhead—monkeys are watching our every movement. | It is a most eerie sensation to feel that you are being watched by scores of half-human creatures hidden in the trees and quite invisible. If you stand still a moment there will gradually steal over the jungle a dead silence, broken presently by a little purr; if you are quick you may catch sight of a monkey playing peep-bo with you in a tree, but as soon as he feels he is spotted the head is withdrawn behind a branch and a moment later poked carefully round the other side. Suddenly the silent trees are alive with baboons coughing, grunting like pigs and plunging off into the jungle; they seem to spring out of the violently agitated foliage, where a moment before was nothing, as crowds spring from the paving-stones in big cities. I suppose a monkey’s first thought is self-preservation ; his second is undoubtedly an insatiable curiosity. We passed more fires, the bamboos crackling like musketry, interrupted now and again by louder ex- _ plosions. The echo thrown back from the forest was extraordinary, no less than were the sheets of flame which leapt into the air and sank down again immediately. Mee? IN THE JUNGLE I had a swim in the Shingaw hka at sundown, which refreshed me after a fourteen-mile march, and another on the following morning, when we marched only ten miles; but we were well into the foot-hills by this time and the road was nowhere level. There were plenty of jungle fowl strutting about ; in the early morning they came out into the open a good deal, but though noisy they were very wary. The scenery was daily growing wilder, and pouring rain all through the night of 6th May and half next day, with wind and lightning, had warned us to hasten if we would reach Hpimaw ahead of the monsoon. | A heavy thunderstorm by night in the hill jouaias is an awesome sight. Flashes follow each other with great rapidity all round the hills, like gun-fire, and peering through the driving rain you see the maddened trees suddenly lit up, and then blotted out; a moment later they are lit up again, fainter this time, as the flash is farther away; then darkness again. Very faintly do they show up yet a third time within the space of a minute—now the flash is miles and miles away and there is no answering roll of thunder. But all the time the wind is howling and the rain drumming on the ~ hard, leathery leaves, till gradually the noise dies down and presently the stars are sparkling in a limpid sky. May 8th was a day of continuous drizzle. It was our last day by the ?Nmai hka, and we covered fifteen miles, On the following day we crossed the Chipwi River, now very low, and began the ascent of the Lawkhaung ridge. At the head of the Chipwi valley is the low Panwa Pass into China, ve Sata 2 7 - 2 ee ote ee és THE MiGHTY MAHSEER AND THE MONASTERY, PUTAO VILLAGE, HKAMTI PLAIN. The The fish was one of Mr. P. M. R. Leonard’s sixty pounders caught in the Mali hka. men supporting it are Kachins. Photo by P. M. R. Leonard, Esq. The Nam Hkamti in the foreground. Photo by T. Hare, Esq. IN THE JUNGLE 25 The junction of the Chipwi with the 7Nmai is one of the best mahseer’ fishing pools on this road, which abounds with famous spots. In every bungalow is kept a fishing record-book wherein you read entries like the following, written up by officers passing _ through, or on duty down the road :— “ April 1oth—Started fishing in the pool at the junction of the Chipwi hka with the ’Nmai. After half-an-hour hooked a big fish, which fought for twenty minutes, when he got away, the line breaking on a rock.” Or again: “ We began at the lower rapid opposite the Tammu hka bungalow, and hooked the first fish in fifteen minutes, with seventy-five yards of line out. He fought hard at first, but was landed and killed in half-an-hour.. Weight 604 lbs,” The Lawkhaung ridge divides the basin of the Chipwi hka from that of the Ngawchang hka, and is a separating line between the monsoon forests of Burma and the tem- perate forests of the mountainous North-East Frontier. It was a stiff climb up to the military police post of Lawkhaung, and we were caught in a very heavy rain- storm before we got there; the monsoon was indeed close behind us, dogging our footsteps. There is a considerable Maru village at Lawkhaung, almost the first we had seen, for they occupy spurs well back from the river, and are carefully hidden; the Shans of the Irrawaddy valley we had already left far behind. The home of the Marus is the valley of the >Nmai hka, so we scarcely saw them till we reached that river farther north in September. Lawkhaung is about 4000 feet above sea-level, and continuing the ascent next day, we marched by a road * Mahseer—the big carp, Barbus tor, of Indian rivers. 26 IN THE JUNGLE cut in the mountain-side through the forest to Peopat, keeping from 7000 to 8000 feet above sea-level. The vegetation had changed bewilderingly, and the trees, with their heads in the chill mist, wept softly; water gushed and gurgled down all the scuppers of the moun- tain. Gone were the familiar tattered sheets of the banana ; gone too the clumps of giant bamboo, the fig- trees and graceful palms, their place usurped by the sturdier oaks, magnolias and rhododendrons of a bleaker clime. On the ground lay, spending their fragrance, the large milk-white corollas of a splendid rhododendron. Here they had drifted like snowflakes, but we looked in vain for any tree from which they might have fallen; had they been wafted hither on the breeze, or spread as a couch for some Diana of the forest? At last the problem was solved—the rhodo- dendron was epiphytic,’ growing at great heights on the biggest trees, generally quite invisible from below. On the glistening purple slates of the mountain runnels, down which slid thin streams of water, grew violets and patches of a lovely primula (P. obconica var.) cooled by the spray. The Jatter has white flowers with a canary-yellow eye, borne in loose umbels at the summit of long stems, which rise from amongst the rough leaves. Emerging momentarily from the forest above Peopat —which name is attached to nothing but a bungalow— we stood on the brink of things, and spanning the in- tervening valley with a coup d’eil saw, two stages distant by road, the white speck of Htawgaw fort crowning the hill-top, a lonely rock washed by a sea of forest. On the 12th we reached Htawgaw, descending two. 1 R. dendricola, sp. nov. ¢ IN THE JUNGLE a7 or three thousand feet by a break-neck path almost to _ the Ngawchang river, and then climbing up again to the fort, which, from an altitude of 6000 feet, commands the whole valley. Here the country is drier, the vegetation again changing; for the high Lawkhaung ridge takes the first rush of the monsoon on its southern face. Pine- trees, alders and bracken clothe the intermediate slopes, and there are bush rhododendrons and Pieris with beaded spikes of milk-white flowers; but the vegetation of the deep valley is sub-tropical, and of the high mountains northern. | At Htawgaw I met Mr Lowis? of the P.W.D., who had built the Hpimaw road *—-he was now engaged on the fort, a compact little building of stone commanding a splendid view of the Ngawchang valley and the roads to China by the Hpare and Lagwi passes, both under 10,000 feet; also Captain Enriquez, in command of the Gurkha military police. Lowis. was going up to Hpimaw in a day or two, so I waited for him. Once more attention must be drawn to the physical barrier maintained by such a mountain range as the Lawkhaung ridge, actually the watershed between two big tributaries of the ’Nmai hka—the Chipwi to the south, the Ngawchang to the north—for after crossing it we lost sight of the Marus. From Htawgaw onwards the valley is occupied by Lashis below, by Yawyins (or Lisus) above. It is three stages from Htawgaw fort to Hpimaw, the road lying up the valley of the Ngawchang hka. For 1 Mr C. C, Lowis, C.I.E., Public Works Department. 2 Since this was written a cart-road has been built. It follows a different alignment between Seniku and Htawgaw, via the Chipwii valley. 28 IN THE JUNGLE the first half of the journey the valley is comparatively broad and open, but after Lumpung village the river gnaws its way through a fine gorge, and it was here we met with our first cane suspension bridge. The main supporting cables of rattan, or climbing palm, which grows in the jungle, are securely spliced to trees or to a stout scaffolding on either bank; loops of cane connect the main cables together, forming ‘a hammock framework, like the rigging of a ship, and the slender flooring is composed of canes laid lengthwise along the bottom. Thus in section the bridge resembles © the letter V, while a side view of it spanning a broad river is almost a U; and though simple in idea and doubtless easily constructed, it is in appearance a somewhat elaborate structure, chiefly owing to the complicated supporting tackle at either end. The bridge, of course, sags tremendously. Sliding one foot cautiously before the other and clutching the side cables for support, you start down a steep decline and having reached the bottom in mid-stream, made giddy by the unrhythmical swaying of the structure, and by the rush of water below, ascend the other. ‘Thus in fear and trembling the perilous passage is effected; but, like all such ordeals, familiarity soon rabs it of its terrors—the reality, too, is less alarming than the appearance—and gripping the side cables with each hand, one may presently execute an exhilarating pas seul over mid-river, springing to the elastic recoil. _ The worst bit is always along the naked spar bridging the gap between the bank and the beginning of the hammock, through the gaping jaws of the supporting masts, where it is too wide to admit of holding on to both sides at once. IN THE JUNGLE 29 Very similar, cane bridges built by many different tribes are met with throughout the hill jungles of the North-East Frontier and Assam and in the Himalayan foot-hills, at least as far west as Sikkim. The Abor tubular cane bridge is perhaps the most remarkable of all. From Htawgaw fort the road dips steeply to the Ngawchang and continues up the left bank, finally crossing the river by an excellent wire suspension bridge to the village of Lumpung, the first stage. Just below Htawgaw the Hpare hka, up which lies the path to the Hpare and Lagwi passes into China, is crossed. The valley is crowded with villages dotting the terraced slopes where rice is grown, and above are steep hills covered with fern brake and crested with dark pine-trees, open to the winds. On the granite rocks in the river bed many scrubby bushes were in flower, including a small wiry crimson- flowered rhododendron (R. indicum), now nearly over, a Pyrus and Hypericum patulum with large golden flowers. Par more remarkable was the number and variety of orchids which grew on the trees, especially on oaks and alders. ‘They were of the most quaint and varied description, more grotesque than beautiful, and of all degrees of blotchiness and colour. I was astonished to see masses of Dendrobium growing even on the pine- trees, whose ascetic-looking branches seemed to afford them neither water, refuge nor adequate support. The wayside rocks too were thatched with purple and white Dendrobium. Orchids were most abundant between about 3000 and 6000 feet altitude. 30 IN THE JUNGLE On 17th May, in sunny weather, we continued up the right bank of the river a long stage of fifteen miles to Black Rock bungalow, situated where the Ngawchang suddenly changes direction from south to west and enters the gorge. For miles the road is cut out of the sheer cliff face, overhanging the river, and it was here that during the first expedition to Hpimaw, in 1911- 1912, several hundred clumsy Government mules fell, or had to be pushed, over the precipice, for they either could not or would not advance and were holding up those behind. A broader road has been blasted now. It was only the Yun-nan mules which saved the first Hpimaw expedition from being an expensive farce; as it was, comedy is the word. From Black Rock bungalow Hpimaw fort is just visible at the head of the valley, a speck in the moun- tainous distance. On 18th May we crossed the Ngaw- chang again by another P.W.D. bridge, and entered the fertile little Hpimaw valley, whose streams spread out over a floor of rice-fields, and cascade from terrace to terrace—the valley that had been the cause of so much heart-burning in Yun-nan-fu, and of so much irresolution in Simla. It seemed an unattractive place | —it was raining now as usual—and an insignificant, to claim so much attention. But it is by such Tom Tiddler’s grounds that empires stand or fall. Lashi women were at work in the paddy swamps— they did not look a prepossessing lot. Riding slowly up the winding valley, which narrows rapidly, we came to the meeting of the waters, one stream flowing down from the Feng-shui-ling, the other from the Hpimaw Pass. » IN THE JUNGLE 31 A short distance up the latter valley lay the village whence the armed might of the Indian Empire had driven the village pedagogue; but the Government of India has ever shown itself dilatory and cowardly in its dealings with the neighbouring power of China, and astonishingly ignorant. Had it not been for the Imperialist Hertz,! a real driving force on the spot, the mandarins of Simla would assuredly have been bluffed by the mandarins of Yun- nan-seng over the Hpimaw valley. What a delicious scene! The force that had cautiously felt its way for two months from Burma, fearful of meeting resistance, desperately resolved, advancing in battle formation into Hpimaw, to be con- fronted after all the rumours of war that are so prolific along the China frontier by a courteous old Chinese schoolmaster! But the Chinaman was in no hurry. He kept the staff waiting half-an-hour. At last he appeared. “Now,” says the 0.C., very stern,. “you must leave this village.” “I shall be charmed,” replies the courtly old man, bowing as only a well-bred Chinaman can'; whereupon he packs his bedding and marches over the Hpimaw Pass back into China. So Hpimaw was occupied by the British, ipuiedakabe abandoned, and permanently reoccupied the following year, when the fort was built. From the meeting waters, fringed with blue irises, we climbed two thousand feet up the hill to the fort, perched on a ridge overlooking the village, 8000 feet above sea-level, passing from spring almost into winter, 1 Mr W. A. Hertz, C.S.I. (see Chapter XVIII.). 32 IN THE JUNGLE and were welcomed by the commandant * to an excellent midday breakfast. And so I settled down in the comands bungalow at Hpimaw fort. It was 18th May of the wonderful year 1914. 1 Captain (now Major) J. E. Cruickshank. CHAPTER II LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT | (5* granite, knotted ‘and corrugated, pleated and crumpled into bewildering tangles, and again hacked through and through by destruc- tive storm waters; stark cliffs of limestone overshadow- ing the valleys; slopes here clad with rain-drenched forest, elsewhere so steep and rocky that nothing but rank grass and desperate grapple-rooted trees find foot- hold in the short soil; and on a bleak, windy shoulder where a spur, sweeping down from the crest of the range, has broken its back and tumbled away in agony to the deep valley of the brawling Ngawchang hka, blocking the path to China, stands Hpimaw fort.’ From the commandant’s bungalow just below the fort itself you look across the marble-clouded valley, where invisible villages are snugly tucked away in the folds, to the grey-blue mountain ranges of the 7Nmai hka, crowned by the gaunt mass of Imaw Bum, white- furrowed where the snow-choked couloirs spread fingerwise into the valley. Behind the bungalow the darkly forested slopes of the main range rise © abruptly. The path to China follows the spur from the fort, climbing sometimes steeply, sometimes gently, now perched on the crest, now slipping over and traversing one or other flank. 1'There is no fort there now ; it has been pulled down. Cc 33 34 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT The day after my arrival at the fort the commandant and I set out for the pass. Tearing our way through thickets of silver-leafed and waxen-stemmed raspberries, which cover the moun- tains in astonishing variety, we soon plunged into a forest of rhododendron, laden with heavy trusses of crimson, scarlet, pink, white and yellow flowers, like huge coloured balls. Here in the depth of the jungle massive- stemmed conifers shoot upwards in all the pride of their great strength and, outstripping every rival, spread protecting arms over all the forest. Strapping smooth- trunked. trees from whose bases radiate thin upstanding buttress roots like planks on edge, bracing them for the struggle, bear aloft crowns of foliage like fighting tops; hideous ropes and ribands of crumpled wood, disfigured with loathsome-looking \ warts, lie coiled like snakes in the gloom, and shouldering their way rudely through the dense foliage, burst into flower far over- head. Everything is bearded with moss, which has felted the wooden pillars and hangs in delicate festoons from the heavy-laden boughs. Orchids cling to niches in the trees, their milk-white, blunt-nosed roots creeping out in all directions, flattened against the trunk like scared lizards and probing ever moisturewards into the darkest crevices.. Ferns too, apple-green, malachite and olive, with delicately cut fronds, or strap-shaped and erect, help to weigh down the groaning branches — buried beneath alien vegetation. A rank undergrowth surges waist-high round the trees, where pale green butterfly orchids (Calanthe sp.), ferns and Urticaceze contest the ground with striped cuckoo-pint hiding beneath enormous leaves.’ — 1 Arisema Wallichianum. LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 35 Also let us add this fact: these quaint chocolate, pink and green striped cuckoo-pints are provided with lids, the tip’of the lid being drawn out into a delicate lash which trails on the ground; and the more rainy the climate, the darker and damper the forest wherein these plants grow, the longer and slenderer this thread. Of what use is this strange appendage?’ Is it a fishing-line hung over the edge of the great cup into the wilderness below to catch something? Is it a guide rope for guests bidden to the cup? Is it, perhaps, of no use—now— its use long since lost, or one of nature’s failures, abandoned? Whatever it is, nothing could be more curious. Presently we emerged from the dim forest into sun- lit meadow where grew mauve primulas with clusters of little tubular flowers like grape hyacinths (P. /imnoica). Along the fringe of the forest twining plants with ropy yellow stems scrambled over the trees—here were white clematis and cherry-red Schizandra and fragrant honeysuckle. Far. below, floating like water-lilies on the sea-green foliage, the milk-washed flowers of a magnolia gleamed. But it is the rhododendrons which, chequering the forested slopes with splashes of colour, charm one to silence, while the heart seems to cry out with delight. Here at gooo feet they are great red-barked trees with tangled branches, and from the fat pointed buds immense bunches of scented flowers, thrusting aside the sticky scales, are pushing out—it seems wonderful — enough how all these perfectly shaped and delicately coloured corollas can be packed away inside those closely clasping scales, without injury. But here they are nevertheless, welling honey and flooding the atmos- phere with fragrance, while the bees, going mad, tumble 36 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT over each other in their eagerness to take toll of the passive blossoms. | One species had leaves of frosted silver and fat trusses of citron-yellow flowers, thus resembling R. argenteum. Here too.grow species of Schima, bee oak, Ficus, Acer and many other trees. Up and up, still climbing steeply, at one time enveloped in a forest of bamboos so thick that one could not see twenty yards into the brake, and all clothed in green moss; at another, out on the open ridge again, brushing through stiff bunches of Pieris, like white heather. Far down the steeply shelving hill-side lies the network of tree-girt veins which gather water from ten thousand hidden springs and, overflowing, fling it into the pulsing arteries roaring out of sight. Grass and bracken grow on this rock-strewn slope, with bushes of blue-washed Hydrangea, golden-leafed Buddleia! and willow. Conspicuous too were slender | trees of Ekinanthus, from every twig of which hung bunches of striped red cups. In the long grass there sprang up in June—it was but May when the © rhododendrons blotched the mountains with colour —a beautiful Nomocharis with rosy flowers speckled with purple at the base, pink geranium, gaudy louse- worts and other flowers. Suddenly in the forest we came upon a shady bank blue with the lovely Primula sonchifolia growing in careless luxury, as primroses do in a Kent copse. The path was strewn with fallen corollas, scattered like jewels, It is a charming plant, with rather the 1 B. limitanea, sp. nov. LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 37 habit of an English primrose, a hemispherical umbel of azure-blue flowers, each yellow-eyed, springing from a thickly clustered rosette of dark green leaves. Up here it really was still winter—there was snow in one of the gullies. And now the cold air of the pass itself chilled us, while borne on the wings of the wind came rushing up on every side from invisible valleys the rain-clouds, melting about us as they wrapped round the trees, twisting and whirling through the branches like smoke. Drip! Drip! Drip! It was the only sound which greeted us, for the torrent was out of earshot in the depths below, and birds are rare and subdued in these gloomy forests—we saw only some Jong-tailed jays and gaudy woodpeckers. Perhaps even their spirits are oppressed by the ceaseless patter of the rain and the sour smell rising from the sodden leaves whence in a night spring strange and sickly speckled pilei, spawn of perpetual twilight. A deep gash in the mountain ridge—the pass itself, dipping steeply over into the warm blueness of the _Salween valley, across which the sun shone brightly on the wall of mountains opposite, twenty miles away ; and across those mountains too, deep down in the bowels of the earth, rumbled the red Mekong, another warrior river of Tibet. We stood now on the rim of the Burmese hinterland, looking into the fair land of China, the threshold of Yun-nan, which means “Southern Cloudland.” - On the other side a stony track leads steeply down towards the Salween. Mules might, with difficulty, be taken to the top of the pass on our side, but it is doubtful if they could be taken into China; anyhow, I never saw 38 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT any cross. I was in the Salween valley, not far south of the Hpimaw pass, in 1911. It is inhabited chiefly by Shans, and there are no mule-roads there. The Hpimaw pass is the most southerly pass leading direct to the Salween valley from Burmese territory, till that river itself enters Burma in the far south. Above the pass, which is a gap bitten out of the ridge, bushes of crimson-flowered rhododendron, grow- ing amidst a wilderness of rocks and coarse grass, dotted the mountain-side. _ The splash of torrents far below, blended into one continuous murmur, came up faintly on the breeze, and but for the wind frisking in the grass a great quiet brooded over these high solitudes, Gusts of dense cloud boiled silently up from the white cauldron and shut out everything; its clammy breath clung to us, and wetted us through, and passed over, allowing another glimpse into the blue valley of the Salween, while the dull murmur of the torrents rose momentarily to a roar, before dying away into silence again as the next heavy curtain of vapour rushed up. And far away in sunny China puffs of silver cumulus rested lightly on the rocky Mekong divide. Below the fort are steep slopes covered with high bracken, where grow stately lilies, yellow and white (Lilium Wallichianum and L. nepalense), purple willow- herb, royal fern (Osmunda regalis) and hundreds of sticky wee sundew plants, their glistening leaves out- spread to entrap flies, which, when entangled, this murderous little plant innocently sucks to death.? Here too grows a tall Hedychium with yellow and white flowers. But the most*lovely species of this . 1 Drosera peltata, , LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 39 genus sends up a great candelabrum of cinnabar-red flowers. It is found in shady thickets, but is not common. In the wet, shady gullies, where water is ever dripping, are masses of brightly coloured, glassy- stemmed balsam in great variety, orange, white and violet. And everywhere grow trees. Standing on the flat shoulder of the spur at sunset, looking down into the vast pit of the valley where the Ngawchang river flows wrathfully, one could follow the changeful air currents, traced in condensing and dissolving vapour as the clouds waxed and waned. _ The rainfall in the low valleys on the other side of the Lawkhaung range is much heavier than it is to the north in the Htawgaw and Hpimaw valleys, and the clouds from the Burma plains do not at first easily pass over that range, precipitating themselves against it instead. Thus looking south to the mountain wall standing up between the Chipwi and Ngawchang rivers one saw tall slate-coloured pillars of cloud with cauliflower tops mounting skyward, then flinging off grotesquely shaped puffs which mounted still higher, and melted away even as they rose, in a vain endeavour to cross the barrier. Day after day they beat als ak against that rocky shore, filling the air with broken cloud spray, which rushing up on us, fell in drenching showers, leaving blue sky down the valley; while to the south- west those slate-coloured pillars still towered over the distant range in ominous threat, and on-the plains of - Burma the rain fell in torrents. Listen—hardly a sound to be heard! It is the hush of a June night at home; bats, flitting by like shadows, 4o LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT pass and repass, a fire-fly glimmers against the trees and a barking deer cries sharply, once, twice, from the bracken-clad hill-side. A few stars twinkle in the blue vault, and the mountains are dimpled into fantastic forms by light and shadow. But away behind that barrier pitiless drenching rain. Not that it never rained at Hpimaw! Fear from it! Rather was it raining a/ways in a persistent, maddening drizzle, with breaks of a few days, or a week, now and then. It was mid-June when the heavy summer rains began. Then the mountains were hidden, swathed in white bandages of cloud; the valley was hidden, filled to the brim with cloud; and at night dense, impenetrable mists enveloped the whole world, it seemed. So I stood one time, a tiny atom on the brink of the last great precipice of all, with the waters roaring louder and louder all round me as the growing torrent lifted up its voice, and all the world weeping quietly—the most melancholy drip! drip! drip!—with a horrible inevitableness. And I struggled to tear aside the grey veil and look out upon the dangers which beset my soul on every hand, but could not; for a moment vague trees and cliffs leered from the other world like giants, and disap- peared silently, mysteriously, as they had come, when the heavy white mists boiled over again, while I stood there on the shoulder of the spur, peering into the cauldron below; peering till my -eyeballs cracked, afraid to move, ae still could see nothing, so that a great fear was upon me, gripping me. That was fever. But they passed, these wild fancies, born of the racking fever which came to us all in turn. LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 41 Throughout those days the rain poured through the roof of the bungalow, and the puddles swelled to pools on the floor. But the rain passed too, and after the middle of June came a break. Hpimaw village lies scattered up the shelving valley 2000 feet below the fort, and is finally pinched out by converging spurs of the main range. There are moderate-sized, grass-thatched huts raised on stilts, with a deep porch in front, surrounded. by little fenced-in patches of opium—such brilliant colours, purple, dusky crimson (the colour of port wine when the lamplight shines through it) and white! The glaucous green poppy heads were being scratched now, and fat tears of sticky fluid were oozing from the wounds and rolling slowly down the side of the globular capsule, ready to be collected. The opium is used locally as a prophylactic against fever, not smoked as in China, but wiped off on a rag, which is then sucked, or soaked in water to make a beverage! Opium pellets are also chewed. Little stony paths, sunk between hedges of raspberry and St John’s-wort, by purling streams, lead from hut to hut. By the water are beds of blue iris and Acacia trees, and in the paddy-fields brilliant blue and gold Tradescantia, with its furry stamens, and the arrow-shaped leaves of Sagittaria, familiar to lovers of East Anglia. The Lashis are allied to the Maru, Chingpaw, Nung, and others of the Chingpaw or Kachin family inhabiting the Burmese hinterland. ‘There is a tradition that this particular tribe originated as a cross between a China- man and a Maru woman, but however that may be, there is no doubt of their close relationship to the latter. They occupy the lower land up the Ngawchang hka 42 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT and its tributaries, their rivals the Yawyins occupying the dourer stony land above them; the villages of the latter are perched on the hill-tops. Perhaps a day will come when the sturdier, hard-working Yawyin will drive out the lazy, opium-ridden Lashi from the more fertile lands, even as he himself was originally dis- possessed by the more numerous Lashi. The Chinese call the Lashi Ch‘a-shan and the Marus Lan-su; both tribes are included under the general Chinese designation, Hsiao-shan-jen, which means simply, ‘¢men of the small hills”; while the 7a-shan-jen, * men of the big hills,” includes Kachins, Yawyins and some smaller tribes living higher up. The ordinary Yun-nan name for the Kachins is Shan-t‘ou—i.e. “ hill-top ” (men). There is great confusion of names in a region like this, crowded with different tribes speaking totally different languages and calling themselves by different names, while each in turn is differently named by neighbouring tribes. Moreover, the distribution of tribes such as the Lashi and Yawyin along the Burma-China frontier being discontinuous, some living well inside Yun-nan, others far away down in the Shan states and Burma, they have adopted the dress, habits and to some extent language of their dominant neighbour, Chinese or Burmese; thus we get a further complication in people of the same tribe calling themselves by different names in different parts of the country. All the familiar tribal names on the North-East Frontier, such as Lashi, Maru, Kachin and Yawyin— the only ones we need concern ourselves with—are either so used by the majority of the tribes themselves, or else are of Kachin or Chinese origin.1 | 1 See Appendix II. LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 43 I have mentioned tribes as living at distinct levels, one above the other. The explanation is simple. Speaking generally, the valleys will be more fertile and have more cultivable land than the hills; they will naturally, therefore, be occupied in the first instance by the more powerful tribes, who will remain until driven out. Hence we would expect to find that the tribes occupying the valleys are the most powerful, while those occupying the highest spurs are the weakest. The once all-powerful Shans originally occupied the - fertile plains and valleys of western Yun-nan, and a large part of Upper Burma, being gradually dispossessed in the former province by the Chinese; but they still occupy the Salween valley, and much of Upper Burma, and the question naturally arises, Why has not this degenerate remnant been long since driven out of the _ fertile Salween valley? The answer is, that the Salween valley is extremely malarious and the Chinaman cannot live there; the thoroughly acclimatised Shans, on the other hand, _ thrive; hence they are left alone. The same argument applies to other parts of the North-East Frontier. A formerly powerful tribe took possession of the fertile lowland valleys, and became acclimatised and, in spite of degeneration, is now left in possession by more vigorous tribes, who are relegated to the less fertile but healthier hill-tops. | It is said that when the Lashis first came into the Hpimaw valley they found the Yawyins there and drove them out by sheer weight of numbers; however that may be, the Yawyins are now in a fair way to drive out the Lashis in their turn. 44 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT Possibly, if we had not occupied Hpimaw, Chinese from beyond the Salween valley would have gradually come over and squeezed out the Lashis, or at least obliterated them as a tribe in their own inimitable ey by absorption. As to the reputed origin of the Lashis, it is not indeed a very romantic union anyway—a hard-headed, practical Chinaman and a half-wild- Maru maid from the jungle. And truly it is difficult to say a good word for the Lashis. The cynical callousness with which a well-favoured girl—she was only twenty—related the ‘olen story of love, intrigue and murder makes one’s blood run cold. A man from another village wished to take her to wife, she said, but she refused the offer. Again and again he had asked her, and still she refused, for she had another lover. At last, tired of importuning her, which is not the way of these hill tribes, the man came to her hut one night and, tying her up, carried her off, with the help of some friends, to his own village. | When she was untied, instead of simply running away, she plotted revenge, determined to rid herself for ever of this tedious lover whom she loathed. | Therefore she tried to poison him, putting aconite in his food, but failing in this, and growing steadfast in — her resolve, she cast aside all subterfuge and sought surer means. Then in the dead of night she crept to the sleeping form and drawing his own dah from its wooden sheath almost severed the hated head from the trunk with a ferocious blow. ‘The man uttered never a groan, but LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 45 died as he slept, swimming in blood, and she threw the body from the hut. Next morning, she tells us, she walked’ calmly to her own village and resumed her old life. One can picture the dreadful scene in the lonely hut—the moonlight glistening on the wet rice-fields all round and shining through chinks in the mat wall, the glowing embers in the square hearth, then the drawing of the keen blade, the measured distance for the stroke, the wrapped figure lying on the split bamboo floor— how that floor must have swayed and cracked under her effort—and the deep breathing of the sleeper. And finally the flash in the moonlight, and the blow — dimly aimed in the gloom, but struck well, cutting _ through helpless flesh and bone, while the blood welled out silently, staining the slippery bamboo, the cold, calculating hand which struck again and again in blind hate, to make certain, chipping the floor, *¢ And what did you do with the corpse?” she was asked. 3 “7 threw it outside; it was no use in the hut.” And she was strong enough to have done it, not a doubt of that. The unaffected surprise of the savage girl when arrested and charged with murder because she had legitimately rid herself of a man who was repugnant to her would have been comic in other circumstances. The ingenuous recital of her wrongs, and the awful means adopted in order to safeguard her rights, revealed the primitive law in its ugliest aspect. More picturesque in his recital of love and intrigue was the fort interpreter, a wizened but agile old Chinaman, yet a very Don Juan, who sometimes came 46 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT across to the bungalow in the evenings to teach me — Burmese. His home had been in Momien, now called T‘eng- yueh, over the border in the Yun-nan mountains, but when he was yet a little child, in the long-forgotten days of the great Mohammedan rebellion, while Sultan Suliman ruled half a province by the blue lake of o ee eS Toe Se Tali-fu, the city of T‘eng-yueh had been sacked by — the victorious Panthays, and his house with many others burnt to the ground, so that his mother was forced to flee over the mountains to Bhamo, carrying him on her back. Settled in Hsin-kai—that is, New Market, as the Chinese inaptly call Bhamo—for this sleepy town on the banks of the mile-broad Irrawaddy ill recalls the bracing chalk hills and ape woods of Cambridgeshire— he had grown to man’s estate, and when the English deposed Thibaw and ruled in Bhamo he returned to his first home to marry. They are restless folk, these Chinamen of the far west, and after a few years of domestic life in T*eng-yueh he had come to Burma. There, in old Bhamo, he had met his second love © and married her—not that he had grown weary of his first, but simply that business having called him to Burma it was necessary to have a ménage there. He recounted his conquests in the field of Eros, and his dull eyes glistened. ‘I suppose you like your Burma girl best,” I suggested confidently, thinking of the dainty butterfly creatures one sees in that charming land, but he answered warmly: “No! Za-yen. My wife at T‘eng-yueh is a very good wife. She is always at home, sewing and doing LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 47 the housework; she never wants things, nor makes a fuss. But my Burmese girl is sinfully vain. She wants new silk /one-gyi always and gold bangles more numerous than Ma-E-Hla next door, and if I won’t give them to her, threatens to run away. She is very restless and expensive,” he continued sadly, “and does -no.work in the house; she wants to live like a princess.” And the poor old man sighed. That is so like a Chinaman—always coldly practical, with no room for sentiment. Yet was he not satisfied with his experiences, but going to the jade mines, which lie far away in the Kachin hills, must needs take a third wife of the country, this time a Kachin. No great troubles seem to have ruffled their married life till he came to Hpimaw, and fearful of falling amongst even worse barbarians—here he spat signi- ficantly—wished to take his latest wife with him. _ But she flatly refused to go—for Hpimaw isa foreign land, eighteen days’ journey from the jade mines, and so to his chagrin our Don Juan had to make a settle- ment on her and come away alone. Whether he had since contracted any temporary alliances at Hpimaw he did not divulge, but he spoke so disparagingly of the Lashis, for whom he had the bitterest contempt, that I think it unlikely. Nor was it tactful to inquire too closely. Poor lonely old man! He had wives all over the country-side, but they were none of them near him; and like a true patriot he thought first of his ancestral home in T*eng-yueh ! _ The Chinaman has the greatest contempt for all the highland tribesmen; but I sometimes wondered whether 48 LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT my friend had contracted a temporary alliance with a Yawyin maid in the Hpimaw hills. They are nice- looking girls. | As to the fort itself—the reader must not suppose that a fort on the North-East Frontier is a concrete structure mounting guns. How could it be! Nor are such defences required. It is simply a small building, of stone perhaps, or of wood strengthened by walls of brushwood and grass sods, which will stop bullets. The walls are loopholed for rifle and machine-gun fire, and there is an open yard in the middle where, in case of an attack on the post, the mules can be tethered, and any extra people taken inside the fort. Such frontier forts are always built on prominent spurs, well away from villages, commanding a pass or road, the first object being to secure a clear field of fire, jungle being felled and, if necessary, hill-sides cut away to ensure this. In the event of trouble on the frontier they are the refuge for everybody in the post, civil and military, and it then devolves upon the garrison to hold the fort, and if possible the road, till help can arrive—which may be a matter of days. The garrison of Hpimaw was then about half a company (100 men), with a couple of machine guns. These forts, though fulfilling their object, are naturally more imposing than alarming; they are quite strong enough to withstand such troubles as brew on this frontier, and are meant neither for war on the European scale, which is obviously impossible in such a country, nor for prolonged resistance. They would — act as centres of resistance against the rebellions and sudden outburst which from time to time flash up on LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT 49 our Indian frontiers, and die away as suddenly and mysteriously as comets come out of the unknown and disappear whence they came. They also serve to impress and overawe the more truculent tribesmen—to prevent rather than to meet trouble. As regards food we were quite comfortably situated, for though we could procure little in the Hpimaw valley itself, yet, owing to our proximity to the fertile regions of Yun-nan, it was a simple matter to send men over the pass for fowls, eggs, rice and potatoes. In fine weather Chinamen used to come over with supplies for sale, but in the summer they came more rarely, and then I would from time to time send a couple of Lashis across with orders to get what they could; and after a week’s absence they would return with perhaps a hundred eggs and a dozen fowls, bought for a few rupees. Eggs seemed to keep indefinitely at Hpimaw— certainly I often kept them ten days or a fortnight, only a small percentage going bad; and they may have been ancient to start with. So hard up is the North-East Frontier for food, the villages even in the most favoured districts raising barely enough for their own subsistence, that my Lashi collectors always asked me to supply them with rice. It may be remarked here that the Hpimaw valley and the Hkamti plain are the only places in the whole vast area of the Burmese hinterland where lowland paddy can be grown. Elsewhere mountain rice, buckwheat and maize are universally cultivated. We kept a number of fowls at the fort, but they were sadly decimated from time to time by wild cats, eagles and perhaps owls, though it may be D so LIFE AT A FRONTIER FORT that the alleged wild cats sometimes had only two legs. Jungle rats were another pest; they swarmed into our store-rooms at night, and got at anything that was not tightly shut up in a tin, sometimes even opening biscuit tins by pushing them off the shelf on to the floor. They were wily too, and would not look at traps or poison, however carefully concealed; they really seemed to reason on such matters, - The fort commandant also kept up a garden, of ‘which he was pardonably proud, cut out of the steep side of the kAud; and from this garden he supplied our table with excellent cabbages, radishes, cauliflowers, globe artichokes and other succulent vegetables, all raised from seed. They really did very well consider- ing the vileness of the climate—or perhaps because of it, for did it not in some ways resemble the English climate ? From time to time the fort commandant went on tour and I was left alone. These tours, lasting anything from a week to a fortnight, were confined to such paths as existed, while my goal was rather off those paths into the remoter mountains. But in the first week of June I decided to accompany him on a trip to the Feng-shui-ling, a pass into China south of Hpimaw, of which he spoke enthusiastically. And an account of that journey deserves a chapter to itself, ONTARIO CHAPTER III THE FOREST OF WINDS AND WATERS -N a fine June morning we set out for the () Feng-shui-ling, going straight down the pre- _ Cipitous hill-side below the fort, through tall bracken, 2000 feet to a stream, and then up a narrow- ing valley; but the mules had to keep to the road. It was rather lucky for me that the commandant had some mules, as it was difficult to get Lashi porters now, this being just the time when they were busy planting their taungya+; and though that is really the women’s job, the men also have plenty to do for a short time. __ These taungya are simply hill-sides cleared of jungle. The jungle is cut after the rains and lies for a few months. About March, when it is fairly dry, it is set on fire and the undergrowth burnt out; but the stumps and big tree trunks are only charred, and the Jatter lie about in all directions, making progress across a steep taungya extremely arduous. In the spring the maize is dibbled into the soil, and ripens in the autumn. After the first year the soil is exhausted and the taungya abandoned to the jungle which quickly springs up, covering the place with a dense tangle of herbs and bushes, amongst which small trees soon begin to appear; while a new faungya is cleared elsewhere—a complete change of soil instead of a rotation of crops. 1 Taungya—a Burmese word, meaning unirrigated hill-side cultivation, \ ie . : 52 THE FOREST OF It is obviously a very wasteful method of cultivation, but one well suited to such a country. Down here the air was clammy and oppressive, but the water clear and cool. Strapping leafy herbs clothed the banks, with beds of yellow monkey-flower (Mimulus nepalensis) and purple-spotted bugle and balsams. Certain species of the last-named have curiously swollen nodes, like glass beads, in each of which I found a tiny grub; these swellings occur only at the. points where the leaves spring from the stem—that is, at the nodes. The path, though steep, and in the forest muddy, © presented no difficulty to the mules; and early in the afternoon, after crossing a low pass, we emerged into an open bracken-clad meadow and camped by the stream. Nor far distant, where a boisterous torrent rushed down from the mountains and disappeared into a gorge, stood a small village occupied by half-a-dozen Minchia families from Li-kiang, in Yun-nan. As usual in these open sunny spaces we were attended by swarms of persistent blood-sucking flies —horse-flies, blood-blister flies and sand-flies, against which there is no sovereign remedy; one must resign oneself to their attentions and forget the irritation in other interests. The blood-blister flies in particular are pernicious — insects, rather smaller than the common house-fly, yellow and black like a wasp. Their bite raises'a | blood blister the size of a pin’s head, which irritates for a long time, though relief is obtain by pricking | it and letting out the fluid. The bare legs and arms of | the natives are speckled with small black dots, caused | Se aa WINDS AND WATERS 53 by the punctures of this fly. No doubt the blister- fly, like the mosquito, carries one of the many forms of fever suffered in these parts. Along the stream-side several kinds of raspberry bore fruit, but many of them were more striking for their handsome foliage or habit, or for the soft bloom of wax which whitened their smooth stems, than for the merit of their fruit; yet some too were luscious, and I sent home. seed of all the Rubi 1 could find, as it is a genus well worth study, and no doubt capable of great things under cultivation. They seem to prefer granite to limestone—nearly all I found were growing on granite. | There was a shrub growing here nearly every leaf of which bore a small rosy spike on the upper surface, somewhat resembling a looper caterpillar standing up; each spike, which was hollow and entered from the under surface of the leaf, contained a small insect, the originator of the disfigurement—as it was from the leaf’s point of view. The resemblance to a caterpillar was really striking, but otherwise there was nothing to distinguish the sick leaf from a dozen similarly disiigured met with in England. With sunset came a relief from the dripping heat, _ but an immense halo round the moon presaged rain on the morrow. In order to allow ample daylight for settling into camp, it was our habit to start early, make a single march and halt finally about two o’clock. Conse- quently we were up at five o’clock and, after a quick meal, away into the forest at an hour when most folks at home are coming down to breakfast. Our path lay up the big torrent in rich, yet not 54 THE FOREST OF dense, forest throughout, for there was no bamboo brake to choke it here. Ferns, orchids and strange cuckoo-pints carpeted the ground, or hung from trees, with sometimes blue iris and giant lilies in open dells. But trees and shrubs were in greatest variety, including several rhododendrons, one with white flowers smelling sweetly of nutmeg (R. megacalyx, sp. noy.); another, and this, as previously related, a small shrub, always growing epiphytically high up on big trees, whose large white flowers, blotched with lemon-yellow at the base, were the sweetest scented in the world (R. dendricola). There were also Deutzia, smothered in soft pink blossom like Japanese silk, and ropes of snowy-white clematis hanging over the bushes. The lovely Luculia gratissima also flourished here. Dak In the gloomiest depths of the forest we came upon a primula, since called P. seclusa, which from a cluster of large rugged dark green leaves sends up tall scapes bearing several tiers of crimson flowers. At one place in the forest there was a clay bank overhanging a stream—we were crossing a high spur at the time and must have been nearly gooo feet up then—covered with a mosaic of rough-leafed primulas bearing umbels of little cups filled with seed. They were allied to P. sonchifolia, and, like it, blue-flowered, the commandant told me; he had seen them in bloom as early as February, when snow still lay on the ground. One could imagine what that bank looked like, sheeted with blue while the sluggish forest was still half asleep under its snowy blanket, and every stream tumbling and frothing down its muddy channel as the gleaming ice melted. WINDS AND WATERS 55 Here too flourished Beesia cordata, a novel genus of - Ranunculacee. _ Immense trees towered all round us. Some were > draped with long streamers of moss, others richly covered with ferns and orchids; a few supported small bushes of the most fragrant rhododendrons, whose handsome corollas dappled the ground. Having made good progress through the forest, we camped at a spot selected by the Lashis who had been sent on ahead to clear the track—a small knoll overlooking the now shrunken stream. Emerging next day from an oak forest interspersed with rhododendrons and holly, we reached a big stream, its banks so thickly overgrown with bamboo that we had to wade knee-deep through the chilly water of the stream itself. The mules enjoyed this, splashing lustily, and when the sun broke through the clouds, and sparkled on the chattering water, it was delightful, save for the leeches which we collected. Paddling thus slowly up the stream, we came from time to time into the most enchanting meads, where the little valley broadened. Here the grass was purple with Primula Beesiana, and the shallow waters dotted with tall yellow cowslips, which were not cowslips in fact, but Primula helodoxa, growing on the banks, on gravel islands, on fallen tree trunks, in careless pro- fusion. And there were flowering bushes all round us instead of forest, thickets of buckthorn and rose, wayfaring-tree, barberry and honeysuckle, amongst which sprang up white lilies, tall as grenadiers (LZ. giganteum), marsh marigolds and grasping coils of yellow-flowered Codonopsis, sunning itself as it sprawled 56 THE FOREST OF carelessly over the surrounding plants like a rich exquisite. Most lovely of all, hiding shyly within the dark bamboo groves, was a meadow-rue, its large white flowers borne singly, half nodding amongst the maiden- hair leaves, so that in the gloom of the brake they looked like snowflakes floating through a forest of ferns. I called it the snowflake meadow-ie seer is none more beautiful. «< Why, what a paradise of flowers!” I said to my companion. ‘Who would have thought that these sorrowful mountains and dim, dripping forests held such treasures ! ” “It is pretty,” he replied. ‘I thought you might find something interesting at the Feng-shui-ling.” ‘‘Fen-shui-ling! Is that what they call it? Why, that may well mean ‘ the pass of the winds and waters.” * Certainly there is water enough” (we were still pad- dling up-stream). ‘* Better did sui call it ¢ Hua-shui-lin’ —the forest of flowers and waters.” It was indeed a watery valley, full of wet meadows, rank forest and rushing streams. After a mile or two we left the water and broke through the bamboo lining by a muddy path which ascended sharply to an open meadow, and here we camped amidst the flowers. Close around us on every side rose densely wooded mountains which poured ten thousand tributary rills down into the bamboo-choked streams; and I wondered how we should get back here in August when the waters rose in flood. Not 1 It is impossible to tell from the sound of Chinese words what they mean, so many different words having the same sound, But the written characters at once distinguish them. WINDS AND WATERS a far above us a bare limestone cliff overhung the pass. It had taken us only three hours, travelling slowly, to reach this spot—altitude about 8000 feet—and after lunch we set out to climb the last 1000 feet to the pass. Crossing several swamps, where yellow primulas clustered, we entered forest again, ascending steeply by an execrable path. A big rhododendron with enormous leaves (R. sino-grande) and a giant conifer* were con- spicuous trees here, and, as usual, there was a hanging garden between earth and sky, chiefly of a lovely white orchid. An Aristolochia with quaintly bent yellow flowers like a Dutchman’s pipe lolled over a bush. Presently we met a party of Yawyins from China, amongst whom was a remarkably pretty little girl; but they were very shy. The summit of the pass is flat, overshadowed by the high cliff seen from below, which rears itself straight up from a bog at its foot. Many plants were coming on here, but there was scarcely anything in flower yet, and I waded through it with an eye open for snakes, of which we had seen several venomous-looking ones in the marshes round our camp. The path down the other side leads to Ming-kuan, a fertile and populous valley north of 'T‘eng-yueh, at the source of the Shweli river in Yun-nan. Again we stood on the edge of the Burmese hinterland looking into the fair land of China. It is by this route that the coolies carry the coffin planks from the upper Ngawchang valley to Yun-nan (see Chapter VII.). The Feng-shui-ling, though immediately south of 1 Pseudotsuga sp. 58 THE FOREST OF Hpimaw, is not, as a matter of fact, on the main water- shed, which throws off a long spur here; from the angle formed by this spur with the main divide rises the Shweli, a big tributary of the Irrawaddy. Descend- ing into China from the Feng-shui-ling, the traveller, after crossing the western branch of the Shweli, finds a range of hills between him and the eastern branch of that river, and then a range of high mountains, the main divide in fact, between the eastern branch of the Shweli and the Salween. The Shweli thus divides into two branches, exactly as does the Irrawaddy. | Returning to camp, we found that the orderly had bagged a brace of bamboo partridge for dinner, while the servants had collected a basketful of deliciously flavoured little strawberries? for our tea. The meadow in which we were camped—an irregular-shaped knoll with outcrops of bush-clad rocks, saved only by its slight elevation from being a marsh—was indeed studded with this fruit, offering us an ample supply daily. There is plenty of game in these forests, but the jungle is too thick for shikaring, at least in the summer, and conditions are all against it. Tree bear used to come in quite close to the fort sometimes, and there | were plenty of barking deer about. Serow are not rare either. Early winter would probably be the best time, when the leaves are off some of the trees and the weather set fine for a month or two. As at all moderate elevations on the North-East Frontier, insect pests were legion—here it was the 1 Two species of Fragaria are found here. One has scarlet fruit, almost tasteless, the other, F. nhilgarenses, has white sweetly flavoured fruit. WINDS AND WATERS 59 common fly and the horse-fly by day, and the inevitable sand-fly by night. Add to these the onslaught of ticks and leeches as soon as one stirred out of camp, and it will be realised that there are very real dis- comforts to be faced on the North-East Frontier during the rainy summer months. Two days spent here enabled me to climb one of the surrounding limestone peaks which reared its head almost directly above us, so near that from its summit it seemed one might toss a pebble amongst the tents, yet separated by a deep belt of that accursed bamboo brake, through which it was necessary to find a passage. At the first attempt I charged boldly into the obstacle, but after getting covered with leeches, which crept into my boots and lodged in my hair, I ac- complished nothing; for losing my bearings as I crawled this way and that, I eventually surmounted the brake, only to climb—the wrong peak! , But at the second attempt, my route being more carefully worked out beforehand, I crossed the belt of bamboo without difficulty and found myself on the flanks of the mountain. ; Thence to the summit was easy going, for on the steeper slopes the undergrowth was no hindrance, the forest being open. One face of the mountain com- prised a step-like series of precipices, separated by narrow tree-clad ledges, along which it was possible to scramble; and in these mossy nooks grew many interesting plants, including Primula fragilis, Androsace axillaris and a grotesque chocolate-red slipper orchid (Cypripedium sp.), springing stemless from between a pair of broad heart-shaped glistening leaves which hugged the ground. 60 THE FOREST OF It was a Dwarf in stature, it was full-grown in ‘the size of its leaves and flowers, appearing, there- fore, deformed. ‘Towards the top of the peak were small rhododendron-trees massed with white flowers of large size, and the summit itself was covered with compact wiry shrubs, amongst which I noticed species of Cotoneaster, yellow jasmine and Weigelia. I got back to camp drenched and tired; but the Lashis were happy as ever, sitting in camp combing out their black locks, with great deliberation—a favourite and superior performance of theirs, evidently learnt from the Chinese. I was itching all over from leech bites that night, and though we warned off the sand-flies to some extent with a cigarette smoke screen, it was long before sleep came, and then it was but an uneasy slumber. Starting homewards next day, we soon reached our first forest camp. Outside in the meadow was bright sunshine, but only a ray here and there pierced the foliage to greet us. June gth too was a sunny day, and we travelled slowly, as I wanted to collect seed of the early flowering primulas which covered the clay bank. We found a glorious crimson rhododendron? in full bloom, and ~ the “nutmeg” rhododendron scented the path with its delicate fragrance. Arrived at the Minchia village, we were soon visited in camp by our Chinese friends, and later I went with them to see what I could buy, returning with a goat (price, three rupees twelve annas) and a side of bacon (price, three rupees), 1 R. facetum, sp, nov. WINDS AND WATERS 61 A woman who was amongst the visitors wore a pair of those tasselled silver earrings that you see in parts of Yun-nan, which caused the commandant to break the Tenth Commandment. He asked me to open negotiations with the good lady, and thereupon began one of those interminable discussions in which the Chinese, so expert, revel; not, it would seem, solely with the idea of scoring off a rival, since John will sell you an article for three ounces of silver, after pro- longed argument, which he would not think of parting with for ¢aels} 3°10 before you had discussed the weather; presumably then, partly for the sheer love of argument. Of course I was no match for the matron with the earrings, but I played the game as it is played in China. “That’s pretty!” I said, fingering the bauble. ‘““Where did you get it?” “In Li-kiang, ta-sen.” “Li-kiang! I know Li-kiang. Iwas there last year for the great fair at the temple of the water dragon.” It is considered diplomatic in negotiations of this sort not to talk of the matter in hand; you refer to it casually later, as a postscript. Europeans have earned an unenviable reputation for bluntness with polite Chinamen, owing to their fatal habit of coming straight to the point. We talk “all of a heap,” as the mandarins say. “Ah yes! many people come to the fair from all parts.” «Even so! I bought a horse from a Tibetan there for Tls. 40. Do you want to sell these earrings?” 1 A tael, written T1., is a Chinese ounce of silver. In the interior of China lump silver is weighed out in payment for things, 62 THE FOREST OF ““These? I will sell this bangle for four rupees.” “