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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
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38 Great Russet, Street
1921
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ELECTRONIC VERSION AVAILABLE
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TO THE Hon. w. A. HERTZ, CSI.
“LATE, COMMISSIONER, MAGWE
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UPPER BURMA ‘
ried to open up the Soudan, and were opened up by Fuzzies n that cruel scrub outside Suakim. . . . ” RUDYARD KIPLING ~
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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
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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
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‘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,
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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.”
“<I do not want the bangle, and I have not got four rupees. It is a pretty bangle nevertheless, and I will give you three rupees. How much did you say for the earrings?”
“Four rupees ”—taking one off.
“‘It is too much. Jam a poor man, but I will give you two. Why did you leave Li-kiang?”
“It was arranged that I was to marry a neighbour, according to Chinese custom. But I ran away from home with my lover, and we came to Ming-kuan. When the soldiers came to Ming-kuan, at the time of the great rising during the ninth moon three years ago, we crossed the mountains and settled here, under protection of the English.”
““China is a beautiful country. The Chinese are peaceful, but the soldiers are wicked men. Next year, at the time of the grain rain [April], I shall return to Li-kiang. How much did you say for the earrings?” |
“‘ Ta-jen is a Government official, therefore he is rich, You shall have them for three and a half rupees.”
“‘Only Chinese Government officials are rich. Let me see the earrings. They are not very good, and I will not buy them. I have travelled all over China— it is a beautiful country.”
“Food is cheap there. How much will ta-jen give for the earrings?”
‘<T will give two rupees for the bangle.”
“No, the earrings—how much, ta-jen?”
“I do not want them, but I will give two rupees.”
“Take them, ¢a-jen; three rupees.”
WINDS AND WATERS 63
“ All right, two rupees eight annas—-it is very dear, but what does it matter!”
After that transaction was disposed of the commer- cial spirit became contagious, and people drifted into camp with all sorts of ridiculous articles for sale, including their clothes and bedding.
The idea was abroad that we were -prepared to purchase the entire village, and the simple folk would, I believe, readily have parted with most of it in exchange for our bright rupees. As I had played the distinguished role of middleman in such business as was transacted—and no business, from a marriage to a railway contract, is ever conducted in China with- out that important functionary—the village headman sent me round a stone bottle of that fiery and inebriat- ing Chinese wine called /siao-chiu, made from rice, which both looks and tastes like methylated spirit, and having, as in duty bound, tasted it, I passed it on to the men, with a note of warning.
It being the night of the full moon, a woman whose husband had died a few months previously was sacrificing a small porker and visiting the grave, for it is the Chinese custom, on the 1st and 15th of the moon, to visit the graves of the departed and send imaginary remittances of silver and the commodities of this world to the inhabitants of the spirit world.
By morning all our bread had turned bright green, and it was evident that the rains were approaching. ‘The added burden of a continuous high temperature to places which have a summer rainfall of eighty or ninety inches, as in many parts of Burma, favours a luxuriant growth of mould on articles such as boots,
1 Hsiao-chiu—literally ** small wine,” as we should say small beer.
64 FOREST OF WINDS AND WATERS.
bread, books and other things, while such articles as are in some measure stuck together—cameras, for instance, and again books—become unstuck.
It was a hot march back, for the sun beat fiercely into the enclosed valley, which exuded water every- where, turning the atmosphere into a vapour bath, so that we sweated abominably. Even after toiling up out of the steaminess to the fort on the open ridge we found it warm enough on such a day; but the clouds clustered ominously over the Pass of the Winds and Waters.
However, it had been both an enjoyable and success- ful week, and we got back just before the rain began in earnest.
CHAPTER IV
FEVER CAMP
' , 4 HAT so jolly as a bright day after a fort- night’s grey skies and ceaseless rain! I In the laughing sunshine, the delicately dressed trees flaunting their flowers and leaves, the proud mountains watching over their first-born valleys throbbing with the rush of new life-giving liquid, the exquisite blue heavens where float a few wads of silver cloud, we perceive God; and the surge of thankful- ness for life which rushes up from the depths of our hearts, overwhelming expression, so that we gaze on the scene in a rapture of mute ecstasy—this feeling too is of God. Would that we might continue to live in the glow of that Divine inspiration! At least it is something to have realised, if only for the moment, our own divine nature and our oneness with God.
Thus I mused one fresh morning after weary days of rain as I stood outside the fort, gazing across the gaping valley of the Ngawchang to the rippling forests and snow-smeared screes of Imaw Bum,! and beheld in those splendid mountains a world of romance, from which the veil must be torn aside. The whole scene was wrapped in a soft blue film, the distance streaked _ with white snow which stood out in amazing relief; and at sunset long waves of stratus cloud lapped against
1 Height, 13,371 feet. E 65
66 FEVER CAMP
the indigo rocks, where they projected from the dark- ness of the valley.
Two days later, therefore, on 22nd June, we set out, making a bee-line for a low col opposite the fort, and thence straight down to the Ngawchang river, rather than follow the long mule-road down the Hpimaw valley to its junction with the main valley, and up the latter again.
In this wise we descended by the zigzag footpath to Hpimaw village, crossed the head of the valley, and so up the opposite slope to the col which separates a sugar-loaf limestone peak, called Laksang Bum, from the main range.
On the far side of the col lay zaungya—mountain cultivation—with felled giant tree trunks, blackened by fire, confusedly piled in every direction, making the way arduous; but the view of high mountains right before us, framed between gaping spurs, lured us forward. In the June twilight we came on three wooden Yawyin huts, perched on the bleak crest of the ridge which plunged steeply to the valley below, and hired a guide from amongst the inhabitants.
Then on down the steep limestone slope, its crisp turf speckled with stunted bushes of Cotoneaster, oak and white-flowered Bauhinia, till, as night deepened, we reached a splashing torrent in the valley.
On again through the leafy darkness of the stream bed to another Yawyin village, where we halted; but our night’s slumber was rudely interrupted by the rival cries of dogs and babies.
Besides my two Chinese servants, Yawyin guide and eight Lashi porters, I had with me two hired collectors, — odd little fellows, lazy and unenterprising to a degree.
FEVER CAMP 67
Bum-pat in particular was a stumpy-legged, flat-nosed, pudding-faced little rascal, but a pocket Hercules when he chose to exert himself. He loved to pluck flowers by the wayside, not for my pleasure, but to set jauntily in the wide bamboo tubes which were thrust through his ragged ear-lobes; small brass rings hung likewise from these same tubes, and strips of scarlet cloth were threaded through other holes in the upper lobe of each ear. Beside him the ttall, lantern- jawed Yawyin, with his plain bag hung over one shoulder and his long dah over the other, looked almost simple.
Reaching the Ngawchang next day, we followed a path up-stream by tangled hedges of bramble, climbing fern (Lygodium sp.) and white sprays of Polygonum, through luxuriant meadows, across water-logged rice- fields whence rose the fat-away gurgle of invisible streams spilling over from one terrace to the next, into dark, forested gullies full of ferns and blue forget-me- not and velvet-leafed rock plants, to a cane suspension bridge spanning the gorge.
Here the cliffs were hung with a curtain of creepers, dependent from giant trees, and from the wet crevices sprang a wealth of ferns, begonias and clusters of violet, waxen-flowered didissandra.
The swaying bridge, so flimsy in appearance, so strong in fact, is thirty yards long, and seems to swing in an everlasting wind driven through the gorge by the water rushing along below; however, we crossed without incident, and then came a steep climb up the cliff to the open paddy-land above.
‘Working in the fields, with their already short skirts tucked still higher, were several stout-limbed Lashi
68 FEVER CAMP
girls, who exchanged loud-voiced greeting with my men. " .
“What savages!” cried Tung-ch‘ien, thinking of the demure matrons of China. “Look at their feet! Look at their hair! They are not dressed!”
And indeed his disparaging remarks were merited, for our Amazons were wading in the mud, and had, besides tucking up their skirts, thrown aside their jackets, displaying ample breasts. ‘Their coarse black hair, which so aroused Tung’s derision, was cut in a fringe round the forehead, like a mop, and tied in a knot on top of the head; their feet were bare, number eights, rather a contrast to the “ six-inch gold lilies” of Tung’s fellow-countrywomen. Through the pendulous lobes of their distorted ears were thrust large bamboo tubes, supporting in turn heavy brass rings; and clumsy silver hoops loosely embraced their stout necks, hanging over the breast, with a tangle of bead necklaces. . Altogether, what with their awkward movements and preposterous ornaments, these heavy-featured Lashi women were not very attractive.
After halting at a hut for lunch, while the Lashis, as usual, set about combing their locks, we set out to climb the steep spur fronting us, up which twisted a narrow path overgrown with thick bush.
The steep, rocky slopes of the Ngawchang Salley above the scattered paddy pockets on the river terraces are clothed with coarse grass and bracken, interspersed with pines and alder-trees; many flowers too, as white lilies, anemones (A. vitifolia), orchids and meadow-rue grow in this ragged wilderness. Here and there are patches of taungya, where meagre crops of maize and buckwheat struggle up amongst the felled trees; and
FEVER CAMP 69
dense thickets where alders, brambles (Oxyspora sp.), ferns and twining plants, all fighting ruthlessly for place, indicate abandoned faungya. But the streams, flowing in deep, shady gullies, are always choked with tropica] forest, which thus seems to stripe the hill-side.
Presently, after a short rest on the grassy summit of a spur, I dropped behind the others, and suddenly feeling very sick, lay down and lost consciousness. It was nearly an hour later when I staggered to my feet, and pushed on up the steep path with leaden footsteps, halting every few yards. At last two of the porters, returning from the village which they had long since reached, carried me the remaining distance.
The kindly Yawyins now put at my disposal an empty hut, swept and garnished, and for the next two hours I lay on my bed in a paroxysm of fever, staring up at the blackened thatch, from which hung festoons of soot oscillating in the breeze, and at the smoked bamboo supports, gleaming as though varnished.
After a good night’s sleep I awoke feeling better, and while the men were packing looked about me. There were two very pretty young girls in one hut, gipsy-like, with hazel eyes and abundant black hair; nor were they so shy as in some of the villages.
Unfortunately the Yawyins chew pan, which dis- colours the teeth; and, ageing before their time, the “women at least do not long retain those bonny looks which so charm the traveller. Moreover, though cleaner than their cousins the Lashis, still an aversion to water is sufficiently marked amongst them. However, these _ defects are scarcely appreciated by a casual glance, and they are decidedly attractive to the eye.
This village was situated about 3000 feet above the
70 FEVER CAMP
Ngawchang hka, by a stream which tumbled over a low cliff. Now came a long pull up, buried in scented bracken, till, having traversed two faces of a pyramid which forms the corner-stone, so to speak, where the Ngawchang turns at right angles, we reached the edge
of the forest. It was a hot day, and no water was to be ©
found, so we sat down and made a thorough reconnais- sance of our position before entering the Stygian dark- ness of the forest, after which we should have to trust to a sense of direction scarcely checked by observation.
Ascending thus, we had gradually prised open a view, hitherto locked away out of sight, into the very depths of the Ngawchang valley, now seen as a winding ribbon of filmy blueness, chequered with gleaming rectangles of paddy-land ; to the north snow shone from the clouded peaks, while looking back, across the other bend of the Ngawchang, we saw the distant Salween divide, ribbed and buttressed between its corroded grooves.
Matted forest and marbled cloud, with here and there a yellow lozenge-shaped scar where a limestone cliff interrupted the slope, or a thread of silver where some stream leapt from its bed into the air—that was the view.
: How slight an impression man has made—can ever
make—on these streaming mountains, whose stony heart is well hidden beneath the velvet mantle of forest ! For though the life-blood throbs so near the surface, veiling the world in soft beauty, yet any attempt to disturb it brings immediate, irreparable disaster in its train. The beauty indeed is but skin-deep. Cut away a few trees on those angular slopes and the hungry water, which has been held in leash watching
FEVER: CAMP a and waiting, instantly rips bare the hill-side, flinging — everything pell-mell into the deep-flowing arteries below, and leaving behind nothing but stark staring rock, dreadful in its agony, till time and the patient lichen shall, after long ages, have raised a new film of soil where moss and ferns may perhaps bind the gaping wound.
Wherefore any attempt at cultivation is doomed. It is only in the valleys, or here and there at the mountain foot where a sufficiency of soil has accumulated, that a hill clearing can be made. ‘Two crops cannot be raised on it in successive years—it must be abandoned to the choking undergrowth which springs up amongst the fallen tree trunks till, after six or eight years, it can be burnt, to bear again. Such is the universal method of raising scattered crops throughout the wilderness of the North-East Frontier.
Villages are tucked away out of sight in the valleys, or cling to the lower slopes and spurs, Lashi below, Yawyin above; and the proud forest tree reigns supreme in the silence beyond.
We had been on the scorched hill-side, under a hot sun, nearly five hours when at length we reached the shelter of the forest. Here we were on the crest of a ridge and there was still no water to be had, though the fever had given me a lively thirst. However, our guide came to the rescue, by cutting down some dead bamboo haulms, whose stout stems were found to con- tain plenty of good rain-water, though with a slightly bitter taste. This was a piece of jungle lore worth remembering.
The jungle here was very open, almost park-like, the trees small and moss-covered. , Patches of balsam,
72 FEVER CAMP
iris, ferns, Selaginella and scattered orchids were the only undergrowth.
Coming presently to a tinkling stream, we halted near by, and set about making a camp. Bamboos and saplings were soon cut down, and in the clearings — rough shelters, roofed with branches and bark, rigged up, while my tent was pitched on a knoll. Then the fires were lit and all made snug for the night.
It had been a warm, sunny day, with the promise of fine weather; we were camped well up on a spur of the peak to be climbed, with provisions for a week; success was in sight. The fever attack was, of course, disconcerting, but I might throw that off; anyhow, we were out to find a way to the top.
At dusk there came a mutter of thunder, and the clear sunset sky clouded over rapidly. Louder and nearer grew the thunder, and with it the wind rose.
Within five minutes of the first warning a terrific storm rushed upon us, with brilliant flashes of lightning and drenching rain, The wind tore madly at the tent, and it looked as if it might be lifted bodily up at any moment. I was grovelling inside the little bathroom annexe at the back of the tent, tightening ropes, when there came a sudden crash, followed by a rend- ing sound; at the same moment a shower of branches © rattled down, and half the tent collapsed! A forty- foot tree had fallen across it.
I crawled out from the wreckage into the main part of the tent. The centre pole, bent like a bow, still held, and one of the support poles leaned at a drunken angle—indeed the tent might collapse bodily if I did not look sharp.
Next moment Lao-niu appeared, white in the face
Photo by} A. W. Porter, Esq A Maru Matron.
The head-cloth shows that she ‘is married. She is carrying the day’s water supply from the spring. The water is carried in bamboo tubes.
\\
Td
FEVER CAMP 73
and streaming with water, crawling through the hole in the back of the tent like a frightened dog seeking cover.
nS Ta-jen, it is a big tree that has fallen,” he said, staring wildly.
“Cut it away from the ropes,” I yelled, against the noise of the storm. ‘The whole tent will go in a minute!” I was pulling off my clothes then.
“‘ Ta-jen, it is a big tree, a very big tree!” He repeated the statement in a dazed way, as though it were some magic formula.
“Get a dah, call the Lashis, cut the wreckage loose at once.”
“It is a very big tree, ta-jen,” he muttered mechanic- ally, shivering with cold and fear, but doing nothing.
By this time I was stripped, and seizing a dah, I dashed out into the night. Ugh: I shuddered and caught my breath as the cold rain stung my naked body.
The storm was now at its ake the trees tossing their branches madly. Then a glare of lightning lit up the scene, and I was soon warm, hacking at the tangled wreckage. A fair-sized tree had been blown down, but was luckily supported in part by the surrounding forest, one branch only having crashed through my tent. A couple of men were already at work on it and we soon had the ropes, which, owing to the limited space, were in most cases tied to trees instead of to pegs in the ground, freed.
Then we fixed up the flapping rags of canvas and I got back under shelter, all aglow with the exertion, and rubbed myself down with a rough towel till I was as red as a boiled lobster.
74 FEVER CAMP
The wind quickly subsided, but the rain continued for atime. Then gradually silence fell over the forest, till I could hear the men talking in their shelters and the wail of bamboo flutes; through the torn-out end of the tent a ruddy glow of camp fires burning brightly once more stole cheerfully upon my solitude. This spot we christened Storm Camp.
Next morning, to my astonishment, the day was clear and sunny after the storm; evidently it was only a local disturbance, of which we experienced a much worse example later. |
We broke camp early, ascending steeply, traversing, descending, but keeping as closely as possible to the crest of the ridge which I hoped to follow all the way, forest permitting. Luckily the forest was here pretty open, with small oaks, rhododendrons, Bucklandia, magnolia and clumps of bamboo, but along the traverses and in the deep cross-cuts which trenched the ridge and plunged deeply down into impenetrable jungle progress was much slower.
This bamboo forest, as one might call it after the dominant plant, in distinction to the rain forest of Hpimaw and the Feng-shui-ling, is interesting.
The trees nearly all branch close to the ground, sending up a great number of twisted and bent stems © which interlace above; or the trunk supports a sort of candelabra of branches. But the clean, strapping trunk shooting straight up for fifty or sixty feet as in the rain forest is rarely met with, and then it is always a conifer; also there is less undergrowth.
From tree to tree stretched spiders’ webs and long threads of gossamer which, bedewed by the rain, twinkled and glittered in the breeze as the early
\
FEVER CAMP is!
morning sunlight sent its shafts peeping through the glades.
An hour after starting a fever attack set me shivering and vomiting again. The going too became very bad, with precipitous descents down slippery banks into gullies stuffed full of bamboo where we had to hack out steps. Now we climbed trees and, lopping off the branches, saw the Ngawchang valley behind us, far below, mottled with sunny colours, and snow on the mountains ahead, but still a long way off.
At last I could go no farther, and wrapping myself in a blanket lay down on the ground; but the men went ahead to scout for water, the presence of which controlled our camps. Happily a pool was found not far away, and I stayed where I was till the camp was fixed, when the men returned and carried me to bed.
The afternoon waned slowly, the shivering fit passed, and by evening I felt better again. We were camped on a knoll, which the men had cleared of bamboos, using them to build their shelters. On every side was the dense, dank forest, and our water was obtained from a shallow, flat-bottomed gully, treeless and open at the top, but plunging steeply and deeply down into thick jungle on either side, which cut across the ridge at right angles.
Perhaps the most depressing feature of these forests is the immense silence which pervades them; it is as if such dim, wet solitudes oppressed animal life rather than holding out promise of shelter and food, for birds are quite rare, and we saw no animals larger than voles and mice—not even a squirrel. True, at Storm Camp on the fringe of the forest we had seen a couple of snakes—these reptiles flourish to excess in the hot, wet
76 FEVER CAMP
valleys of the Hpimaw hills—and several partridges. But here the forest seemed absolutely deserted—yet once we heard the tweet-tweet of a tiny bird.
Immediately one of the Lashis concealed himself in a thicket and started to whistle a few plaintive notes in reply.
Presently curiosity got the better of that little bird’s discretion, and the tweeting came nearer. Still the decoy whistle continued, was answered, and so again, till at last the poor little victim appeared, hopping cautiously from twig to twig, cocking his head perkily now on one side, now on the other, as though consider- ing, till he was right over the thicket where the bush- rangers lay in wait; and he would assuredly have been struck dead on the spot had there been any missiles to hand. This incident may partly account for the scarcity of birds in these hills, as it does in so many of the hill jungles where the poor natives wage incessant warfare against anything that flies, creeps or crawls, for food.
I was quite unfit to travel next day, so calling the Lashis together I spoke to them as follows :—
“Go,” I said, “make a path to the snow mountains and bring back all the flowers you can find.”
I was not altogether certain that, blinded in the
forest as we had been on the previous day, we might not have diverged from the main ridge on to some minor spur. However, from camp the ground rose above us, and by ascending as high as possible and then climbing trees the men ought to be able to get a view of the snowy mountains and of our position in relation to them.
By the plants they brought back I should be able to’
FEVER CAMP 77
judge roughly what altitude they had attained, and as I expected them to reach the snow and return laden with alpines, it was with a certain suppressed excite- ment that I awaited their return.
The morning dragged slowly on, and my disgust can be imagined when, quite early in the afternoon, those
gallant Lashis returned hours earlier than they were - expected, to report that, though it was possible to get along, there was no water (hence no place to camp), and that the cliffs were still far away. As for plants, they brought me a balsam, a Corydalis which turned out to be new? and one or two other subdued species of the forest undergrowth !
Where were the primulas, saxifrages and Meconopsis that I sighed for? It was a great disappointment, but I consoled myself by anticipating what we would do next day.
When darkness fell I heard the fires crackling merrily as the big rhododendron logs were piled on, and the sad wail of bamboo flutes, and snatches of song crooned in a minor key, from where the Lashis sat huddled up in their cramped shelter huts. The weather was still fine, but the sky had clouded over and a cool breeze had rustled the trees all day, bringing down showers of leaves at dusk.
Away in the middle of the night I awoke suddenly.
Outside the trees were weeping softly under a drizzling rain and from the gloom beyond the entrance two large eyes of livid fire gazed at me unblinking. For a long time I lay looking at this apparition, as I thought in my sickness it must be; at last curiosity could stand it no longer, and rising unsteadily I found
1 Corydaks saltatoria, sp. nov.
78 FEVER CAMP
an old tree stump just outside, from the crumbling interior of which two patches of fungus-infested spunk- wood glowed with phosphorescent flame; on the ground lay scattered leaves and sticks outlined in pale fire from the same cause.
Came 27th June, after a long, long night of wakeful- ness, but no bustle of starting up the ridge; for another spasm of fever had prostrated me. A fierce bout of shivering and vomiting early left me in a state of collapse for the rest of that day, and on the 28th I sent a party down the mountain, telling them to seek a route straight down the flank of the spur to the Yawyin village. If this was feasible, it would save a long round, as we had ascended by an unnecessarily circuitous route.
The men were away all day, and returned at dusk, saying they had found a new route—they were willing enough to work when it came to going down! Also they improvised a chair with two bamboo poles and © a board attached by ropes.
At night a gusty wind rose, sending the leaves fluttering down again, and later came rain.
The morning of the 29th dawned damp and misty, the whole jungle sobbing quietly as it seemed, and it was with a heavy heart that I gave the ange to pack © up and abandon Fever Camp.
We started early, myself seated in the chair wrapped in blankets and carried by two men. Almost immediately we left the ridge and plunged down a tremendously steep declivity through a dense growth of bamboo; but the men had marked a good trail, and going ahead now, cut a way for the chair, so that we went down at a great pace. Pushing through the tall
FEVER CAMP 79
bamboos, I was soon thoroughly wetted by the showers of water shaken from their slender stems; but in a surprisingly short time we emerged from the forest, finding ourselves out on the steep, bracken-covered hill- side again, and almost immediately above the village, which was reached within another two hours.
The clouds now rolled back, revealing the mountains all round, the sun shone out, and the heavy heat of the valley began to weigh on us like a hot pudding-cloth.
We rested an hour at the village and in the after- noon continued down towards the river; though shaky, I succeeded in walking most of the way.
One of the Lashis trod on a snake in the long grass —he was bare-footed, of course—and leapt clean into the air with a yell like an Apache; when he reached earth again he broke the reptile’s back with his bamboo staff.
We slept in the hut of a Chinaman who told me he came from Chungking, the port on the Yang-tze at the head of the great gorges, many weeks’? march distant. This is‘an interesting fact, as illustrating the gradual westward movement of the Chinese. I have come across Ssu-ch‘uan men cultivating inhospitable- looking mountain slopes in the remotest parts of Yun-nan, which is gradually being populated from the overcrowded Chengtu plain, the richest part of the immensely fertile province of Ssu-ch‘uan, with its seventy million inhabitants. And as they press peace- fully westwards they eat up and imperceptibly absorb the tribesmen who lie in their way, hustling the intract- able remnant farther and higher into the mountains.
This direction taken by the emigrants of Ssu-ch‘uan is the natural one, the line of least resistance, south-
80 FEVER CAMP
wards down the valleys into the ony spaces of Yun-nan,
North and west would only take them into the cold Tibetan mountains and grassland plateaux, a country they abhor, and where they are not wanted.
Swarms of mosquitoes kept me awake all night. My shivering fit was due next day, but the path was easy and we should reach Hpimaw in the afternoon, as I had hired four more villagers to carry my chair.
Nevertheless it was a long journey, and it took us nearly nine hours to the fort, reached by five. o’clock. The evening was beautifully fine, and as we climbed the long hill from the Ngawchang valley the “ pass of the winds and waters” stood out in clear relief.
Then I dosed myself with quinine and went to bed.
Thus on 3oth June the first attempt on Imaw Bum came to an untimely end.
CHAPTER V
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
r ITTLE more than a week later we set out a second time for Imaw Bum, but alas! by this time the weather had suffered a relapse.
As before, we made straight for the Ngawchang hka over hill and dale, sleeping just above that river.
Pushing through the thick growth in the stream bed hard by the Yawyin village where we had slept previously, my attention was attracted to the strange circumstance of some tall stinging nettles rocking to and fro in still air, and turning to them | found that this motion was caused by a number of large cater- pillars agitating the leaves. ‘These formidable larve, apprehensive at my approach, had raised their heads, snake-like, and darting them rapidly to and fro caused the leaves on which they sat to shiver and tremble in the manner described. ‘The trembling motion became still more marked as I looked closer, and when finally I touched one, several of them ejected at me, with considerable violence, drops of dark green fluid. Such mummery is evidently designed to scare away some enemy, but whether bird, spider or insect I did not ascertain.
On the following day we crossed the Ngawchang, and ascended to the Yawyin village by the cascade, _ where we learnt with astonishment that since our last visit the tiny village had been scourged, three men
F 8I
82 ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
having died and one woman even now lying grievously sick; an old man told me that they had all eaten poisoned honey.
I asked Tung about this, thinking of the Pontine honey which poisoned the soldiers of Cyrus during the retreat of the ten thousand, as related by Xenophon.’
‘““It is true, ta-jen,” he said. ‘In the fifth and sixth months the honey is poisonous, and those who eat it die; but at other times it is good.”
The old man was himself ill, and saddened by the disaster which had overtaken his village; but I gave him some medicine and he eventually recovered.
Next morning we awoke in the clouds. Heavy showers continued to fall, and the steep hill-side on the direct route to Fever Camp was very slippery.
Plunging at last into the dripping forest, we reached our goal in five hours, after an exhausting climb; however, it had proved less formidable than I anticipated, and preferable to the roundabout route via Storm Camp followed on the last journey.
We found the huts at Fever Camp in good repair, and as soon as the fires were blazing we became quite merry in spite of discomforts.
Shafts of sunlight darting between the trees next morning awakened the camp at six o’clock, and we were soon on our way, the bamboos showering their burden of water on us as we brushed through,
Keeping to the ridge, and ascending gradually, we presently halted to climb trees, but though we had a glimpse into the Ngawchang valley, the mountains were
1 See also Hooker, Himalayan Journals, and J. C, Whyte, Sikkim and Bhutan.
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 83
everywhere hidden. Two hours’ marching brought us to the end of the path previously cut by the Lashis— a sufficient tribute to their slackness—and after that progress became slower, the bamboos growing very thickly in places. Flowers were rare, a couple of dwarf raspberries, several species of balsam, a Pedi- cularis and an orchid being the only ones I have recorded. But there were rhododendrons and a few other small trees mixed with the bamboo growth, and _ now fir-trees began to appear. Birds called at intervals, but kept out of sight; and we crossed the tracks of a bear.
In the middle of the afternoon we halted by a shallow saddle where water was found, and for the next half-hour nothing was heard but the ringing of dah against bamboo, as rapidly a space was cleared. One by one the shelters were run up, and presently looking through the trees I saw from my tent the gleaming fires and little groups of men seated. round them over their rice-pots.
Selecting a big rhododendron, I climbed to the top
and settled down to wait for the curtain to go up. After an hour I was rewarded. The clouds lifted slightly, permitting a view of the Imaw Bum range away to the left, across a broad gap.
On the right lay the Ngawchang valley, but of the ridge ahead I could see nothing on account of trees; then the mist came steaming up from below again, and everything was blotted out. However, we seemed to be going in the right direction; all we had to do was to push ahead, keeping to the ridge.
I called this place Observation Camp—altitude be-
84 ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
tween 8000 and gooo feet; it was really quite a jolly spot, except for swarms of ant flies.
On 14th July we awoke enveloped in clammy cloud as usual, and nothing could be seen from the look-out tree. After a gradual ascent, the ridge going up and down like a switchback, we went astray for a time, bearing away to the left along a lateral spur, but luckily the clouds lifted and revealed the error before we had gone very far.
Following the first early morning rush of mist out of the valley it kept comparatively fine, and in the afternoon during a burst of sunshine we had another view of the range, girded round with bold precipices ; there could be no doubt that we were converging slowly on Imaw Bum itself.
Still it was an anxious day of hard work, cutting a. path, or, where the ridge broadened and the bamboos grew more openly, selecting the best route. At one point we were held up by a dense growth of stiff bamboo grass six to eight feet high, which proved a formidable obstacle.
Gradually all the old familiar trees save rhododen- drons died out, while fir-trees, hitherto scattered, began to increase in numbers. Still there were no flowers, though we came across a single plant of Podophyllum Emodi, dangling its big pear-shaped scarlet fruits, and a curious little black orchid, as fungus-like in appearance as in situation, growing in the fermenting leaf mould. There were also a few Liliacew in fruit, and some ferns. Everywhere our feet trod softly the: same mould, beneath the tall, slender bamboos.
Camp was pitched on a knoll commanding a good view of the range—altitude about 10,000 feet—and
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 85
at nine o’clock the stars were shining in a clear sky. |
I awoke in a raw mist to see T‘ung leaning over me.
“ Ta-jen,” he greeted me, “there is no water; it was all finished last night, and there is no more.”
Too true. The pool from which we had drawn our supply overnight had run dry. So we set out hungry.
Half-an-hour after breaking camp we found a pool in the open jungle and had breakfast while waiting for a heavy shower to pass. All around us were silver firs, big scaly-barked rhododendrons, and thick bamboo grass from six to twelve feet high; and so we marched on, up and down along the ridge, apparently as far as ever from our goal, yet in fact making real progress.
Presently we came upon some small, bushy rhodo- dendrons—there was one with purple flowers just over, and another with bright lemon-yellow flowers. We were hot on the scent.
Up to a certain point the rhododendrons grow bigger as one ascends the mountains, the biggest tree rhododendrons occurring at intermediate altitudes, say 7000 to gooo feet. ‘Thence they rapidly decrease in size, till at 12,000 to 13,000 feet on the North-East Frontier, and 14,000 to 16,000 feet on the Yun-nan ranges, they grow like heather in the Scotch Highlands.
The smallest alpine species are considerably smaller than the bushes and: small trees of low altitudes. But see how little effect absolute altitude has on the flora—one finds the same species of rhododendron and primula at 11,000 feet on the North-East Frontier that one finds at 15,000 feet in north-west Yun-nan!
And the matter is no doubt one of moisture and protection in winter; at 11,000 feet on Imaw Bum
4
86 ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
plants are as close to the limit of perpetual snow as they are at 15,000 feet on the dry mountains of Yun-nan east of the Mekong. Moreover, on the latter range they must ascend to that altitude in order to find sufficient moisture during the vegetative season.
Pressing on, we came suddenly to a place where the ridge contracted to a granite wall flanked by precipices, so that we must needs crawl along the top, jumping gaps, or, descending from the crest of the ridge, turn the precipices below, scrambling along under the sheer walls. |
Before me lay the answer to my questions, the realisation of my hopes. For the rocks were covered with flowers—alpine flowers—rhododendrons, primula, saxifrage, Cassiope, Cremanthodium. And not only that; with flowers which, if not identical with others edand on the Tibetan frontier in 1911 and 1913, were plainly microforms of them.!
Some species were obviously identical, and of the close relationship of the flora as a whole there could be no question.
The tremendous significance of this fact was not lost upon me——but now the reader will ask: “ What question was answered by this discovery, and what was its significance?” I reply:
Well, here is an alpine flora within the limits of Upper Burma identical with another alpine flora on another mountain range 200 miles to the north and
1 The word microform is used to denote relationship, irrespective of the degree of that relationship. ‘Thus if A is a microform of B, some botanists may call A a variety of B, another will regard them as distinct species; by denoting them microforms one acknowledges the relationship without committing oneself further.
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 87
many miles to the east, separated from it by the deep, impassable valley of the Salween. This latter, the western China alpine flora, has long been recognised as closely related to the Himalayan alpine flora, so that the flora we are considering must also be so related.
Now it is impossible for this flora to have reached Burma from the Himalaya, across the plains of Assam, or the lower ranges to the west of the ’Nmai hka, crossing the hot valleys of the Mali hka and Chindwin. Nor indeed is there any record of an alpine flora at all comparable to that of western China and_ the Himalaya on the low hill ranges of Assam or western Burma which would lead us to think that the migration could have been in this direction. On the contrary, what is known of the flora of these ranges leads to the opposite conclusion—that such flora as has travelled by this route has come to a dead stop early on.
It is equally impossible for the flora of the Mekong- Salween divide to have jumped the Salween valley and reached the Imaw Bum range that way. Either it must have passed across from one range to the other before the Salween valley was formed, which is inadmissible, or we are driven to the conclusion that it came from the north, right round the head of the Assam valley and across the extreme tip of northern Burma. This is the only route by which the flora of Imaw Bum and of the Mekong-Salween divide can have been derived, as plainly it has been, from a common source."
1 See Transactions and Proceedings of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxvii., part i., On the Sino-Himalayan Flora.” Also Geographical Journal, November, 1919, ‘‘On the Possible Extension of the Himalayan Axis beyond the Brahmaputra.”’
88 ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
I spent some time collecting specimens from the granite rocks, where I found, amongst others, the following :—Cassiope myosuroides, Diapensia himalayica, Primula sciophila,’ rhododendron spp., Androsace sp. Cremanthodium gracillimum; and we then went on our way. Ten minutes later we were in the flower- less jungle again.
Camp was pitched at an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet, not far from the last of the silver firs. In spite of a marked chilliness in the atmosphere, there were actually fire-flies in my tent. No big bamboos were found here, so the men cut slabs of red bark from the great gnarled rhododendrons with which to roof their shelters. |
At dusk a flurry of cloud tumbled off the mountain- tops and sank to bed in the valley, and I perched myself in the top of a rhododendron tree and sat there looking at the main range, and the summit of our ridge, where it joined Imaw Bum, till the stars shone out almost as brilliantly as under the clear dome of the Tibetan sky. I knew that we could easily achieve the summit next day, and re- turned to my tent naney But T*‘ung had other misgivings. |
“Only three days’ food left, Ta-jen,” he said when he came with supper.
Well, we would have to make a dash for the summit next day, and as the chances of finding any water higher up were remote, it would be best to leave the camp where it was and return there.
Taking with me five Lashis, I set out early, cutting a path through the formidable barrier of
1 A beautiful little gem, related to P. della,
raed
YAWYIN CHILDREN AND IMAW Bum IN JUNE.
The boy on the left is wearing the rattan cane rings below the knee, affected by all the frontier tribes. : Imaw Bum is 13,370 feet high. It was first climbed by the author following the high spur ‘on the right, subsequently from the rear by following up the valley on the left.
u i)
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 89
bamboo which faced us at the start; but the ridge soon became more open. Here scattered through the bamboo growth were the last outposts of the silver firs, stunted and ragged, their clipped branches all pointing in one direction like finger-posts of ex- ceptional unanimity and tedious persistence. In the shade grew livid green orchids and a_ beautiful Nomocharis, both white-flowered and rose; here and there a break in the bamboo growth revealed open grassy glades, likewise dappled with flowers.
Soon the big rhododendrons in turn died out, and we were wading through unresisting bamboo grass little more than waist-high, clear to the screes beyond. The ascent was steady, in places steep, with none of those dips down which had caused misgivings in earlier days. |
Then came a confusion of scrub rhododendron with tawny-red or flame-yellow, trumpet - shaped flowers,’ yellow dog rose (KR. sericea) and bushes of white-flowered spirzea, and crossing a few strips of boulder we found ourselves free, on the naked mountain flank, lashed by hard-driven rain.
Suddenly ahead of us rose several big birds, as large as geese, which flew screaming down the slope; they were dark in colour, with short fan-shaped tails barred with white, and long necks, but that was all I could distinguish through the curtain of blown rain.
In 1919 I came across this bird again on Imaw Bum, and identified it as Sclater’s monaul (Lophophorus Sclateri), one the most magnificent of all pheasants. 1 also obtained a specimen of the Chinese blood pheasant
1 R. herpesticum, sp. nov.
go ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
(Ithagenes sinensis) from the same peak. Both are quite common on Imaw Bum.
Clambering up some cliffs in the crevices of which - crouched half-frozen dwarf shrubs such as juniper, willow, rhododendron and gnarled cherry, we at last stood on the summit of the long ridge, where it joined the main range.
We had conquered our virgin peak,
The highest summit lay some distance away to the left, along the main ridge; fronting us was another deep valley at the bottom of which flowed a con- siderable stream, and beyond that again a jumble of ridges, spurs and valleys, but through the veil of swirl- ing mist it was difficult to be sure of the topography. Sufficient was it for the moment that we had achieved our object.
The far side of the mountain sloped smoothly down to the stream just mentioned, and was embroidered with rhododendrons formed in the most enchanting patterns, within the web of which were included small patches of pure white quartz sand starred with the little bluish violet flowers of Primula coryphaa.
The rhododendrons were all dwarfs, not six inches high, bearing erect trusses each of two comparatively large flowers set horizontally, with widely gaping throats. They had white flowers, purple flowers, rose flowers, lemon-yellow flowers, port-wine flowers*; but perhaps the most striking of all was one with pure white, waxen-looking flowers. |
In this paradise we roamed for some time though shivering with cold as the raw wind beat through our
1 P, corypheea, sp. nov, closely allied to P. bella and to P. “i ane
2.R. nmatense, sp. nov.
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 491
drenched garments. Patches of snow still lay melting in the gullies; the mists gathered and dispersed whimsically. I would have given a lot to have seen these mountains bathed in sunshine.
Suddenly my attention was diverted by a loud snort, and looking over the ridge I saw on the opposite scree, 300 yards away, a herd of seven takin? standing head to wind in the driving mist, like Highland cattle. Their backs were to us, so that we had ample leisure to examine them, as the wind was coming up-valley and we were well above them. There were two big bulls, three females and two quite small calves. It was a splendid sight, and I bitterly regretted having left my rifle in camp. ne
After watching them through glasses for a time we halloed, and the herd started up suddenly at the sound and made off across the scree, those great lumbering brutes, almost as big as water buffaloes, leaping nimbly from rock to rock like goats. Plunging through a strip of bamboo grass, they reappeared strung out in line on the next scree and were soon swallowed up in the mist. |
It was the second time I had seen this strange beast at home, for I had been a member of the expedition which discovered and shot the first Budorcas Bedfordi in Shensi, five years previously. Then we had hunted them knee-deep through the snow for three days, in the bitter cold of the wild Ch‘in-ling mountains, the back-bone of China, and had seen a herd of over thirty.
Very little is known of the takin’s habits or dis-
1 Budorcas taxicolor.
92 ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
tribution yet. It has been reported from Bhutan,! Assam, South-East Tibet and the North-East Frontier, whence it ranges into Ssu-ch‘uan and northwards to Shensi, The Indian species is known as BS. taxicolor, the Ssu-ch‘uan as B. tibetanus, the Shensias B. Bedfordi; but as the vast jungle-clad mountain ranges between its extreme limits are practically unknown ground, these may eventually turn out to be the same, or colour varieties of the same animal, But much remains to be discovered, especially as regards the distribution of this animal, half-goat, half-buffalo. It may yet be found to extend down both sides of the Chindwin river, for example, and south of the Zayul chu, at the head-waters of the Mali hka beyond Hkamti Long. Unless, however, it is found in Yun-nan and more generally distributed over Ssu-ch‘uan, we may be certain that its distribution is _ discontinuous.
At the same time it is absolutely confined to the Himalayan ranges, the parallel ranges of Upper Burma and western China, and the main divide across China.
Returning now to the low cliffs and tumbled boulders up which we had finally climbed to the summit of the ridge, we prospected again for plants, Thickets of - bamboo grass alternated with smooth, gravelly slopes and confused piles of boulders, amongst which grew many handsome flowers such as Cremanthodium Wardit, Polygonum sp., Saxifraga purpurascens, Cassiope myosu- roides, and a small purple orchid; mats of silken-leafed
1 The living specimen which in recent years was to be seen at the London Zoo came from Bhutan. This animal died in 1918. There is a stuffed specimen of B. Bedfordi set up in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington.
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 93
dwarf willow spread fanwise over the ground, and mangled junipers strove to rise above the rocks; even a tortured cherry-tree, mutilated almost beyond recog- nition, and a Pyrus maintained the fight against cold and starvation. But the rhododendrons, even the most dwarf, never appeared disfigured. Their splendid flowers were the most beautiful of all.
There was not, however, that overwhelming pro- fusion of flowers here that had so astonished me on the Tibetan border in 1911 and 1913.
We got back to a dismal camp, all fires out, and the rain continuing for the rest of the day, by nightfall my tent was the refuge of moths, beetles and flying creatures of all kinds.
Next morning, 17th July, we started down the ridge, ’ reaching our third camp in two hours, and Observation Camp two hours later. Here we halted for a short meal, and starting off again, reached Fever Camp before dusk. Round Fever Camp the sodden mould was now encumbered with scarlet, yellow and purple pileate fungi spreading their poisoned gills. Several quaint orchids and lifeless-looking broomrape were in flower. Not far above a magnificent white- flowered rhododendron (R. crassum) was in full bloom,
Maintaining the pace down, we were out of the forest in an hour next morning, great volumes of cloud rising from the valley towards the summits we had left. We soon reached the Yawyin village, only to learn that the sick woman had died the previous day. But the old man had recovered, and with tears in his eyes thanked me for the medicine I had given him. '
94 ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK
I went in to see the dead woman, and in the darkness of the poor hut just made out a figure wrapped in a white cloth which entirely concealed it except for the hands crossed on the breast.
An aged hag, crouched on the mud floor, was watching over it, wailing hopelessly and wringing her hands; from time to time she ceased crying and muttered incantations; then she would burst forth again in mournful wailing that had in it a note of uncontrollable despair, dreadful to hear. In the heavy darkness beyond, where the embers of a fire glowed, a white-haired old man was cooking food, and several children crawled about, playing in the dust, heedless of the ruin round them. In such gloomy surroundings, with the old witch beside it, the corpse, swathed in its coarse hempen winding-sheet, looked horribly like an Egyptian mummy, and I was glad to withdraw from that fallen house.
Outside some men were hammering a coil together —next day the dead woman would be buried on\the cold mountain-side.
Now the old man, taking me by the hand, pointed with shaking finger.
“< Two ite died in that hut, ta-jen,” he said, “three __
in that one.’
Then he broke down altogether and wept on my shoulder.
Leaving this village of the dead the same after- noon we descended to the river, the men singing as we came down the last hill-side into the semi- tropical warmth of the valley, glad to be home again.
Crossing the river we did not halt, but continued
ASCENT OF A VIRGIN PEAK 95
till nightfall, by which time we were in the Hpimaw valley.
Camping where we halted, dead tired, and starting again at daylight, by midday on 19th July we were back at the fort with our spoil.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE TEMPERATE RAIN FOREST
wherein lay the village of Hpimaw, opposite
the fort, rises a high limestone peak, aloof and frowning. ‘Towards the valley of the Ngawchang its slope, though steep, is unbroken, but facing the main range it falls away in sheer broken-off precipices. On this side too it is grooved with a deep fissure filled with forest and walled in by great slabs of bare rock. This is Laksang Bum.
In the second week of July we set out for this peak —limestone seems to attract to itself all the prettiest flowers—and descending to the village halted in a rose-scented lane for lunch, while we called for fresh porters.
Some young girls who, pressed into service above, had carried loads for us down from the fort, ministered to our wants in the meantime, bringing bamboo flagons of thick, heady liquor, and begging for beads in return.
They are not, generally speaking, pretty, these flat- faced, short-statured, corpulent Lashi girls, but in spite of their unwashed appearance—nay, it is real enough— they are, like all the hill tribes, quaintly picturesque.
A dark blue kilt-like cotton kirtle to the knees, a short jacket barely reaching the waist, grey cloth leggings and a blue turban of ample proportions—
, 96
G stein hs sentinel over the green valley
THE TEMPERATE RAIN FOREST 97
such is their dress in the main, and were their bulky figures more shapely it would be not unbecoming. Beyond this they are loaded with bric-a-brac indis- criminately, like a Christmas tree. Below the knee are the black rattan rings universally worn here, and in addition heavy cane girdles, threaded with white cowry shells, are loosely twisted round the waist. This belt plays no part in keeping the kirtle up, however, and, sagging low in front, gives a most untidy impression, as it tries to hide the breach between the short jacket and the kirtle.
But the most striking thing about them is the vast weight of blue bead necklaces—blue seems to be their favourite colour—with which they fetter themselves. How do they get them? A simple proceeding since Johnny Gurkha came to Hpimaw and made love to them like the little gentleman he is. Before that it must have been difficult, for they love not the journey to the Myitkyina bazaar. The ubiquitous Chinese pedlar no doubt aided them.
Leaving the village, we crossed the valley and ascended the slopes on the other side; the fragrance of lilies came to us from the grass, and we pitched camp on a little knoll at the foot of the peak, amidst silvery cotton grass and tangles of bryony. Here the bracken grew seven feet high, vieing with purple- flowered meadow-rue!; a few small trees, skerries rising from the ferny sea, grew half submerged. Here and there bosses of limestone, cropping out ir- regularly, were covered with the woolly white wrinkled leaves of Didissandra, which has violet lobelia-like flowers; and a dense wall of jungle, hung with an
1 A species like Thalictrum Delavayi. G
98 IN THE TEMPERATE
equally dense curtain of climbing plants, made the ascent of the peak by the gully, in appearance at least, almost out of the question.
The cliff which bounded the gully on one side, however, was open, and it was up this ridge, hugging the fringe of the forest—for- the other side was precipitous in places and required caution, the more so as the short dry grass which clothed the ridge was slippery—that I proposed to reach the summit.
In the afternoon blood-blister flies gave us no quarter, but as usual they passed with the day, and gave the sand-flies an innings.
The evening was fine and when the moon rose over the mountains it caught the cotton grass and splashed the whole meadow with drops of glistening silver. Fire-flies twinkled amongst the trees, some coming into my tent to examine the lantern, as though jealous of its wan beams. A deer barked close by, and was answered by another, and then came a shrill scream from high up in the jungle, as of some animal in deadly fear.
Next morning, wading across the channel of deep bracken which separated us from the peak, we gained the ridge and began the ascent. No serious difficulties were encountered until nearing the summit, whereupon what had thus far been just a very steep slope was succeeded by broken precipices and rocks, necessitating hand and foot work with frequent traversing to turn awkward-looking cliffs; and the summit was reached in about three hours without incident.
We were now about 10,000 feet above sea-level, with uninterrupted views all round, but we could see very little on account of the clouds, Across the
RAIN FOREST 99
valley a white spot on the edge of the forest marked the fort, and right at our feet lay the village. But the Ngawchang hka was buried away out of sight, and the mountain ranges which enfolded us were heavily cloud-capped.
Several rhododendrons were still in flower, one a small tree with large trusses of striking crimson- scarlet flowers (R. agapetum), growing along the edge of the forest—this as late as gth July! But I have seen this species in flower as late as August; in fact it appears to flower twice, spring and summer, for I have also found it in flower, and nearly over, in May.
We descended by the wooded ravine, which though steep gave secure hand and foot hold. On the damp limestone cliffs, in beds of moss, grew patches of a pretty little pink-flowered primula now in seed. Pink and white begonias and a few other flowers shone in the festering darkness of the forest, but mostly, where light filtered through from above and the awakened undergrowth sprang to meet it, ferns carpeted the warm leaf-mould.
Lower down the descent became more difficult and we came to precipices. At last we reached the bottom, and parting the thick curtain of creepers, which hung in front of the daylight, saw our camp on the knoll, not faraway. Joyfully we plunged once more through the sea of bracken, which totally submerged us, and presently reached the tents.
Back in Hpimaw after the middle of July difficulties gathered thicker. At this time I was suffering from a bad foot which kept me indoors for several days—I had injured it climbing, and the continual pressure of sodden boots had aggravated it till it festered. And
100 IN THE TEMPERATE now came T‘ung-ch‘ien weeping and asking that he might go home.
Poor Tung! I think it was the first time I had seen him disheartened, for he was a cheerful soul, and merry. First he told me that his little daughter had died in far-away Li-kiang—but that was months ago, while we were still in Yun-nan, and could hardly be the cause of his immediate distress; for his grief was poignant. |
“Don’t you remember, ta-jen, when we were in sunny Yun-nan in the spring—we passed some Tibetan horse dealers returning from Mandalay on the road that day, and you greeted them—how I wept one evening? J knew about it at that time.”
‘Then it is too late, Tung! Why do you want to go back to Li-kiang now? See, we shall only be here a few months longer; stay with me till the autumn and we will go back to Yun-nan together. next year.”
Then he told me that my Lashi collectors had been unkind to him on the road, so I scolded them soundly, and next morning after a night’s rest—what opiate can induce an oblivion like eight hours’ peaceful sleep to ease a bruised heart ?—T‘ung said he would stay with me till I left. And from that moment he sional to recover his old spirits.
There were family troubles at the fort too, a dooly- bearer having unwisely mixed himself up in an affaire with a Lashi matron.
They are queer folk, the Lashis, impatient of restraint, restless under the closer surveillance of the sircar, which, since the Yun-nan Government coquetted with the villagers of Hpimaw, has been forced into
RAIN FOREST: | bes
a programme of direct administration which otherwise might well have been long postponed.
The commandant, missing one of his followers, heard by the merest chance one morning that he was a prisoner in the village, awaiting execution, which was fixed for noon that very day; whereupon two sepoys, rushing down, arrived just in time to save him.
Then was unfolded the usual story of love, intrigue and revenge. It appeared that the wife of a village elder, growing tired of him, had found another lover in the dooly-bearer, and that these two had enjoyed each other’s love.
Discovery followed; the woman had been severely beaten, and the co-respondent, for all that he was an Indian—perhaps the more readily on that account— summarily condemned to death. And he would certainly have been barbarously beheaded but for the prompt arrival of the relief party.
The woman’s story was to the effect that her husband was an old man, and, as she bluntly told the commandant, “no good.” Baring her back, she exhibited the weals and bruises inflicted on her for her conduct, and pleaded that she had but enjoyed the embraces of her lover, a function her ageing husband could no longer fulfil.
Two men who were brought up in chains, self- appointed judges and would-be executioners of the wretched dooly-bearer, asked, with an assumption of haughtiness, by what right the commandant interfered in the affair. It was the law in China that a man taken in adultery was executed, and they adhered to that law, since Hpimaw was under Chinese dominion !
This was a new aspect of the case, but the prisoner’s
102 IN THE TEMPERATE
ignorance, real or assumed, of the political status of Hpimaw could not condone this reckless action, and they were naturally locked up till the civil officer, who resided at Htawgaw, three marches down the valley, could inquire into the case.
The incident threw some light on the attitude of the Lashis towards ourselves and China; either they were unaware of the real significance of our presence in the valley, or by no means*reconciled to it.
Towards the end of July there came one of those sudden and inexplicable breaks in the rains, character- istic of the hills. By night it poured as steadily as ever, but by day, in spite of the cloud blanket resting soddenly on the mountains, burying their summits, owing to some cross-current of air, some subtle re- adjustment of pressures, the rain held off for a week, while the sun even peeped out occasionally.
Then after a tempestuous sunset behind the Lawkhaung divide the clouds would close their ranks, and pressing heavily down on the valley, envelop the fort in drenching rain for the night. They were grand sometimes, those struggles at dusk between the retreat- ing sun and the onswarming clouds. In a river of gold the setting sun, defiant to the last, would flash its fiery signals across the valley, and disappear, while the. wicked-looking cloud waves quickly closed all loop- holes, and rushing up the valley, beat furiously against the mountains.
It was on just such a night, when we were sitting down to dinner, that the bugle sounded the alarm.
I heard the tramp of feet, and men came running past the bungalow. It was as thick as a London fog outside, and the finest drizzle was falling,
RAIN FOREST > 103
though heavy splashes dripped from the sodden trees, |
Away down the hill on the lower shoulder you heard’ the stamp and jingle of saddling up in the mule lines, and presently the pack-mules came trotting up the path, with the water glistening on their harness.
There was a squad kneeling at the entrance to the fort, with fixed bayonets—they shone dully through the lamp-lit mist, and a tense silence wrapped every- thing now as in a shroud, not altogether due to the thick mist which seemed to be slowly but surely choking the whole world to death. The Asiatic is not less brave than the European; but in the long empty spaces of the night his nerves strain and snap like parting hawsers, and he crumples up.
For he fears silence more than anything in the world.
A clicking sound from above made me look up, to see the jacketed muzzle of a machine gun thrust menac- ingly through a loop-hole at an angle of the fort, and a second looked sideways down the bare slope from the keep at the opposite angle. A row of dark faces dimly outlined against the slit in the diabolical gloom gave to the whole the appearance of a cruel mouth grinning evilly. |
Then the commandant nodded his head, and spoke to the subadar. The order was given to close, and the bugle rang out once more.
Of course it was all play, or let us say dress re- hearsal; but the annual crop of rumours from over the frontier had been coming in and included the oft-advertised march of imaginary Chinese legions on lonely Hpimaw.
I often think that if those high-placed mandarins in
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104 IN THE TEMPERATE
Yun-nan who considered they had a grievance when we occupied Hpimaw had themselves resided there for six months, their verdict would have been: ‘For God’s sake take the cursed place !”
The Gurkhas, it may be remarked, are very fond of flowers—they have learnt to love them in their own mountains in far-away Nepal, I expect. I often met parties of them returning laden with bunches of rhododendrons and golden marigolds, which they stuck in glasses of water to decorate the fort.
The limit of plant adolescence had now been reached, and everything was growing and spreading enormously. The turgid undergrowth stood. man-high, the trees were covered with varied flowers, not their own. The thick pile of fern-like moss which covered every tree trunk and every bamboo haulm was a hive of suburban life, a world apart from the busy life of the larger forest.
Probing into its green depths, you found the most entrancing creatures in hiding, as when you lift up the fringe of seaweed lining some sapphire rock pool; and no doubt they were equally astonished at the violation of their sanctuary.
Here I brought to light a quaint green stick-insect cleverly disguised as a sprig of moss, for which, indeed} I mistook him till he showed himself capable of indepen- dent motion. Here too in the green underworld of moss were snails shaped like French horns, and slender pink
worms, leeches—but of them more anon—beetles, -spiders—oh! a menagerie of creatures; the hive pulsed with silent life. Beneath an unrufiled surface, what struggles took place between creature and creature, each an idea in the Divine Mind, each labouring under a
RAIN FOREST 105
blind impulse to increase its numbers without regard for others; what raids, what devilries, what tragedies!
Then came fever again, and for several days I had to depend on my Lashi collectors; nor was their enterprise great. ‘There were wet nights when the rain pattered dismally on the roof, grey mornings, the dripping jungle only half seen, and flying cloud; but sometimes a gleam of sunshine and a few hours’ fine weather in the afternoon before the watery sky suffocated the sun again.
Below the fort the ridge falls away steeply to the valleys on either side and the flank facing the village is thickly wooded with small trees and scrub—rhodo- dendrons, oaks, willows, Hamamelis, poplar, barberry, tangled up with miscellaneous undergrowth and climb- ing plants. The rock where it crops out is seen to be limestone, and likely enough this ridge was once continuous with the isolated sugar-loaf peak across the valley, Laksang Bum, already alluded to, till cut through by streams flowing down from the neighbour- hood of the Hpimaw pass.
The flank away from the village falls as steeply to another stream, but, facing south, is not wooded; it is clothed instead with bracken and grass, whence spring many white and yellow flowered Zingiberacez, besides tall white lilies one year and yellow lilies the next, at least so I was told—certainly there were only yellow ones (L. nepalense) while I was there; and since both are biennials there is nothing incredible in the alterna- tion. In rocky parts, as the slope increases, scattered oaks, alders and pines struggle against gravity, flinging a network of rugged roots over the slipping rocks. It is not till you get right down to the bottom in the cool depths of the narrow glen, where the stream cascades
106 IN THE TEMPERATE
over slaty ledges, that forest growth occurs. Here I found another patch of Primula seclusa. | a
This contrast is typical of the whole region, and not a mere accident. North slopes are forested, south slopes are grass-clad, so that looking north one sees all the south-facing slopes at once, and the mountains appear somewhat bare, but looking south, mainly north- facing slopes are exposed, and they appear well timbered.
On fine evenings the Gurkhas used to play vigorous “soccer” on the small undulating parade ground cut out of the hill-side, and I sometimes joined them in a game, till my feet got too sore from climbing. It was a pleasant change, and home-like!
While exploring the wooded slope below the fort I found as late as the last day of July the glorious crimson Rhododendron agapetum still in flower. This conjured up visions of possible English gardens flaming with these magnificent trees from March till midsummer. There were some ground orchids in the wood too, including Cypripedium arietinum and another with twin heart-shaped leaves lying flat on the rocks, variegated and glistening, as though cut from frosted glass.
Then there silently arose just in front of me a brown flapping creature which zigzagged through the trees, sawing a little up and down, before it came to rest abruptly, and—melted away. Had it been, as | at first thought, a bird, there was nothing, save perhaps its silent movements, like those of a night-jar, remarkable about it. But no bird I ever met could alight thus on a bush and immediately disappear, noiselessly. Indeed it was not a bird; its flight, its manner of settling, its power of spontaneously blending with its surroundings, all betrayed it for what it was. It wasa butterfly; and
RAIN FOREST 107
with the realisation at once the incredible size of the insect struck me. But I never captured one of those skulkers, though I saw several. What I did capture in this copse was a new species of shrew.!
It was here too, in wet, mossy nooks amongst tits limestone rocks of this slope, that, early in July, I first found a pretty little pink-flowered primula new to me, not unlike P. malacoides, but less tall.
And so came August. The commandant had gone on tour again and I was alone with a tiny puppy he had given me as companion. The mails arrived regularly once a week, but their news was six weeks old, and no shadow of the breaking storm had as yet darkened Hpimaw. The entry in my diary for 4th August states that it was raining day and night and we were living in the clouds. I had been in bed all day with fever, unable to take any food, but was out again on the 6th, when I discovered a dainty little meadow-rue on the open limestone slope.
At last I made up my mind to abandon my botanical work at Hpimaw and return to England in order to regain health prior to another attempt; but [| would not go by the direct road to Myitkyina—I conceived a better ending to the trip. I would march northwards right along the North-East Frontier, amongst the wild mountains where rise the Laking, Mekh and Ahkyang rivers, cross to the plain of Hkamti,
1 Blarinella Wardii, Thomas, sp. nov. This belongs to a new genus of shrews, related to the earless shrews of North America, first distinguished by Mr Oldfield Thomas, F.R.S., of the Natural History Museum ; the other two known species of the genus, B. quadraticauda
and B. griseldi, are both Chinese, 8. Wardii extends the genus west- wards,
108 IN THE TEMPERATE
and thence make my way over the mountains to Assam. This plan decided on, I at once set about making preparations.
On 12th August the clouds lifted slightly, and I started on a last climb to the Hpimaw pass.
A foul, musty odour now rose from the leaf-mould in the jungle and a magic growth of meadow flowers, not unlike the meadows of the Yun-nan mountains, but less tall, covered the open hill-sides which previ- ously had been bare save for a thin carpet of turf; but the glory of the rhododendrons was past, their place taken by these strangers on the threshold of the forest—tall meadow-rue, twining Codonopsis with yellow bell flowers, masses of Astilbe, like giant meadowsweet, chestnut-leafed Rodgersia, Polygonum, Pedicularis, geranium, Corydalis, royal fern and crimson spikes of Epilobium.
Buddleia limitanea was in flower at 10,000 feet, and the swollen infant streams were overgrown with balsams, marsh marigold and monkey-flower, jostling each other for place, with blue-flowered Cynoglossum and colonies of lanky Polygonum. There were more small birds about now, some of them very pretty little fellows, whose queer cries were pleasant to hear. |
By 17th August all was ready for our departure, and on that day I dispatched an advance guard of eight porters.
All transport on the North-East Frontier and through- out the Burmese hinterland is done by porters—there are no pack-animals of any kind, and no roads either. In western China and throughout Tibet, on the other hand, though the roads are appalling, all transport
RAIN FOREST 109
is done by mules, ponies, or yak—a very different state of affairs. It is commonly said that only beggars walk in Tibet!
Tung was sick and a little sulky, but the iden of seeing new country so cheered me that I felt better than I had done for some time. Alas! little did I realise how vastly same is all this country for many weary marches, at least all the way to Assam. However, a real break, promised for several days, had come in the rains, the sun shone from a blue sky—it was the hottest day we had had, 81-°3° F. in the shade at 8000 feet !—and watching the changeful sunset where invisible air currents were reshuffling the gilded clouds, I felt that we might yet achieve something from the wreck of the season.
On 18th August the main body, consisting of ‘Tung (Lao-niu had left me), my Maru interpreter, Lashi servant, ten porters and myself finally left Hpimaw. There was a mail due that morning and I delayed starting till it should arrive.
At last the mules appeared toiling slowly up the winding path, and I followed them up to the fort, inside which was the post office, to get my letters; but to my disappointment, receiving only a post card, I immediately turned my back on Hpimaw and followed the porters down the hill as fast as I could go.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE LAND OF THE CROSSBOW
AKING the path down the Hpimaw valley,
which skirted now golden rice-fields, we
crossed the spur, thrust up like a wall
between the Hpimaw stream and the Ngawchang as
they converge on the confluence, and dropped into the latter valley.
Here we were soon beyond the last paddy-fields, from which fat Lashi women were busy uprooting alien weeds, and thenceforward saw no more level ground, save here and there wee terraces high up enfolded in the river bends, till we reached the Shan plain six weeks later.
Everywhere the steep slopes are clad with coarse grass through which bare rock thrusts itself in places, but there is a fair amount of hill cultivation for the first few miles. Scattered over the hill-sides are pine- trees, oaks, and Alnus nepalensis, giving to the valley a park-like appearance. |
The maize crop was now ripening, and many are the devices employed to scare away the monkeys which raid the fields by night. On the very steepest slopes a small hut is built at the top, with a long diving-board jutting out, thus overlooking the entire slope below. In this forward observing-post one or two—generally two—people take up position for the night, and when the monkeys come, sally forth and
IIO
THE LAND OF THE CROSSBOW 111
drive them away by making strange noises and throwing things at them. In the slack intervals between raids they make love.
A more ingenious method is to erect bamboo poles with split tops, here and there, attaching a cord to each. When the cord is jerked the split bamboo clacks lustily, and by tying all the cords together and leading the one line to the hut the clappers can with one tug be set clacking simultaneously. Thus all the sentry has to do is to sit in the hut and give the line a sharp tug every few minutes, when alarming noises start up unexpectedly from every corner of the taungya. The disadvantage of this method is that as only one is required on sentry duty, the prospects for love- making are not so good.
Tins are sometimes used instead of split bamboos, and where a stream runs through the taungya, the line is stretched out from bank to bank with a float, in the shape of a log of wood attached to it, dangling in the water. The rush of the torrent against the float, flinging it this way and that, jerks the rope spasmodically, which in turn rattles tins or clacks bamboos all over the field; thus a more or less con-, - tinuous noise is kept up, breaking out now here, now there with whimsical uncertainty.
But the most ingenious apparatus of all was worked by means of a hollow log, pivoted in the bed of a torrent. As the stream filled the reservoir with water, the log tipped up, emptied out the water and returned heavily to its original position, hitting a stretched bamboo cord a shrewd blow as it fell back. This in turn jerked a cord attached to all the clappers, which clacked away out on the faungya every few
112 IN THE LAND OF
minutes as the trough filled and fell, emptied and rose.
In the evening we reached a considerable village called Gaulam—there were both Lashis and Yawyins here. It is prettily situated in the mouth of a V- shaped gully, on a shelving fan of gravel spread out by the stream, the big sixty-foot huts raised on piles sheltered by palms and walnut-trees, with tangled hedges of cucumber plants from which hang golden fruits like bananas. Below the river chatters merrily by, in a broad, shingly bed, before entering the gorge.
Clapper, clapper, clack, clack went the monkey scares, shaken by the tumbling waters of the torrent. As the full moon rose, flooding the valley in golden light, troops of monkeys came out of the black jungle above, and we heard the shrill cries of the children, and the clap, clackety, clap all through the night, driving them back.
The temperature fell only to 65° F., but the air was raw after a damp night.
Though the next day opened with drizzling rain, the sun quickly came through, and it was muggy in the valley. ,
We marched to Kang-fang in the morning, crossing
several deep gullies filled with a confusion of shrubs, brambles and trees, strung together and often smothered beneath an immense tangle of climbing
fern, Polygonum and Leptosodon, whose delicate fairy ~
bells of pale violet colour swung mutely on the breeze.
Gorgeous butterflies sported in the sunshine, and a plague of flies tormented us. Where there was any
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THE CROSSBOW 113
cultivation it was chiefly millet and maize, with patches of tobacco and cucumber round the villages. /
There is no flat ground anywhere, not so much as to pitch a tent on, save in the river bed where the shrinking waters have laid bare a pebble bank.
Kang-fang stands on the left bank, the river being crossed by a cane suspension bridge; thenceforward we kept to the right bank of the Ngawchang. Kang- fang is also the last village up the valley where Chinese are met with, and a depot for storing the - coffin planks which are brought down from the forests to be carried into China.
This cofin plank industry is of some importance on the frontier, and considering the rapidity with which the trees aré being destroyed, it is strange that the Indian Government has taken no steps to regulate the export of planks or protect the tree.
Moreover, the timber might prove of value for other purposes besides that of making coffins, and though the inaccessibility of these forests would prohibit the export of timber to Myitkyina, the tree might be intro- duced elsewhere.
The tree in question is a magnificent juniper, which grows upwards of 150 feet high and 20 feet in girth at the base. It is not found in the Ngaw- chang valley below about 6000 feet, nor much above 8000 feet, and occurs scattered or in groves probably all the way up the North-East Frontier. The finest specimens | came across were confined to the remote _ forests and gorges around the Wulaw Pass,
The Chinese name is Asiang-mu-shu—that is, ** scented-wood tree”—and ‘T‘ung assured me that a conifer we had seen growing amongst arid rocks in
H
114 IN THE LAND OF
the stark gorges of the Tibetan Mekong in 1913 is the same tree as the one which is cut here, an identification I am inclined to doubt.’
The juniper is cut when the wood, as judged by its scent, is ripe, it being then anything from twenty to eighty years of age; the planks are of a size corresponding to the great size of the tree, the average dimensions being—length, eight to ten feet, breadth two feet, thickness one inch, giving a weight of 100 to 140 lbs. when freshly cut, though not more than 60 to 80 Ibs. when dry.
Chinese carpenters come over from T*‘eng-yueh, a city of western Yun-nan, and cut the trees themselves, hiring coolies to carry the planks back to China, as many as 150 being exported in a good season. But some years, when the rice and maize crops fail on the North-East Frontier, they do not come at all.
The price of the planks rises rapidly as you recede from their home. At the source they are sold for Tls. 1? each. From here they are floated down the Ngawchang when the water is shallow, ten together, fifty planks requiring only five men to attend them on their twenty days’ journey.
At Kang-fang they are stocked for the winter, and in early summer, when the snow has melted on the Feng-shui-ling, are carried on the backs of coolies to Yun-nan, each man carrying a single plank, taking about ten days between Kang-fang and T‘eng-yueh.
1 Wilson mentions buried wood of Cunninghamia lanceolata as called hsiang-mu-shu in Ssu-ch‘uan. Of course the name might be applied to any scented wood. (See 4 Naturalist in Western China, by E. H. Wilson. ) .
2 See Chapter III.
; |
‘THE CROSSBOW 115
The minimum price of a coffin in T‘eng-yueh being about Tls. 50, and the cost of four boards landed in T‘eng-yueh only about Tls. 20, good profits are realised.
Why the “scented wood” is so valued in China for making coffins is explained by the passion the Chinese have for exhuming their corpses and burying them elsewhere. This is the remedy whenever the least hint, as reflected in the distress of the departed spirit, suggests that a site not in accordance with feng-shui, otherwise ‘ wind-and-water,” or luck, was selected for the grave.
Geomancers, though dabbling in inhuman affairs, are, after all, themselves only human, and sometimes make mistakes, though no Chinaman would think of burying a relation without first consulting a geomancer.
When it becomes plain, through the continued ill luck of the relations, that the departed spirit really is ill at ease, then the body is promptly exhumed and buried in a more favourable position.
Chinese graves are often situated amidst the most romantic surroundings, on wooded hill-sides shaded by funereal cypress, the sward strewn with dwarf irises, crimson rhododendrons afire all round. But on the great hazy plains more prosaically they pimple the landscape like mole-hills.
Tls. 50 seems a good deal to give for a coffin, but the Chinese have an exaggerated respect for the dead which reacts distressingly on the living. If there is one thing universal in China which shouts aloud for reform, it is the gross luxury in which the dead are ushered into the next world, leaving the account to be settled by those remaining behind.
116 IN THE LAND OF
T‘ung inveighed bitterly against these things. He had recently lost a mother-in-law, for Tls. 150—a considerable sum for a small trader, including the provision of coffin, mourners, a feast to all his friends, new clothes, crackers to keep off devils, and a band; but perhaps it was worth it.
At Kang-fang we crossed the river by cane suspen- sion bridge to another village, consisting of half-a-dozen scattered huts. Pursuing our way up the right bank, sometimes in the river bed, where the Lashis stopped to sharpen their dahs on specially selected stones, we entered a lovely gorge, forested to the water’s edge; here the river was quite forty yards broad, and shallow, chattering beryl-clear over shining pebbles.
Just below this gorge the Hpawte river enters the Ngawchang on the left bank. By following up the Hpawte hka, the Chimili (12,000 feet), the last accessible pass direct to the Salween from Burmese territory, is reached. .
Climbing over a steep cliff we descended to the river, and struggling knee-deep across a boisterous torrent camped on a sand spit in the river bed. From the damp cliffs hung sprays of orange orchids, and the long, forked tongues of Gleichenia liniaris ; bunches of striped violet Chirita peeped from amongst nests of spearhead-shaped, downy leaves, and the mottled velvet leaves of Colocasia sp. formed a beautiful mosaic; here and there were bunches of gorgeously coloured balsams, and the spikes of a Dendrobium studded with orange-yellow flowers. |
At dusk a woman, followed by a little girl dragging ~ a reluctant dog at the end of a string, waded the torrent more confidently than we had done, picking |
THE CROSSBOW 117
her way over the gravel bar where the water was ‘rough, but shallower; while I went into the river for a short swim above the rapid. ‘There is a single plank bridge over the torrent a few hundred yards up-stream, spanning a gorge, but the ford saves distance.
Then came supper under the stars, the temperature, sheltered by the trees, being 65°
Out of the darkness strange winged creatures fly into the wan halo of light cast by the lantern, and commit suicide in the condensed milk; slender-bodied, long-legged stick-insects follow, and hopping moths of brilliant hue.
The start was delayed on 20th August owing to the discovery that the men had not provided suflcient rice. However, we heard news of a cache in a Yawyin village above, and having climbed up to it found several bags in a hut. Two of these we commandeered, leaving a fabulous sum in payment to salve our conscience.
Then another als occurred, the rest of the porters being discerned in the distance climbing straight up the flank of the mountain, as though to cross the Imaw Bum range and come down into the ?Nmai valley direct, instead of continuing up the Ngawchang and so into the Laking valley over the Wulaw Pass.! By the time we had recalled them the day was half spent; it was drizzling too, the mountains swathed in mist.
We had a fair amount of climbing up and down,
1 The Wulaw Pass is not on the main Salween-Irrawaddy divide,
but separates the basins of two rivers both flowing down to the Irrawaddy from that divide. It is actually a ridge, not a col.
118 IN THE LAND OF
often in thick forest. The undergrowth consisted mostly of ferns, flowers being rather rare in the semi- darkness. Here and there we found a small monks- hood, or species of Strobilanthes, or of orange-flowered Globba, and the huge umbrella-shaped leaf of an Amorphophallus, or the umbels of scarlet and black berries of Panax ginseng. Wherever there was water, rank masses of gorgeous balsams glared, and the tree trunks hung out orchid sprays and the slender tubes of a brilliant scarlet Aeschynanthus.
Soon we came to another suspension bridge, with an easy ford just below—indeed the river here seemed fordable in most places even now, and later in the year it would offer no obstacle at all. The bed is considerably broader than where the river enters the limestone gorge above Black Rock, though the moun- tains rise more steeply from the water’s edge. The left bank especially, though clothed with dense forests, is very precipitous, the trees often clinging to bare rock; and as I looked at those mountains, springing tier -on tier above the brawling river, I thought what a magnificent virgin field was here for the naturalist.
Fish traps are met with from time to time, both in torrents where they join the main river, and in the Ngawchang itself.
A bamboo fence is built out from the shore and a long, hollow tree trunk buried in the shingle beneath it, both ends being left open, and a conical net attached to the lower end. The water banks up against the fence, and any fish swept through the tube are caught in the net. 3
Unable to reach a village before dark, we camped
THE CROSSBOW 11g
for the night in a thicket, with tall, saw-edged grass, alders, ragged bushes and brambles all round us; a worsesplace for mosquitoes and sand-flies we could not have selected.
A shower passed over at nightfall, and was followed by a starry sky which lasted an hour. But had there been no drizzling rain to add, in the absence of tents or natural shelter, to our discomfort, there would have been little sleep for anyone that night, and I was thankful for daylight. The minimum temperature was 62°9° F.
Starting early, we soon reached a Yawyin village on a broad platform which sloped down to the river, the right bank being more open here, the mountains farther back. But the left bank was an uncom- promising wall of forest, showing the Salween divide, separating Chinese from British territory, to be a most formidable barrier.
After leaving this village we had five hours’ hard work, climbing many hundreds of feet to the summit of one spur, only to drop down on to a deep-flowing torrent on the other side and start climbing up again.
These torrents are tumultuous blasts of water leap- ing thunderously amongst big boulders in the cool gloom of the everlasting forest; there is a clammy feeling in the air, as of a toad’s skin; no sunlight gets through the dense roof to kiss the shivering balsams that crowd at the water’s edge, wetted in the flying spray, or the scarlet trumpets of Aeschy- nanthus that loll from the moss-coated tree trunks,
The bellow of the torrent fills the air, and every inch of ground is covered with dumbly struggling, sappy and enervated plants, which surge to the very
120 IN THE LAND OF
roots of the trees and overflow the confused boulders; tall creepers hanging from aloft veil the light yet further, and one is glad to climb out of this dim oppression on to the sunny hill-side, with its rank, plebeian growths and cruel, saw-edged grass, as quickly as possible.
We passed a few men on this march, two Chinese pedlars, their goods carried in baskets on the backs of coolies, and several men stumbling slowly along with coffin planks, though, as stated, they are usually floated down to Kang-fang. From time to time a shower happened along, but it was not seriously wet.
After a tiring day throughout which the trail had grown persistently worse and the climbing more arduous, we reached at dusk two tiny hovels perched - up amongst the green maize on a steep taungya, as remote a place as one could come across, and slept snugly. )
The next day’s march was very similar, but a change was stealing over the valley, the path keeping well above and some distance back from the river, which was now little more than a big torrent flowing in an inaccessible forested gorge.
From the scorching, shadeless hill-side we would plunge terrifically down into the benighted forest, by an execrable path slippery with mud, cross some ravenous torrent by a single tree trunk, and climb laboriously up out of the gulf into the hot: sunlight again; and watching these white cataracts roaring out from amongst the trees and rocks higher up the glen, I always longed to start off up-stream, tracing them back to their puny sources in the cloud-veiled
THE CROSSBOW > 121
mountains of the Imaw Bum range, where no white man had ever trod. But there was no time for any such side ventures.
At midday we reached a Yawyin village of six huts and in the evening a second one as large.
These huts are quite small, with walls of bamboo matting and plank floors, roofed with split bamboos in several layers placed alternately with convex and concave faces uppermost, thus forming a system of corrugated tiles. Being built on the spurs which slope steeply down to the river, they are always raised on piles, with rickety verandahs on two sides, along which one has to stoop to avoid the projecting eaves. The door is reached after performing com- plicated balancing feats on a notched log, which does duty for a ladder, and the interior is completely divided into three or four rooms. |
They are nothing like as big as the Lashi, Maru and Kachin huts, and differ further in the absence of the big front porch, and in the rooms being completely divided off, without any central passage.
As for the people, we found them charming, and it is good to think that these hardy mountaineers are crowding over the frontier into the dour valleys of the Burmese hinterland. Though they are much nicer looking than most of the tribes up here—the lantern-jawed men look as proud and fierce as Red Indians—they grow cadaverous as they age, when the Mongolian relationship comes out much more clearly. They are often long-headed, with quite a fine profile, and the girls have merry, round faces, pink cheeks and large, frank eyes; they show off their figures to advantage by wrapping a long
122 IN THE LAND OF
sash round the waist—a Li-kiang habit. Indeed many of them claim to have come from Li-kiang, which suggests a relationship to the Mosos, and through them to the Tibetans.
Most of them can speak a certain amount ot Chinese, and there can be no doubt that they are pressing slowly up the Ngawchang valley from the south, as well as crossing direct from the Salween valley. Where the Lashi is already in occupation, they ascend the mountains and plant their villages above his, but here they have extended far beyond the limits of the Lashi, and are doggedly opening up virgin ground. Nothing could promise more brightly for this bitter country, and it may be that in time the vigorous Yawyins will overrun the indolent Lashis, and replace them in the lower valleys.
The dress of the Yawyin girls is extremely picturesque—a harlequin skirt of many colours, or more exactly three, buff, ochre-red and chocolate, arranged in broad stripes, with a short jacket; a sash tied round the waist, and an ordinary Chinese turban worn in place of the scarf affected by the more prosperous Yawyins of the T‘eng-yueh district. Cloth gaiters, similar to those of the Lashis, are generally worn by the men, who otherwise have adopted Chinese dress, and all go about barefooted.
Their food consists chiefly of a sort of porridge, made from buckwheat, with coarse cakes of the same unpalatable grain, and vegetable soup, with fowls and eggs occasionally—little more than the bare necessaries of life. But they are always hospitable and even generous.
Their weapon is the crossbow, with fire-ardened
THE CROSSBOW 123
bamboo arrows, poisoned with aconite; and the dah, a short, straight-bladed knife of soft iron.
We spent the whole of the next day, 23rd August, grinding corn for the journey over the Wulaw Pass, as this was the last village at which adequate supplies could be obtained. There was only one hand-mill, so it took a long time to fill all the skin bags with flour. JI took a turn at swinging the heavy stone round and round, feeding the maize corn into a little hole in the upper stone, and collecting the flour which was squeezed out between the two; but my shoulder, unused to the work, soon tired.
In the evening we had some sports, jumping, putting the weight—a large boulder—and a comic turn by my Maru interpreter, a most amusing fellow, who in his grotesque, but often successful, efforts to pick up sticks while tangled into knots kept the rest of us in fits of laughter.
That night, or rather in the very early morning, the temperature sank as low as 60°3° F., and we awoke in the clouds, which were falling about us in rain after breakfast; and so it continued all day, with the briefest intervals.
We marched four hours in the morning, and four more in the afternoon, climbing over the spurs, now grown mountain-high, across occasional taungya, tra- versing steep, forested slopes where there was scarce foothold for a goat; so that for all our marching we made scarcely five miles’ progress up the valley.
At midday we struck almost the last Yawyin village, comprising three huts—the site was but two seasons old, these people having come from Yun-nan the year before.
124 IN THE LAND OF
There were two remarkably pretty girls here, with whom my men promptly started an outrageous flirtation.
When these tribespeople fraternise, they break the ice by offering each other pan and lime from the little bamboo boxes they carry, as an Englishman would offer a cigarette; and I watched one of my Lashis, who could not speak a word of Yawyin, dumbly offer his to a pretty girl, blinking self-consciously under a glow of smiles from his companions.
The huts here had a floor of bamboo matting instead of boards, and the roof too was made of a single piece of matting bent over in the form of an arch. At dusk, in pouring rain, we reached Wulaw, a village of eight huts.
We saw many magnolia trees in the forest this day, which showed that we were steadily ascending.
Rain was falling from a perfect blanket of mist when we awoke on 25th August, and a minimum temperature of 61° F. scarcely gives an indication of the chill damp- ness.
We soon reached the last outpost of the advancing Yawyins in the Ngawchang valley, two huts on the very edge of the forest, in a newly felled clearing not yet burnt. There was a T‘eng-yueh pedlar here, sell- ing Chinese jackets and loose trousers of dark blue cotton cloth such as the Panthay muleteers wear in Yun-nan, and purchasing coffin planks, half-a-dozen of which were leaning against a tree.
From this point we plunged into the forested wilder- ness, and after a stiff climb camped about five o’clock at an altitude of over 8000 feet. Those who reached the water-hole first had the pleasure of building the huts, while the sluggards came in to find camp prepared.
THE CROSSBOW 125
There were plenty of bamboos in the forest, and scarcely any undergrowth, so we had no difficulty in rigging up shelters, which were built entirely of bamboo, roofed either with branches or with split bamboo tiles, like the huts we had seen; and in spite of the rain we made ourselves snug. My own shelter was made with a central ridge pole, across which bamboos, half cut through, were bent, being tied to the cross pieces by thin strips of bamboo; and over this framework I spread my valise.
There was a very big conifer (Pseudotouga sp.) growing here, and many gnarled oaks, amongst the intricate mossy roots of which hundreds of voles? had their burrows. So open is this park forest that except when following some well-defined feature, such as a ridge, it is impossible to find the way, and one might vainly wander for hours through the silent glades, looking for a trail to follow.
1 Vandeluria dumeticola, Hodgson.
CHAPTER VIII
OVER THE WULAW PASS
LL night it rained, and there was a marked A drop in temperature, the minimum registering 50°? F. :
It was useless waiting for the rain to stop, so we started off at nine, ascending steeply by a ridge. So slippery was it, however, that after four hours’ heart- breaking work, during which little progress was made, the men refused to go on, and we halted in the forest, drenched to the skin and shivering with cold. The altitude was about 10,000 feet, judging by the fir- trees and rhododendrons which surrounded us.
Making the best of a bad business, we built our leaky little shelters and got the fires going; we even pretended to be cheerful—lI believe the Yawyins really were! Anyhow, as I lay curling up on my bed, almost afraid to move lest I should upset the shelter, with streams of water dripping in, I heard them singing away by their fire as though they had not a trouble in the world.
It was a wretched night of pouring rain, minimum temperature 49°5° F., nor did it show any indication of stopping in the morning. All the fires were out, and it took so long to start them again, pack up our sodden things with numbed hands, or move at all in the confined space of our huts that it was nearly midday before we got off. |
126
OVER THE WULAW PASS. 127
Once outside, thoroughly soaked’ again, it was not so bad, for movement was much to be preferred to the previous inactivity.
First came a steep climb up through fir and rhodo- dendron forest, where there was more undergrowth than usual, to the summit of the ridge.
Here we were exposed to a raw wind from the south-west. There was nothing to protect us, and, shivering with cold, we made our way for hatha snile or more, up and down along the open ridge through scrub rhododendron? and bamboo grass three feet high. The highest point of the ridge, between 11,000 and 12,000 feet, was soon reached, but ahead, dimly seen through the mist, rose a still higher peak.
Eastwards we looked over a sea of gloomy mountains, and my guide pointed out a path which he said went to the Shapa Lisu country, probably across the high range of mountains which divides this region from the Salween valley, since he said that it was eight days’ march to the first village!
At last we left the open ridge and began to descend a spur on the right, soon reaching the comparative shelter of trees and bamboos again.
So far the ridge had proved rather disappointing in flowers, though I had found a solitary and bedraggled primula amongst ‘the scrub, and presently I came on a fine crimson-flowered lily (L. Thompsonianum).
But now quite suddenly we found ourselves in a bewitching garden, the path bordered with spotted pink Nomocharis growing in the grass under shelter of the bamboos, with patches of saxifrage hard by, and grass-of-Parnassus.
* R. oporinum, sp. nov. flowers.
128 OVER THE WULAW PASS
Then, leaving this ridge, we plunged down the slope on our left, through fir forest, and emerged on to a grassy meadow lining a stream which splashed and gurgled amidst a perfectly dazzling display of flowers. Enclosing this enchanted spot, the forested slopes rose on every hand; but the stream meandered through ‘them, accompanied by its strip of meadow, which floored the tiny valley with flowers.
There were purple-flowered Allium, and tall cabbage- leafed Senecio, sheets of white grass-of-Parnassus, stiff louseworts, delicate Cremanthodium, and a mammoth Rheum, standing up erect as a grenadier, six feet high. But most welcome of all, I caught sight of the twisted conical capsules, full of flat seeds, of one of that curious race of primulas (perhaps P. Delavayi) which now many botanists consider are not really primulas at all, but which are provisionally grouped together in a section called Omphalogramma. ‘This was a treasure
indeed, and [ collected all the seed I could find, for my ~
discovery extended the distribution of these pseudo- _ primulas, and might prove a link between the Himalayan and Chinese representatives.
Tramping down this stream, which swelled rapidly as other streams came gushing in right and left from the closely surrounding wooded hills, we presently came to thickets of shrubs and a wild tangle of _ climbing monkshood, bell-flower and starry stitchwort, with giant meadow-rue, larkspur, Umbelliferee and many other things.
The country here was most remarkable; I have never seen anything like it elsewhere. The Feng-shui-ling was the nearest approach to it, but quite in miniature, and the mountains there were fully 2000 feet lower.
OVER THE WULAW PASS 129
Our altitude must have been somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 feet, and we were surrounded on all sides by a tangle of low, rounded hills, amongst which rushed hither and thither a network of frothing brooks.
The hills loomed up shadow-like and indistinct in the whirling mist, which clung like smoke to the tree- tops; wooded to their summits with rhododendrons, bamboos and fir, they peeped at us over each other’s shoulders from every direction, while the streams which bubbled at their feet were lined with meadow, and the flowers grew like the magic beanstalk. Masses of violet-flowered Strobilanthes! flourished here. Some- times the passage between two hills was so narrow that we had to paddle along in the stream, while giant meadow-rues and long, clinging monkshoods showered their burden of raindrops playfully on us as we brushed through; sometimes we would emerge into a little grassy dell tucked away in a fold of the hills, with streams splashing down all around us. »
So we went up one stream, over a low col, and down another, then across a stream to another valley, on and on, till my sense of direction was utterly mazed, and still the wooded hills, blurred in mist and rain, rose all about us, and the song of the rising torrents grew shriller. |
Then quite suddenly the meadow widened out, and where the tall flowers swayed graciously all round us I came on what I sought. They were standing in a row as stiff as though on parade, just above the edge of the meadow bordering the woodland, a line of glorious poppyworts. So the missing link was found, and the flora of the Imaw Bum range definitely
| 1 Amongst them S. oresbius, sp. nov. I
1430 OVER THE WULAW PASS
connected through that of the Mekong-Salween divide with that of the Himalaya.
This Meconopsis (M. Wallichii) grew seven feet high, and had pale purple flowers one and a half inches across, massed with a tassel of golden anthers in the centre. The flowers are small in comparison with many of its kind, but they are borne in remarkable
numbers; one plant I examined, which had a seven- —
foot stem, bore 16 buds, 27 flowers and 103 fruits— —
\
nearly 150 flowers in all, though not blooming simul- taneously. It may be wondered how so many flowers of this size are crowded on a seven-foot stem, but it is quite simple. They are borne in short racemes six to nine inches long, of about seven flowers, each raceme, springing from the axil of a strap-shaped, drooping leaf,
closely pressed against the main stem, which itself ends —
in a flower, giving a wonderful concentration of colour. The whole thus forms an immense panicle, the tall stem studded from top to bottom first with fat ovoid buds, then with flowers, and below with capsules, I collected seed of this species (familiar from the Hima- laya), but it was not quite ripe and did not survive the journey to England.
But it was now growing dusk, and we were all weary, our hands and feet swollen with the continuous soaking; also we had had nothing to eat since eight
o’clock breakfast, as the weather had been too bad to
allow of halting for a meal, and we had been marching with scarcely a break for nearly six hours. Consequently it was with some relief that I heard,
while collecting my meconopsis, the glad ring of dah
against wood not far ahead; and following up the
sound, discovered my men on the summit of a small
OVER THE WULAW PASS 131
knoll from which they were clearing the bamboos. Through the red-barked trees I saw the fires already gleaming. ©
It was dark before the shelters were finished and we snuggled into our wet nests; late before I got any dinner; but these things did not matter. What did matter was the fact that no sooner were we established on our hill-top than we were surrounded by myriads of tiny sand-flies which bit like fury. There was a perfect fog of them, and they caused us dreadful anguish, even the hardy natives hopping about; as for me, my face, neck and wrists were covered with bumps in a very short time, and I was itching all over. [ lit two candles of my slender stock, and thousands rushed to their death in the flames; but their numbers were nowise diminished.
Thus with pouring rain the wicked night passed, and dawn came, lowering.
It was still pouring when we got up next morning, 28th August, after a minimum of 50°3° F., but ceased just as we turned our backs on Wulaw. In winter these mountains are covered under deep snow and it must be bitterly cold here for months. I have never seen even in Yun-nan a more wonderful place for flowers than Wulaw, nor one more difficult of access, nor more hedged round with tortures for those who would brave its terrors. It will defy the collector, and guard its treasures long, for I hardly think a white man could spend a season there and live.
Our route took us down the rocky bed of a narrow stream, the almost precipitous banks of which were smothered with flowering shrubs and small trees of cherry, birch, maple and rowan, with bamboos and
—
132 OVER THE WULAW PASS
rhododendron higher up. As for the giant herbs springing from either bank, they met and embraced overhead, bridging the narrow defile, so that we passed beneath arches of purple meadow-rue or brushed through tangles of yellow Corydalis and white plumes of Astilbe, which is like meadowsweet. By the
' water’s edge were beds of orange-spotted monkey-
flower, and balsam with pendent crimson bugles, saxi- frages, primulas and lilies, mixed up with bushes of hydrangea, currant and hairy-leafed raspberry. It was bewildering, this rampant growth of struggling, long-limbed flowers in the dim-walled bed of the bubbling beck.
Presently a small black creature darted through the foaming water in front of me, and grabbing hastily, I caught it in my hand. It had shiny black fur like a mole’s, which refused to be wetted, and the little creature proved to be none other than one of those rare insectivorous animals known ‘as a water shrew.*
But now other rills came tumbling in, laughing with -
joy, and the beck grew and grew, though the gorge did not broaden, only the walls rose higher, frowning down on us, with a riband of sky visible overhead. Swifter and swifter flowed the stream down its smooth, rocky bed, till at last it leapt over a fall too high for us to negotiate, and we started traversing along the steep clay bank to a track above, which soon left yi restless stream far below.
Now matters became more difficult, for we had to
cross numerous torrents which had cut deeply into the ©
soft hill-side; and the rain having turned the surface
1 Chimarrogale styani, the second known example. The first was.
taken in Kansu, North-West China.
OVER THE WULAW PASS 133
to clay, we slithered down the high banks, and ex- perienced the greatest difficulty in climbing up the other side.
At first we were in mixed forest, but as we descended the conifers disappeared, and their place was taken by grand deciduous-leafed trees; here and there were open glades, as in a park, filled not indeed with bracken, but with masses of violet Strobilanthes and white-flowered Polygonum, growing man -high round the enormous tree trunks.
Then came gloomy, impenetrable forests of bamboo whose thick, leafy growth overhead cut out all daylight.
During a brief halt for lunch we were attacked by bees which appeared in such numbers that they eventually routed us. Continuing to descend, we at last slid down a steep clay slide and reaching the confluence of two fairly big streams, started to paddle again.
Presently crossing to the far bank, we began to climb once more, up, up, up, till we seemed to have ascended as much as we had previously descended. No words can convey how exhausting this work was.
It was unutterably dismal in these bamboo forests —no song of birds, no ray of sunlight, no wayside flowers, nothing but the patter of rain on the leaves above, and the eternal drip, drip of water.
At last, about five o’clock, the vanguard of our now straggling party, comprising three Yawyins and myself (they were always to the fore, splendid fellows!), stood on a low pass, looking over into what seemed in the mist and rain, to be a big valley.
re P a i ‘y sy
1334 OVER THE WULAW PASS
Down we plunged through the cold stream, splashing along, covered with leeches, and so thoroughly soaked
and saturated that the water seemed to penetrate
our very skins, till at six o’clock, by which time we.
had come some distance and the baby stream had swollen to fair size, we came suddenly on a big shelter already set up, and halted thankfully. There was just a thatch roof, sloping up from the ground, large enough for us all; and we were glad to have it.
An hour later another batch of men, mostly Yaw- yins, arrived, and even after dark one or two more straggled in; but several of the Lashis, including the one who carried my food, did not come in at all that night. | |
However, we lit a fire and spread out our bedding under the lean-to, and in spite of a coldish wind slept well after our strenuous march; for, heaven be praised, there were few sand-flies, and the bees we could cope with.
Sitting round a big fire in comfort, listening to the wet bamboos sizzling and exploding on the fire with loud pops, was pleasant enough; next day, the men said, we should reach the first Maru village.
T‘ung-ch‘ien was in good spirits and astonished the Yawyins by telling them of the marvels of Mandalay and Rangoon, whither he had accompanied me, and of the railway train and steamer, and how many days’ march they go in a day. Or he would talk to them of Tibet, and sing Moso songs, which were always greeted with loud laughter.
Though it rained all night we kept fairly dry, and by eight o’clock it had ceased. An hour later the three remaining porters arrived, having spent an un-
ts 7
ir
,
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comfortable night in the forest Heber up. So we started again.
And now for the first time we got something of a view, towering limestone cliffs looming up ahead; but whether they were across the valley we were looking into, or bounded our own valley, it was impossible to say, and seething mists soon hid them again.
We passed several bamboo rat traps set up on the bank of the stream, for the Marus catch and eat vermin; also little fenced-off places where grew the plant called by the Chinese huang-lien (Coptis teeta), a Ranunculaceous plant, the root of which is used medicinally. ‘The Marus come up into these forests for jungle produce of this sort, also to hunt the takin, serow, bear and other animals.
Here and there gigantic trunks of the coflin-plank tree lay across our path, and as we emerged at last from the twilight of the forest we saw across the stream, high up on the opposite side of the valley, a number of these big trees; they stood out very plainly from amongst the deciduous-leafed trees which sur- rounded them, conspicuous by their shape, their colour and above all by their size.
Sliding and tripping we came down a tremendously steep hill-side in the open, and saw the village of Che-wen below on the left bank of a considerable stream which flowed in a deep valley.
An hour later we were splashing through the sties and mud-holes of a Maru village, its dozen huts stand- ing amongst little fenced-off gardens, where grew beans, tobacco, opium poppies and a few peach-trees.
Pigs grunted and scuttled, an odd cow or two stood uncompromisingly in the fairway, and women seated
136 OVER THE WULAW PASS
in the porches looked up from their weaving and stared at us. However, we were well received, and soon shown into a house, whereupon the inhabitants crowded round the doorway to gaze at me.
At last I was able to take off my wet clothes, and having started a big fire in the room placed at my dis- posal, we set to work drying everything.
These huts, made of bamboo matting, raised on stilts with hard floors of wooden boards laid across beams, narrow verandahs and front porch, are small, like the Yawyin huts, not at all like the typical Maru huts of the 7Nmai valley. Outside the houses are small box- like granaries raised high on four stout pillars capped with circular discs of wood, which serve to defeat the rats. /
Fields of maize and buckwheat slope down to the river. Beyond, the shadowy outlines of high mountains dis- appear into the rain mists. Up the valley and across the Salween divide, distant eight marches, lies the country of the Shapa Lisus, an evil tribe, according to Maru tradition; but this is not altogether surprising, since they wage a continuous defensive warfare against the Chinese, whose ruthless efforts to exterminate them are calculated to: sharpen all their latent pratnang and cruelty.
These Shapa Lisus come across the mountains selling cattle, salt, cotton clothes and iron cooking pots, all obtained from Yun-nan, buying Auang-lien in exchange ; thus they act as middlemen between the Chinese and Marus for trade purposes. Chinese traders themselves sometimes penetrate into these inhospitable mountains.
It may be remarked here that the Lisus* do not
1 Lisu is the tribal name, and includes the clan known as Yawyin.
ee na ee
OVER THE WULAW PASS 137
believe in ats, the elfish and capricious spirits of mountain, river and forest which watch over the lives of the great Kachin family inhabiting the Burmese hinterland; and their practice of putting the things ' used in this life—crossbow, pipe, wine jar and hat—on _ the grave, for the use of the spirit, is distinctly Chinese. These considerations point to an eastern rather than a northern original home for the Lisus.
As to the Marus, I was not altogether favourably -
impressed with their dirty appearance; but first impressions are notoriously deceptive, and later they displayed redeeming qualities which endeared them to me far more than their cousins, the Lashis.
Amongst their more distinctive peculiarites is the mop of unkempt hair, rarely tied in a brief pig-tail, like a Jack Tar of Nelson’s day, or in a knot on top of the head. The men usually wear a brown or blue striped kilt, like a Burmese J/one-gyi, dyed locally with jungle dyes; but occasionally Chinese fashions are followed.
It does not appear, however, that the Chinese have ever gained much of a footing over here. Barring an occasional cotton garment—for the Marus cannot sew —or a red-buttoned skull-cap, the only thing Chinese I saw was a set of scales, as used for weighing silver in China. They were being used by one of my Lashis, who was exchanging glass beads for cane rings, made of thin strips of rattan, such as all the men, and women too, wear round the leg; and a bargain was struck by weight.
As for unmarried girls, they cut their hair in a fringe all round. Their tight skirts of white hemp cloth, home woven, reach just below the knee, and they wear a low-necked blue cotton jacket with short sleeves,
—
” 138 OVER THE WULAW PASS
embroidered with cowry shells, or buttons, according to the state of the market. Other finery—bead necklaces, iron hoops with bells, and earrings, or tubes, resemble © those of the Lashis.
It continued to rain, for we were still well in the mountains, but the much lower altitude we had attained was reflected in the warmer night— minimum tempera- ture 64°8° F., nearly 15° higher than on Wulaw.
As the rain showed no signs of stopping, I felt inclined to rest on 30th August; but a break occurring in the afternoon, I changed my mind, and we started about two. |
Fight of the Yawyins brought from the Ngawchang went back from here, their place being taken by Marus. -
Near the village the path was frequently interrupted by stout fences, which serve to keep the cattle from straying.
In less than two hours we reached the Laking hka, of which this was a tributary. ‘The Laking is a fair- sized river, thirty yards across, flowing with a swift current; just above the confluence a cane bridge spanned the Che-wen stream, and on the far bank stood another village. But of camping grounds, save a considerable pebble bank in the bed of the Laking, there was no sign, though to the Maru and Yawyin any place where water, bamboos and firewood are obtainable is a camping ground, so there is no need > for the solitary traveller to worry. OnlyI should not care to campaign in such a country. ;
Immediately below the confluence of the Che-wen stream with the Laking hka the latter enters a magni- ficent limestone gorge embroidered with rich forest. The track soon leaves the boulders in the river bed
OVER THE WULAW PASS 139
and climbing sharply, becomes difficult; precipices are _ ascended by means of notched logs, deep gullies crossed | by means of tree trunks, and both were now slippery
__ with rain and mud.
_ Presently we descended to the river bed again,
where the water foamed over rapids, and a few minutes
later were once more climbing steeply up a slippery
path almost buried in vegetation.
Came yet another descent to the river bed, and com- paratively easy going over the boulders. There was a quiet stretch of water here, with a rapid under the far bank, so one of the Marus, with a view to display- ing his prowess, slipped off his kilt—the only garment he was wearing,