Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady River

Here is the great Ayeyarwady - Irrawaddy Ayeyarwady river Video,  this is the complete version embedded into Adobe Acrobatm. Delta Myanmar Burma, Irrawaddy flotilla company.

Traveling the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, after reading through this it looks like Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river traveling was more advanced in this days than today.

THE NORTHERN IRRAWADDY – AYEYARWADY

THE DEFILES

The Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady is of all the great rivers of south east Asia the greatest. Through Myanmar it flows for a thousand miles, in a broad navigable stream, from the " confluence – in the far north, where, emerging from its mysterious birthplace, it unites with it, first great tributary, to the sea into which it pours through a hundred mouths. The mountains in which it is born, an offshoot of the Himalaya, follow its destiny seaward, and when they sweep down to its water's edge, or tower mistily on its wide horizon, lend it an incom­municable charm and beauty. Lessening gradually from altitudes of eternal snow, they sink with the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river into the ocean, their last bluff crowned by the golden pagoda of Moodain, " Gleaming far to seaward, a Burmese Sunium.''

It is no light undertaking to describe this majestic creature. It: length and volume, its importance as an artery of the world, its rise and fall--these are easily recorded facts. The beauty of its waters that mirror a sky of varied loveliness, of its hills and forests and precipitous heights, of its vast spaces that bring a calm to the most fretful spirit, of the sunsets that wrap it in mysteries of color—thee are things for which words are greatly inadequate.

A great painter might attempt to picture the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy  river, but he would do so with the knowledge that he must leave it incomplete, for he could paint only a phase of that which is infinite in its variety. He could tell but little of the human interest with which it is fraught; of the long historic procession that fills the mind's eye, the migration of prehistoric races, the movement of peoples under the impulse of immutable laws, the advance of invading armies, the flight and agony of the vanquished, the triumph of exultant victors ; of kings and nobles and warriors ; of saints and ascetics ; of the life of the common people, with its passing joys and sorrows, in all of which the silent immortal Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river has played its continuous part. One cannot entrap the glory of that which lives and moves, and is yet in its entity and suggestiveness eternal.

The peoples of Myanmar came from the Highlands to the north of their present home many centuries ago, at a time of which no memory is preserved in local legend or tradition; though nature, less forgetful, has written upon each man's face the evidence of his origin. Following the streams which rise in that elevated country, they gradually spread south­ward, reaching in the fullness of time the sea. In primitive ages, when the clan or tribe was the only political unit and there was no more obvious line of separation than the watershed between the streams that they encountered in their southern migration, it was natural that each tribe should separate itself from the rest. It was a separation however, which while it secured to each tribe its immediate liberty, carried in it the germ of ultimate reunion ; and read in the light of this physical fact the racial history of Myanmar becomes clear in its wide outline. The dominant Myanmar represent the tribes that wandered down the tributary sources of the Upper Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady finally to coalesce in the valley of the great Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river. Their kindred with a lesser heritage arc found in the many tribes on their borders. The Mon or Talaing, the people of the south, were amongst the first of those who came. The Myanmar's drove them before them, as they would probably have been driven themselves in time by the newer Kachin. But the Kachin has recoiled before the might of England, and the tide is now setting back to the first home of all these peoples.

The Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady, then, as it flows ocean ward, ever accompanied by its hills, is symbolic in a profound sense of the history of the land. On its banks these rude Mongol wanderers grew up to civilization under the influence of Hindu exiles from India ; a civilization to which the ruins of ancient cities bear testimony to this day. About its northern reaches there was fought out the long battle of Burmese supremacy over the rival Shan race ; a struggle of many centuries and varying fortunes in which the prize was the great Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river itself. Shan kingdoms once powerful in the north, and as early as the first century of the Christian era in political relation with China, fell in the struggle, and save in tattered chronicles of small value, their memory has gone out from among their people. Down the valley of the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady, too, there swept the all-but ­engulfing tide of the Chinese invasions, in one of the earliest of which there perished PAGAN, the greatest of all Burmese capitals. And it has been up the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady from the sea, reversing as in India the immemorial tradition of conquest, that the British power has advanced. The great conflict between East and West, more universal now than at any previous period in the history of the world, has once more been fought out along its banks. The people of Burma have become a subject people ; its kings have passed for ever out of the category of sovereign princes. Once more the West has triumphed to the satisfaction of the West, and if there be a far-off divine event ' to the ultimate benefit of the East. Yet no satisfaction can divest such changes of their tragic character. The most callous cannot regard the fall of a nation without some sorrow, or the final extinction of a picturesque Court and of ancient institutions without regret. " Burma," in the words of the royal chronicler of China, " Burma, from the Han dynasty until our day, has existed for over seventeen hundred years, and now alas ! by reason of a few years of tyranny and indis­cretion on the part of its monarch, the country has been obliterated in the twinkling of an eye."

Not the least of its many fascinations is the mystery which has shrouded the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river's birthplace. Soon after entering Burma it presents the appearance of a pellucid stream eight hundred yards in width. That is the farthest knowledge of it possessed by the ordinary traveler. The men who live up there, the Englishmen who rule and fight in the wild border country, know it a little farther, as far up as and beyond the confluence where the N'Maikha and N’Mlekha, its two main sources, unite. Beyond this point the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady is un navigable, and it has not yet been given to any man to say from the sight of his own eyes whence it comes. The secret of its birth is still in the wilderness of mountains which spreads away beyond the confluence to north and west. Yet it is being slowly wrested from its keepers. One by one the conjectures hazarded by investigators since the dawn of the nineteenth century have been disposed of ; one by one the wild frontier tribes are being reduced to subjection, as the growing peace of Burma frees the Government for exploration and extension towards the north. Its mystery is scarcely any more a mystery.

Thirty miles below the confluence the new settlement of Myitkyina is laid out on the high right hank of the Ayeyarwady - Irrawaddy river. No change can he more significant than the change which the last few years have wrought in the character of Myitkyina. It was once upon a time the last frontier of Myanmar, a military outpost in the heart of the enemy's country. For six months each year it was cut off from nearly all communication. The only approach to it lay by the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, and the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river is no highway at that season. The outpost of Myitkyina had to look out for itself, feed itself, and fight upon occasion for its life. One winter it was attacked and burnt down by the caterans of the hills over the heads of its garrison of a thousand men. Myitkyina is still somehow frontier town, it is still liable to have to fight for its life ; but it is no longer cut off from the rest of Myanmar. It is easily reached by railway at all seasons of the year, and it is becoming a popular stopping-place for the tourist hurrying round the globe. It has all the freshness and charm of a new settlement, and though on the borders of savagery, it is full of life and action and hope.

From Myitkyina to the junction with the Mogaung,

the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river flows in a broad clear stream over a pebbled bed. Steaming down-stream in the last days of December one can see the coarse sand churned up from amid the pebbles by the eddying current and glistening like gold in the sunlit waters. The simile is not altogether fanciful, for the gold-washers arc at work on the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river slopes below Myitkyina. Nearer the shallows which the steamers skirt in their course distinct glimpses can be had into the life of the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, and great fish may be seen scuttling away in agitation. The Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy river, though broad and majestic to the eye, is comparatively shallow in its northern reaches, and the navigable channel is narrow. This is made obvious when a bank of yellow pebbles tilts its back half-way across the stream, or a reef Of grey rocks stretches in sawlike outline across the ship's course, narrowing the channel to a stream of deep water under the shelter of the opposite bank.

Behind Myitkyina, now fading into the blue distance, there tower up like " Breasts of Sheba " the twin peaks of Loi Lem and Loi Law, and behind these again there fade away into the empyrean the unexplored mountains of the north, upon which there is a gleam of snow. It is one of the most beautiful and most satisfying voyages in the world, this swift descent down the upper waters of the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady. The keen ozone of a perfect air, the broad winter sunlight flooding a landscape of romantic beauty, the sense of encompassing infinity, fill the blood with a supreme vitality, and lift the soul into regions of exquisite peace. The great Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, free for the present to go where it lists, flows on in serene untroubled beauty, the central chord in a grand harmony of nature. Overhead there is a flawless sky, and on every hand the mountains stretch away to the utter­most horizon in shades of color ; from tints so faint that they are scarcely to be known from the ether beyond, to the rich purples of near peaks and the deep blue-greens of heavily wooded spurs which reach down to the water's edge, laving their uncovered foundations in the stream. At points like these in its course, where the dense shadows fall on the seemingly motionless waters, the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy river presents its most characteristic and beautiful aspects, resembling some still mountain lake.

Sixty-five miles below Myitkyina, the Mogaung, emerging from between low flat banks, clothed in giant grass, pours its tributary waters into the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady. It flows through a district fruitful in serpentine and amber and India rubber, inhabited by a medley of hill tribes of kindred origin, whose truculence and savagery long prevented its being opened up. The town of Mogaung has earned an unenviable notoriety as a penal settle­ment. Banishment to Mogaung was almost the greatest misfortune that could overtake a Myanmar official in disgrace under the old regime: Near it is the Indawgyi Lake, from which the Mogaung derives a portion of its waters, and a legend of the country tells the old tale of an ancient city at its bottom, suddenly engulfed. Soon after the union of the Mogaung and the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady a new range comes prominently into view, broadening out into a beautiful amphitheatre of blue hills, at the foot of which the united stream must seemingly come to eternal pause. But the the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy river makes a grand south-westerly sweep, and there presently becomes visible in the vicinity of the Shan-Talok village of Senbo, the great gorge through which it must pass, known in the nomenclature of the the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy river as

THE FIRST DEFILE

Here in the shadow of the hills spreads a vast receiving-basin in which its waters must perforce stay their course, since the narrow and circuitous defile is all too small for the broad stream demanding imperious admis­sion. At this, the winter season, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river threads its way far down amid the sands which in flood-time form the bottom of an immense lake. There can, indeed, be few more magnificent episodes in the life of a Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river than this. For when, swollen with melting snow and heavy rain, it rushes turbulently seaward in obedience to the first law of its being, it is here suddenly checked in its course by the iron hand of the mountains. Signs of its terrible recoil are evident on every side. The spectator standing under the barbed frieze of the military outpost near Senbo and looking down, first on the now quiet Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river and then across a yawning interval to the opposite heights, realizes something of its greater life. Far above the present limit of its waters, to a height of eighty feet, marking the woods with an even line in testimony to its dominion, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river climbs in its session of wrath. In a single night it rises fifty feet, as though it would sweep the mountains before it, and at such times the defile within is a mad inferno of waters in which no boat can live.

For thirty-five miles the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river flows through the mountains of the First Defile, whose rocky sides, torn and lacerated, lie bare in winter, the embodiment of savagery. This is more especially the case at one point, the most dangerous in the entire defile, where the black rocks rise sheer out of the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river's bed, threatening destruction. Through them there has been cut a passage, now high above water-level, for the slow country boats, which formerly performed the perilous duty of carrying the mails in the flood season. From May to October the defile is entirely closed to steamers, and even for country boats the service is one of danger. The journey up-stream is then sometimes of three weeks' duration ; the descent is a matter of six hectic hours, so fierce is the current. Strettell, who made both journeys at a comparatively quiet season, left of the journey up-stream the following account :

" The scenery throughout this defile is sublimely grand and pictur­esque, but in places awful to contemplate, as one stands watching the trackers, encouraging one another by fiendish yells that echo through the woods and straining every muscle to gain ground as the boat sluggishly quivers through the fierce rapids now running flush with the boat's gunwale. All now depends on the trueness of the towing-line : that gone and we are lost, for the best and strongest swimmer could not live in such places." Returning in March, three months later, the journey was even more fruitful of excitement : " The danger of the defile had in no way been exaggerated. Indeed, as we shot down the impetuous stream every moment seemed to be our last. It was with difficulty the helmsmen kept the boats from being carried round by the violent eddies and whirlpools, and the boatmen rowed their strongest against stream to reduce the terrific pace at which we were being borne by the fierce rapids. Our position was too critical to admit of accurate observation."

These are fearful joys to which the present-day traveler is not subjected ; yet, for the seeker after it, the swift delirium of a race down the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river in its turbulent season is an attainable joy any time between May and October. The Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, restricted in this portion of its course to a narrow rocky channel, assumes again, though in a less transparent degree, the pure green tint which characterizes it at Myitkyina. On each hand the nobly wooded hills run down in echelon to the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river's edge, and there is at all times that play of color characteristic of hills piled behind one another in receding distances.

At frequent intervals the hills send down their tribute to the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river in streamlets that babble over great polished boulders and gleam and sparkle in the sunlight. This is their season of security and charm. In the rain season their music swells to a deafening roar as they rush down in cataracts, bringing with them, in helpless chaos, boulders and trees and sand. Near the lower end of the defile the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, winding a narrow and sinuous course through the rocks known as the Elephant, Cow, and Granary, enters on one of its most exquisite passages. The rocks fancifully so named stretch across in a broken line from shore to shore. For half the year they are covered, but in winter they lie exposed, glistening in the sun and revealing the true width of the channel, here scarcely more than eighty yards across, but of unfathomed depth. Their sheer bare sides, of a polished grey-green hue, afford no footing for life ; but on their rugged summits the receding Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river leaves a thin deposit of rich silt, in which tussocks of vivid grass find a home, their lively beauty enhanced by their grim setting. In the days soon after the war, when the channel was less known, a small steamer came to a violent end amid these dangerous reefs, which in the flawless calm of a winter afternoon present an aspect of placid beauty.

Below the Elephant and Cow the little hamlet of Tamangyi

shows out from the leafy hillside, and the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, freed from its iron fetters, lengthens out into a long dreamy reach in which the varied hills and woods and the opalescent clouds that trail like the pinions of another world overhead, attain redoubled beauty. A moment, and the dream sweeps by, the great curtain of the hills folds swiftly back, revealing a distant glimpse of the Shan mountains ; and the waters, sparkling in the broad sunlight, seem visibly to rejoice at the termination of their long and arduous passage through the territories of the First Defile.

Few signs of life greet the traveler between Senbo and Tamangyi. An occasional boat or dugout, a thatched hut high up on the steep declivities, at the lower end some blue-coated Chinese Shan quarrying for stone, a rare pagoda ; such are the faint symptoms of man's dominion. For the rest, a startled otter on the rocks ; a white-headed fish-eagle with keen gaze intent on his prey ; a cormorant poised on a stake and drying his dripping wings with obtrusive philosophy ; a panther swimming hurriedly for life across the fast-flowing Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river ; the short, quick call of barking deer, or the sullen roar of a tiger making off, up one of the leafy watercourses. All else is loneliness and solitude.

Leaving the hills, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river spreads out to ambitious dimensions, and flowing past the site of ancient Sampenago, receives before it reaches Bhamo the tributary waters of the Taping.

THE SECOND DEFILE

A few miles below Bhamo the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady, leaving behind it a great mass of mountains, the loftiest peaks of which are the possession of China, glides into the gorge known as the Second Defile. There arc no signs here of a vast accumulation of waters similar to that at the mouth of the defile above. The channel, broader and less obstructed, offers a more adequate highway, and the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river is less turbulent in its entry. Yet on all sides there is grim testimony to its power in the pedestals of the surrounding hills, torn, contorted into the most fantastic patterns, and swept bare of every vestige of life to a height of thirty feet. It is this sense of conflict between elemental forces which, felt intensely here, makes the Second Defile a great spectacle of the world. Near the northern entrance a mighty cliff which turns its worn face to the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river speaks with eloquence of the conflict. It rises sheer into the sky from the water's edge, eight hundred feet from its massive foundations made smooth by the constant friction of the speeding Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, to the delicate clustering bamboos on its summit. Round its base graceful creepers climb and hang in festoons amid the branches of noble trees. A pagoda in miniature, one of the smallest of the myriads which taper heaven­ward in this land of religion, crowns the top of a small rock at its foot. Its diminutive size throws into relief the great rock scared with the stress of centuries, which towers majestically above it. An instinctive hush settles down on the ship as we race under its shadow, and there is deep silence in the gorge, broken only by the steady paddle-throbs which echo through it like mysterious heart-beats. In this battle-chamber of nature, stamped with the records of a long unceasing strife, the soul of the spectator shrinks into itself, finding no vent in the commonplace.

There is a legend attached to the great rock that is not unworthy of its tragic grandeur and beauty. It is a tale of the first king and queen of Sampenago, who were driven in a far-away day from their kingdom by Kuttha, the king's brother. The king, with true Buddhist philosophy, when he heard of his brother's advance forbade any resistance. To take life would he wrong and the issue must turn on the extent of his accumulated merit through all past existences. If this were great the threatened evil could not befall him ; were it small it could not he averted. So while the king turned to prayer and good works, his princes and generals stayed their measures for defense, until the usurper swept in on the tide of destiny and seized the kingdom. The king fled, but was pursued overtaken and cast into prison. The queen escaped to the enchanted mountain Wela, where a son was born to her in her sorrow.

When the little Prince Welatha (" son of Wela ") was six years old he saw his mother in tears and by questioning her learnt that he was a prince and his father a captive. When he was seven his mother yielded to his importunity and sent him with her royal ornaments to visit his father. On approaching Sampenago he met his father being led out to execution. The brave boy stopped the procession and revealed himself, offering to die instead of his father. The king Kuttha thereupon ordered him to be thrown into the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady. But the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river rose in tremendous waves, the earth shook, and the executioners could not for terror obey the royal order. This being reported to Kuttha, he ordered that the prince should be trodden to death by wild elephants ; but the beasts could not be goaded to attack him. A deep pit was then dug and filled with burning fuel, into which the prince was cast ; but the flames came on him like cool water, and the burning faggots became lilies. When Kuttha heard this he grew furious in his rage and had the young prince taken down to the spirit-haunted mountain and cast from the great precipice into the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, but he was caught up by a Naga and carried away to the Naga country. The earth quaked, many thunderbolts fell, the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady rolled up its waves and broke down its banks. Kuttha was seized with terror, and as he fled forth from the city gate the earth opened and swallowed him up.

It is an interesting feature of many old legends that they enshrine the traditional knowledge of some ancient historical or natural fact, and there is perhaps in this pretty tale the record of some great convulsion, an episode of more than usual moment in the ceaseless conflict between the great Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river and its encompassing hills.

This, the place of the Great Cliff, is the finest portion of the Second Defile. Soon after leaving it the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river sweeps round in more than a semi­circle, to emerge once more in untrammeled splendor at the foot of a rounded hill tinted with reddening grass and not unlike an English down.

Below the defile lie the island and village of Shwegu, through the tree­tops of which gleam the golden spires of many pagodas, the centre of a great annual festival attended by many thousands of pilgrims. An island of green and gold set in the folds of a sunlit Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river fading away to steel-blue mist at the threshold of the mountains, on the summits of which an army of opal clouds is enthroned, Shwegu is thrice lovely.

Henceforth, till it reaches the Third Defile, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river's course is uneventful, save where, encircling many islands, it receives from China the many-mouthed homage of the Shweli. Yet it never ceases to be beautiful. At evening the sun sinks behind the clear-cut amethyst hills in a blaze of gold, and the hues of sunset pervade the still reaches, slowly changing like chords of some divine music till they pass imper­ceptibly away into the dusk of twilight. Later the stars shine out in the clear winter sky and their light, like quivering spear-points, plays on the face of the waters, hastening on to their union with the sea. The Great Bear climbing the heavens, points coldly northward, where imagination pictures the snows of aeons lying on the summits of mountains on which man has left no footprint. Near by the lights of a small village die out one by one, and a great and brooding silence falls upon hillside and plain. It is midnight on the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady.

Below the picturesque village of Male, enclosed in a red-thorn stockade, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river for the third time in its course between the Confluence and the sea forces a right of way through hilly country. Male was once the resting-place of a fugitive queen and for a short time served as a royal capital. In later days it was the Myanmar customs-station on the upper Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, and in the last days of 1885, when the kingdom of Myanmar was hastening to its end, a fleet of the king's warboats and steamers lay at anchor at Male, in wild hopes of a French advent across the frontiers of Tonquin. But the French never came, and the last of the house of Alompra was already on his way into exile, followed by his weeping wife and a stricken court, before His Majesty's itinerant ambassadors in Europe had concluded their wanderings in search of an alliance. Leaving Male, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, confined between low hills, flows in tranquil splendor under the shadow of the Shwe-u-daung, whose bare peak and sharp declivities rise majestically into the sky like the Spanish sierras beyond Gibraltar.

The Shwe-u-daung, nine thousand feet in height, is the outer citadel of that fortress of magnificent mountains in the chambers of which are treasured the finest rubies of the world. Sixty miles inland, in the beautiful Mogok valley, are the famous ruby mines of Burma. The road was rough and steep in my days and for five months each year impracticable for wheeled traffic. At best it was hard going for the long trains of bullock-carts, which creaked and toiled along its ruts, laden with machinery for the mines and all the requirements of a colony of Englishmen planted in a secluded valley sixty miles from a highway of communication. But the traveler on horseback, lightly equipped, made the journey in two days.

Mogok itself, surrounded by magnificent peaks like the Pingubaung, seven thousand feet in height and apt to be transfigured at sunset in a glow of red fire suggestive of their priceless contents, is unique in its seclusion and its world-known fame.

Below the village of Thabeit-kyin, the port of Mogok, on the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady, there is a charming island pagoda and monastery. Once, and it is not many years ago, the monastery was tenanted by an abbot and his monks and acolytes. Every year at a great annual festival the countryside came over in long boats and dugouts, and the pagoda platform was gay with the brilliance of a Burmese festival. Monastery spires and columns, the-chapels of the Buddha, and the slopes of the island pagoda, were renovated and gilded with the lavish gold of Burmese Buddhism. In the still waters of the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river between the island and the near shore, dogfish, tame and gentle from years of immunity, came each day to be fed by the monks, and at the year's festival to be decorated with leaves of gold by the followers of a religion the highest attribute of which is its tenderness for all created life. For the traveler the pagoda of Thihadaw, with its singular appendage, was one of the most interesting spectacles to be met with on the upper Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river. But a few years have wrought a change which is not without its symbolism. The island pagoda set in the heart of the Third Defile is still beautiful ; but the fingers of decay are busy with its monastery roofs and spires. Its halls and closets lie empty and deserted. The waters of the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river are slowly but certainly eating into the fence of wood and stone, built in an earlier decade to protect the island, and time must bring destruction, The monastery fish, no longer fed by its tenants, no longer protected by their presence from secular attack, have grown wild and timid, and no artifice will now induce them to come when summoned by the familiar call. It is believed that the island, consecrated to religion, can never be flooded, however high the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river may rise. The pagoda is still firm on its base, its buildings are still habitable and yet it is silent and untenanted. No one will say why.

The old monks at Thabeit-kyin shake their heads and mutter impossible reasons ; the fishermen of Thihadaw village say it is because their village has become small. An evil tale of war, which broods sadly over the deserted place, attributes it to another and a harsher cause. But whatsoever the cause the result is there, and in a sense it is symbolic of an inevitable decline. Fewer monasteries are built now than in years gone by ; fewer scholars chant their lessons in the monastic schools ; everywhere there is a loosening of the bonds of the great religious organization which has ministered so long to the spiritual life of Burma.

At Thihadaw the defile grows to greater beauty. The single line of hills which has confined the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river on each hank rises in height and breaks up into a greater variety of groups, through which the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river wanders in long reaches and curves as placid and calm as untroubled slumber. At Kabwet village, where an enterprising German used to work the coal mines of the neighborhood, the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river emerges in a great curve from the midst of the higher hills and widens out, though still restrained for many a mile by low undulating country, beautiful in December with warm autumn hues, till, at Kyaukmyaung, the Third Defile quietly ends. The view, hitherto confined, now broadens out and far ahead on the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river's horizon loom successive spurs of the Shan mountains towering in stately beauty above the distant city of Mandalay.

Here the great defiles of the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady end. The Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, leaving its infancy and hot strenuous youth behind it, settles down to mature life, till at the delta still many hundred miles distant, its power is broken and lost in the ocean.

The present-day traveler in Myanmar is borne along the great highway under very pleasant conditions. For nine hundred miles the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady Irrawaddy was navigated by the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, most of which have been well equipped with the comforts of civilization.

For purposes of rapid travel the fast mail steamers are the more suitable ; but for interest and local color and for the insight they offer into the life of the people, the great cargo boats of the flotilla are to be preferred. To the gay light-hearted Myanmar, whose philosophy is perfect indolence, and to whom time is infinite in its opportunities for doing nothing, the speed of the express steamer is of no attraction. A Burmese village which treats the arrival of the mail-packet with calm indifference is plunged into excitement when the hoarse whistle of its slower fellow is borne up the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river. On such occasions Sleepy Hollows where no one appears to have anything to do but doze in a conformable corner or bathe in the cool Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, attain to a ridiculous energy. For to every little village secluded from the great world beyond it, save in so far as it rests on the shores of the noblest of, highways, the cargo-boats with huge flats in tow mean the advent of news, of gossip, and of trade, things especially dear to the Myanmar woman's heart. Each week they leave Mandalay, the centre of all things to the Upper Myanmar mind, for the long voyage up the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river to Bhamo, and they bring with them all that a Myanmar heart can desire, all that a Myanmar village cannot furnish, from tinned Swiss milk and potted salmon to silk and pearls.

The process is eminently simple. The cargo-boat and at least one of her flats are partitioned out into stalls which are let for the entire voyage, a matter of a fortnight, from Mandalay to Bhamo and back. But the stall-holders are wisely conservative and retain their stalls for years. In this way they build up a business connection and arc well known in all the towns and villages along the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river. Thus if the Headman, Moung Bah, of Moda village, wishes for a new silk putsoe of the fashionable dog­tooth pattern, or his wife a tamein of the new apple-green and pink tartan, or Ma-Hla, the village belle, a necklace of Birmingham pearls, they go down to the steamer landing, and with much detail describe their requirements to Ah Tun the Chinaman, or Sheik Ibrahim the Mohammedan trader, whose long grey heard contrasts strikingly with the hairless faces about him ; and in the fullness of time the " fire-boat," trumpeting its advent, brings to each of them his heart's desire.

The transaction, gratifying in itself, is made more so by time. Moung Bah's wish for a fashionable garment was probably inspired by an eloquent hint from the silk dealer, or a glimpse of a Mandalay dandy when the last boat passed through. A week's reflection eked out with clouds of green tobacco smoke and

If you are traveling up in the boat next voyage you will see Moung Bah sitting on his haunches on the high foreshore of Moda village, chewing betel-nut with apparent calm ; and when the boat is run alongside and the lascars plunge overboard into the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river with a rope to make her fast, and the gangway planks are laid, Moung Bah will walk up gravely to the upper deck and enter into possession of his long-expected purchase. A period of further excitement will follow on his return home, when the fashion­able garment will run the fire of domestic criticism and the loud praise of the village cronies. Business transacted under such conditions is laden with subtle charms for the Oriental. Time, the mere element of hours and minutes, is a thing of no account in a bountiful land where there arc no paupers and no poor law ; in a smiling land where it is always afternoon.

The deck of a cargo-boat is itself a microcosm of Myanmar life. Down the centre there is the long double line of stalls, back to back, each stall separated from its neighbor by a row of bales or boxes; and in the small square spaces between, the stallholders have their habitation. Here at all hours you see them seated on gay carpets, reclining on soft quilts, slumbering under silken tartans, flirting, gossiping, smoking contentedly, or playing animated chess. A Burmese game of chess is an unique entertainment. Everything pertaining to it is of massive proportions. The chessboard is of solid wood nearly two feet square ; the squares look gigantic ; the pieces, rudely carved, are made to stand hard usage, for the Myanmars throws a curious vigor into his play, each piece being brought down on the board with a sounding thwack. In addition to the players there is always a group of friends and self-constituted advisers round the chessboard. Each of these takes a keen interest in the game and pours forth his advice with great eagerness. The player, with an amiable superior smile, plays his own game, and when this is at variance with proffered advice each move is followed by long-drawn sounds of pessimistic regret and resolute head-shaking. One or two spectators who do not understand the game look on in silence, smoking their long green cheroots in a manner suggestive of deep and concentrated thought. The game, in short, is interesting, because there is so much human interest in it.

The flats in tow of a cargo-steamer are occupied as a rule by a poorer class of stallholders than those in the steamer itself. Silks, cotton goods, fur coats, socks, linen, china, pottery, ironware, and the gewgaws of vanity here give way to the necessities of life—to salt and onions, piles of imported flour, molasses in little rhomboids like toffee, sugar in crystal­line heaps, baskets of potatoes, red and yellow chilies, and raw produce of the most bewildering variety. Most of the stallholders here are women. The atmosphere is wholly different from that in the adjoining steamer. The curtains are let down and a soft half-light pervades the flat. In the dim vista, broken here and there by bars of light in which the myriad motes riot, women lie asleep resting against soft flour-bags, or sit chatting in undertones in small groups. In this way the hours and weeks pass by, till they grow to years, and in some cases a lifetime.