Life and Travel in Lower Burmah: A Retrospect — Edition Insights

STILL UNDER CANVAS 22

THE CITY OF PALACES 36

ON THE MOVE ONCE MORE 46

THE TEACHINGS OF BUDDHA 69

RIVER-LIFE UNDER DIFFICULTIES 85

A SECRET EXPEDITION 137

“LEAVE OF ABSENCE” 188

THE MERGUI ARCHIPELAGO 233

A RETROSPECT OF LIFE AND TRAVEL IN LOWER BURMAH.

“So long As he could make me with this eye or ear Distinguish him from others, he did keep The deck with glove, or hat, or handkerchief, Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind Could best express how slow his soul sail’d on, How swift his ship.” SHAKESPEARE, _Cymbeline_.

The conditions under which we now plough the ocean or fly through continents present so remarkable a contrast to the state of affairs half a century back, that we who are in the autumn of life, with the signal of the “sere and yellow leaf” fluttering feebly at the masthead, can scarce realize the old coaching days, with their thirteen hours’ travel to every hundred miles, as more than an old dream.

Time in those days was, to all appearances, of less commercial value than it is now, when it represents the Golden Calf, and commerce is conducted by means of electricity and steam. The merchant had to wait patiently for months before learning the fate of his argosies; Clive was eleven months reaching India; experience and nautical skill reduced the time to six, and improved routes to four months; while one month now suffices, through the agency of steam, from Southampton to Bombay. The arrival is then flashed home through that “girdle” which Puck offered to put “round about the earth in forty minutes.”

When the Victorian era takes its place in the pages of England’s history, the revolution effected by electricity and steam in its commerce, its battles, and its treaties, will occupy a large and important part of the interesting and glorious chapter.

Long voyages under canvas are nowadays therefore, except as a means of recuperating one’s health, the exception; and it is not surprising that the employment of steam power should be so universal, whether from considerations of time and business, or of sea-sickness and pleasure; a steamer moves through fifteen or twenty miles an hour day and night, independent of wind and weather, whereas a sailing vessel is heavily handicapped, having to quadruple the distance in constant “dogs’ legs,” besides being becalmed in certain latitudes for days together.

The rising generation greet any allusion to the voyages so common in the palmy days of the now defunct East India Company with _fin-de-siècle_ contempt; living, as they do, in an atmosphere of perpetual excitement and unrest, they are almost incapable of comprehending the frame of mind in which their forefathers plodded through their allotted span of life.

But as “many things by season season’d are to their right praise and true perfection,” so the human mind seems able to adapt and accommodate itself to the varying circumstances of this transient sphere. A century or so hence the people of this country will probably look on our modern naval and mercantile craft with as critical an eye as that with which we contemplate the _Victory_, or the first steamers of the P. and O. We pride ourselves on the combination of size, speed, and comfort, and the graceful lines of our floating palaces, on their electric lighting and luxurious saloons; we feel confident that not much more can be accomplished: yet could we but “revisit the glimpses of the moon” in 1992, we should find ourselves in the midst of a new creation.

On the 1st September, 185—, a majestic old frigate-built East Indiaman lay moored off Spithead, all ready to weigh anchor and awaiting only the arrival of the pilot and one or two passengers, detained by accident or otherwise. She was surrounded by numerous small craft, some laden with various articles for sale, others waiting to convey ashore those who had come aboard to see the last of sons and daughters about to seek their fortunes in the glorious East, where money was reputed to be easily made, and men hungered for wives of the European pattern.

Very mixed were the feelings of the passengers at the moment of parting: regret on the one hand at being separated from loving parents, severed from the tried companions and indelible associations of early youth; on the other, a certain feeling of independence and freedom, and the natural ambition to get on in the world.

Many shook hands for the last time on this side of the grave; and as the tiny craft pulled away and were lost in the distance, the solitude of the cabin was sought, and a blessing implored on the dear ones left behind.

There may be a reluctance on the part of many to utter a prayer under normal conditions, but in an unusual state of things there are, I believe, few who will not deviate from the beaten track and intuitively ask aid from a higher power.

Sorrow, however, takes but a passing hold of the elastic nature of youth; and when the shrill whistle of the boatswain and the stamping of many feet on deck proclaimed that the anchor was being weighed and the canvas loosened, curiosity soon gained the ascendancy, and, in spite of eyes still red with weeping, passengers as yet unknown to each other might be seen occupying every coign of vantage, and watching the sailors as they sped round the capstan to some familiar air played on the fiddle; and anon looking up as sail after sail was loosened, then drawn home and bellied by the freshening breeze. That she was moving soon became evident from the noise made by the water and the gradual diminution of familiar objects ashore. Glasses were brought into requisition, and closed with a sigh when, even with their aid, all was blurred, hazy, indistinct.

So faded that “white-faced shore, whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tide”; and before the end of the year we were to look upon another of a very different complexion, low, swampy, and muddy; fringed with cocoanut trees, at the foot of which jackals shrieked, making night hideous, and around which mosquitoes buzzed and bit, as with the avowed mission of scaring away nature’s sweet restorer.

To the officers and crew all the bustle of getting under weigh was of course familiar; but to some fifty passengers, starting for the most part on their first voyage, it all seemed chaos: anon a stentorian voice gave an order, resulting in a tramping of feet and the thud of ropes falling on the deck, to the accompaniment of “Cheery, boys, oh!” or some other ditty that was prime favourite in those days.

Having made a fair offing, the good old ship bore steadily down channel, the pilot entering his boat somewhere off Start Point, and his “God speed!” seemed to sever the last link that bound us to the mother country.

Even in a comparatively calm sea the movement of an East Indiaman was sufficient to test one’s sea-going qualities, so that, when the bells had been struck for meals, the cuddy table presented numerous gaps, while certain ominous sounds proceeding from the direction of the private accommodation announced to the happy few the advent of that terrible ordeal _mal-de-mer_. Happily for the majority of mortals it soon wears itself out; and the stomach, conforming to the law that “use is second nature,” soon becomes tolerant of the new order of things, and ceases to resent the innovation of digesting under conditions of perpetual motion. I only came across one case in which sea-sickness became a source of positive danger. The sufferer, a hale and healthy man on coming aboard, was reduced in the course of a couple of months to a mere bag of bones. What medical aid failed to do was accomplished by nature; his sickness ceased, and in lieu thereof he acquired an insatiable appetite which distressed him. He apologized for the amount that he ate at meals, and for filling his pockets with biscuits afterwards; but he was powerless to restrain himself, so that by the time we arrived at our destination he was the counterpart of his original self. I never saw him again, but I imagine that, if he did ever return to Europe, his path lay through unexplored regions, as I believe he would have attempted to traverse them on foot rather than again enter a cabin.

Personally, I never experienced sea-sickness; the only influence that the motion of the ship had over me was that I fell asleep on the least provocation, which was very many times a day, as reading and writing were equally out of the question.

By the time the dreaded Bay of Biscay had been crossed, and the ship had entered warmer latitudes, the deck presented a more animated appearance, and the cuddy table became devoid of gaps. All sorts and conditions of both sexes had now acquired their sea-legs, and their sea-stomachs too; for the most part they ate, I am convinced, more than was good for them. Sea-air enjoys the reputation of stimulating the appetite, and it undoubtedly had that effect in this particular instance, assisted, maybe, by the seductive variety presented at each meal. It was surprising, indeed, how such a number could be so catered for day after day, extending to the third part of a year: mutton, pork, fowls, ducks, and geese were always forthcoming, to say nothing of the ubiquitous ham; nor was there any falling off in fresh bread and pastry, while the cows in the long boat kept up the supply of milk. After each meal the water astern became dotted with empty bottles—for passengers, who could have as much ale, &c., as they pleased, _did_ please—which, as they sank to great depths, were probably shivered into fragments ere they reached the bottom by the increasing pressure. Supposing, indeed, the waters had dried up, the Cape route to India could, I doubt not, have been easily traced by these innumerable fragments of glass. The captious critic, commenting on what we had done for that vast continent extending from the Himalayas to Cape Cormorin, was wont to remark that, had the Mutiny been successful, empty bottles alone would have remained as monuments of a century’s dominion. Thus we should have had the same memorial from Spithead to the Hooghly, and might have figured as a nation in whose administration glass figured as an important ingredient, the captious one ignoring in all probability such insignificant achievements as the Grand Trunk Road, and suppression of Infanticide, Thuggee, and Suttee.

The only article on which any restriction was placed was the fresh water allotted for the purpose of ablution, more than a given quantity being obtainable only under peculiar conditions. But temptation, like slander, “rides on the posting winds, and doth belie all corners of the earth,” and even old East-Indiaman stewards were hardly above its subtle influence.

Unrestricted access, then, to everything save fresh water, was the old order of things; and the P. and O., besides having kept abreast of the requirements of the present day in the matter of shipbuilding, speed, and comfort, deserve more credit than they actually got for being the pioneers of so admirable an innovation as lowering the passage-money, and charging extra for wine, beer, and aërated waters.

Many of my contemporary travellers will remember how from start to finish of a voyage the table was crowded at breakfast, lunch, and dinner with bottles containing various wines; in addition to which there were frequent descents to the cuddy to slake an imaginary thirst with a B. and S. This inordinate and imaginary thirst died a natural death under the new system of paying for what is ordered. A bottle of claret on the breakfast table became the exception rather than the rule: few made it “eight bells” to any extent, and the pop of soda-water bottles became very rare.

From the suspicious way in which we English approach each other, whether in a private room or in a public conveyance, it would seem as if there lurked in our composition some of that cautious mistrust so characteristic of the wild beast. But after having been a week or so in each other’s company, the passengers positively began to thaw towards one another; a welcome change that was, however, succeeded by a still harder frost. For a time, indeed, we constituted a happy family, dancing, singing, and acting together; but this temporary and unstable fusion of minds was doomed to resolve itself into two antagonistic elements, an untoward state of affairs that culminated only as the good ship drew near her destination. There were two ways of accounting for this division in the camp; my own view of the matter was that we saw too much of each other from “rosy morn till dewy eve,” which, besides breeding contempt, gave birth to that “green-eyed monster,” jealousy. But the sailors ascribed all that went wrong to the presence of so many clergymen, whom they looked upon as the _fons et origo_ of storms and everything undesirable. It is, however, a melancholy yet undeniable fact that a number of human beings herded together for any considerable length of time will be sure to fall out, behaving in all probability rather less charitably than so many tigers and jackals.

But on the whole, much as there was to lament in the matter of ruffled tempers and petty ways, the outward-bound vessel represented a perfect paradise during the four months’ voyage, compared with the ordeal of a similar period aboard a homeward-bound Indiaman. To give even a faint idea of the angry conflagration of passions by which the passengers in the latter were wont to distinguish themselves, one would have to borrow from the “Inferno” of Dante, and conjecture what must be going on in Pandemonium, where the evil spirits meet in council!

The living freight was of the most volatile and combustible nature, while the perpetual friction of its conflicting elements—swarms of noisy children, and touchy old men with disordered livers—kept the ship in perpetual danger of destruction. But a merciful Providence has tempered the wind to the Anglo-Indian by pointing out an overland route, and consigning the homeward-bound Indiaman, in so far as passengers are concerned, to the pages of history; so that the danger of spontaneous combustion is now confined to the cargo.

To resume our outward voyage. By the time we had finished taking stock of each other, conjecturing why So-and-so was going out to the East, the beautiful island of Madeira hove in sight; but to our united earnest entreaties to be allowed to land for a few hours at Funchal the captain turned a deaf ear, expecting the wind to change at any moment to a more favourable quarter. For some time, however, it continued dead against us, and the repeated tacking enabled us to obtain different views of the peaceful isle, so near and yet so far, with the land sloping up from the sea to some 6000 feet, and patches of cultivation appearing here and there amid the thick woods.

With all the selfishness of youth, I fervently hoped to remain weather-bound in such a paradise for an indefinite period; but my hopes were literally blown away by the wind itself, which “chopped” round, and Madeira faded from view.

The beautiful is said to be a joy only as long as it lasts; but my recollections of this island on which nature has been so lavish have outlived so evanescent a period, and I have often dreamt of it in later days. Had it only fallen in with the eternal fitness of things to have made it a part of the outlying British Empire, English capital and enterprise would have developed its resources, seconding the efforts of Nature’s prodigality, instead of counteracting them. We may possibly have already acquired more than our share in all _five_ quarters of the globe without casting longing eyes on Naboth’s vineyard; our possessions may reasonably excite the jealousy of other powers, but no one can deny that we are specially adapted, both physically and mentally, for colonization far above any other nation; and that Madeira would have shone with especial brilliancy in the British Crown is a foregone conclusion.

On my first return voyage, years after, we landed at St. Helena, which, interesting as it is from its historical associations, cannot in my opinion compare with Madeira in natural beauty.

Among the least pleasant experiences of the whole voyage was the ordeal of being becalmed near the line, where an oily sea sent back the glare of perpendicular rays: several days of this sort of thing proved too much for the tempers of the passengers, without evoking very choice selections from the copious vocabulary of the crew.

The cuddy table was patronized in stately silence, and at any time, indeed, conversation became as spasmodic and laconic as the merest courtesy would allow. We of the civilized persuasion have somehow drifted into the notion that it is imperative on us to talk at all times and seasons, so that few tongues ever rest from morning to night, when the timely interference of Providence paralyzes for a time our power of speech.

Being becalmed in such a spot has its ludicrous as well as its painful side; and few could help feeling amused at the sight of the ship’s bows pointing at different times to every direction of the compass, as the under-currents made us drift where we would not, intensifying our utter helplessness.

Then, too, the captain would come on deck, look around and aloft, whistle, and betake himself once more to the sacred precincts of his cabin. The officer on watch would imitate his chief with pious precision, especially the whistle, in which he had the faith peculiar to sailors in need of a favourable wind. But the son of Astræas remained in obdurate seclusion in his Thracian cave, and passengers and crew rose to the verge of desperation.

One early hour out of the twenty-four contained, indeed, some element of enjoyment, and that was when the decks were undergoing the beneficial process of “holy-stoning,” which consisted in rubbing them from stem to stern with a species of pumice and a plentiful supply of sea water. Then it was that the early bird could get a most enjoyable bath, not in the sea, indeed, which was infested with sharks, but on deck under the full play of a hose.

The bath was customarily followed by a cup of tea, extracted by bribery and corruption from the cook; and then we generally paced the deck barefoot and with just a suspicion of clothing, until the _levée_ of El Señor Sol, whom, from his nasty habit of insinuating himself under the brim of one’s hat, I have always found most trying at daybreak. The bath, the cup of tea, and an anteprandial pipe were not the only advantages of early rising, as one also escaped thereby the extremely trying noise of “holy-stoning” directly over one’s cabin.

No Hindoo, Mohammedan, or Buddhist ever went through his religious ceremonies with such unerring regularity and unshaken faith as inspired the sailors in their “holy-stoning,” in which process they seemed to take especial delight, so that it almost amounted to fetichism; and the face of the chief mate, who usually presided at this daily celebration, would assume an angelic expression that apparently stimulated the men to further efforts.

Unquestionably great as are the benefits conferred by the modern appliances and improvements in the art of shipbuilding, in one respect at least the old Indiaman had the whip-hand of its successor, and that was a roomy cabin, a bed- and sitting-room combined, amply, if not elegantly, furnished. Contrasted with the berth—or “pigging”—system of modern ships, this was a prodigious advantage, compensating to a great extent for the length of the voyage. Being caged up with several utter strangers, passing, for example, through the Red Sea, and in a state of insufferable heat, is an ordeal that one is not likely to forget; having to climb at nights into an upper shelf, and, if one is fortunate enough to sleep through the night without being pitched out, putting one’s bare foot on the bald head of the gentleman below, who also wanted to get up at the same moment—these are instances of the luxury of modern travel of which one hears so much. And we bear it all with a patient shrug worthy of Shylock!

Another digression! But how can one help philosophizing on board ship?