Occasional wooded islands broke the monotony of the
river, and were just discernible from the magnificent English roads
which skirted the hills high up from the river, and yellow sandspits and
big wedges of granite and rock ran far out into its uneven course. By
day the joyous Burma sun smiled upon all, and at midday poured its
merciless heat down upon all mankind, unheeding the weary wanderer whose
tramp was now near done. At night the tropical moon turned all this
riverine world to the likeness of a very fairyland. Lying in a long
chair in the dak bungalows one drank in the scenes which succeeded one
another in bewildering succession, and felt himself thrilled by an
almost fierce appreciation of eastern beauty. It was good to meet again
an Englishman, a sturdy, firm-featured Englishman, whose love of the
East, like mine own, was a veritable obsession. The sun glare of the
tropics had parched the color out of our white skin, and despite the
fact that malaria came back again here to taunt me, yet I was again in
the East that I loved, that had scarred and marked me ere my time
mayhap. And yet I, with many such of my own countrymen, despite her
rough handling, worship her.
* * * * *
In three days I was in Bhamo.
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