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I had to meet Carter at the Fort where we were to take canoes, and an elephant, across the Irrawaddy to a jheel, five miles through jungle. The sun came up splendidly, hot and yellow over China, and warmed me comfortably as I drove to the Fort, and the mist off the plain rose and became sunlit cumuli to lie for the rest of the day on the shoulders of the Kachin Highlands.
I am sorry Mr Buchanan went; there's much to ask, about what he knew; of trees and beasts and people, or of the geology of these mountains that are beginning to appear to our left and right: to the west, the southern spine of the Arrakan Mountains, and to the east, the ranges of the Shan Highlands, which divide the Irrawaddy valley from the valley of the Salwin river.
I had sent my Boy round to find a place where we might stay, and on our return to the steamer he told me the Dak bungalow was occupied, likewise the circuit house, so we were stranded and homeless on the banks of the Irrawaddy. We then went up to the club, and there found to our relief our Boy was ... mistaken, and that the Dak bungalow was available.
Their right consisting of 15,000 men, commanded by Sudda Woon had crossed the Irrawaddy, and was marching down the other bank; with the apparent object of recrossing, below Prome, and cutting the British line of communication. The centre from 25,000 to 30,000 strong, commanded by the Kee Wongee was coming down the left bank of the river, accompanied by a great fleet of war boats.
For the second time since that night on the Irrawaddy, Elsa recorded a disagreeable sensation. It proved to be transitory, but at the time it served to establish a stronger doubt in regard to her independence, so justifiable in her own eyes. It might be insidiously leading her too far away from the stepping-off place. The unspoken words in those hateful eyes!
It being important to ascertain the number and position of the enemy posted on the banks of the Irrawaddy, Commodore Lambert directed Captain Tarleton to take under his orders HMS Medusa and three Company's steamers, and to proceed up the river for the purpose of obtaining that information. Accordingly, on the 6th of July, the vessels proceeded up the Irrawaddy.
After the Defiles we stop at Sinkan on the left bank, where the river spreads out again into the more usual style of Irrawaddy scenery, the valley very wide, the sandy river's edge capped with a jungle of waving kaing, or elephant grass, eighteen feet high, and over and beyond bluey-green tree-clad mountains, not very high, but high enough to be interesting and to raise hope.
Two miles below Nampoung the two rivers join, and the combined stream flows on to enter the Irrawaddy a mile or two above Bhamo. No change could be greater or more sudden. We toiled upwards in the blazing sun, and in two hours we were deep in the thickest jungle, in the exuberant vegetation of a tropical forest.
It was to the water force that the capture of Donabew was intrusted, as it lay upon the opposite bank of the Irrawaddy; while the general's force was directed against Tharawa, at the junction of the two main branches of the river.
I thought that my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamps, to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Mississippi forests, had taught me something about these pests; but I was doomed to learn a lesson that night and the following which will cause me never to doubt the possibility of anything, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may appear, connected with mosquitoes.
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