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Updated: May 3, 2025
A faint mist lifting off the shore. The sun is hardly risen, but already the bullock carts with heavy wooden wheels are squeaking and groaning along the sand. There is just enough mercantile life to be comprehensible and picturesque; some four or five Irrawaddy Flotilla steamers are fast to the bank, and between them are some sixty native canoes with round mat houses on them.
Not four years of fighting in Burma proper, for most of the Irrawaddy valley was peaceful enough by the end of 1889; but as the central parts quieted down, I was sent to the frontier, first on the North and then on the East by the Chin mountains; so that it was not until 1890 that a transfer to a more settled part gave me quiet and opportunity for consideration of all I had seen and known.
It would be impossible for me to tell you about everything of interest that the Irrawaddy has to show, but perhaps I have said enough to give you some little idea of how beautiful and interesting a river it is. Leaving the river, let us go ashore at one of the many villages on its banks, and see how the Burmese live.
He was a brave man, and, indeed, there are many brave men amongst the Burmese. They kill leopards with sticks and stones very often, and even tigers. They take their frail little canoes across the Irrawaddy in flood in a most daring way.
Now we are moving on, up the river, by the Irrawaddy Flotilla Co. paddle boat, instead of going to Mandalay by train and down by boat as is more customary, this for the reason that all the comfortable bogie carriages are away north with the Prince's following, and night in an old carriage is not to our tastes.
Altogether, in the impressiveness of its scenery, the quiet, irresistible flow of the river, and the bright tints and varied growths of the forest, the lower defile of the Irrawaddy forms one of the most striking scenes I have ever enjoyed; and if the river had no other beauty than this to show, it alone would amply repay the traveller for his journey.
The passage of the defile occupies about two hours, and the course of the river is very tortuous. At the bends little beaches of bright shingle lie against the tree-roots. Fishing cradles, such as I have described, are frequent, and cormorants in great numbers share with the fishermen the spoils of the river, for nowhere on the Irrawaddy are the fish of better quality than here.
Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me more than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a "country ship," which is the name bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and they still exceed the generality.
There are red houses peeping out between the trees, and boats begin to pop up here and there, but we don't seem to be getting on very fast, for we are zigzagging this way and that across the water, almost more crookedly than we did on the Nile or Irrawaddy to avoid sandbanks.
The memory of that liquor would cause men to weep as they lay dying in the teak forests of upper Burmah or the slime of the Irrawaddy . And there was a port which was notable; and there was a champagne of an obscure brand, which always came to mess without any labels, because the White Hussars wished none to know where the source of supply might be found.
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