Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 13, 2025
You can escape from enemies, as witness my companion, who had been shot at times without number and had only once been hit, in the leg, but you cannot escape Nats. Once, he told me, there were two very sacrilegious men, hunters by profession, only more abandoned than even the majority of hunters, and they went into this wood to hunt 'They didn't care for Nats, they said.
Big beetles passed us humming, and we met some children with lamps swinging, and they sang as they went, to keep away the Nats or spirits of things. Our steamer looked pleasantly homelike, lying a yard from the shore. The purdahs were up and showed the lamp-lit table on deck, set for dinner, and flowers, books and chairs, a cosy picture.
And I sez to myself, it can't be the fault of the place anyway; the law-makers have a chance for their souls to soar if they want to, here is room and to spare to pass laws big as elephants and camels, and I wondered that they should ever try to pass laws as small as muskeeters and nats. Thinkses I, I wonder them little laws don't git to strollin' round and git lost in them magnificent corridors.
It is of the nature of an Aspen, and of little or no practical use, but so holy that the poorest peasant will not disturb it. The Burmese believe the things of nature, but especially the trees, to be the abode of spirits. "To the Burman of to-day, not less than to the Greek of long ago, all nature is alive. The forest and the river and the mountains are full of spirits, whom the Burmans call Nats.
Everyone who passes stops to strike one or the other of the bells, they want to call the attention of the "good nats," or spirits, to the fact that they are at the pagoda! In this shed is an enormous bell large enough to hold half a dozen men. I don't think you'll be able to make much effect with a deer's horn on that.
It is true that a fervent Buddhist will not kill even a fish, but a fisherman is not quite such a reprobate as a hunter in popular estimation. And the Nats think so too, for the Nat of a pool will not forbid all fishing. You must give him his share; you must be respectful to him, and not offend him; and then he will fill your nets with gleaming fish, and all will go well with you.
If not, of course, you will come to grief; your nets will be torn, and your boat upset; and finally, if obstinate, you will be drowned. A great arm will seize you, and you will be pulled under and disappear for ever. A Nat is much like a human being; if you treat him well he will treat you well, and conversely. Courtesy is never wasted on men or Nats, at least, so a Burman tells me.
All the Nats everywhere seem to have been distressed at our arrival, to hate our presence, and to earnestly desire our absence. They are the spirits of the country and of the people, and they cannot abide a foreign domination. But the greatest place for Nats is the Popa Mountain, which is an extinct volcano standing all alone about midway between the river and the Shan Mountains.
They didn't care for anything at all apparently. 'They were absolutely without reverence, worse than any beast, said my companion. So they went into the wood to shoot, and they never came out again. A few days later their bare bones were found, flung out upon the road near the enchanted wood. The Nats did not care to have even the bones of such scoundrels in their wood, and so thrust them out.
That was what happened to them, and that was what might happen to us if we went in there. We did not go. Though the Nats of the forest will not allow even one of their beasts to be slain, the Nats of the rivers are not so exclusive. I do not think fish are ever regarded in quite the same light as animals.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking