as perfectly comfortable as the mail boat we
have left--cabins, mess table, promenade on the upper deck in the bows.
There are curtains round the bows to drop if there is too much draught,
and thick handsome carpets on deck. To compare price, comfort, and
beauty of scenery with a Nile trip would be hard luck on Old Nile and
its steamers. I should say this is a third cheaper and six times more
comfortable, and many times more interesting. With regard to mosquitoes
there are more at this present moment of writing than I have had the
misfortune of meeting elsewhere, but it isn't so all the road. I still
think, however, that those mosquitoes of the Bassein Creek are
incomparable.

We (that is merely "I" this time) went to-day with a very European party
of Mandalay residents up and across the river to Mingun in a sort of
large picnic on a Government launch. We went to see the second biggest
bell in the world and a pagoda that would have been one of the biggest
buildings, if it had ever been finished! Both are great _draws_, and
neither is of any account. The view of the winding river from the top of
the ruins of the pagoda is certainly exquisite, and for ever to be
remembered. But it's a pretty stiff climb to get there, and you should
let your enemy go behind, for the loose bricks sometimes go down through
the shrubs like bolting rabbits.

The trees too are splendid, and the distant ruby mountains are very
exquisite, but as for dancing on a Government boat's deck, and tea and
small talk--such things may be had at home, and brass bands too--_mo
thruaigh_!

The big bell weighs about ninety tons; it is hung on modern girders, far
enough off the ground to let you crawl inside, and it has a poor tone.
The diameter of the lip is sixteen feet. The masonry, otherwise the base
for the proposed pagoda, contains 8,000,000 cubic feet, is 165 feet high
and 230 feet square, and is cracked through the middle and tumbling to
pieces owing, some say, to an earthquake and thunderbolts--I think from
bad building and the natural inclination of loose bricks to find their
angle of repose.

To-night we gharried to the Grahams to dinner, over the ups and downs
and deep sand and ruts of the shore, over cables and round timber heads
and teak logs till we got to the hard, a man on each side holding up the
conveyance, and two men with lanterns.

[Illustration]

There were splendid roses on the dinner-table and strawberries down from
the Shan Hi