to tranship the mails
and Burmese passengers. Meantime I took a spell of painting, then
Krishna and I hunted up a bamboo, got out snake-rings, fishing book, and
reel, and had a rod fixed up in no time. What with gun, cartridges,[32]
and painting things, my cabin looks quite interesting--to my mind. We
have but one other passenger, so we may utilise two cabins, one as
sleeping-room, the other as sitting-room, gun-room, and studio combined.
As such it might be even bigger with advantage, but for situation it
would be impossible to beat--for changing views from the window or
swirling tide and passing boats with people in them, like bunches of
flowers flaring in the sun, and then all soft and delicate as they float
past in our shadow. The priests in these boats, with their yellow robes
and round palm leaf fans have a decorative effect of repetition, and we
are told these fans keep their thoughts from wandering from
righteousness to pretty girls. Palm leaves, robes, and their bare right
shoulders and arms are all in harmonious browns and yellows; the water
is bluish mother-of-pearl. The men row their boats as all Southerners
do, Italians, and the rest, standing and backing them like gondolas;
only the Burman uses two oars.

[32] Telegraphed to Cook, Rangoon, who sent them to Mandalay by train.

But to the fishing rod and line; we started with bait and did underhand
casting from lower deck up and down the ship's side. The rod was
excellent, a split new cane, if not exactly the "Hardy split," and it
did not lie wholly between two points--it meandered a little, but I've
got salmon on worse. We got nothing, and yet I saw a Burman in a dug-out
log, with a no whit better rod, pull up a beauty like a sea trout of two
pounds, as he drifted past; so next stopping place I hope you will hear
of fish "grassed" or "creeled," as they say in the papers.

We pass Mingun, half-an-hour up the river from Mandalay. I've mentioned
this place before and its bell. The bell is big, so the traveller is
expected to make every effort to see it. To me, the size of a bell is
not very interesting, and one heap of stone (pyramids included) seems as
interesting as another. It's the design that counts.

The Flotilla steamer does not always stop at Mingun; we went steaming
past it on our left. The reflections of the trees and ruin in the
smoothly running stream were crossed by rippling bands of lavender,
where a breeze touched the water: and sea swallows