a bank of sand beside it, and G. and
the Burmese woman made a great collection of orchids and bulbs, and ants
and stinging beasts as they climbed the trees. But alas, I got only one
fish, and it was no beauty! I rather think the Taiping water is too
discoloured and sandy for Mahseer.

If the ride in the morning was pleasant, that in the afternoon and
evening was even more so. As we came down the glens to Kalychet,--the
gold of the evening faded in front of us, and left us in soft
sweetly-scented darkness. The fire-flies lit up, and their little golden
lamps flickering alongside through the intricacies of the dark bamboo
stems helped to show us the track.

[Illustration]

... How tired we were when we at last reached the rest-house: tired of
the delight of the day and the difficulty of riding in the dark. It blew
a little during the night and grew cold, but we thought of the heat of
the day and made belief that we were very snug, though the wind did play
freely through the open floor and cane walls.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From Kalychet to Momouk in the sun in the morning was perhaps our most
enjoyable ride, such heat, and light, and exhilarating air, the air of
Norway with southern colour. Butterflies, huge black fellows with
dazzling blue patches, fluttered off the sandy bits of road, their
shadows blacker than themselves, the ponies' feet crackled the great
hard teak leaves. Out of forest and creepers into bamboo thickets; then
into glades with flowering kaing grass and wild fruit, redder than
tomatoes, hanging from creeping plants; across slender wooden bridges,
over roaring streams, always getting lower till the path came out on the
plains again on the wide macadamised road.

... It was rather sad getting on to the plain again. We left our hearts
in the Kachin Highlands, and thought, with a little melancholy, how long
it would be before we breathed clean hill air again.

Our train got a little disorganised getting into Momouk, the
pack-ponies' backs were the worse of wear, and our Boy had fallen out
with sore feet--the poor fellow had been working up to his collar. He
crept in hours after the others and collapsed, his bare soles cracked
and legs in pain. Silly fellow won't wear shoes for some caste or
religious superstition; he is more fitted for his clerks work than for
tramping. I held his pulse and tried to look as if I knew what to do
with a sick Hindoo, tu