38 Naturalist at Large 



folk, picturesque, rather offish, and dressed gaily in red 

 and blue. We succeeded in getting some of their swords 

 and other artifacts for the Peabody Museum. After leav- 

 ing Bhamo we slipped downstream, the current carrying 

 us along quite quickly, and in a few days were back again 

 in Mandalay. 



This excursion had proved so enjoyable and to our no- 

 tion so instructive that we decided to try one more Bur- 

 mese expedition. We had heard of the Gokteik Gorge. This 

 was to be reached by the railroad which runs out into the 

 Shan states. It is from the end of this railroad that the 

 Burma Road runs. We went first to Mamyio, a pleasant hill 

 station, and then on to the gorge where there was a ddk 

 bungalow, just a short distance before the railway ended 

 at Lashio. The last stage of the journey was made in a 

 somewhat primitive railroad coach: I remember finding 

 the sliding door which led into the wasliroom completely 

 covered, and I mean loo per cent covered, with the largest 

 and most ablebodied cockroaches I have ever seen. They 

 scattered about when they were disturbed but before long 

 crawled back and took up their old roosting places. 



The extremely deep Gokteik Gorge through which a 

 stream ran was very narrow and the cliffs which formed 

 its walls were so close together, and both "slantindicular" 

 in the same direction, that the effect was just like being in 

 a cave. We looked up and saw no sky. Here there was an 

 enormous colony of cave swifts of the genus Collocalia, 

 a genus abundant, widespread, multitudinous in species, 

 and distributed all over southeastern Asia and the islands. 

 It is from one species of the genus, in the East Indies, that 

 the nests made of the swifts' dried saliva are gathered to 



