BURMA 



1007 



BURMA 



Rapid Transit in Burma 



Where Elephants are Made 



High Caste, Woman of 



With Neck Rings Lower Classes Burmese Boys at School 



and it seems not difficult to understand the 

 "ten-year soldier" when he declares that "if 

 you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 

 'eed nought else." And more prosaic writers 

 admit that these pictures, as Kipling gives them 

 in On the Road to Mandalay, are not over- 

 drawn. 



The area of this great province on the east- 

 ern coast of the Bay of Bengal is 236,738 square 

 miles, somewhat less than that of Saskatche- 

 wan or of Texas; but its population of 12,115,- 

 217 is twenty-five times that of the province 

 named and three times that of, Texas. Assam, 

 Tibet, China and Siam border it on its land- 

 ward side. 



The People and Their Civilization. In many 

 lands of romance a depressing influence is the 

 degradation and misery of the people, but in 

 Burma the traveler does not feel this. The 

 native Burmese, who are of the Mongolian race, 

 are a good-natured, cheerful people, who take 

 life easily because they live in a land so kind 

 that it is only necessary to "tickle her with 

 a hoe and she laughs with a harvest." 

 Their philosophy of life, if it may be called by 

 so formal a name, is to work as little as pos- 

 sible and to spend the rest of their time in 



frolics and festivities. The betel nut and the 

 "whackin' white cheroot" are their chief in- 

 dulgences (see BETEL). Men and women alike 

 dress much in silks of bright colors, and a city 

 street on a festival day is a brilliant sight. 



In the hill regions to the east live the Shans, 

 a hard-working people whose views of life are 

 far more serious than those of the Burmese. 

 That they have not the artistic eye for dress 

 that distinguishes the Burmese may be seen 

 from the accompanying illustration. 



The Irrawaddy River is navigable for hun- 

 dreds of miles, and is connected with three 

 canals dug since British rule began. Carriage 

 roads have been built in many places, and 

 over 1,500 miles of railway are open, with 

 more under construction. Rangoon, the cap- 

 ital, is joined to Mandalay and Maulmain, the 

 other chief towns, by railroads. See RANGOON; 

 MANDALAY. 



The Land and Its Resources. Much of the 

 surface of Burma is hilly or mountainous, par- 

 allel ranges running with considerable regu- 

 larity from north to south. The highest moun- 

 tains are on the north, where an extension of 

 the great Himalayas shuts off Burma from 

 Tibet. Rivers flow in. the valleys running north 



