444 THE BURMESE 



lar and stocky, with excellent endurance and the very 

 best of manners. The Burmese are Mongols, but even 

 in Lower Burmah the healthful influence of their orig- 

 inal uplands in the Himalayas is clearly to be traced. 

 Tlie men are strong, and many of the women are pretty; 

 they are quite another race from tlieir Hindoo neighbors. 

 Why they did not ages ago conquer the entire Indian 

 peninsula it is hard to say, unless they prefer their own 

 rugged hills. The Burmah pony has all the character- 

 istics of the Burmah man ; and he is said often to pos- 

 sess road-speed, probably not, however, in our sense. He 

 finds his way all over India under the pseudonym of 

 Pegu pony. 



The aspect of Southern differs materially from that of 

 Northern India. The soft, moist, tropical heat keeps the 

 native's pores open and seems to make him a cleaner mor- 

 tal. He strikes one as better fed — it is an ambition here 

 to grow fat; his huts are neater, and altogether he fills 

 your ideas of decency to a greater degree. By decency I 

 do not refer to clothes. If the bathing-suit of a modern 

 belle can go in a bonbon box, so will the full dress of a 

 Hindoo go in a thimble. A string around his waist, with 

 a breech-cloth scarcely as big as a handkercliief tied to it 

 front and rear, is all he needs. He wears no turban ex- 

 cept in the extreme summer heat, and goes about looking 

 for all the world like an old black -bronze statue. The 

 children remain as the Lord made them. The women are 

 always scrupulously clad, if diaphauously. But though 

 the Hindoo sometimes rides a bullock, he is rarely enough 

 astride a horse. His little native jutka pony is barely 

 worth notice ; he is not half as good a goer as the trotting 

 bullock. 



In Madras the waler is omnipresent. He is fair for 

 carriage woi-k, not more. A pair of good-going sixteen- 



