238 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



and industrial work by their more thrifty, hard-working, and 

 plodding neighbours, the natives of India and Chinamen. 

 What he will eat and drink to-morrow does not trouble him 

 in the least so long as he has enough for to-day. Such a 

 thing as a starving Burman, however, is unknown, as food 

 may be had from any monastery for the asking, and wages are 

 high ; the people are besides noted for their charitable and 

 hospitable qualities. If you enter an out-of-the-way jungle 

 village, where no white man has perhaps ever set foot in before, 

 you are sure to receive a pleasant reception. You may be 

 tired, travel-stained, and disreputable-looking, with regard to 

 dress and general appearance. You may look like a veritable 

 tramp or loafer, in fact, as one often does in out-of-the-way 

 parts of Upper Burma, from deputy commissioners downwards. 

 At any rate, speaking for myself, my appearance, decked out 

 as I have often been in a pair of baggy, dark blue, silk Shan 

 trousers, " baungbees," a banian, a shooting-coat, and an old 

 brown Ellwood's shikar-hat, would certainly lead any one at 

 home, who should see me thus clad for the first time, to suppose 

 that I had either escaped out of a lunatic asylum or was in 

 reality a tramp. It makes no difference to the Burman ; he 

 will at once attend to your wants and that of your pony before 

 even troubling you with any inquisitive questions as to who 

 you are, your destination, the object of your journey, etc. 

 Fresh cocoa-nuts, cheroots, the offer of a seat on a strip of brand- 

 new Manchester carpet in the verandah of his house, are at 

 once placed at your disposal. The perfect freedom of the 

 women, as I have already remarked, and the very frank manner 

 in which they reply to your questions and in turn put others 

 to you, is, coupled with their seductive and winning ways, 

 particularly attractive to an Englishman, and very different 

 from what one would be likely to meet with from any other 

 Oriental. 



Their food consists chiefly of rice, vegetables, fresh and 

 salt fish ; a decoction of pounded fish is also consumed in 

 a state of semi-putrefaction, after it has undergone a process 

 which need not here be gone into, but it is considered amongst 

 them as a bonne bouche, and known as " ngapee," their national 

 dish. His one and only ambition, so far as I have been 



