2 8o WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



may be hired at the rate of from Rs.25 to Rs.3O per mensem 

 per mule (about 2\ and the services of one muleteer 

 for every three mules is included. The mule men are also 

 very useful in assisting one's servants in pitching camp, 

 erecting tents, getting together firewood, and cutting down 

 jungle. These Maingthas, or Shan Tayouks as they are called, 

 come of a very hard sturdy race, and at first sight with their 

 pig-tails one would take them to be Chinamen. They are, as 

 a matter of fact, of Chinese extraction. Burmans are abso- 

 lutely useless as muleteers, as they do not understand how to 

 lace up packs on to the Shan or Maingtha pack-saddle, which 

 is really one of the simplest, lightest, least galling, and most 

 serviceable articles of its kind I have ever seen, and in my 

 opinion to be preferred to any Government commissariat or 

 other pack-saddles ever invented. Should the sportsman not 

 be able to hire mules in the district he intends shooting over, 

 and should money be a secondary consideration, I would 

 suggest his getting an agent in Mandalay or Bhamo to pur- 

 chase mules for him. Good serviceable mules may be bought 

 from sums varying from Rs.So to Rs.i2O each. Carts 

 drawn by bullocks may be hired in any district throughout 

 Burma for sums varying from Rs.i to Rs.2 per diem; 

 they are, however, a very slow means of locomotion, and the 

 sportsman can only keep the beaten track ; all hilly country 

 would be quite inaccessible to them. A good deal of baggage 

 can be conveyed by cart, and when rough cart roads intersect 

 a flat game country, it would perhaps be as well to take them, 

 for part of the journey at any rate. The feasibility of this would 

 of course first be ascertained by the sportsman. I have often 

 used carts myself in the Tagaung subdivision of the Ruby 

 Mines district, but found that I was unable to get as deep 

 into the jungle as I should like to have gone, owing to the 

 absence of cart tracks and to the continual breaking of an 

 axle-tree, an accident which requires a halt of a few hours. 

 No journey by cart could be undertaken into a hilly, rocky 

 country, such as is likely to be met with in parts of the 

 following districts of Upper Burma, where the best big-game 

 shooting is, namely, Chindwin, Katha, Myitkyna, Singu, in 

 Mandalay district, Shwegu in Bhamo district, Momeik and 



