Back to Burma 253 
to the innkeeper at Manshien bidding him cook them for 
supper. It was New Year’s Eve, my last night in China. 
Starting again before the sun was in the valley on New 
Year’s Day, I crossed the frontier and entered the forests 
of Burma. In the day time there were gibbons to be seen 
dropping heavily with great splashing of leaves from tree 
to tree, and flocks of myna birds performing droll antics ; 
by night, the occasional sparkle of a fire-fly and that curious 
all-pervading sound which forms a kind of background to 
the tropic night, the drone of cicads. But it was by night 
especially that the roar of the Taping river in the gorge 
below carried me in fancy away back to the vast solitudes 
of the Land of Deep Corrosions. 
I reached Kolongkha at eight o’clock at night after a 
ride of forty miles, only to find that the fundamental 
resources of a dak bungalow are far inferior to those of 
the meanest Chinese inn; there were indeed crockery and 
glassware and excellent furniture, all at the disposal of the 
traveller, but even a hungry man cannot eat crockery, and 
if it isa choice between bedsteads and blankets the latter will 
be found the most generally useful. I had arrived so late 
that it was impossible to get anything to eat, and so cold 
did it become towards morning that I was eventually driven 
to pull down the door curtains and wrap myself in them. 
Starting at 5 a.m. without any breakfast, since there 
was no guarantee that I should ever get any, however long 
the delay, I reached Momawk at two o'clock, and finding a 
Shan establishment where they catered for wayfarers, fared 
sumptuously on biscuits and coffee. Another nine miles down 
the dusty high road, and I was back in Bhamo, just over 
ten months since my departure. My travels were over. 
During five days spent in Bhamo awaiting the caravan, 
which arrived safely on January 5, I stayed with my friends 
Mr E. B. Howell and Mr Joly, who were still exiled from 
T‘eng-yueh on account of the complete disorganisation of 
the Chinese Customs service, and on January 8, I left for 
Mandalay by river. Four days later I was in Rangoon, 
the guest of a very old friend, now Professor of Physics in 
Government College, till the boat sailed on January 25 
for England and home. 
