FORESTERS’ LIFE IN BURMA 167 
interpreter ; so that only weapons of self-defence 
were retained when marching in those vast forests, 
and occupation depended almost exclusively on pro- 
fessional duties and on efforts to pick up some know- 
ledge of the ways, not only of the people themselves, 
but of the various nationalities who are engaged in 
commerce and other work in the country. 
I soon found that all of the comforts and many of 
the decencies of camp-life had to be abandoned 
in this new country, where there were no roads, 
and often even no paths, to those places that the 
forester had to visit. The duplicated outfit of tents 
and camp-furniture laden on many carts, the horses 
and traps, the troupes of servants, and the patriarchal 
herds of cows, sheep, and goats, that followed the 
forester through the jungles of Northern India 
were now all absent ; three elephants (one generally 
incapacitated by a sore back or a lame foot) provided 
all the available carriage, and a bed, a chair, and 
a table, all the possible furniture. The country 
supplied fowls, eggs, rice, and coarse vegetables, such 
as pumpkins and spinach, and thus the most precious 
part of the equipment consisted of canned milk and 
butter, of bacon and wheat-flour, and of candles 
that gave a dubious light after dark. A change of 
clothing and a bottle of whisky were not forgotten, 
and so, with two servants instead of twenty, we 
plunged into the wilds in January, to emerge three 
months later after walking some four or five hundred 
miles through the primeval forest. 
An elephant carries from six to eight hundred 
pounds, and can cover daily some ten to fifteen 
miles if carefully laden and looked after ; and though 
