176 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
the discharge of their duties, teaching the young folk 
from the neighbouring villages, reading from their 
sacred books, or strolling around in the cool of the 
evening. On these occasions there was always 
regret that want of knowledge of the vernacular 
prevented our closer acquaintance. 
The daily march through these giant trees, whose 
tops were often invisible in the morning mists, 
through the swaying bamboos that arched 50 feet 
above the traveller’s head, through grasslands wet 
with the clinging dew, had the charm of novelty, 
but the isolation of the lonely European when no 
brother-officer was within reach became after a 
time trying in the extreme. Of animal life little 
was seen; the tracks of tiger, bison, elephant, 
and ‘“sdmbhar,” were there, the cries of birds 
and of the melancholy hooluk monkey were often 
heard, but the eye seldom lit on any living 
creature, a depressing change from the forests of 
India, where game still existed plenteously. This 
objection did not apply to insect life, which swarmed 
around, many species being predatory on the human 
body, and so compelling an interest in their pro- 
ceedings. Communication with the outer world was 
restricted to the weekly steamer plying as far as 
Kindat, and beyond that river-port was dependent 
on the good-will of the messengers, who leisurely fol- 
lowed my quicker movements; and so it happened 
that after two days’ marching up the bed of a water- 
course, always ankle and sometimes thigh deep, I 
arrived on the slopes draining towards the Irrawadi 
River, having had no letters for eighteen days, and 
no news of the world for twenty-five. Here I met 
