96 "MANY ISLES AND STRANGE PLACES" 



which when gently struck — horns and beams of wood 

 are used for the purpose — pour forth a flood of melan- 

 choly murmurs. 



There is no solemn hush about religion here. 

 Believer and every kind of unbeliever, devotee and 

 holiday-maker, children and loafers, and dogs, are all 

 mixed up in one crowd as in the bazar, the Buddhist 

 apparently holding the stoic belief that true religion 

 depends on an inward state, and not on any outward 

 circumstance. 



" A governed heart, thinking no thought but good, 

 Makes crowded places holy solitude." 



After Hindu Pharisaism and Mahomedan fana- 

 ticism, to say nothing of all the schisms of Christianity, 

 there is an air of almost unreality about a temple into 

 the holy places of which, and at the hour of prayer, 

 every man and woman, no matter what their creed 

 or honest doubt, may come just as they are and do 

 just what they please. It maybe, as Marcus Aurelius 

 and Hamlet said, that there is nothing either good 

 or bad, but thinking makes it so ; but until I went to 

 the Shwedagon Pagoda, I never heard of priests and 

 congregations who acted in this belief at their own 

 altars. j 



From Rangoon of blessed memory we departed 

 to the Coco Islands, which, as has been already men- 

 tioned, are interesting as being the only islands of 



