It is hot and still, we have passed across a place of broken tangled undergrowth and come out into a rather untidy courtyard, where some sneaking yellow pariah dogs barked at us until I cut at them with my stick, when they ran away and barked again from a safe distance. There seems to be no one else here but ourselves. A great tree covered with glorious magenta flowers stands on one side. It is our old friend the bougainvillea, but here it grows into a great tree instead of a creeper. It is backed up by the dark foliage of many mango trees. In front of us is a large house which seems to rise in many storeys, and the roof of each storey is carved and decorated, so that it shows up like lacework against the sky. The house stands on legs, so that the under part is quite open, and a broad flight of wooden steps leads up to a verandah on the first floor. Stop to examine the carving on the balustrade. It is wonderful! Figures of tigers, dragons, peacocks, monkeys, and elephants are all set among foliage and cut out very deeply.

When we arrived in Burma yesterday we came up the river Irrawaddy, which at its mouth is called the Rangoon River. What seemed like low green banks are really swamps filled with rushes growing high and strong; as we passed between them suddenly we saw afar off a gleam of gold, and by staring hard we made out a great tower against the sky. We are going to visit it presently, but just now I want you to see something else quite funny. Step softly on the broad wooden verandah and peep round that corner.

There squats an old man with a perfectly bald head, smooth as a billiard ball; he wears a loose garment of dull yellow stuff which forms a sort of skirt and is draped across one shoulder as well, falling over his honey-coloured chest. He is all yellow, except for his round, shining black eyes, very like glistening balls of jet. On the ground in front of him, lying full length on their little stomachs, are about a dozen small boys. You thought they were girls? I don't wonder! Each one has a feathery tuft of hair in the middle of his head standing up like carrot tops, except for this the little skull is closely shaven all round. They all have skimpy white jackets and skirts from which their skinny little yellow legs stick out kicking in the effort to master their tasks. In a loud sing-song jabber they are repeating something which they read off the slates they hold in front of them. It would be funny to learn lessons lying flat on the floor, wouldn't it? But these boys have never sat on chairs in their lives; they will have to learn that as an accomplishment if they go into business offices when they are older.

The old poongyi, or monk, is the teacher. This beautiful carved wooden building is the house where the monks live, and it is called a choung. In the morning, very early, the monks wander forth, dressed in yellow robes and carrying begging-bowls and fans. They do not beg, however, they are much too proud; they merely stop and stand about where there are houses, and the people rush to pour food into their bowls. It is a privilege for them to be allowed to do this, as they are supposed to "gain merit" by so doing. Nearly all the Burmese are Buddhists, and these men are Buddhist monks.

You would never guess what the fans are for; they are to put up as screens to shield the faces of the monks when they pass a woman, for they are not supposed ever to look at a woman, it is too frivolous! When the begging-bowls are full they generally contain a strange mixture, for everyone pours in anything he or she happens to have; there will certainly be rice, both cooked and raw, peas, perhaps fish, and this may be wrapped up in a leaf to keep it separate, which is necessary when it is curried; then there will be some cakes or cucumbers; possibly, in the season, mangoes and plantains. One of the greatest delicacies of the Burmese is a horribly smelly stuff called ngapé, made of rotten fish laid in salt; no feast is complete without it.

The monks are supposed to live on what they get in their begging-bowls, but, as a matter of fact, in wealthy monasteries they don't; they empty it out for the pariah dogs, which explains why so many dogs always hang around the monasteries.

The Burmese have some funny notions; one is that they do not like anyone else's feet to be above their heads, so they build their houses on posts and do not use the ground floor. It looks as if there were many more storeys rising above the first floor where they live, but that is a sham; the roof is only built to look like that, and is hollow inside. In most of the monasteries there are schools, and the little boys are taught in them, as you see here. Besides this, every boy, when he gets to a certain age, must spend a time, longer or shorter, in the monastery. It may be only a few days or weeks and it may be years, according to the ideas of his parents, but while he is there he has to wear the yellow robe and carry the begging-bowl, and what to a growing boy must be most trying of all, he is not allowed to eat anything after midday!

That old fellow has caught sight of us; he is getting up and seems quite pleased to welcome us. It is a good thing we brought Ramaswamy with us, for he can speak Burmese and interpret for us; the monk knows no English. The little boys spring to their feet and stand gazing at us with wide eyes, delighted, as any boys would be, at getting an interruption to their lessons. They gradually come round us and begin to laugh and even to touch our clothes, but the old monk sends them all away and leads us into the wooden rooms of the monastery that open off the verandah. Several monks here are lying lazily about on mats half-asleep, but in a moment they all surround us, and for the first few minutes we experience rather an eerie sensation. Coming in from the bright sunshine outside everything seems very dim, and these curious men with their shaven heads and beetle eyes come close up to us and press upon us, pawing us and pointing to a great image of Buddha shining out in a ghostly way from a shrine at the end of the hall.

There are many little candles burning before it, most of them sticking to the ground by their own grease. One of the monks takes one up and holds it so that we can see the image, about twice life-size, seated in that calm attitude of the sitting Buddha, with crossed legs and one hand on the lap, while the other hangs loosely down. There is a serene self-satisfied smirk on the marble face, which looks more like that of a woman than a man. Ramaswamy explains to us that this is a very specially holy Buddha, and that the little dabs of gold splashed here and there about him are the offerings of the faithful; they are simply bits of gold-leaf stuck on. Gold-leaf is expensive, for it is real gold beaten very thin, and these little bits represent much self-denial on the part of many poor people. A Burman's great object in life is to "gain merit" for a future existence, for he thinks that he will live again and again many times in different forms, and that as he behaves in this life so he will be born again into a better or worse state in the next; if he is very bad he runs the risk of becoming a snake or some other repulsive reptile. He is not afraid of overdoing the merit, as the ancient Egyptian was; the more he can pile up for himself the better, and the way in which he does this is to feed the poongyis, build choungs and pagodas, and set up or adorn figures of Buddha.

The priests at this choung own a priceless relic; it is no less than a hair of Buddha! After some persuasion they are induced to show it to us. They bring a great casket, which is solemnly unlocked, showing another inside, and again another, and at last we get down to a little glass box with an artificial white flower in it, round which is wound a long and very wiry white hair. I should say many of the same sort could be got from any long-tailed white horse!

On a table near are various offerings, and among them we see a rather greasy pack of ordinary playing-cards and a soda-water bottle, besides several saucers of waxy white blossoms of the frangipani flower, such as we saw in Ceylon, emitting a very strong scent. The soda-water bottle and playing-cards look rather dissipated, but they are quite serious offerings, given by somebody who thinks them rare and interesting. Our ears for some time past have told us that an extraordinary amount of ticking is going on, and now that our eyes have become accustomed to the light, we can see numerous clocks on brackets and tables; these are of all sorts and sizes, including a 2s. 11d. "Bee" clock, cuckoo clocks, and even one large "grandfather." In between and about them, on the floor and on the shelves, are lamps large and lamps small, some brass, some china, and some glass!

The clocks are all going hard, ticking away as if they were running a race to see which could get ahead of the other. It is a funny medley! The monks are lazy enough and pass half their days asleep, but if they keep all these clocks wound up someone must have something to do. These are all offerings, and the more the better; no monk can ever get enough lamps or clocks to satisfy him!

We pass down and out into the courtyard, and all the monks follow us in a body and gently edge us toward some ponds or tanks where fat tortoises lie on the banks or float lazily in the stagnant water.

There is a man sitting on the side selling balls of rice and bits of bread. Just as we come up a graceful Burmese woman buys a ball and throws it into the water. In an instant what looks like a voracious army of huge spiders floats up from below and attacks it, and as the ball of rice dissolves and falls apart every grain disappears. Looking more closely we see that they are not spiders at all, but a curious kind of fish with long feelers growing out all round his mouth and nose. As he thrusts up his mouth to the surface, with all the feelers wriggling, the rest of his body is unseen, and the appearance is exactly that of a round spider with wriggling legs. Buy a bit of crust and see the fish dart at it and simply tear it to pieces; they scramble at it from all sides, pushing and nibbling, and in less time than you could imagine every crumb is gone!

The woman is laughing, and we laugh back at her. She is short and very neat, with her shining black hair coiled round her head and secured by two big pins, while a dainty spray of flower falls down on one side. Her face looks quite light coloured, for it is thickly covered with a kind of soft yellow powder, and she has a brilliant gauzy scarf across her little white jacket and falling down over her tight rose-pink silk skirt. As she walks away with a curious shuffle we see that she has on the quaintest shoes, with red velvet caps and no heels; but the caps are so much too small for her feet that she has had to leave the little toe outside! This is a fine dodge, and Mah Shwe can say she takes twos or threes in shoes with truth, even if her feet are much larger!

The monks are standing in a solemn group near their staircase when we go back, and when I suggest to Ramaswamy we should give them something he disagrees vigorously. "Not touching money, Master, only food and rice, no money." All right, we won't tempt them, and I put back the rupee I had taken out. You must have noticed already that the money here is the same as in India. Then we climb into the miserable little box on wheels which is waiting for us; it is the only cab we can get here, and calls itself a ticca-gharry. The little rat of a pony seems a very long way off; it is a tight squeeze for us inside, and there is certainly no room on the box beside the hairy-legged native for Ramaswamy, but he hops up on a board there is behind for the purpose, and hangs on as we jolt away to the Golden Pagoda.

The first thing we see when we arrive at it are two enormous monsters, not like any animal in existence, made of white plaster with glaring red eyes. They have dragons' heads and tigers' bodies and are most terribly ferocious. These guard the entrance to the pagoda and are called leogryphs. Between them there is a long ascent rising to the pagoda platform. The place is like a bazaar with people in their gay clothes coming and going, and the sun glinting through between the pillars at the open spaces. It is difficult to tell the difference between men and women, for all alike wear skirts and jackets, and you never see a man with a beard, hardly ever with a moustache. But the true distinction is that the men have a gay handkerchief called a goungbaung wound round their heads, and the women wear no head covering, and, as you have seen, they never think of veiling their faces, like the Mohammedan women. The men's head-gear is very different from that we saw in India; it is not a huge and heavy erection, but just a silk or cotton scarf twisted up and tucked in, and very often there is a "bird's nest" of dark hair sticking out in the middle of it, for the men's hair is long as well as the women's, but they roll it up so that it is not seen.

Everyone is very bright and friendly, and the girls who are selling all sorts of little tawdry things on the stalls by the stairs call out to us persuasively to buy from them. On the whole the place is clean, and there is no bazaar smell, only a certain sharp wood-smoke flavour and the scent of many flowers. But at the foot of every white column are horrible deep-red stains that look as if some little animal had been slaughtered there. It is not so bad as that. You remember we saw a man whose mouth was stained red with chewing betel-nut, which he did in the same way that some of the roughest men in England chew tobacco? These are the stains of that betel-nut, for nearly everyone here has the nasty habit.

Up the steps we pass, higher and higher, and come out on to a great platform which looks like a street, for it is lined with buildings on all four sides and in the middle too; but rising above those in the middle is the great pagoda, the Shwe Dagon, —shwe means golden, – and this is the most wonderful thing in Burma.

It is so wide at the base that it takes quite a long time to walk round it, and then it goes up in a bell-like curve, tapering to a steeple little less than the height of St. Paul's Cathedral. At the very top of all, so high that we can only see it by cricking our necks, is an iron cage called a htee, meaning "umbrella," decorated with swinging bells. Listen for a moment and perhaps you can hear them as the wind sways them about. No, the air is too still to-day. Deep in the innermost chamber of the pagoda are no less than eight hairs of Buddha, besides other relics of other Buddhas who lived before the last.

The marvel of it is that this great monument is pure gold from top to bottom. Much of it is covered with thin plates of real gold, and the rest, yards and yards of it, is plastered with gold-leaf.

Did you see that red glint from the top as the sun caught the htee at an angle? That was probably a real ruby, for it flashed out like a sword blade. There are many real stones set up there, and the htee alone cost £50,000!

Coming back to earth, look at the glitter on all these shrines that line the platform on both sides. Though it looks like a street it isn't really, for there are no houses, only shrines and temples. That one close to us is dazzling to look at. No, those blue and red flashes are not from real jewels; examine them and see. The shrine is encased with little pieces of looking-glass, some red and some blue and some plain, all fitted in together like mosaic.

The next is made of the wonderful carved woodwork the Burmans do so well, and it is gilded all over; for my own part I prefer the dark teak ungilded, but still this looks very handsome among the rest. That tall post like a flagstaff, with streamers flying from it, is a praying-post; can you make out the figure like a weather-cock at the top? It is a goose instead of a cock, and doesn't tell the direction of the wind. It is the sacred goose. The brilliance of all this detail takes one's breath away. On every side we see the people worshipping, and yet it is not a festival day, for then we should hardly be able to move for the crowds on the platform – where there are tens now there would then be thousands. The worshippers drop down quite simply on the pavement before a favourite shrine and hold up their hands toward it, sometimes with an offering of flowers in them, or even a big taper. There is a woman passing smoking a monstrous "green" cigar. It is a huge thick roll of light-coloured stuff like shavings, about as long as your arm from elbow to wrist, and as thick as a man's finger. She has to open her little round mouth wide to get the end in. It is not filled with pure tobacco, but a chopped mixture of all sorts; even you could smoke it without any harm. Why yes, women smoke here almost all day, and children too. They do say the mothers give the babies-in-arms a whiff, but I haven't seen that myself!

Set up everywhere are coloured umbrellas with fringes of coloured beads, as large as those used for tents on lawns sometimes. We peer into numberless shrines as we pass and see Buddhas of every sort peeping at us out of the dim interiors; there are Buddhas of brass, Buddhas of marble, Buddhas of alabaster, Buddhas coated with white paint, and Buddhas covered with gold. Most of them are seated, always exactly in the same position as the one we saw far away in Ceylon. This is supposed to signify Buddha as he sat under the Bo tree meditating. Others show him standing with one hand upraised, and this is to show Buddha as he was when teaching, and others are lying down, but these are the least common. They are supposed to show Buddha when he passed into eternal calm.

Pink is by far the favourite colour for the people's clothes, and it is very vivid, like the colour seen in striped coco-nut cream, but white is also much worn, and there is some yellow in orange shades. Many of the Burmese wear a shirt of maroon check, just like a check duster; these are their workaday clothes, on festivals they generally manage to come out in silks.

Come round now to the back of the shrines that line the platform on the outer side, here there is another open space, and on it are bells as large as church bells; they hang between two posts. Take up one of those deer's horns lying beside that one and stroke it hard. It gives out a clear musical note. Try now the piece of wood, that sounds different. Everyone who passes stops to strike one or the other of the bells, they want to call the attention of the "good nats," or spirits, to the fact that they are at the pagoda! In this shed is an enormous bell large enough to hold half a dozen men. I don't think you'll be able to make much effect with a deer's horn on that. It is the third largest in the world, and once was in the bottom of the Rangoon River, for the English were carrying it away when it toppled over and sank. Engineers tried to raise it, but failed, because of its enormous weight; but the Burmans, after some time, were allowed to try, and somehow managed to succeed, and not only so, but they hauled it right up here! It does look as though there were something weird about its positive refusal to be carried away!

Along the edge of this part of the pagoda are a number of wooden platforms raised a foot or two from the ground, for the use of those who come from long distances, and on them many families are lying or sitting. On one sits a tiny boy with a quizzical intelligent little face. His top-knot sticks up like an out-of-curl feather. Beside him is a still smaller mite who cannot be more than two; he has little silver bangles on his fat wrists and ankles, and a strip of cotton rolled round his dumpy body, while papa and mamma and numerous aunts are seated on the platform behind gravely smoking.

I stop to light a cigarette close to this family, and in an instant the elder lad holds out his hand timidly. Just to see what he will do I give him a cigarette; he takes it with a self-possessed courtesy and looks at me, politely waiting for a light. I hand him the box and he strikes a match and bows a little as he returns it; even the children have excellent manners. Drawing in a great whiff of smoke he sends it out through his little round nose in keen enjoyment. But the fat baby has suddenly become alive to what is going on, and crawling on the top of his brother clamorously demands a smoke more loudly than if he were asking for sweets. The bigger boy hands him the cigarette. He knows quite enough not to put the lighted end in his mouth, and in a second is puffing so vigorously that the cigarette burns away like a furnace; when his brother sees this he makes a desperate effort to recover it, but the fat baby pushes him off with one hand, while he clings to the cigarette with the other, and, turning away his head, smokes harder than ever.

We are both reduced to fits of laughter by this time, and the family on the platform are enjoying the joke too. Seeing that there are likely to be difficulties, I solve them by producing another cigarette for the elder boy, and the fat baby is left in full possession of the first one. The last sight we have of him is as he violently resists a grown-up sister who is trying to take away the stub!