A Civil Servant in Burma. White Herbert Thirkell
of military control is essential. But the removal of the arsenal to a distance is an urgent necessity.
After its occupation in 1852, Rangoon was carefully laid out on a systematic plan, with straight streets of varying width. The broadest road, edged with shady trees, ran from Soolay Pagoda up to the cantonment, as fine a thoroughfare as could be seen in East or West. In the early fifties some far-seeing benefactor planted along Godwin Road17 a glorious avenue of padauk, and earned the blessings of men later born. Three times, at the approach of the rains, these stately trees burst forth for a day in petals as beautiful and as fleeting as fairy gold. Then one drives under a canopy of gold, over a golden carpet of fallen flowers, amidst a crowd each bearing a golden blossom. To see this lovely sight you must live in Burma. It comes too late in the season for the casual visitor.
The main lines of the plan of Rangoon have been preserved, and are as at first designed. But the past thirty years have seen many changes. In 1878, though there were many strangers within its borders, Rangoon was still a Burmese town. Now it is the third port in the Indian Empire,18 a vast city of over a quarter of a million of people, speaking a pentecostal variety of tongues, among whom Burmans are a dwindling minority. Then the cantonment, no doubt of needlessly vast extent, occupying a wide space on every side of the pagoda, was like a picturesque park, studded with little wooden houses, each surrounded by an ample shady garden. Halpin Road, by some sentimentalists called the Ladies’ Mile, with a humble but select gymkhana19 at one end, was restricted to the use of the military and civil community. Now the gymkhana has been quadrupled in size, and far more than quadrupled in membership. Jehus of all races and classes raise the dust of Halpin Road in dogcarts, landaus, and motor-cars. A great modern hotel occupies a large space; houses of a decadent type, planted as close together as suburban villas, have devastated the pretty cantonment; natives of wealth and position live on sites once reserved for the sovereign race. Doubtless all these are signs of progress. But they shock the æsthetic sense. The Pegu Club was housed in Cheape Road, in a wooden building not long ago dismantled. On the Royal Lake a few boats afforded exercise and pastime. If your boat upset, you were fined for illegal bathing; and if you scrambled back into your boat, you were fined for embarking elsewhere than at the prescribed jetty. Dalhousie Park, it may be gratefully admitted, has been much improved, mainly by the devoted attention of the late Mr. John Short. It is now beyond imagination the home of the picturesque, its lovely lawns and winding paths fringing the lake, with the pagoda shining in the middle distance. Except a few public offices, there were no buildings of importance. Government House was of wood, with a small masonry annexe, near the present imposing and luxurious, but hardly beautiful structure. A neighbouring house was used as a guest-house, to accommodate the overflow of visitors, till some years later it was sold by a frugal Chief. The General Hospital, of wood saturated with generations of microbes, was then, and for long after, a disgrace to civilization. It has now been replaced by a magnificent pile, the best-equipped hospital in the East, one of the best-equipped in the world. The race-course, round the parade ground, was about two-thirds of its present size. The little race-meetings twice a year, where one knew all the ponies and riders, when lotteries were of small value and attended by one’s friends and acquaintances, when bookmakers were unknown, and we did our mild gambling at the totalizator, were more enjoyable and more truly sporting than the present-day monthly meetings, where more than half the owners are Chinamen or Indians, and almost all the riders professional jockeys. In wealth, in luxury, in comfort, Rangoon has made great advances in the last thirty years. Yet I doubt if it is quite as pleasant a place of abode as it was a generation ago.
The outskirts of Rangoon were rustic or, as we say, jungly. About this time a tiger swam across the river from Dalla, then a mere village, and was shot by Mr. G. G. Collins, an Inspector of Police,20 under a house in Godwin Road. Within the last ten years a similar incident occurred. One morning an old woman, selling cheroots on the pagoda platform, half asleep or half blind, opened her eyes, and saw in the dim dawn moving near her stall what she took to be a large cat. She waved it away, and it went off. It was a tiger which had strolled up the grassy slope of the Pagoda Hill. The pagoda was being regilt, and was encased in lattice-work. The tiger climbed half-way up the trellis and there stopped, till, after some ineffectual attempts, it was shot by an officer of the garrison. This strange event has an explanation. A nat21 came riding on the tiger to inspect the gilding of the pagoda. He rode half-way up and then dismounted, pursuing his journey on foot. On his return, he was much surprised and displeased to find that his steed had been killed. Some say that he was unable to resume his journey, and is still there. This story was current in Rangoon on the evening of the occurrence.
CHAPTER II
EARLY YEARS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS
My personal acquaintance with Burma dates from January, 1878. I came to India as a Bengal civilian, attached to the Upper Provinces, liable to serve in the North-West Provinces, the Punjab and Oudh. It was doubtless for that reason and because I had shown some aptitude for the study of Persian that the Government of India were pleased to post me to the Central Provinces, and then, before I had even joined at Nagpúr, to order me to Burma. As in those days our covenants did not bind us to serve elsewhere than in the Province of our choice, I think it likely that, after a term in Burma, I might have obtained a transfer to the North-West Provinces. However, I went to Burma and stayed there; and so far as my official career is concerned, I do not suppose I should have done as well in any other part of India. Certainly I should not have had elsewhere so interesting a life, or found so congenial a people.
On our arrival in Rangoon, my wife and I were hospitably received by two residents, Mr. E. C. Morrieson, a man of my own year, and Mr. C. F. Egerton Allen, then Government Advocate, afterwards acting Recorder of Rangoon, and still later in the House as member for Pembroke Boroughs. Their kindness was in accordance with the traditions of the country, which, I am glad to say, are still maintained. A comparatively new Province, in some respects it may be a little behind the times, Burma has always cherished the primitive virtues, conspicuously that of hospitality. Perhaps to some extent this is ascribable to the influence of the genius loci. For in the world there are no kinder or more hospitable people than the Burmese. The generous manner in which strangers are received may be one reason why hotels in Burma have, if possible, a worse repute than those of India.22
Our first station was Bassein, one of the four ports of Burma, situated on a fair river some sixty miles from the sea, in the midst of the Delta of the Irrawaddy. It was then the headquarters of a district. Not very long afterwards it became the headquarters of the Irrawaddy division, carved out of the overworked division of Pegu. In those days the only approach to Bassein was by river steamer. Even now, though Bassein is linked with Rangoon by rail, the river journey is easier and pleasanter. Our little vessel steamed now on the broad flood of the main river, now through narrow winding channels, called locally “creeks,” which intersect the delta in countless profusion. Though searchlights in the bows were then unknown, we ran on, by day and night, between densely wooded banks. Now and again the passage was so narrow that branches of trees crashed through our cabin window. Here and there, on the mud of a bank left bare by the tide, we saw crocodiles and bands of chattering monkeys. Except at the large villages, where we halted to take up and set down passengers and cargo, the solitude was perfect save for a few huts on the riverside, a casual fisherman in his dugout, a boat full of men and women going to market, or of monks (pôngyis) in their yellow robes. The hideous sampan and the still more horrible lighter or barge had not yet invaded these sacred recesses. Such larger craft as passed us were the stately Burmese boats, built on graceful lines, propelled by sail and oar, with high carved sterns on which the helmsman sat aloft. Such people as we saw were all Burmans or Karens. The kala23 was as rare as a black swan.
My Deputy Commissioner was Mr. G. D. Burgess,24 one of the first civilians deputed to Burma, of the same year as the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, of lamented memory. Mr. C. U. Aitchison,25 who succeeded Mr.
Called after General Godwin, who commanded the force in the Second War.
The population of Rangoon in 1881 was 134,176; in 1911 it numbered 293,316. In 1878 its trade was valued at £10,484,469, as compared with £32,040,000 in 1911 (private trade alone).
A Chief Commissioner, newly arrived, whose face was not yet familiar, was told by a barber in the town, in the course of his ministration, that he should try to join the gymkhana, as that was the way to get into society.
Afterwards of the Commission.
This is, however, a matter of taste. A lady told me that the only thing which made it worth while to come to Rangoon was the Strand Hotel, with its general comfort and its incomparable omelette. The pagoda merely impressed her as “a messy place.” Perhaps she was only playing upon the poor Indian’s simplicity.
The late Mr. G. D. Burgess, C.S.I.
The late Sir Charles Aitchison, K.C.S.I., successively Member of Council and Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab.