The Commissionership of the Northern Division was probably the most interesting office in Burma. Mandalay itself always seemed to me a goodly place wherein to live. ’Tis true that for a couple of months or so the heat is great; but though the thermometer rises to 110° or more, the climate is dry, and yet we do not seem to have the excessive, suffocating heat, day and night, of the plains of Northern India. Again, every æsthetic and artistic taste is gratified. Never to be forgotten are the battlements of the walls, the purple shadows on the eastern hills, the glowing sunsets on the moat, the splendour of moonlight in the Palace corridors. The frontier work was absorbing, and occasionally exciting; the ordinary executive work enough to occupy one’s time without being unduly exacting. Of the touring I have already tried to create an impression. Just across the road, too, so to speak, was the new hill-station of May-my̆o, then coming into notice. The railway to Lashio, in the Northern Shan States, was being made, and had not yet reached May-my̆o; but it was easy to get up for a week-end. A drive of fourteen miles along the Aungbinle-bund to Tônbo, then a ride of thirty miles, with a change of ponies at Pyintha; with an early start, May-my̆o was reached in time for breakfast. We rode up by the railway road to the Zibingyi plateau, a craggy path sometimes rendered hazardous by showers of boulders rained down after blasting operations on the line above. Thence part of the route was over the plateau, through pleasant jungle-tracks, part along the embankment, where the rails were not yet laid. Returning by the same way, we got back to Mandalay by office-hours on Monday. May-my̆o was still in bud, perhaps even more delightful than in its fuller bloom. Sweet were the rides through bracken and underwood, with the chance of losing one’s way and a possible thrill of meeting a bear. And cheerful the gatherings at the Club, the trivial social pleasures in which all took part. Mandalay itself was a large military station, where good-fellowship has always reigned. It was therefore with regret that, early in 1894, I received Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s summons to Rangoon to act as Chief Secretary for Mr. Symes, on furlough. At the time I was acting as Judicial Commissioner in a temporary vacancy caused by Mr. Burgess’s absence on privilege leave. As was our custom in those days, I obeyed the order without remonstrance. CHAPTER XV LOWER BURMA ONCE MORE