Having stayed in Pauk the night, we were off the next morning early, forded the river, travelled a stage, and rested for our midday meal in a monastery. This is no uncommon thing in Burma; we had occasion to do so several times on this journey. There is hardly a village without its monastery, one or more, always the best building in the place, and kept very clean; and it generally happens, as in this case, that there are some vacant buildings used as rest-houses by chance travellers. We always found the monks affable and pleasant to meet, quite chatty, with a kind of friendly familiarity entering at once into conversation, and evidently not having the slightest objection to seeing us about the premises. We, on our part, reciprocated these advances, and made things pleasant all round. Thus we travelled on from day to day, as fast as our bullocks could make the journey, which was very slowly indeed. As we could gain nothing by going ahead of our cart, we were obliged to spend the spare time as best we could. My companion, having a gun, and being a good shot, managed to get something every day, which, in the entire absence of the butcher’s shop, was very acceptable for the larder. We had either a hare, wild pigeons, jungle fowl, partridges, or something. Game is abundant on the route, and in the jungle you have no fear of encroaching on anybody’s preserves. I suppose there are few places in the world now, however remote, where an Englishman is not constantly meeting with some wandering specimens of his countrymen; and even in the wildest recesses of the jungles of Upper Burma, you are liable to the discovery that the genus Englishman includes the species gentleman and the species snob. We had a curious illustration of this. Arriving one evening, long after dark, about eight o’clock, at a roadside rest-house, built by the Public Works Department for the common use of English travellers, we found a gentleman whom I will call Captain X. He was travelling in charge of a large military convoy of elephants, ponies and other baggage animals, carrying up supplies to one of the distant military stations in the Chin country. He and a junior companion were in possession of the comfortable, spacious, three-roomed bamboo rest-house, where there would have been ample accommodation for us as well, with our scanty travelling kit, in the third room, which they were not using; and they had really no more right to monopolise the whole than we had. However, they were in possession; and on our presenting ourselves at the door, Captain X. never so much as asked us to step inside, never attempted even to ascertain who we were, or to enter at all into conversation with us, but simply directed our attention to a dirty, shabby bamboo shed at the lower part of the compound, built for natives, and at that moment quite full of Burman coolies, who, he cheerfully assured us, would readily “nip out” and make room for us, if we asked them. Some people’s idea of the purpose