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Show GUif li More Interesting Than Any Other Section of India. PASSED UP BY TRAVELERS Marvelous Sights Missed by Those Who Stick to Beaten Tracks of Travel City of Rangoon the Gem of the East. (By Francis E. Clark, D. D. LL. D.) President United Society of Christian Endeavor. Rangoon, Dec. 9. One or the corners cor-ners of the world too much neglected by travelers in the past has been the marvelous country that lies at the northeastern end of the Hay of Bengal. Ben-gal. It is not too much to say that Burma contains more of Interest than any equal section of the Indian Empire and yet probably not one American traveler in ten who visits India extends ex-tends his journey to Burma If he " 1 I ft ? I .'i .S w V,. . I :-.:( : ,'. ' . , . " - V ' ;. v. . -,' " ' : - - .f S ' ' ' ' " - - M . - r 1 - Elephants at Work Carrying Mahogany Logs. VII., Is the emperor, though it ought to be as much a separate dominion as Australia or Canada. It is a three days' Journey on a fast steamer from Calcutta to Rangoon, and when one reaches the latter city he finds people of a totally different " race, different language, different customs, cus-toms, different complexion, different costumes and different religion. He finds that he has exchanged the sun-parched fields of India, where famine fam-ine always stalks behind the laborer, for the well-watered meadows of the Irrawaddy, where in December the luxuriant fields of rice wave their heavy tasseled heads, and where all the year around and the century through famine is unknown. Instead of the straight-featured, thin-limbed, agile Aryans whom he left in Calcutta, the traveler finds in Rangoon, Ran-goon, three or four days later, round-faced, round-faced, jolly, plump Mongolians, with slant eyes and yellow skins and the merriest of black, twinkling eyes. Instead of the three and thirty million mil-lion gods whom' he saw worshipped in Eenares, he finds no god In Rangoon, but only the placid, unwinking, half-smiling half-smiling image of Gautama Buddha, who 500 years before Christ, attained to Nirvana, and whose Image is to-day worshipped by one-third of the human race. Buddhism believes In no per sonal god, but only, as one of its disciples dis-ciples declares: "In the eternal principles prin-ciples of mind and matter inherent in the universe." Though Buddhism was driven out of India, it has apparently n found a secure home in Burma. In !m!n. o:io finds temples carved with ;ill sorts of curious and often hi-(li hi-(li ou;: figures of everything that is in heaven above and the earth beneath and the waters under the earth. In lUinu.i, Rraceful, slender pagodas, oft-encrusted oft-encrusted thickly with gold leaf, and rising fioui 00 to ;!00 feet in the air, are seen, and everywhere, in every stately pagoda and every little jeweled shrine, the same linage, calm, unseeing, unsee-ing, immovable to earthly joys or sorrows, sor-rows, Gautama, as he attained the long-sought Nirvana. Come with me lor a glimpse of this wonderful and seldom visited city on the banks of the Irrawaddy. The big sttamer plows slowly up the muddy waters ol the great river, which at Its mouth is so wide that you cannot see from shore to shore. On either side are h.xuriant paddy fields, for Burma is by far the greatest rice-producing ! country in the world I After some hours we see signs of ap-! ap-! uroach to a large city. There (are tall chimneys and big oil tanks on I one side of the river, for Burma is a great oil -pioduciug country, and the Standard Oil Company Is no stranger to her wells On the other side of the river, as we approach nearer, fine business blocks become visible and wide, tree-embowered tree-embowered streets, and dominating all, a great pagoda that glistens In the a . - k n t - ' . - - W -J , ' i- ' , K - . - . - . ..: . .-. . .v- . . .., . I i .t.. " . . . y : .. '. ,i-i.'(v - . ; .. . ; x . .... - - ... .... ' 'lit.: t i . -v-n '. : s - ', ' l f , : i i : V ; ,..,.. , .1 .!. i t Ss i .. j V . i i v r -- .... i' Shrines Along the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. s going east, he sails directly from Calcutta to Colombo, and thence to the Straits Settlements and China; or if his face is turned westward, he cuts across India from Tuticorin or Madras to Bombay, but in either event misses the Gem of the East, the great Burmese Bur-mese city of Rangoon. Many people think of Burma as a part of India, and the Burmese as Indians, In-dians, but they are no more Indians than the Chinese are Americans. To be sure, Burma is a province of the Indian Empire, of which King Edward intense tropical sunlight as though of solid gold. This is the great Shwe Dagon pagoda, the wonder and glory of the Buddhist world, which we shall . shortly visit The harbor is lively with large steamers and little sampans and nsu-ing nsu-ing boats and queer craft of every description, de-scription, for next to Bombay and Calcutta, Cal-cutta, Ranpoou is the busiest port in the Indian Empire The steamer draws up to the wharf, ?nd all is life and bustle. A hundred gharries, box-like carriages with close- Burmese ponies start off at a gallop, aDd we are soon in the heart of the city. Here are great godowns or wholesale storehouses filled with the choicest wares and products of the east, large department stores which would not blush to stand beside Wan-amaker's Wan-amaker's or Siegel's, public buildings, postoffice, custom house, etc., that would do credit to any city in the world. Here, too, is a beautiful public pub-lic park, charming lakes, an extensive zoo, all in the heart of the city, drawn blinds to keep out the sun, await the passengers. The tough little The ever-changing panorama of street scenes Is entrancing. The Burmese Bur-mese and Karens, with their fresh, smooth yellow skins and bright skirts of every conceivable shade of gor-geousness, gor-geousness, the sallow Chinamen with their long cues, the Jinkrikishaa darting in and out, the lumbering ox-carts loaded with the produce of the country, coun-try, the elephants patiently and intelligently intel-ligently moving great mahogany logs, taking them up in their trunks and balancing them on their tusks all these sights made a ride through the streets of Rangoon more fascinating than any lord mayor's show, and more varied than the midway of a World's fair. But the spot to which all travelers' paths converge in Rangoon is the Shwe Dagon pagoda, the most sacred spot in all the Buddhist world. Up a long flight of stone steps we walk, on either side of which are chattering venders of curious wares silks and lace and gongs of brass, huge cheroots. eight or ten inches long and as larjr" around as youi two thumbs, which contain tobacco enough for a family smoke; oranges, mangoes, Jacl; (ruit and pawpaws; Jade, ornaments and tin sel jewels Indeed almost anything that a Burman would want to eat oi wear or bedeck himself with. At the top of the steps a gorgeous, glittering sight indeed strikes the eye for there rises a great and graceful column of gold, a hundred and fifty feet above the vast platform on which it is built, and which itself rises 170 feet from the ground. The pagoda is very wide at the base, and tapers gradually to a bell-shaped top on which is a crown of solid gold and jewels alone worth a round half million mil-lion dollars. From top to bottom, however, the pagoda is covered with gold, gold plates near the top and gold leaf at the bottom, and in the glaring sun which for three-fourths of the year beats down upon it, presents an indescribably inde-scribably gorgeous appearance. One can fancy that a conical mountain of solid gold had reared Itself in the cen-1 cen-1 ter of its twami of children, for all around are little pagodas or shrines clustering close to the base of the par- ent, and each one vying with all the j others to show itself the richest and most bejeweled. In the great pagoda is a huge Buddha, Bud-dha, so covered with gold and gems that the covetous public is kept away from It by strong iron bars, while all the lesser shrines have other images of the placid saint and some of them many, but all with exactly the same expression of ineffable content. Bud-dhas Bud-dhas sitting and Buddhas lying down, Buddhas large and Buddhas small, Buddhas In marble and bronze and silver sil-ver and clay, but always the same unmistakable un-mistakable Buddha. In every shrine more or fewer wor shippers are bowing and mumbling, while the pretty girls as they worship, smoke the "whacking big cheroots" of which Kipling, sings. No pain, no sorrow, no worry, no care is depicted on the faces of these innumerable images; but at the same time, no interest in human affairs, no sympathy, no love. In these figures, too, it must be confessed there is little of the lofty sublimity of contemplation one sees in the Japanese Buddha, at Kamakura, the most beautiful and im-! im-! pressive of all the world's Buddhas. In them all. however, whether impressive im-pressive or insignificant, one sees cold, self-centered indifference to all mundane mun-dane things. This self-absorbed indifference indif-ference is characteristic of the religion that worships these idols, and herein lies its supreme weakness. A multitude of other sights, odd. beautiful, bizarre, but all interesting, attract the traveler. "On the road to Mandalay," which lies some 20 hours' journey up the Irrawaddy. They are well worth the notice of any one who can wander from the beaten tracks of travel long enough to enjoy them. iCops right, ism. by Joseph E. F?owles.( |