bevy of girls go into an Englishman's house and sprinkle him with lavender-water, or the moss-rose bouquet, so favourite with Burman belles. After a little badinage, they produce plain water, and threaten further operations unless something is given them. This they usually get, and if Englishmen complain of shameless extortion it is their own fault. The fair speculators are not such as any respectable girl would care to be seen with, and the prettinesses with scents are no more national than the scents are themselves. A provincial beauty would infinitely prefer a good honest ducking with vulgar water to the mawkish sentimentality of eau de Cologne. Some of the results of superior civilisation are very undesirable. On the final day of the feast a gun is fired at noon to signalise the ascent of the tha-gyah min to his happy realms again, and then all is over. The squirts are laid by for another year; clothes are hung up to dry, and nothing remains but to wait and see whether the pohnnas are more successful than usual in their prognostications for CHAPTER VII. A BOAT RACE. IT is four o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun is still beating down fiercely on the mile and a half broad stretch of water which extends far above and below Myan-oung. But the whole population of the town, and excited family parties from a score of villages round about, are gathered on the banks of the Irrawaddy, and bustle about regardless of the heat. Girls with flowers in their hair, and the brightest of dainty silk handkerchiefs floating over their dazzling white jackets; their costly skirts trailing on the half-muddy, half-dusty grass, and the long loops of their dah-leezan necklaces swinging about on their bosoms, hurry backwards and forwards with unwonted activity, regardless of the detriment to the fragrant yellow cosmetic on their cheeks and necks, and heedless of the occasional remonstrances of the guardian duennas, hardly less excited than themselves. Young men, ordinarily scrupulous as to the jaunty set of their flowered turbans, and the carefullyarranged folds of their hundred or two-hundred rupee waistcloths, now rush backwards and forwards, apparently aimlessly, their goung-boungs twisted on anyhow, or hanging loose round their necks, and the cherished pasoh girded up tightly round their loins, reckless of creases; while they have not a word to say, or even a glance to throw at the fairest of the country's daughters. Staid old men are gathered together in knots, all talking together at the pitch of their voices, and jingling bags of rupees in one another's faces; every now and then one group rushing off to another and swelling loud talk into shouting, in a fashion of which you would not have believed the phlegmatic old gentlemen capable, if you had seen them three days ago. Everywhere is bustle and excitement and anticipation. Even the township policemen have lost their ordinary official swagger, and are engaged in eager converse with individuals who, in ordinary times, command their attention in quite a different way. There is very good reason for it. The full moon of Thadin-gyoot is past; it is well on in October, and it is the time of the boat races. For weeks past the Myanoung boat has been spurting up and down the long straight reach, or having a heavy training paddle to Akouk-toung and back again, and now at last the great day has come. Myan-oung has challenged Thohn-kwa, hitherto the unconquered champions of all the low country, and the race, in best-and-best boats, is to come off this afternoon. The down-river men with their boat, and pretty nearly the entire body of their fellow-villagers, arrived last night, and none except the privileged have seen anything of them yet, to enable them to judge whether they are in as fine form as they were last year when they rowed the Bassein boat to a standstill. No wonder there is excitement, for Myan-oung is but a young subdivision, sprung up since the English occupation, with no speciality for paddlers, and Thohn-kwa cherishes a name for prowess on the river from far back in the old Burmese days. But suddenly there is a lull in the buzz of talk, and every eye is directed up the river. The boats have started for the preliminary row over the course. It is necessary to propitiate the guardian spirits of the river, and the votive offerings are therefore to be made. At the stem. of each boat crouches a man holding with outstretched arms a bunch of plantains, some cooked rice, flowers, and betel, for the behoof of the water-kelpie. This precaution must on no account be omitted. Who knows what disaster This might not otherwise happen? The flouted nat might upset the craft with a flip of his finger, or cling to the keelson of the boat and tire to nothing the sinews of the brawniest arms. Therefore goodly alms are given, so that all may rest with the prowess of the rival crews. breather serves also another purpose. It enables the spectators to have a final view of the antagonists, and to lay their last rupee or not on their champions according as their judgment or loyalty bids them. Not a man of them will back the enemy's boat. If they have not supreme confidence in the superiority of their representatives, they simply refrain from staking all they possess. But in all the vast crowd there is not a man who has not a money interest of some kind in the race. There is Oo Ohn, the district magistrate, in the "grand stand"-a primitive erection run up in half an hour with some sticks and bamboo matting; he is a Thohn-kwa man by birth himself, but nothing will persuade him to back the fishing village against the subdivision over which he now rules. Why, he has practically built and furnished all the money for the Doung-sat-pyan himself. The water-craft which he learnt in his native place has only prompted him to hang with greater loving care over the lines of the boat when it was building, and Bah Too, his eldest son, wields the steering paddle in the Peacock, the pride of Myan-oung. Now the old gentleman-he pulled a good oar himself twenty years ago for the very town he now longs to beat moves about uneasily, gets up and sits down, winds and unwinds his white paw-lohn, and can hardly refrain from shouting out, for the Peacock is just passing, and Bah Too gives a yell and flourishes his paddle, and there is a great shout of "Youk-kya!" from the Myan-oung partisans. Youk-kya, or youk-kya bah-thah, means simply “man or "man, the son of his father," but it is a defiant challenge, or an inspiriting cheer to the Burmese. They are a fine, strong-looking lot, the Myan-oung crew, perhaps a little too fleshy, and therefore possibly deficient in staying power, but all young, and worked up to a state of nearly frantic enthusiasm by the presence of their sweethearts and the momentous duty that rests upon them. Their weather-beaten old trainer paddles alongside of them in a little canoe, and begs them to be calm at the beginning and not rush themselves out at the start. The boat is a beauty, and does credit to the old magistrate in the sweeping curves of its lines. Low and as light as skilled hands can make it, it draws only a few inches of water, and does not rise much more than a foot above the surface. So thin are the sides that the boat is tourniquetted together with twisted wire and bamboo, and the seats themselves serve more to stiffen it and prevent a wrench from doing any harm, than as conveniences for the paddlers. There are twenty-four of a crew all told, and the boat is fifty feet long. It is painted all black, save at the bow, where there is a brilliant representation of the peacock, from which it takes its name. At the end they come with a great spurt, shouting and bending to each stroke, and another great yell rises from the bank to assure them of the approval of their townsmen. A length or two behind them comes the Thohn-kwa boat, paddling along composedly to the time of their celebrated rowing song, a mysterious, gusty air that has suggestions of |