A Burmese wonderland; a tale of travel in Lower and ... - Khamkoo

A BURMESE WONCERLAMD. 55
famous dredgers which, at Myitkyina in more ambitious
but unprofitable days, rede the fiocds of the Upper
Irrawaddy, and dredged its bed for gold. These two
machines will
always be associated with that Irrawaddy
El Dorado, w^here they deserved better success, and where
80 long they waged a brave but hopeless fight. It is a
surprising
feat, and a wonderful instance of resource and
enterprise, to have cut up these immense dredgers in
uppermost Burma, and to have conveyed them hundreds
of miles by rail,
steamer, lorry and bullock-cart to a new
field of activity amongst the remote hills of Tavoy.
Tavoy has an absolutely ideal seaside resort in a
place called Maung Magan.^ It is really faultless.
Maung Magan is a wide bay with distant hills running
out to sea on either hand, and w^ith a few islands on
the horizon of a brilliantly blue sea. The coast is
fringed with a kind of tamarisk, amongst which a
number of bungalows, for week-end use, face the sea.
At high tide the waves wash close up to the verandah
steps, in\dting frequent baths. It is a place for shirt,
shorts
and bare feet, and for shameless abandonment to
bathing and paddling, and the joy of hunting for
pretty shells, which are soon discarded for
prettier ones.
I found no less than fifty different kinds of shells in an
hour. They were mostly small ones ; but enormous
nautili, cowries and other shells are cast up by the
great waves of the Monsoon, and can usually be bought
from the villagers. The largest cowries are 3| inches
^ Map Square D. N.