LOVELY RANGOON.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 March 1922, Page 1

LOVELY RANGOON.

By Richard Curie, the well-known Writer and Traveller).

Although Rangoon is the capital of Burma, to a casual visitor it is much more an Indian town than a Burmese. I 'Pile work of this great riverine port is carried on by Indian cuolies, and the streets are crowded with Indians from Calcutta and Madras. It is as you walk from the centre outwards that the Burmese spirit gradually reasserts itself. .Stand of a morning by the Lakes, blue beneath the blue sky, with the golden outline of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda rising above the fringed palms of the farther shore, and you will realise that this is no Indian scene. And presently, as you stand there, a troop of laughing, loitering Burmese will wander by, men and women dressed almost alike in their gay colours, and alike smoking large cigars, and, behold, one will sound a gong from time to time, and its clear note will pass over the water in that still air with a sort of lingering caress. Rangoon lies twenty-four miles up its river in the enormous flat riceplain of the Irrawaddy delta, and its only landmark from afar is the glittering dome of the Shwe Dagon, which, set upon the one hillock of the surrounding country, has the significance of a national symbol to the traveller approaching from. the sea. This most famous of all Buddhist pagodas is the one outstanding feature of the city. It lies well away from the busy centres of the town and the hour to visit it is in the cool of the afternoon. Yellow-robed priests with shaven heads and parchment umbrellas walk sedately along, making for their monasteries, and a swarm of Burmese, brought out by car and tramway, are climbing the long range of covered stairs to reach the platform of the pagoda. This platform is 166 ft above the ground and is 900 ft long by 685 ft wide. The bell-shaped pagoda, whoso upper part is overlain with eighth-of-an inch-thick plates of solid gold and whose lower parr is covered with burnished gold-leaf, rises from the centre of the platform to a height of 370 ft; its circumference at the base is 1,385 ft Round the edge of the platform are huddled about 1.500 tiny pagodas, the gifts of pious Buddhists from all over the East. Before these shrines, with their figures of Buddha in one of his three traditional attitudes, the devout kneel, while in the fairway of the platform children sport, dogs run hither and thither, and a light-hearted multitude perambulates for ever. At dusk the gold of the Shwe Dagon takes on a beautiful lemon tint and the five tiers of electric lights fitted amend it begin to sparkle: It is strange to pass from this setene of the enchanted Orient into the hospitable European precincts of the Gymkhana Club, but it is just as well not to allow the call of the East to sink too deeply into one’s blood.