“Well, Sophy, you must only take a sort of pre-honeymoon tour; we will go up to Mandalay, and maybe explore a bit of the Shan hills; I shall coax George to come—­he has not had a holiday for ages.  Douglas must get a fortnight off duty, and Martin Kerr, our donnish old cousin, who is arriving from Calcutta in a day or two, may accompany us; he is a bachelor, very well off, and has lived all his life like a hermit crab in his college in Oxford.  Lately he had a bad breakdown, and was ordered an immense rest and change; so now he has ventured out to blink at the universe beyond Carfax and the High, I expect he will find us shamelessly trivial and ignorant.  How his eyes will open when they look upon this glaring world and behold some glaring facts!  I shall invite Miss Maitland to join our party; she is of a nice suitable age, and I shall pair her off with Martin; we will take George’s durwan, as courier, for he has Upper Burma at his finger-ends, and will see that we are comfortable.”

The projected tour proved entirely successful; Mandalay was reached in thirty hours.  From Mandalay, after a few days’ halt, the explorers fared to farther and less trodden fields, visited the ruby mines, and the wonderful remains of Pagan; occasionally they found the accommodation at zayats, or rest houses, a little rough, but this was handsomely discounted by novel sights and experiences, a full view of the Burman at home, and the easy joys of village life.  First of all, there was the morning procession of the stately pongyes, carrying their empty begging-bowls, and looking neither to the right nor left; there were delicious hours in the forests; boating and fishing expeditions on the rivers, or rides to the ruins of ancient cities, half buried in jungle.

Shafto and Sophy saw so many novelties that they were almost bewildered, but not nearly so much bewildered or impressed as was the Professor, when first introduced to the library of an ancient monastery, in comparison with whose age his beloved Bodleian was a mere infant.  Here the volumes were written on palm leaves, then rubbed over with oil to toughen and preserve them; the edges were richly gilt and fastened together by drilling a hole at one end, through which a cord was passed, then they were placed in elaborate lacquer boxes.  There were countless numbers of such books, devout and mystic, all inscribed in Pali; they included the “Three Baskets of the Law,” also the Laws of Manu, which dated from the fifth century before Christ.  Professional scribes were kept constantly employed in re-copying and restoring these precious tomes, as the palm leaves only last about a hundred years, after which they become brittle and difficult to decipher, and the copyists have an endless task.

The Professor, attended by an interpreter, haunted the library, made eloquent signs to the pongyes in charge, and was permitted to examine and make notes of the rarest of their frail treasures, for which favour he duly made a generous acknowledgment.