The Belted Seas by Arthur Willis Colton — Read

It happened in the year '84 that I took in sailing orders at Hong-Kong to go round to Rangoon for a cargo of teak wood. It's a hard wood that's used in shipbuilding. That was a new port to me, and it wasn't a port-of-call at all till the English took it. You go some thirty miles up the Rangoon River, which is one of the mouths of the Irrawaddy, which is the main river of Burmah; and the first you see of the town is the Shway Dagohn Pagoda, the gilded cone above the trees. Rangoon had already a good deal that was European about it, hotels and shops, stone blocks of buildings, the custom house, offices of the Indian Empire, and houses of English residents. The gilded pagoda looks over everything from a hill. The crowds in the streets are Eastern, Chinamen, Malays, and Bengalees, and mainly the Burman of the Irrawaddy. I was anchored over against the timber yards. I says to myself:

"Rangoon! Pagoda! Why, Green Dragons and Kid Sadler!" I wondered if he was there to be asked, "How's business? How's the dyspeptic soul?" and whether he had an office maybe near the custom house, and exported gold leaf and bronze images of Buddha. I started to find the temple of Green Dragons, and followed a broad street, leading to the right, for nearly a mile. Then it grew wooded on each side. Gateways with carved stone posts and plaster griffins, took the place of shops, and behind them you could see the slanting roofs of the monasteries, and their towers, strung to the top with rows of little roofs. A stream of people moved drowsy in the road, monks in yellow robes with their right shoulders bare, women with embroidered skirts, men with similar skirts, men with tattooed legs, and men in straw hats with dangling brims. There were covered carts looking like sun-bonnets on wheels and pulled by humped-necked oxen. There were little skylarking children, and Chinamen, and black-bearded Hindoos.