Four Years in Upper Burma by W.R. Winston — Read

We had a great desire in the mission to pay a visit to the Chin tribes on the western frontier, with the view of ascertaining their locality and circumstances. Consequently, when the cool season arrived, the usual time of year for tours, I started with my brother missionary, Mr. Bestall, then stationed at Pakokku, for a journey to the Chin country. The Chins, as explained in Chapter X., are not Buddhists, but worshippers of spirits or demons, and are on that account more barbarous, and, contradictory as it may seem to say so, more ready of access than the Buddhistic races, to Christian mission effort.

We left Pakokku at 4 A. M. one morning in November, mounted on two lively Burmese ponies, with a cart drawn by a pair of bullocks for our things. In travelling through the jungle you need to take almost everything you require; so that when the sugar, and salt, and tea, and bread, and butter, and tins of meat (in case the gun brings down nothing), and soap, and candles, and rice, and curry, and frying-pan, and kettle, and crockery, and a few other simple necessaries, not omitting medicines, are packed up in a box, and the pillows and rugs for the night rolled up in a mat, and a change or two of clothes put in a portmanteau, and a few Gospel portions and tracts included, to distribute in the villages as we pass along, you find you require a cart to carry them. As the cart can only travel, on an average, about two miles an hour, it requires a long day to do twenty miles. There is no advantage in going ahead of the cart, you only have to wait at the end of the stage, and it is more enjoyable to spend the time in leisurely travelling. In this way these jungle journeys, though the travelling is rough and often fatiguing, are very serviceable for the sake of the change of air and scene, and the free out-door exercise they afford.