These orders came to Yule quite
unexpectedly late one Saturday evening, but he completed all preparations
and started at daybreak on the following Monday, 24th Jan. 1853.
From Calcutta to Khyook Phyoo, Yule proceeded by steamer, and thence up
the river in the Tickler gunboat to Krenggyuen. "Our course lay through
a wilderness of wooded islands (50 to 200 feet high) and bays, sailing
when we could, anchoring when neither wind nor tide served ... slow
progress up the river. More and more like the creeks and lagoons of the
Niger or a Guiana river rather than anything I looked for in India. The
densest tree jungle covers the shore down into the water. For miles no
sign of human habitation, but now and then at rare intervals one sees a
patch of hillside rudely cleared, with the bare stems of the burnt trees
still standing.... Sometimes, too, a dark tunnel-like creek runs back
beneath the thick vault of jungle, and from it silently steals out a slim
canoe, manned by two or three wild-looking Mugs or Kyens (people of the
Hills), driving it rapidly along with their short paddles held vertically,
exactly like those of the Red men on the American rivers."
At the military post of Bokhyong, near Krenggyuen, he notes (5th Feb.)
that "Captain Munro, the adjutant, can scarcely believe that I was present
at the Duke of Wellington's funeral, of which he read but a few days ago
in the newspapers, and here am I, one of the spectators, a guest in this
wild spot among the mountains - 2-1/2 months since I left England."
Yule's journal of his arduous wanderings in these border wilds is full of
interest, but want of space forbids further quotation.
