 His journey took him up along a road which seemed as though it would climb out of the world. As indeed it did. Out of the world of the big river in the friendly village, into another world where surely he might find his family in a passing glance. Market day, they said, and hurried on. Day here was as good as a holiday. These were hard-working people whom he could respect, conservative and tenacious. Oblivious to sudden changes of fortune or weather, the hill people stared at him as he at them. They smiled at his bargaining and went quietly on with their own interests. That too he liked, would traders, would travelers. All these were things he wanted to find in a family. The Pongee had told him he must look for his family among provident people. People who used the things the earth yielded with wisdom and imagination. So that when he came to a lead smelter deep in the hills, he was hopeful again that it seemed his sisters. But he approved of their energy. It was good for a countryman to have hard-working sisters. They told him that much of the mining of the country was done by people who cultivated the earth as a farmer does the paddy field. With only their own labor and tools of their own ingenious making. The next stop on his journey took him to the strangest place he had ever seen. Through flower-choked canals in a thin blade of a boat, down to the broad sea within the land which is called Imley. The chants of Imley, he found, had another of the qualities so useful in one's family. They had adapted themselves to their element with grace and without question. He saw men of an agility scarcely human. Traversed the water as casually as they would walk across a plain. Glittering marshes. The lake was their marketplace, their home and their highway. It could have been pleasant to find his family in such a place. For he had the true Berman's love for a gracious environment. Though enough Berman philosophy to accept a rugged one. To see the ancient cities along the river about which the Pongee had spoken. To learn of the wondrous past which could contribute to a more wonderful present. He saw new people. Some of those who call themselves truly Berman, as he himself did. Busy, happy people they seem to be. He looked into their faces for signs that he should know. But their faces were not yet open to it. From the boat he saw pagodas growing like clusters of flowers on the river bank. When they reached the far shore he saw jewel like temples which breathed in air of other times and indeed other lands. He could stand high above this plain and see the stones of what were once pagodas. Pagodas as countless as the pretings of a bullock cart. It stood like a burned over forest of grey towers so old no man could say when the first spire was lifted to the sky. This city which had been the crown jewel of the mighty kingdom of Magan. Farther along the river were other places famed for holiness. For this was a whole small world of piety where arts and crafts and the good works of daily life combined to do delicate homage to the Lord Buddha and to recreate for his followers the beauties of his life. It was good to see that the craftsmanship of older days was neither lost nor dim. It was brightened alive in the little house of silver smiths where patient men forged the native silver into things of worth and beauty. Indeed he thought a family should have good craftsmen to make a proud household. The luster of the gem city of Mandalay still gleams in history and in the heart of Burma but dimly now. Over the ruins of the last palace where Burmese kings ruled a deep sadness hangs like a mist. The walls were not thick enough nor high enough to hold back the last enemy and the guns never spoke at all. But the chinti still stands blended guard at the foot of the holy hill of Mandalay.