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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Tuesday, 4 February 1902
Started down the Mindon Chong. Shot many birds.
Got fever. I think sun 101 - 102.
Slept at Sakade.
Got sick. Bad insomnia.
The next morning we started down the stream, always through the most delightful country and among charming people. Everyone knows, of course, that all the villages in this part of the country are strongly fortified with pallisades of sharpened bamboos. The voyage down the river was exceedingly pleasant and the shooting delightful. One could sit on the stern of the boat and pot away all day at everything, from snipe to heron. Our Burmese boys and the kites had great rivalry in retrieving the game. The kites seemed to know that they would not be shot at. I had another slight attack of fever in the afternoon, but nothing to speak of. We tied up at Sakade for the night. There was no dak-bungalow near, and one does not sleep in a Burmese village unless necessity compels. And yet—
By palm and pagoda enchaunted, o'er-shadowed, I lie in the light Of stars that are bright beyond suns that all poets have vaunted, In the deep-breathing amorous bosom of forests of Amazon might By palm and pagoda enchaunted. By spells that are murmured, and rays of my soul strongly flung, never daunted; By gesture and tracery traced with a hand dappled white, I summon the spirit of earth from the gloom they for ages have haunted.
O woman of deep red skin! Carved hair like the teak! O delight Of my soul in the hollows of earth—how my spirit hath taunted— Away! I am here, I am laid to the breast of the earth in the dusk of the night, By palm and pagoda enchaunted.
The early hours of the morning in the winter are bitterly cold, and the river is covered to a height of several feet with a dense white mist which does not disappear till well after sunrise.
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