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Though the upper river passes through hilly country, it still signals its sinister message of decay and 
death. A dramatic incident had stamped the fact on my memory. On the steamer was an old man, a 
distinguished official who had intended to retire from the service and take his pension a month or 
two before. He had been personally requested by the lieutenant governor to postpone his return to 
England that he might facilitate the arrangements for the visit of the Prince of Wales. The 
conversation of Europeans in these parts 
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of the earth is inexpressibly morbid; they seem obsessed by the ever present probability of death. 
The official tried to conceal his panic by loudly asserting a medical theory of his own, that plague, 
cholera, dysentery and typhoid (the four princes of the blood royal in the palace of King Death) 
were merely varieties of malarial fever. I said scornfully, "Next time you get cholera, I hope they'll 
give you quinine." The joke came three days later, when he died of cholera. I do not know whether 
they gave him quinine or not. 
Bhamo is a delightful outpost. One is outside the malarial stewing of the jungle. But I got to hate it, 
as I wanted to proceed to China, and was held up for seventeen days by the non-arrival of my 
passport. The delay was partly deliberate. The deputy commissioner was absent; and his assistant 
was an Eurasian, who took the greatest delight in annoying the white man. I ultimately got leave to 
proceed over his head, and having done so rubbed it in with the following letter: 
16.12.05 Dak Bungalow, Bhamo 
Dear Sir, 
In response to your thoughtful suggestion (conveyed in your favour of yesterday's date), I did myself 
the honour of presuming to enter into telegraphic communication with H.B.M. Consul at Tengyueh. I 
will being to your notice, with your kind permission, my intention to leave Bhamo tomorrow in 
consequence o the information thus conveyed; but I will refrain from agitating you with other 
portions of his communication. 
These, though, I suspect, will sooner or later be brought before you by His Honour the Lieutenant 
governor of Burma; and I trust that you will extend to this gentleman's observations the same 
prompt courtesy and intelligent attention which you have hitherto been graciously pleased to 
condescend to bestow upon mine. 
I must overwhelm myself in due expressions of gratitude for the untiring pains you have so willing 
given yourself on my behalf, and trust that efforts so unintermitted have had no prejudicial effect 
upon your constitution. 
I am sure that you have thoroughly enjoyed yourself, virtue being its own reward, and I am sure I 
can express no more welcome good wish than that fate may soon send you another real white man 
to treat you as you have treated me. 
I have the honour to be, Dear Sir, 
Saint E. A. Crowley 
The Assistant Commissioner, Bhamo 
I am not a snob or a puritan, but Eurasians do get on my nerves. I do not 
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believe that their universally admitted baseness is due to a mixture of blood or the presumable 
peculiarity of their parents; but that they are forced into vileness by the attitude of both their 
white and coloured neighbours. A similar case is presented by the Jew, who really does only too 
often possess the bad qualities for which he is disliked; but they are not proper to his race. No 
people can show finer specimens of humanity. The Hebrew poets and prophets are sublime. The 
Jewish soldier is courageous, the Jewish rich man generous. The race possesses imagination, 
romance, loyalty, probity and humanity in an exceptional degree.