I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, f • n r\ , Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.arGhive.org/details/goldendagonOOpalm THE GOLDEN DAGON; OH, UP AND DOWN THE 1RRAWADDI. BEING passages of ^itantuw m the §urman Gktjriu, BY AN AMERICAN. v /A , ^ ^7 NEW YORK : DIX, EDWARDS & CO 18.56. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by DIX, EDWARDS & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. w*5>*a MILLER & HOLM AN, Printers &. Stereotypers, N. Y. efcintinn. WITH NO LESS GRATITUDE THAN AFFECTION. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY WIFE. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGK Hong-Kong — The Bore — Ay-Chung — Kumpny's But- tons 1 CHAPTER II. Singapore — The Malays' Vengeance . .14 CHAPTER III. The Straits of Malacca— A tame Myth ... 26 CHAPTER IV. Penang — Running Amok 30 CHAPTER V. What we were going to fight about . . . .33 CHAPTER VI. The Ghaut at Moulmein — Palkee-Garrees — Steam vs. Elephant 41 CHAPTER VII. Moulmein — Town and Cantonments . . . .51 CHAPTER VIII. Elephant-back—" Old Injin-Rubber "—The Boa— The Caves— Guadma— The Bats 57 CHAPTER IX. Dacoiteea — A Burmese House . . . . .73 Viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGE Honorable John and Dishonorable John — "The Old Yaller " — The Fighting Missionary — Our first Stock- ade — A Hero 78 CHAPTER XI. Oar Burmese Clients— War-boats — A funny Panic . 92 CHAPTER XII. " All Together, Engage the Enemy !" — The Storming of Rangoon and Dallah — The Swimmer's Charm . 100 CHAPTER XIII. Kemmendine — Fire Rafts — Confiding Creatures ! — A Wooden Gun — The Stockade — The Aspect and the Voices of the Night — Rangoon is ours — Bathing under Difficulties 105 CHAPTER XIV. Magnanimous! — The Stockades of Rangoon — The Streets — The Machinery of Boodhisin — The Golden Dagon — The Great and Little Bells — Boodh and " Baccy " — The Ingathering — Young Shway-Madoo 115 CHAPTER XV. The Lotos-Tanks— Testing the Water— The Poonghee- House— Black Art 127 CHAPTER XVI. A Prize and a Prisoner — Plenipotentiary Abdoolah — His Character and Costume — Sticks and Chickens — The great Battle of Pontalong . . . .132 CHAPTER XVII. Our Miracles — The Fisherman's Butcha — The Tribute of Rotten Eggs — Blowing up a Poonghee . . 144 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE The Boodh 152 CHAPTER XIX Doonoobyoo — The Grave of the Maha Bandoola — His Talipot Tree— His Plutarch— The Story of Ziuguza 156 CHAPTER XX. Shelling the Woons 168 CHAPTER XXI. Our Convoy — The Dacoits' Ambush — Lynching Fra Diavolo — The wounded Women — Theen-gyee . .173 CHAPTER XXII. Young Ingeeboo — His Shadows — His Tattoo . . 183 CHAPTER XXIII. The Pagoda Road — Poonghee and Missionary — The Bazaar — Disemboweling the gods — Burmese Venera- tion 190 CHAPTER XXIV. The Sports of the Grove— Foot-ball— Puppets— The Drama — A Burmese Rachel 196 CHAPTER XXV. Mindakeen — One little romance of a Shoulder-Strap, and another of Paijaraas 205 CHAPTER XXVI. An Experiment — Bandoola's Bluff — Giving a little Hero the Slip 211 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVII. PAGE Prdme — The Ladies — An indignant Bloomer — Surpris- ing a great General — Astonishing Him . . .215 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Oath and Imprecations — Maidens, Wives, Concu- bines, and Prostitutes . . . . . .223 CHAPTER XXIX. How it seems to own a Woman — Little Mayouk — Her adventures 232 CHAPTER XXX. My adventure at Pegu ...... 237 APPENDIX. I. The Golden Dagon in 1590 293 II. The Karens 295 III. The Poonghees . . . . • , . ' . .301 IY. Burmese Law . • 304 Y. Imperial Pegu 310 "Next came one Who mourn'd in earnest, when the captive ark Maim'd his brute image, head and hands lopt off In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, Where he fell flat and sham'd his worshippers ; Dagon his name ; sea monster, upward man And downward fish ; yet had his temple high Rear'd in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in G-ath, and Ascalon, And Accaron, and Gaza's frontier bounds." Milton : Paradise Lost. " If you would see our pagodas, come as friends, and I will show them to you. If you come as enemies — Land. The Maha Bandoola to Gen. Willoughby Cotton. THE GOLDEN DAGON; OR, CHAPTER I. HONG-KONG THE BORE AY-CHUNG KUMPNY'S BUTTONS. We kept lonesome companionship together, my cheroot and I, in the verandah of Brooks's in Hong-Kong. Up a narrow climbing court, a score or two of yards off the main street, and hard by the gate of the Bishop's Palace, Brooks's was a famous house for reflection and billiards, and a bad (that is, a good) one for fleas — especially poor in prospect. But it had one evident advantage — it with- drew, as it were, from the town, affording you a respite from your Hong-Kong, and permitting you by snatches to dream that you were out of it : out of its swarms of entomological coolies 2 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and infectious beggars ; its white heat and its brown rascals ; its odious incense of joss-stick and opium pipes ; its jargon and jostle of foot- pad peddlers and piratical tankamen ; its cheer- ful chain-gang ; its sweaty chair-bearers ; its red- hot umbrellas ; and all the rest of noise, and filth, and bad smells, and vermin, and corner monstrosities of tumors, and ulcers, and cher- ished boils, and cultivated sores. For a brief and blessed season you had es- caped from your last accursed cripple — from the elephantiasis that had chased you round the corner, and the white leprosy that just missed you as you dived through the door of the nine- pin alley and fled up the narrow stairs, putting Brooks and his garrison between you and all the Flowery Kingdom. Brooks's is eminently a house to get away to ; and after the first three days of my fore- taste in Hong-Kong of that town's infernal counterpart, I blessed mine inn, as though I were Dives and had suddenly come upon a dewy bower, in among the brimstone, where something could be had to drink. I had "done" my Hong-Kong — Consul's, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 6 Comprador's, Custom-House, Club-House, Gov- ernment-House, Joss-House, Parade ground, Barracks, Library, Bishop's Palace, Cathedral ; and four features of the place had struck me — the sameness of the natives, the ferocity of the Sun, the indispensability of punkas, and the universal bore : The sameness of the natives — - whether the specimen under examination were man or woman, of fifteen or fifty — whether it were the same pig-eyed pertinacity who had played shadow to me ever since I landed, or a fresh one whom I now beheld for the first time — merry or miserable, bright or stupid : the fero- city of the Sun, like a fiery dragon filling the air with his scorching breath and wallowing in flames : the indispensability of fans, pendulating in every apartment, from the smoky den where- in your fat comprador compliments you in sour claret, to the high hall of the Cathedral, where " Joseph Victoria, Esq." — as a compatriot of mine once addressed the Lord Bishop — offers public proposals for the saving of your soul — a fan waving in the hand of every Hong-Kong citizen, from the greasy, bare-backed bearer who grunts along with your palankeen, to the THE GOLDEN DAGON ; illustrious " Fan-qui" who represents Her au- gust Britannic Majesty in those lovely latitudes, in her name disposing of pirates, dispensing opium, and " opening China" generally, over his tiffin : the universal bore — the endemic Hong-Kong yawn, unmitigated by billiards or the Overland Mail, uninterrupted by a fire. My adventures had been neither many, nor choice: to climb the granite back of the town, where the streets are cut in stairs, to the house of a Company's Servant, whose wife — a gas-lighty ballet girl on furlough — was addicted to gin and water, and sempiternal whist; to penetrate, impelled by reckless curiosity, into the inner temple of a gambling house on the Victoria Road, whither multitudinous, parti- colored lanterns, and the file-and-saw treble of flowery song had attracted me, and where some retired assassins were playing a sort of Chinese " Simon says wiggle-waggle" for sam- shu ; to make a complimentary call on Ay- Chung, the loose beauty of the long-tailed Upper Ten : these constituted the sum of my excitements— or may I add a cobra decaudated in Brooks's Compound, and an ugly dog dis- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 5 comfited in single combat in the Bishop's grounds — achievements, both, of which I was a part ? Ay-Chung, lotos-lipped, and lush! Truly, for her sake, I could find it in my heart to treat Hong-Kong to an amiable parenthesis. A comely maiden, and a comfortable, was that feminine fly in amber ; not pig-eyed, she — Juno herself not more ox-eyed; nor flat-nosed and slack-nostriled, but especially race-horsy in those particulars ; not leathery as to her complexion, but olive-dyed and blush-mantled, and necked like Solomon's spouse. And then her smile, her waist, her foot! either would have made the fortune of Archilla Sarsaparilla, on Broadway. To hear Ay-Chung talk broken China was to forget Hong-Kong, and cease to wish you were dead. " Ay-Chung," sighed my devoted friend, Da Souza, of the Kumjmifs service, whose acquaint- ance I had made nearly three hours before, " Ay-Chung, wont you marry me *?" It was Ay-Chung's pleasure to make answer that she was indisposed (in respect of my bo- 6 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; som friend's society) and in no humor for nonsense, but that her sister was open to overtures towards an honorable alliance, and sophisticated in the forms of such business. Accordingly the Nourmahal of Hong-Kong delivered her meaning in the following mel- lifluous gibberish : " Mi no savee that pigeon ; mi too muchee seeckee insidee ; spose you likee more ploppa, can ketchee my seesta ; he savee that pigeon all ploppa — can do." But even Ay-Chung was but as curry to the dry rice of the Hong-Kong fare, and even her spiciness could not long continue to make its insipidities appetizing. So I withdrew with- in my cheroot, and entertained myself with wondering what would come next. The North Star, which had brought me hither from California, by way of the Hawaiian Islands, had gone to Macao to "tea," and would not return until after many days. I was left alone in China — a situation more picturesque than pleasant ; my nearest friend was six thousand miles off, and my dearest, twice as far. As Fanny Kemble used to say — OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 7 first I billiarded, and then I verandahed, and then I nine-pinned, and now and then I tanka- boated, and sometimes I native-quartered, and all the time I cherooted. One afternoon, as I sat alone in the spacious verandah — cheroot going, and legs, American- wise, reared up against the lattice, thinking how poor I was, and how little I cared for that, and how funny it was to be at one's heart's antipodes, and how slow " something" was in " turning up" — a Bengalee Kitmudgar, whose business it was to back my chair at tiffin, and browbeat the Chinaman whose business it was not to fetch my ale, announced a " Kumpny Sahib," and at the same time handed me the card of " George J. Neblitt, H.C.S." The gentleman followed his name — a de- cidedly good-looking, well-dressed person, of forty or thereabouts — perhaps younger; pre- possessing, and very conscious of it ; a lady's man on the face of him; the self-defensive reserve of the Englishman relaxed somewhat by flie sailor. Bayard Taylor says if bear-skins and blankets were the fashion in the West-End, the true THE GOLDEN DAGON Cockney would sport them in Ceylon ; and by the same token my visitor ignored»palm-leaves and the ventilated sola, and made himself hot and happy in a silk hat. He had evidently been doing his calls of duty and compliment, for he was not yet at peace with his finger-nails, whose purity was plainly too recent to be safe. A light-blue frock of silk, trowsers (not panta- loons) of the same, a white Marseilles vest, a black tie, voluminous and carefully careless, white stockings on feet of gentlemanly dimen- sions, and dainty shoes of patent leather, plainly of Chinese make — these composed an outer man more than commonly agreeable. A few gilt buttons, bearing the Company's crown and lion, on coat and vest, were all that denoted his profession ; nothing signified his rank. He proceeded at once to business. The gallant Captain (for such he was) had the honor to command the Honorable Company's Steam Vessel, Phlegethon, then on her return to Calcutta from an expedition in the China Seas, to destroy piratical junks, and disperse' the long-tailed Buccaneers, who, in those waters, overhaul honest merchantmen, and take lives OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 9 as well as toll. She lay at that moment in the harbor, in sight of Brooks's windows, de- tained by an untimely accident. Her Surgeon, returning from a dinner party on board a Peninsular and Oriental Company's Steamer, late on a dark night, had slipped overboard and was drowned. Captain Neblitt had a large and sickly crew, the worse for a protracted season of hard work and privation His orders from the Admiral were imperative, not to proceed without a surgeon. Although there were several English men-of-war in port, the sanitary condition of the squadron required the constant attention of all its medical officers, consequently none could be spared to the Phle- gethon. Wherefore, the Captain had been beat- ing the town in the hope of finding some starving 'poticary, willing to be a Company's servant for the nonce, for the ecstasy of being his own master thereafter — or some erratic Sawbones, like myself, with a turn for traveling and no care for the morrow. If this last would suit him, I was his man ; and so, indeed, my fame had gone abroad, for a Dr. Barton, whoever he was, had sent the Captain, in his troubles, to 1* 10 " THE GOLDEN DAGON ; me, as an up-to-any thing circumnavigating the globe. " Was I a physician ?" " I was." " And a surgeon also?" " Yes." " Had I ship-board experience?" "I had." " Was I prepared to join, and enter upon my duties, at once?" "Yes." " It was then three o'clock ; I should have to report myself at nine ; he would sail at day- break for Calcutta ?" " So much the better." "Then it was a bargain." "Perhaps. But softly, Captain — you will require to know who I am." " Of course, some form of introduction ; you will give me one or two good names — or we shall presently meet some of your friends— or we will call together on some merchant or Com- pany's servant. Who do you know ?" "No one." " Ah ! In Hong Kong— but in China ?" OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 11 "Not a soul." " How !— You are English ?" "No." "What then?" " Yankee." " Ah, indeed, Sir — happy to make your ac- quaintance — greatly obliged for the prompt offer of your valuable services. But the case is peculiar ; I can remember no precedent for the appointment of your countrymen to surgeoncies in our service ; you will allow me to get further instructions from the Admiral. Of course you have at hand the highest testimonials of profes- sional qualification?" " Not a line." "Your diploma?" " When I last beheld it — about three months after I came into possession, in due course of humbug, of that costly piece of parchment — a nigger baby in Virginia was playing with the red seal, and had taken the blue ribbon to dress up his kitten with." " Extraordinary people ! Keally, I'm quite at a loss, Sir. What have you to propose ?" " Enough, I hope, to extricate you from your 12 THE GOLDEN D AGON ; dilemma.— Being two chivalrous Anglo-Saxons, we will gallantly waive the nationalities and dispose of the American part of me by a brave stroke of courtesy. By a like argument, you will take my gentleman-status for granted ; and as for the professional attainments, it will be the easiest thing for the Admiral to convene a board of Examiners, composed of his own sur- geons, aboard his ship this afternoon. I will meet them promptly and they can try my medi- cal pretensions off hand." This proposition the Captain pronounced " highly American." Whether he meant a com- pliment or the reverse, he forgot to explain ; perhaps it was the enterprise he meant — per- haps the impudence ; at all events, he hurried off to lay this " highly American" plan before the Admiral. Meantime I strolled into the billiard room where some English officers were knocking the balls about, and at the first table, cue in hand, recognized a senior surgeon attached to the American Japan Expedition. He was waiting the arrival of his Commodore, and had just come down from Macao, in the nick of time to answer OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 13 for me ; for though not personally acquainted with each other, my connections and ante- cedents were not unknown to him. On hear- ing my story he kindly dispatched a handsome note to the English Fleet Surgeon, adding to mine his own request for an examination. At dusk Captain Neblitt returned, bringing my appointment to his ship ; tlm Admiral dis- pensed with preliminary forms. Before nine o'clock I had reported myself on board and gone the sick rounds. After that I returned to the town, and climbed the back streets in the moon- light alone. I hope Ay-Chung slept. 14 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER II. SINGAPORE — THE MALAYS' VENGEANCE. At dawn t rejoined my ship. The men were already heaving away at the anchor. The Phlegethon was a small flat-bottomed iron steamer of very light draught, carrying two im- proved thirty-twos on bull-rings fore and aft, two eighteens on a side, and two rocket tubes on the bridge — or elevated deck, between the paddle-boxes. Her ship's company numbered about two hundred, all told, one-fourth of whom were Lascars and Malays, employed as stokers and coal-trimmers, but good and trusty men, (especially the Malays), when their fighting qualities were in request. She was admirably adapted for any description of service requiring vessels of light draught, celerity of movement, and facility of management. In the subsequent operations in Burmah, she was at once tender, pioneer, pilot and messen- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 15 ger for the larger ships of Her Majesty's and the Indian navies, and, as will appear hereafter, she, and those she carried, lacked nothing of various exciting employment and isolated ad- venture. She- had already become somewhat famous by a brilliant enterprise in the Chinese waters, where, in company with the Styx, she utterly annihilated a formidable fleet of pirati- cal junks, to the lively satisfaction of the for- eign merchants of Canton and Hong-Kong, who accordingly complimented the two commanders with an honorable memorial of plate. As, with her long black hull, sharp rake, small paddle- boxes, short polished funnel, flush deck, lo.w rail, round stern, clean gratings and bright guns/ she lay in the midst of a fleet of tanka boats, touched by the rising sun, she looked remark- ably natty. After an early breakfast, steam up, and then away across the China sea to Singapore. Under the awnings, in all the luxury of sleepy skies and lazy Eastern airs, we sped past the ugly " Asses' Ears," and the Ladrones, infamous for cut-throats, and the barren Anambas (what do they in that garden ?) and the beautiful Bin- 16 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; tang, and at the end of a week let go our " mud hook" off the tumble-down jetty of Sin- gapore. Notes of travelers, and journals of officers without number, have topographized this place for those who must know its height above the sea, its thermometrical peculiarities, its soil and productions, its manufactures and its foreign trade, the extent of the English suburb, and the population of the native town, with its ethnological characteristics. As for me, I have no time to be instructive ; in a day or two we must be getting away to Penang and onward to Burmah. There is another class of readers — expressly for such careless waifs as I — who would rather learn that a Chinese Crispin, in Singapore, made me a pair of patent leather shoes outright in six hours by himself, and that they fitted me and wore well — and that Crispin, that same night, was kidnapped by a tigress as he was returning from a visit to his sweetheart, somewhere be- yond the great grave-yard, and introduced to a circle of pups, not as a guest but as a feast. Just before our arrival at Singapore, an event OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 17 of horror had occurred which, better than the most elaborate descriptions, serves to show the Malay temper, and the need of experience and tact in those Europeans (especially ship-mas- ters) who employ and venture to manage that sensitive, resentful race. A British barque sailed, in the middle of October, from Hong-Kong for Calcutta, with a crew of Malays. She was commanded by an Englishman, with English warrant officers. The Malays, as is their custom, were under the control of a tindal — a sort of boatswain, elected from anions? their own number — next in autho- rity to whom was a " second tindal" or boat- swain's mate. These tindals exercised absolute discretion in respect of the corporal punish- ments to be inflicted on their countryman. Blows to a free Malay can be struck only by a Malay ; the nature of the offense must be stated to the tindal, who measures it by a standard subscribed to by, his men, and dis- penses the corresponding blows, or gagging, or confinement in the coal bunkers, or double duty, as the case may be. Sometimes the ob- durate are treated with mysterious indignities, 18 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; the wholesomeness and force of which are appreciated only by themselves. Such is the universal organization of Malay crews in the Indian seas ; and all Europeans must respect it, from Jemmy Ducks, the boy of many snubs, through boatswains and mates, up to the despot who takes the sun and says where she is to-day. The skipper who would venture to trice up a Malay and flog him with the cats, must be drunk or mad. Nor in con- fiding to the tindal the police administration of his own department does the " old man" incur the slightest risk of lax discipline. Left to themselves, the Malays rarely need punishment, but when they do, it is laid on with the heavi- est hand, and with but little heed to the "regu- lations." Tindals stand not on the manner of the pounding but pound at once ; and from a purely disciplinarian stand-point it is beau- tiful to see how patiently, and with what trained respect according to the bond, the most tiger-like of these fierce fatalists submits to the bloody chastisement of his elected officer, often a slender youth, a mere stripling, to be strangled with a finger and thumb — for the tin- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 19 dal is chosen for his activity, intelligence, and seamanship, rather than his strength. The Captain's wife made her home in the brig, and, of course, " worked the ship." A hen-pecking, sharp-tempered she-sailor, with an unaccountable aversion for Malays — who have a sort of indulgent contempt for women, and usually content themselves with letting them alone — she cowed the skipper and "horsed" the crew, letting slip no opportu- nity to have them punished for trivial or imagined misdemeanors, and in this making her husband the instrument of her spite. She found an ally in the mate, a dissolute fellow of ungovernable passions, often drunk and always reckless, who noisily braved the revengeful devil in the Malay blood, and boasted that " it just took him to bring the slippery niggers down to their work." There were six Europeans in the crew — an English carpenter, the cook, and a small boy, his assistant, and three ordinary seamen. There was also a lady-passenger, with an infant. One morning, a few days out from Hong- Kong, when the hatches were off to ventilate 20 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; the hold, and the men, having just had supper, were smoking and chatting in squads about the deck, the second tindal seated himself thoughtlessly on the coamings of the main hatch with a pipe in his mouth. The act was one of unpardonable carelessness, affording a dangerous example to the rest, for which he richly deserved punishment at the hands of his proper officer, and after the manner of Malays ; but not as it was administered by the mate, who, coming up stealthily behind the man — all unconscious of the danger, and, no doubt, equally unconscious of his crime—struck him a savage blow on the back of the head with a belaying-pin, knocking him headlong into the hold. The Malay was cruelly hurt, and being lifted out by his companions, was carried for- ward insensible. The affair produced, at the time, no visible excitement among the Malays : they went about their work as usual, betraying no more than a natural anxiety for the life of their officer, relieving each other in attendance upon him, and employing all their rude arts to heal his wounds. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 21 The vessel lay for some days becalmed, and in that time the injured man was sufficiently recovered to come on deck in the evening and sit forward with his friends. It was afterward recollected and emphasized by the carpenter and the cook's boy, that from the hour in which the second tindal reappeared on deck, "the watch below" never wholly " turned in," but gathered in knots about the forecastle, conversing with animation, and sometimes even with undisguised excitement, in a tongue unknown to the carpenter, who had a slight knowledge of both the Malay and Bengalee languages. At last, when they were within a clay's sail of Singapore, as the Captain sat near the bin- nacle in the moonlight, smoking, with his feet on the stern rail, and his back, of course, to his crew, the Malays, armed with knives and axes, came aft with their tindal at their head — all together, but so quietly that their approach was unheard by the skipper, who was some- what deaf, and their dreadful purpose unsus- pected by the carpenter and the boy, who were the only Europeans on deck. They 22 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; mounted the poop-deck and stood close behind the skipper. With downright, steady brunt, the tindal buried the butt of his axe in the old man's brains, and while his astonished eyes still stared, they tossed him over, shivering, to the sharks. Then the tiger in the temper of each man of them sprang forward with a roar. The mate, with the two women, still lingered over the supper-table in the cabin, when these wild beasts, fairly foaming, burst in upon them. The man was brave as well as brutal, and snatch- ing a cutlass from the rack between the stern ports, as the women fled into a state-room, he stood at bay, his back against the door. But the tindal, lithe as a cat, and careless of the weapon as though he had as many lives, slip- ped under the blade before the mate had gath- ered his wits together, and, with teeth and nails, fastened on his throat. In a moment, a dozen others had grasped his sword-arm and twisted it out of the socket. Then they drag- ged him, cursing and biting, on deck and slung him in the rigging and set the second tindal, the avenger, at him. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 23 With barely strength enough to handle his sheath-knife, the Malay clung to his prey, gloatingly, jealously, restlessly, like a famished wild-cat over a reeking morsel, dissecting him piece-meal and daintily, with many a horrid interlude and obscene intercalation, down to the heart, while the other fiends were playing out their parts. With damnable mirth they dragged their foolish enemy, the skipper's shrew, half dead already, from her hiding-place. A little while, and bruised by " pioneers and all," and gro- tesquely mutilated, she was flung into one of the boats hanging at the davits. The lady-passenger and her babe were as yet unharmed ; with even a degree of care they were placed in the boat along with the still gasping remains of the skipper's wife. It was believed by the carpenter, and afterward so declared by several of the Malays, that they did not mean to kill or hurt the lady, but only to set her adrift in the boat with her dying sister, to be picked up by some junk or European craft, in the track from Singapore to Hong-Kong. But even as they were in the 24 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; act of " lowering away," the second tindal, drunk with blood, left his carcass, and rushing in among them with his knife, cut away the after fall, and so, the stern dropping with a jerk, threw the three wretches into the sea, and mother and babe, with that horrid thing, went down among the sharks. They had dispatched, in the beginning, the four European seamen. The boy had hidden himself and was forgotten. The carpenter had been ever a favorite with them, so they merely bound him down to the deck between some ring-bolts, leaving him to be picked up by any passing craft. Then inverting the ensign to attract attention, they took to the boats, and made straight for Singapore, where they gave themselves up, being the first to tell their own horrid story. And they told it truly, looking to be admired for the fidelity with which they had done their law upon those who, spite of many a warning, had set it at defiance. They were told they would be hung, and they were hung, but they laughed at that to the last. Your Malay is your only sincere, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 25 practical fatalist ; death is a matter about which he never "fashes" himself. The boy came out from his concealment when they had gone, and released the carpenter, and at dawn the two hailed a passing vessel, which took them off and carried them into Singapore, When we arrived, the Malays had been sent on to Penang for trial and execution — all except two, who were shipped with us to follow the others. 2 26 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER III. THE STRAITS OF MALACCA — A TAME MYTH. OVEE THE SIDE. Maiden, look over the side with me, And what do thine eyes discern ? " Only some gulf-weed under the bow, And a petrel under the stern. " And deep, deep down, where the depths are dark. I can see a dolphin shoot, Round and round in a rainbow ring, And a shark in fierce pursuit. ' But what to me may the gulf-weed be ? Or what is a petrel worth ? And what should the dolphin share, or the shark, Of the pity or hate of earth ?" A busy thought for an idle mind, And a care for a heedless heart, May the weed or the silly petrel lend, Or the chase of the fish impart. Delicate berries the gulf-weed bears, Bountiful, ripe, and red, That never peep'd from a cotter's hedge, Or bloomed by a shepherd's shed. Nor ever a place hath the gulf-weed found On the lap of the matron Earthy To be part of a rosy truant's prize, Or the crown of his Christmas mirth. 27 Never a home hath the gulf- weed known, Nor a clasp of the friendly land ; But, rootless and drifting, wearily bears Its berries from strand to strand. Yet, like a branch from a cottage vine, Flung on the open sea, It telleth of rest to the weary waves, And of home to thee and me. Light as the petrel's footsteps are, They slip on the sliddery sea ; Quick though her wings as a winking star, They struggle heavily. And piteously the brine drips down, From her breast to the crouching wave, — Alas, if so fierce a foe should fall On a thing so slight and brave ! Far from the rest of her native nest, And the joys of a sea-bird's home, She follows the billow whose doom is hers, To roam — and roam — and roam. Breasting the brunt of the charging gale, Her's is a hero's part, Strength in the stroke of her slender wings, And hope in her panting heart. So the petrel under the stern may teach A wholesome homily — Of courage and trust for a fate forlorn, And of patience to thee and me. Swift as the glance of a witch's eye, In a glory of gold and blue, With a changing wake like the sheen of a blade, The dolphin flashes through. t 28 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; Implacable as Nemesis, The type of a Godless mind, That full-armed heathen of the seas, The shark, comes up behind ! 'Tis a vision of love in a bounding heart, Pursued by a ruthless hate ; Turn from the side with thy silly tears, And leave the chase to fate. Did you ever catch a myth and tame it ? If not (because your Wall-street brother counted his fingers and pooh-poohed you), wait till you sail through the Straits of Malacca in November ; then bait a line of fine fancy with a thought of perfect faith, and take a mermaid. Mine was of the loveliest and most syrene. She came not of the race of Hans Christian Andersen's little one — who parted with her tuneful blandishments of voice in order that a pair of " the neatest white legs that a maiden could desire" might grow out where her tail used to be ; for as we cut the pale blue water in furrows of silver stars, she chased the shadow of our flying keel across the fields of coral, sing- ing to me by moonlight the song her trans- lucent fore-mother sang for Ulysses. She brought me pearls, the purest that mer- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 29 urchins pelt. She whistled up the parrot-fishes, to show me their crimson-silver plumage. She flushed me a flock of gurnards, to flutter their Psyche winglets. She strewed the sea-field for acres with the fragile violet Janthine ; and fleets of her Portuguese men-of-war, with hulls as blue as her own eyes and sails as pink as her lips, rode down over the long swell, to give battle to saucy Sallee-men. She showed me how her sharp-shooting chaetodons could bring down sea-flies with swift drops of water. She brought me branches of home-sickening sargassum — the holly that told of sea-cattle, and the yew-sprays from billowy graves. Under the boughs of areca, in among islands of dream, I spied, where she pointed, the reedy booms, and buoyant out-riggers of free-booting proas lurking in cunning coves. And when at last the breeze of sherbet came over the groves of Penang, she showed me the Hebes of air, how they sprinkled the draught with nutmeg. 30 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTEE IV. PENANG RUNNING AMOK. Penang ! — Paradise and Peridom attainable by steam ! And yet, for all its pools of silver, and its bowers of balm and beauty, and its bird-bells tinkling tunefully, and its orchards of Araboid aromas, and its drowsy palms nodding tipsily over brimmers of spiced ether, and its bamboos rippling where long shadows sail, that Eden also hath its fiend. While we were there, a Malay ran amok. The fellow — a familiar vagabond who hung about the skirts of the town — had been bambooed for a theft. Next morning, even as the golden sun began to glorify the garden, he snatched his wicked krees, and with black locks streaming in -the astonished air, and back and loins bare and slippery with palm oil, with staring eyes, and visage all-bedeviled, crazed with shame and spite, and drunk with opium, he reeled like a mad dog, down the thronged lanes between the bam- 31 boo hedges, where blind old men, unwitting of the horror, crept from hut to hut, and maidens came singing from the groves with great plan- tain clusters on their heads, and shiny brown youngsters ran races for cocoa-nuts. He rushed through flying men shouting for their weapons, and women screaming to Guadma and Boodh, and children laughing at the funny man — stab- bing and chopping and slashing, and spattering the bamboos with blood ; till at last, down, and wriggling in a fit, he was dispatched, and his steeple-chase of death was run. Pardon ! I relate these things in course. No more than my reader have I a taste for horrors; but in those lands, where spiced sauces are everything, they do not serve these separate, and you must take them chow-chow with your music and loveliness and love — all or none. Next morning we lifted the anchor and, under " full power," sped away to Burmah — for coals and water, so they said — the kidnappers ! to serve me so, a poor Yankee waif! Passing the scare-crow Andamans, content to take their injured look for granted and be- lieve them innocent of cannibals, in a few days 32 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; we ran up to the custom-house wharf of Moul- mein, so suddenly that an elephant took fright at us, and ran away with a field-piece. Our coming had been looked for, for many days. Rumors of war, between the East India Company and the Burmese nation, were agitat- ing the motley community of Moulmein and lending to the advent of the Phlegethon more than her share of interest. Already a British Commodore, with a frigate and a Company's steamer, was at Rangoon. In fact, in less than six weeks our guns were " conciliating" Burmah ; and as it is my own story, and not the history of a war of annexa- tion, that I have set out to write, I have gather- ed from this Burmese campaign — wherein I was a volunteer in spite of myself — a few passages of personal adventure which, here and there in the progress of my rambling story, will turn up for the entertainment of my reader. For the rest — the policy, the diplomacy, and " all that sort of thing" — I shall hand him over to Cobden and Ellenborough, with one introduc- tory chapter, more free than flattering : — and then go ashore. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 33 CHAPTER V. WHAT WE WERE GOING TO FIGHT ABOUT. In 1826, at the close of a vexatious, and, as it finally appeared, most unprofitable, war, pro- voked by the repeated encroachments upon the territory of the East India Company, of organ- ized Burmese marauders, encouraged by their government, the British-Indian Administration succeeded in concluding a treaty with that nation, by which certain commercial advan- tages were assured to the Company's people established in, or statedly voyaging to Burmah. Even this, however, w T as not procured without great cost in money and men — the latter " ex- pended" in the way of cholera, low fevers, and sun-stroke — nor until the British force had penetrated through stupendous difficulties into the heart of the country, and almost to the gates of her capital. It was then conceded by the " Golden Foot," 2* 34 THE GOLDEN DAGON; as the arch-savage of that kingdom is styled, that a British resident should be received and respected at Ava, and that British subjects should be admitted to the intercourse of trade, under certain restrictions, and protected in certain commercial enterprises in Burmah, the nature and extent of which were, then and there, jealously and severely prescribed. From that time till the close of 1851, a few traders from Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Moul- mein, Singapore, and even Hong-Kong — all British subjects, under the protection of the Honorable Company, whether native-born, half-caste, Parsees, Armenians, or Chittagonians — attempted, with various fortune, the estab- lishment of a safe and regular commerce with those difficult people. A great variety of arti- cles of British or British-Indian manufacture, not excepting arms, were conveyed thither to be exchanged for cutch, lacquered ware, raw cotton, petroleum, bell-metal, and rubies — silver, which, from the commonness of its display in a crude form among the bazaar people of Martaban, Eangoon, and Prome, would seem to abound, being confined in the country by OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRKAWADDI. 35 the severest penalties imposed on its exporta- tion, and enforced even unto death ; so, also, with the hen fowls, cow elephants, native mares, women, and the female of every kind. And thus, on less than sufferance, but with notable patience and pertinacity, the Com- pany's people continued to proffer their wares in the name of the Governor-General — a name which they hoped would prove their tower of strength. Relying on that talisman, the ad- venturous woodsmen, season after season, traced untried streams to their sources, and dared the almost impenetrable jungle, alive with terrors, to bring, with elephants and rafts, their mam- moth logs of teak down to Rangoon and the ship-yards below Moulmein — which latter place, by-the-by, is a British military post, wrested from Burmah, with the Tenasserim province to which it belongs, by Sir Archibald Campbell, in 1824-25, and a Company's commissioner has constantly resided there, his acts supported by one British and two Sepoy regiments. But these men, instructed though they were in the ways of the country, alive to the pre- carious tenure of their footing there, and to all 36 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; the peculiar perils of their position, long used to contend with Burmese insolence and craft, and not seldom to defeat and punish both, were finally fain to succumb. The most arbitrary- confiscation of their goods by every petty Woon who flourished one gold umbrella — at best no better than a promoted dacoit or free- booter ; the most wanton destruction of their boats and houses ; the most atrocious cruelties practiced upon their persons, in not a few instances extending to their wives and children : these were difficulties too great for a handful of adventurers, unsustained by the presence of a single ship of war, to struggle with success- fully. They frequently applied to the govern- ment at Calcutta for aid. Wherefore, toward the close of 1851, Com- modore Lambert entered the harbor of Kan goon with H. M. frigate Fox and the Company's war- steamer Tenasserim, as tender, and dropped an- chor off the Governor's house. Then began a course of empirical diplomacy unusual in civil- ized practice ; crimination and recrimination ; mutual interchanges of threats and blandish- ments, of curses and compliments, of contempt OR, UP AND DOWN THE 1KRAWADDI. 37 and cajolery. To-day the Commodore and the Woon dined together lovingly, and their respec- tive subordinates pleasantly reciprocated hospi- talities ; to-morrow all were in arms, and with much beating of side-drums and banging of gongs, defying each other. And all this while the original sufferers, with an exemplary exhibition of the largest faith, were waiting — waiting for Commodore Lambert to make up his mind whether his heathen friend was the most atrocious cut-throat or just the best fellow in the world — waiting in some in- stances with their limbs in fetters, in all with their losses unrepaired, their insults unre- dressed. Especially had our American missionaries, laboring in the field of Judson, tasted of the cruelty with which all alike had been enter- tained, and the brave and admirable Kincaid can this day bear witness, even with scars, to the success of the foreign policy of Burmah. It is but just to Commodore Lambert, and to Admiral Austin, who superseded him in the command and died shortly afterward, to say that in their later demands on the Bur- 38 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; mese authorities, so vigorously enforced, they imperatively included safety and respect for our missionary countrymen, and most kindly represented this government in their behalf. Meantime, the old Governor of Dallah, on the other side of the river over against Eangoon, who had all the time been professing the live- liest affection for Englishmen in general and the Commodore in particular, volunteered to send a letter from that officer to the King at Ava, and promised that a satisfactory answer should be returned after a reasonable interval. This amiable old gentleman did not hesitate to communicate confidentially to the Commo- dore his private impressions touching the pro- ceedings of his Eangoon brother, and honestly conceded that that exalted Woon was no better than he should be. Moreover, he assured the Commodore that in case recourse should be had to guns, his feelings would be with the English ; and although, for his head's sake, he should in that event be constrained to make some show of fight, it would be all in friendly sport and according to the " we-understand-each-other" tactics, his shots flying wide of the mark — a OK, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 39 tenderness which, of course, his British friends would be expected to reciprocate. So the letter was sent ; and, after a protract- ed interval, marked by some ominous expres- sions of impatience on the part of the Commo- dore, an answer came, brought by many high- and-mighties mounted on many elephants : "Indemnity for the past, and security for the future," should be forthcoming immedi- ately; His Majesty would not have withheld them a moment — but he had been studiously kept in ignorance of the facts ; as for that reprobate at Rangoon, he should be forthwith recalled in disgrace and a more splendid per- sonage, very kindly affected toward the English, should be sent from the capital to supersede him. All this was, of course, highly flattering ; and the Commodore gallantly expressed his satis- faction by withdrawing to Moulmein, after duly saluting the "Sacred Goose." Not before several months had elapsed, did the truth transpire — that the old governor of Rangoon had been recalled to Ava, but only to be decorated with more umbrellas, and promoted to a higher seat in the kingdom ; and as for the 40 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; new one, compared with him, his predecessor was a blessing. More British subjects had been put in the stocks and fined, more ships and houses confiscated on pretense of containing hidden silver; Rangoon and Dallah had been strongly fortified with extensive stockades ; abundance of ammunition and stores had been collected, and a large army mustered. Then the British commander first learned with whom he had to deal. His story was laid before the Grovernor- General ; thirteen first-class war steamers and seventeen transports, conveying nine thousand men, were sent to Rangoon ; and, shortly after- ward, Martaban, Rangoon, Kemmendine, Bas- sein, Yangeenchinyah, Doonoobyoo, Pontalong, and Prome were taken, and the beautiful and productive plains of Pegu — preparatory to their annexation by the British-Indian government — secured to their oppressed and inoffensive dwell- ers. Early in the bombardment of Rangoon, the vigor, earnestness, and precision of the Dallah guns, convinced the Commodore that he had been mistaken in his respectable and vener- able friend. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 41 CHAPTER VI. THE GHAUT AT MOULMEIN — PALKEE-GARREES — STEAM VS. ELE- PHANT. As we approached Moulmein, the pleased expression on the faces of the officers, the ur- banity of the " skipper," and the alacrity with which the men went about their work, all told plainly enough that our lines were about to fall in pleasant places. " Grog and girls" was legible enough on Jack's weather-beaten phiz, and mess-dinners, pic-nics, and elephant excursions, could be read under every gold band. Under the barn-like shed of the wharf, and on both sides of the way approaching it, were palkee-garrees, propelled by tough, brown, bob- maned ponies, with a will of their own; rude ugly carts, on thick wooden wheels of a somewhat square pattern, drawn by docile oxen, all of them white, and very willing little fellows ; in the distance an elephant or two, 42 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; flapping their great ears like topsails in a calm, and switching their monstrous india-rub- ber sides with branches of some way-side shrub, to keep the flies off. Threading the parti- colored crowd with an oscillating motion, its bearers, with outside elbows sharply crooked and calves all varicose, yelping as they trotted, was, here and there, a long black palkee — the palankeen of Bengal, with its red curtains and its bobbing pole. Along the wide yellow road that stretches over the hill, and sweeps around the back of the town to the cantonments, was gathered a pic- turesque throng, impelled by a curiosity as various as their races and temperaments : high- ly genteel and uncomfortable Englishmen- civil servants of the Company ; premature en- signs from the cantonments, with marvelously thin legs and a used-up yawn, very tight as to the seat of their trowsers, and loose as to their gills and their language; Her Majesty's Com- missioner, perhaps, attended by some general officers— all with clean shirts and immense airs ; two or three American missionaries — very busy, very awkward, very modest, very sensible — the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 43 only people there who seem really to know why they are there, and what is going on ; a few fair daughters of the regiment, perched in pony phaetons, or swinging in palkees ; fat, placid Parsees, with tall, black, stove-pipe hats, long black mantles, abundant black beards, pro- found black eyes, and an imperturbable demean- or ; servile six-penny chee-chees (half-castes), at once deprecatory and dogmatical, extravagant in their protestations of respect and proffers of service, and disgracefully cheap in their gar- ments and their souls — fellows who speak prig- gish English, of a parody sort, and whom nobody kicks, only because, with their close version of the proprieties, there's no room to get a kick in — or, if there were, deducting from the sum of satisfaction the specified pecuniary damages, it wouldn't pay ; Armenians, a sort of oriental Stigginses, especially interesting for their possession of certain lovely " wessels" at home, and the absence of anything attractive in themselves, by which to account for it ; Jews, the same in Cossitollah as in Chatham street — onty that, in the former latitude, their manners have somewhat more of the Shekinah 44 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and less of " der ma sheen"; Chinese, cunning, cosmopolite, comfortable ; Malays, clannish, jealous, exacting consideration ; Bengalees, vociferous and importunate, acquainted with blows and rather liking them, born slaves and scamps and dodging nuisances ; Burmese, by- standing, unprotesting, bothered altogether. All Moulmein was on the qui vive. Presently came baskets of plantains and melons, with now and then the first dorians or mangoes of the season, for a lucky dog of a messmate, from some adjutant's sister or commissary's cousin. Next, all the intricacies of a long-shore toilet were to be woven from a sailor's simple kit, amid much anathematizing of Hindoo barbers and " boys," who deserved nothing better, for that day at least, than epithets ingeniously contrived to insult their religious prejudices. Then fre- quent and modest petitions at the captain's door — "Permission to go ashore, sir?" — that gentleman, himself most eager for the fun, pre- serving an attitude of dignified indifference to such puerile excitements. Last of all came the hurry and confusion, and noisy contention in a babel of dialects, of " shore-boats along- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRKAWADDI. 15 side, sir," reported by the quarter-master, and followed by a variety of novel experiments — often attended by most ludicrous mishaps, to the great glee of the din ghee-wallahs — to balance ourselves in their tipsy canoes : — The cautious men, especially " old stagers," tenderly pre- served the boat's and their own centre of gravi- ty by humbly squatting in the bottom ; the rash, especially the greenhorns, insisted upon standing erect and " striking an attitude," until a ducking, fatal to all their pretty arangements, explained the futility of the effort. And so we reach the ghaut — or rather the mud, when the tide is low — through which we are borne, baby-like, in the arms of the bearers. The dinghee-wallahs being paid — not without much exhortation to our generosity on their part, and some striking arguments, addressed to their extortion, on ours — we switch our way through the motley crew, diverse as Jo- seph's coat, to satisfy the curiosity of patient friends and receive their congratulatory greet- ings. Conveyances must be provided for our ex- cursion. The " fast man," with an eye to speed 46 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and all a sailor's fondness for a drive, selects a garree ; the " old Indian," habituated to luxury and laziness, prefers a palkee. This last is an oblong box, three feet high, three feet wide, and six feet long, paneled and varnished like the body of a carriage, provided with sliding doors and curtains on both sides, and a small window in each end, and, by means of a stout pole at either extremity, parallel to its longi- tudinal axis, borne on the shoulders of four stout bearers. Within, it is furnished with a light mattress of some fine sort of straw, and a pillow of cane or paper, beside a small shelf and drawer to hold books and parcels. In this the passenger indolently extends his fall length, and, in agreeable privacy, smokes, or reads, or sleeps, as he travels. The pa Ikee-ivallahs, as the bearers are called, are naked to the waist, save in the rainy season. Their loins are girt up in an ample breech-cloth of white linen, and a turban of the same mate- rial protects the head, having one end long and pendent, which, taking a turn around the neck, falls over the free shoulder ; their legs and feet are uncovered. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 47 These palkees, which, to an inexperienced person, offer, even when empty, a hopeless weight, are conveyed by them, with a heavy passenger within, at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a day, with but slight distress. Their mode of travel is a short trot, having the free elbow sharply crooked, and marking time with a strange monotonous refrain. To a stranger, this is at first an unpleasant mode of excursion, owing to the almost painful sympa- thy it excites in behalf of the struggling bear- ers ; but that weakness is soon lost in the pro- cess of acclimation. In Calcutta, the palkee is a popular vehicle of flirtation, for which purpose it is suc- cessfully employed. In the most crowded thoroughfares it is not uncommon to meet what appears to be a double palkee, with eight bearers, and the doors closed. The ar- rangement is simple, but ingenious, and de- lightfully convenient. Two single palkees are brought side by side — one, of course, contains a lady, the other, a gentleman ; the outer doors are closed, the inner open ; the vehicles are in the closest juxtaposition ; the same monotonous 48 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; ditty (which, for once, may be an extemporane- ous love-song) serves for the sixteen feet. Hin- doos are never intrusive or inquisitive when they can afford to abstain ; and so two innocent peo- ple recline within an inch and a half of each other, and, threading crowded bazaars, pour soft nothings into each other's ears in all the sacred seclusion of a harem. It is pleasant to travel thus. The garree is a small, close carriage, resem- bling those in use by physicians in this country. It is mounted on low wheels, and seats four persons not uncomfortably. Many of them are neat, and no hackney vehicles can be more convenient. They are drawn by small Burmese ponies — tough, sure-footed, quick beasts, with endless " bottom." The driver, who is attired in the costume of the palkee-wallahs is never seated, but runs beside his horse, whatever the distance. There is nothing especially notice- able about him, except his varicose veins, of which he is proud, and his long wind, of which he is prouder. On the present occasion, one of these latter gentry seized me and my companion and thrust OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 49 us bodily into his box. As we rode past the timber-yards we stopped to regard an elephant who was hauling huge logs of teak, cut for spars and ribs, from one end of the yard to the other, where he piled them. The ends of a stout chain cable, girdled about his burly body, were made fast to the end of a log, and at the word from his driver, who, perched upon his neck, was digging into his skull with an iron-shod stick shaped like a boat-hook, he dragged it leisurely to the spot indicated. There the chain was unhooked, and once more, by com- mand of the brute on his head, he raised the huge beam cautiously, one end at a time, and deposited it in its place, the lazy coolies mean- while sitting down to rest. Wise and gentle and forbearing beast ! " How kind it was of him, To mind such slender men as they — He of the mighty limb I" His must have been the soul, and he more worthy of the saving offices of a missionary than his stolid masters. While he thus pursued his ponderous toil, the Phlegethon, near by, let off steam, and 50 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; the shrill, foreign scream reached his gutta- percha ears. He paused in his task, and listened for a moment, all amazed. Then, raising his trunk aloft, he uttered an ex- clamation of astonishment, like the Indian "ugh!" Anon he turned his brisk little eyes about, seeming to seek some Daniel who could interpret the warning to his dismayed soul ; for it was a warning, of heavy import to him and all his free fellows in the jungle, and I could have prayed for the gift of tongues, that I might speak elephant to him, and tell him, in accents forlorner than Cassandra's, all the dark prophecy of steam and telegraphs, of desolation in his rice fields, and menial offices imposed upon his calves. Presently he resumed his task, no longer with his wonted deliberateness and self-posses- sion, but with a strange agitation in his soul, and wild eyes, big with speculation. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 51 CHAPTER VII. MOULMEIN — TOWN AND CANTONMENTS. Moulmein is a picturesque place ; but so are all Burmese villages, and in their prominent features they are all alike. Select an easy, rolling slope, with knolls and tangled thickets, gently declining from a range of heavily-tim- bered hills. Flank it on either side with interminable jungle, affording secure cover for the various forest life. In front of all, train a wide, rapid, darkly-discolored stream, abun- dantly stocked with alligators, water-oxen, and other such fishy game ; and fill up your back- ground with teak-forests and remote moun- tains, with here and there some paddy-fields between, which shall pasture your wild elephants. Cover your ground with creep- ers, cactuses, canes, and various tropical vegetation in a wilderness of profusion. In among these, plant your native bamboo huts as thickly as you can, and with picturesque 52 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; freedom of arrangement ; for you will remem- ber that you are in Burmah, not in America or England, consequently you will fit your house to your trees, not your park to your mansion, save that, with an eye to future tiffins, you will contrive to secure the convenient proximi- ty of some indispensable plantains and man- goes. You will require three streets : one, which shall be the street of shops, running through the heart of the town in the direction of its length. In the busiest part of this thorough- fare you will require some more substantial structures, built of a sort of half-burnt brick, and occupied by Jew and Armenian shop- keepers, who traffic in everything and stick at nothing. Dark and secret are the domestic quarters of these dens, suggesting Turkish shadows of eunuchs and sacks and bow-strings ; though once in a while the low giggle of some hidden Hagar of seventeen drops into the stranger's ear from between the jealous bars of her lat- tice, or he catches a glimpse of the heavenly profile of some half-caste Armenian maiden. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 53 (such an one was Mindukecn!) as she lights her father's hubble-bubble in the back-shop. Your second street in importance will be the street of ghauts, extending from the canton- ments to the custom-house wharf; and your last will penetrate the cantonments themselves. In a new American settlement, the public building first erected is always the land-office. In Burmah (at an English military post) it is first an American Baptist school-house, which, American-like, looks to a succession of im- provements, and consequently is flimsily con- structed of bamboos, differing from the native houses only in its dimensions. The second is the Company's custom-house, which, British- like, is a fixed, irrevocable fact, not to be reconsidered ; consequently it is a substantial structure of bricks and stucco from the begin- ning. For public buildings, and places of popular resort, you have the cantonments and barracks, where, if your tastes are military, you can in- spect some thousands of red-coated sepoys, and every morning at the sunrise-gun see from three to five regiments severely drilled. If 54 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; your tendencies are religious, you have the English church, and the Catholic chapel, and the Baptist meeting-house. If your tastes are mechanical, you have the timber-yards and the docks, and perhaps a ship-yard. If they are zoological, there are stuffed tigers in the bar- racks, and the elephant who is toting grass for the artillery stables will pick up a cigar, or make salaam for you, for a plantain or two. Besides, there is a live alligator in the school tank, and the superintending surgeon stuffs birds and impales butterflies. You may visit the old poonghee houses and see the idols; or attend parade on Wednesday and Friday after- noons to hear opera airs from the " 18th Royal Irish," or some other regimental band, and idol- ize the girls. For your morning calls, you have the wives, and sisters, and daughters, and cousins of the British-Indian army, with an occa- sional she-adventurer who is on tolerance in society, and the most agreeable person in it, so long as you pay her sufficient at- tention and do not inquire who her father was, which would imply that she is a wiser OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 55 child than you will find her. For amusements you have public mess-days, dinners at the Com- missioner's, an occasional ball or so, some pri- vate theatricals, tableaux vivans, charades, &c., plenty of soirees, and " tea at the Mission." Then there are elephant excursions to " the Caves," (which are not wholly incidentless, and shall be minutely described soon,) and an abundance of pic-nics, wmich are like other pic-nics all the w r orld over, save that you ride to them on elephants and take guns to keep off the tigers. Now, to complete your Burmese village : on every hill-top, on every lofty peak that over- looks the town, let a small white pagoda be seen, perched like some beautiful but lonely bird. Crown each of these delicate aerial edi- fices with a coronet of tiny gilded bells, which shall utter the mellowest music to every pass- ing breeze and salute with silver tinklings the fragrant incense which ascends to visit them from many a lotos-laden lake and plantain- grove. And so you have Moulmein, where one be- holds in the fullness of its grace and beauty 56 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; that most superb of Chin-India's flowering trees, named for a vice-royal dame worthy to be its patron, the Noble Amherstia. On every hand its crown of lively green is seen, and its rustling skirts hang low, fringed and corded and tassel ed in green and gold and crimson. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. - 57 CHAPTER VIII. ELEPHANT-BACK " OLD INJIN-RUBBEr" — THE BOA — THE CAVES GUADMA THE BATS. Shortly after our arrival at Moulmein, an ex- cursion to " The Caves," some twelve miles to the north of the town, was planned by several English officers and resident merchants, and an invitation extended to our gun-room mess. Ac- cordingly, garrees were bespoken, boats engaged to await us at the ferry, and elephants on the other side, to roll us to our destination : kit- mudgars and bearers were sent on before with hampers, teeming with tongues, anchovies, sardines, chutney, eggs, and curry, together with the table furniture, and all the machinery of a pic-nic. And so, with the cheroots, and the " brandy-pawnee," and the soda-water, and the beer, we set out, after an early breakfast of fruit and coffee, in our low, square garrees, drawn by the same brown, bob-maned, opinionated ponies, each with his proper gora-wallah — 3* 58 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; nude and sweaty, and shiny accordingly, and long-winded and varicose — running at his head. After an hour of rattling through straight and narrow streets, between green ditches and smoky bamboo huts — the latter extremely ram- shackle, and redolent of petroleum, ghee, and putrid fish — running over pariah dogs, and throwing naked brown brats into convulsions of glee, while their fathers and mothers squat- ted, and giggled, and smoked great green cigars, in their cane porches — we came, at last, to the river. Here, alighting from the garrees, we transferred ourselves and the " plunder" to ticklish canoes, and were paddled across the sluggish stream, thinking of crocodiles and hip- popotami, to a bunch of tumble-down sheds in a bower of urchin banians, where some Bur- mese loafers, who were squatting as we ap- proached, in knots of three or four, rising to the perpendicular when our boats stuck, a score of yards from the bank, ran down to bear us over the black mud on their backs. A few rods up the road, five elephants, sub- stantial monsters, stood flapping their cape- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 59 like ears, and pendulating their short, ridiculous tails — which, by-the-by, the greenest of us re- garded as very superfluous appendages, as use- less as unornamental, until, lording a stream in the course of our excursion, we perceived the very gentlemanly use to which the gutta-percha philosopher in front of us put his. They twinkled their bright, little, black eyes, that were like polished horn buttons on an india- rubber over-coat, and fly-brushed themselves with whisps of paddy straw, featly flourished with their trunks. Seeing an elephant in a menagerie, may na- turally be attended with sensations more or less flattering to the spectator, in view of the " admittance, 25 cents" — he is conscious of patronizing Behemoth. But to stand under a roadside precipice of animated india-rubber, having already (being a green tourist to that spot) foolishly made grand flourishes of your intention to ascend without assistance, is to look up at Peter Botte, and suddenly recollect that you have left your windlass and rope-lad- der at home ; you are reduced, with ridiculous abruptness, to a sense of your situation — a con- 60 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; fession of your own insignificance, and the magnitude of the Almighty's works. When my kitmudgar, pointing to Behemoth's Jehu, perched on his neck with a boat-hook contrivance for a whip, said, " S'pose Sahib likee, Sahib can go wp" that somewhat saturnine heathen had no intention to be funny. Most of our party had been "up" before, and, with slight assistance — by pushing from below, by Jehu's pulling from above — were soon to be seen leaning over the rails of the howdahs, sur- veying the surrounding country from their com- manding eminence. " Our Yankee friend," being neither active nor light, of course came last. The mountain had partly come down to the other Mahomets, and Behemoth was kneeling. Our company was uncomfortably masculine, so there were no steps provided ; the livery-stable keepers, from whom we hired our nags, would not insult the Sahibs, forsooth — " the Sahibs were birds, the Sahibs were serpents, the Sahibs were mon- keys." (Thank you !) " Must birds, must ser- pents, must monkeys have ladders?" So they boosted their Yankee friend from below, and OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 61 they hoisted their Yankee friend from above ; but they were weak with laughter, and they let go, and the sides of the mountain were no less slippery than steep, and the feet of their Yankee friend were false to him, his temper impatient, his wonted philosophy forgotten : so he slid down. Thrice he slid down discomfited, and, the third time, he earned with him the bamboo front of the howdah. Then Behemoth rose to his feet, contemptuous, indignant, w T ith "too bad" in his eye, impatience in his uplifted trunk, and offended dignity in his short, huffish grunt. But Jehu, patient and busy, picked away at his organ of amativeness w T ith the boat-hook ; there was another small land-slide — and then, with unanimity of extraordinary boosting and hoisting, joined to a great feat of agility on the part of the acrobat, silently apprehensive of the mood of Behemoth, "our Yankee friend" reached the top, amid loud cheers, and "Yankee Doodle" from the band. Whereupon, Behemoth, with great upheavings, arose from his knees, and rolled forward. If you have never doubled the Cape, if your 62 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; stomach is treacherous and your sea-legs uncer- tain, if sea-sickness is your idiosyncrasy, don't take passage on an elephant for a voyage of twenty-five miles; go by water, or try a palkee. First, you are clown by the stern — then bows under ; now a lurch to leeward pitches you into the scuppers, and next you are in the trough of the sea, wallowing to windward. Like a Dutch galliot, under bare poles in a cross-sea — how she rolls ! Like a whale in the wake of a steamer — how she blows ! You ascend a slight irregularity in the road — how she labors up the slope ! You pause on the ridge — for an instant she sways and surges, then " Down topples to the gulf below." You hold on by the howdah; you commend yourself to your usual good-luck ; you comfort your fears by observing how little Jehu minds it ; you throw away your cheroot — it's too hot to smoke ; you stop wishing for tiffin ; you try to think it interesting, and commence insti- tuting naturalistic researches into the sagacity of " old Injin-Rubber," as that funny Smith, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. G3 of the Company's service, nicknames the soft subject of your studies. Thus you get through six miles of monoto- nous jungle, relieved only by its sequel of six miles of monotonous paddy-field. However often you may wish, inside, that you were dead, you never once say so — " You rather like it." At last, you come to your " Caves," and, with a "By Jove, boys — this is capital!" you swing yourself off by the hands, and drop to the ground, as fearlessly as though you had never told a lie in your life. Shortly after emerging from the jungle into the paddy, our liveliest curiosity was aroused by the eccentric movements of our elephant, and the sudden excitement of his mahout, who, leaning over the head of his beast, explored the ground before him, and on each side, with curious, anxious scrutiny, conversing all the while with his huge philosopher and friend, in quick, sharp ejaculations, sometimes shrill, sometimes subdued, sometimes almost whis- pered in his ear. 64 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; " Old Injin-Rubber" crept forward cautiously (imagine an elephant on tiptoe), hesitating, suspicious, vigilant, defensive, holding his pre- cious proboscis high in air. Presently he stops short, stares straight before him with evident agitation, for we feel the mass vibrating beneath us, as when a heavily-laden wagon crosses a suspension bridge. Then, hark 1 with trumpet pointed to the sky, he blows a sharp and brazen blast, and trots forward. At the same moment, an exultant exclamation from the mahout tells the story. in a word — " the boa! the boa !" Right in the path, where the sun was hot- test, lay a serpent, such as he who charmed the first vanity, his vast length of splendid ugliness gorged, torpid, motionless, not coiled nor vermicular, but outstretched, prostrate and limp — subject, abject to the great gluttony of his instinct. " Old Injin-Rubber" pauses, as if for instruc- tions ; he receives them on his organ of philopro- genitiveness from the boat-hook. Half a dozen more rolls and lurches, and he plants his moun- tainous fore-foot on the head of the drunken horror — eyes, brains, blood burst out together. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 65 Like an earth-worm on the pin-hook of an angling urchin, the monster wriggles and squirms — now twisting his great girth in seemingly everlasting knots — now erecting all his length, without a kink, in air — now, in a tempest of dust, thrash- ing the ground with resounding stripes ; till, at last, beaten out, his crushing strength all spent, even his tail subdued, he lies, and only shivers. Then, again and again, Behemoth tosses him aloft, again and again dashes him to earth ; till, torn and spoiled, his gold and black all tarnished with slime, and blood, and dust, the Enemy is brought to shame, and the heel of a babe might bruise the head of the serpent. A small prairie of wild rice gradually and very uniformly sloped from a range of low wooded hills to the stream we had already crossed, and which, after a great circuit, shone before us again ; — on the south, a fringe of jungle ; on the north and west, the river, with here and there a knot of talipot trees ; on the east, far off, the low hills timbered with young teak; and, between, a multitudinous banian, with its tabooed grove, haunted and whispering. 66 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; Iii the midst of this landscape, and rising suddenly from the plain, towered an imposing pile of consecrated rock, green to the top with slimy, slippery damps, oozing forever, and in their slowness finding time to vegetate ; plump cushions of bright moss, creepers creeping cu- riously, the glancing leaves and abundant red flowers of strange, poisonous-looking parasites — green, green, green, from base to peak — a mountain of soft and fragrant couches under curtains of dewy shade, whereon, in his ever- lasting round, the Wandering Jew might come to rest himself; topmost of all, a solitary tali- pot, an hundred feet of uninterrupted trunk, supporting on high its giant umbrella, as though Guadma stood beneath, and looked abroad over all the land ; and every where the proud and ruthless beauty of the ruin-making peepul, the missionary tree, displacing foundations, over- throwing pinnacles upreared to Baal, bearing aloft in her beautiful arms fragments from the havoc she has made, picking at pyramids with her delicate, but expert and busy, fingers — sap- ping the palace of Alompra and the temple of Guadma, in the name of Jehovah ! OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 67 Some dozen or so of Burmese ragamuffins, who did a small business in torches for such excursion parties to the Caves, had accompanied us from the ferry, bearing baskets of bamboo fagots armed at one end with swabs of tow, and dipped in petroleum. Lighting these, and each man taking one, we mounted the steep, tortuous, and slippery foot-path of damp, green stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset it, to the low entrance of the outer cavern. Stooping uncomfortably, we passed into a small, vacant ante-chamber, having a low, dripping roof, perpendicular walls, clammy and green, and a rocky floor, sloping inward through a nar- row arch to a long, double, transverse gallery, divided in the direction of its length, partly by a face of rock, partly by a row of pillars. Here were innumerable images of Guadma, the counterfeit presentment of the fourth Boodh, whose successor is to see the end of all things. Innumerable, and of every stature, from Hop-o'-my-thumb's to Hurlothrombo's, but all of the identical orthodox pattern, with pendu- lous ears, one hand planted squarely on the knee, the other sleeping in the lap, an eternity of 68 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; , front-face, and a smooth stagnancy of expres- sion, typical of an unfathomable calm — the Guadma of a span as grim as he of ten cubits, and he of ten cubits as vacant as the Guadma of a span : of stone, of lead, of wood, of clay, of earthenware, and alabaster — on their bot- toms, on their heads, on their backs, on their sides, on their faces — black, white, red, yellow — an eye gone, a nose gone, an ear gone, a head gone — an arm off at the shoulder, a leg at the knee — a back split, a belly burst — Guadma, imperturbable, eternal, calm; in the midst of Time, timeless ! It is not annihilation which the Boodh has promised as the blessed crown of a myriad of progressive transmigrations ; it is not death — it is not sleep — it is this. Between colossal stalactites at either end of this gallery, we passed into two spacious and lofty chambers, nearly symmetrical in conform- ation and dimensions, separated, like the twin galleries, by alternate pillars and piles of rock. Our entrance awoke a Pandemonium. My- riads of bats and owls, and all manner of fowls OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 69 of darkness and bad omen, crazed by the glare of twenty torches, startled the echoes with infernal clangor. Screaming and huddling together, some fled under the wide skirts of sable, w T hich Darkness, climbing to the roof in fear, drew up after her ; some hid with lesser shadows between columns of great girth, or in the remotest murky niches, or down in the black profound of resounding chasms ; some bewildered, or quite blinded by the flashes of the "co-eternal beam," dashed themselves against the stony w T alls, and fell crippled, gasp- ing, staring, at our feet. And when at last, our guides and servants, mounting to pinnacles and jutting points, and many a frieze and coigne of vantage, placed blue lights on them all, and at the word illumi- nated all together, there was redoubled bedlam in the abode of Hecate, and the eternal calm of the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of outer darkness, done long ago in that black hole of superstition, so many damned souls shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, it were vain to question : there were no dis- closures in that trance of stone. 70 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; Back of all, an hundred feet from the true floor, and hopelessly inaccessible, was a small irregular sky-light in an angle of the rock, through which we plainly discerned a cluster of bright stars ; and a stream of silver- white radi- ance, pouring through this upon the swarthy forms of our guides and the white turbans of our servants, dimming the torches in their hands, made a study for Vernet. Ah, could we but have mounted thither, what a never-to-be- forgotten view of river and mountain, forest and rice-field and banian grove, that window had for us ! We stopped to drink from a curious fountain. The peak over the caves was scooped out for a small lake, from the bottom of which the purest water, crystalline and cool, percolated through the roof of the cavern, and through a wondrous central stalactite that descended to within four feet of our heads, and falling, drop by drop, into its own little basin, hollowed in the rocky floor by cycles of monotonous dripping, flowed away in a slender thread to be lost in some Tophet of a chasm. On emerging from the caves, we found a OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 71 magic structure waiting to receive us — an agreeable shed reared, even so quickly and ex- pertly, of canes and talipot leaves, brought hither for the purpose on the " commissariat" elephant. There were store of camp-stools, and an extemporaneous table of rough planks, covered with a snowy cloth, and laden with the viands and beverages aforesaid. Our " animals" had been turned out in the paddy to amuse themselves — all except "old Injin-Rubber," who stood near by, playing with the low branches of a crooked sissoo. I took occasion, while our laggards were bathing, to fraternize with him and make sociable over- tures. He was condescending, and exerted himself to entertain me — picking up two-anna pieces with his nimble finger and thumb, and handing them to his partner on top ; crooking his knee for me to mount, and gently lifting me, standing erect, to a level with his ears, so that I could clamber into the howdah ; per- mitting me to sit astride on one of his tusks, and playfully riding me a-cock-horse, somewhat to the damage of my dignity ; making me grand salaam by exalting his trunk above his head, 72 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; then gracefully waving it up and down, at the same time blowing his horn. Our repast over, we mounted and rolled homeward, reaching Moulmein at dusk. At the ferry, with many regrets, we parted from our mountainous friends. I embraced " old Injin- Rubber's" trunk, making him sensible, I doubt not, of the affection I had conceived for him, and which I retain unaltered to this day. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 73 CHAPTER IX. DACOITEES A BURMESE HOUSE. Moulmein had been always liable, if not to a combined attack, at least to the predatory incursions of the thieves of Martaban, an im- portant village on the opposite side of the river. A year before, these dacoitees had been frequent and successful. The robbers crossed in war-boats, at night, the stream being narrow where it separates the towns, and, in formidable force and well armed, made successful descents upon the native quarters of Moulmein, occu- pied by friendly Burmese, and Bengalee and Chinese traders. A small force of Sepoys, which formed the patrol, could be easily intimidated or overpowered, and the suburbs effectually pillaged, before the alarm could reach the can- tonments, and the troops be got under arms. With such impunity, indeed, were these sallies effected that silence ceased to be enjoined, and a nocturnal alarm, accompanied by repeated vol- 4 74 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; leys of musketry and much banging of gongs, was easily explained by the nonchalant sentinel who promenaded your enclosure with the cool assurance that it was " only some Martaban dacoits." In the mean time, flimsy bamboo huts were being riddled, men, women, and children often included in a common massacre — not unat- tended by grosser outrages which scarcely ad- mit of recital — and dwellings wantonly fired which had first been leisurely pillaged. From all these expeditions, however, the booty ob- tained was light. Burmese wealth, where it is to be suspected at all, is (with an eye to these dacoitees) com- monly converted into rubies and concealed. The wearing apparel of a people who go com- paratively naked is not considerable ; nor are the furniture and domestic utensils of families who feed with their fingers from one pumpkin rind in common, and repose luxuriously on a yard and a half of "Turkey red." As for their dwellings, the conflagration and reconstruction of one of them is at any time little more than a frolic. The material of OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 75 which they are built grows in abundance a few yards off id the jungle. No expert journey- man builders are required ; the art is taught in every family, which also furnishes its own labor. Split bamboos are of easy carriage ; no nails are demanded, for they are tied together with strips of cane and thatched with palm or other leaves. And thus a commodious, well- constructed dwelling, sufficiently spacious for the accommodation of a large family, provided with various pleasant chambers and the luxury (which is a necessity there) of an ample veran- dah round about the whole, and all together well ventilated, weather-proof, and ingeni- ously contrived to encounter the chances of a latitude of typhoons and rainy seasons, is erected in two days, at no cost, by a man and his wife, a concubine or two, and some " babes and sucklings." Such a structure as this was subsequently the sufficiently comfortable hospital of the writer (at that time on the sick list) during a rainy season at Eangoon, when literally the floods do come, and pour on enduringly for four accursed months. Strange to say, though many 76 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; a crevice in the roof admitted the light of heaven, no water penetrated through the same apertures. This is doubtless owing to the peculiar formation of the leaves with which the thatching is done, and which resemble so many gutters or grooved tiles. The dampness of the ground is avoided by the elevation of the lower floor, which is laid across a frame raised upon uprights some two or three feet from the earth, and leaving a space beneath where fowls and pariah dogs are snugly housed in common, and rarely disturbed, save by the occasional apparition of some vagabond of a wild pig, whereat the aforesaid pariah dogs incontinently run away. My house consisted of one large apartment, (twenty feet square), which was parlor, office, and dining-room in one; two smaller sleeping apartments at one end and a bath-room at the other; the whole surrounded by a wide veran- dah, over which the roof projected very far, affording dry accommodations. Here, in the dry season and when the heats were greatest, we made our lodging. Hither our couches and musquito-nets were brought, and here we OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 77 read, smoked, or talked by day, and slept by night, amid the howling of pariah dogs (a sentimental tribe, whose custom is vociferously to serenade the moon when she is present, or diabolically to bewail her absence when she is not), the hooting of owls and other spirits of darkness and the air, and a babel of sleepless beggars and boats-people on the beach. This not unpleasant abode, together with its " offices" (consisting of kitchen, stable, and lodgings for the servants) was completed in four days, at a cost of two hundred rupees, ($100), the Burmese contractor finding everything, inclusive of the subsistence of his people. 78 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER X. HONORABLE JOHN AND DISHONORABLE JOHN " THE OLD YAL- LER" — THE FIGHTING MISSIONARY OUR FIRST STOCKADE — a hero- Honorable John and dishonorable John — "John Kumpny" and "John Burmah" — had expended several months in tedious and boot- less recrimination. On the part of the Com- pany, obsolete delays, under the pretext of hu- manity, were necessary to appease a jealous and formidable peace party at home. A thousand tricks of procrastination, as successful as they were transparent and vexatious, kept Burmese officials busy and English batteries idle. The tattooed diplomats of Ava required time for the mustering of forces, the furbishing of old honey- combed ordnance, the purchase of Captain Mayflower Crisp's condemned muskets, and the construction of stockades ; and the experience of the previous war had taught them by what devices to procure it. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 79 Overtures and threats (in a " Pickwickian sense") freely interchanged between the parties ; concessions half-proffered only to be seasonably recalled; grievance met with grievance, ex- postulation with expostulation, etiquette with etiquette, threats with defiance, amiable ad-*- vances with officious protestations of regard and regret and a host of flowing "assurances of distinguished consideration ;" flags of truce, cocked hats, and " gold umbrellas," going and coming, to the infinite admiration and awe of the lower orders ; and the by no means flattering spectacle of refined British diplomacy contend- ing, lamely enough, with Burmese treachery and craft : all these were the circumstances which had so long detained the Commodore's impatient little squadron in " masterly inac- tivity," to the infinite disgust of officers, the melancholy wear and tear of men, and the frightful consumption of blessed Majesty's coals. Nor would John Burmah have so noisily praised his gods had he but reflected to what a formi- dable figure the bill of damages and costs, to be served upon him hereafter, was inexorably swelling. 80 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; Such was the state of affairs when, leaving Moulmein, we approached the mouth of the Rangoon river on the morning of January 8th, 1852. Great was our astonishment to find the Commodore lying at the mouth of the river, with the King's ship, a veritable prize. This "King's ship," or "yellow ship," as we were accustomed to style her indifferently, was a large frigate, built for the Burmese on European stocks. She was new, having only her lower-masts in, and, though cut for heavy batteries, was unarmed and unmanned, being provided only with an awkward guard of ter- rified boats-people, under the command of one " Commodore" Abdoolah, a clever, amusing savage, half Burmese, half Malay, who, on the strength of having been a pirate once, had got himself appointed to the chief command of the navy of Ava — that is, the King's ship. Commodore Abdoolah, being troubled with no scrupules of loyalty, was afterward easily persuaded to fraternize with Commodore Lam- bert, who forthwith promoted him from his shabby-genteel command to the more lucrative, if less glorious, post of pilot-in-ordinary for 81 our squadron : in which capacity he dismissed his allegiance in search of his conscience, and repeatedly proved himself one of the most consummate villains and useful men on earth. His fleet and flag-ship had all been comprised in this monstrous naval miscarriage, the " Old Yaller," which, after all, was an experiment of some promise, and no doubt, on British stocks and in British waters, would have come to something. She was constructed very slow- ly, and at an enormous cost, of the choicest teak, (the best of all timber for ship-building,) of which the finest trees had been tabooed by Koyal command for her behoof. Though a queer-looking craft " outside," there was much in her "lines," and the nice particulars of her construction, to please the eye of an expert, and she was surely one of the strongest and most durable, as she was one of the largest, ships of her class afloat. The way she came into our Commodore's hands was this : He had sent a party of officers to negotiate with the new Woon. This deputation consisted of gentle- men from the Fox, among whom were Cap- 4* 82 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; tain Tarleton, the commander of that frigate, and the Commodore's Secretary, Mr. Southey. These were subsequently joined on shore by an American missionary, Mr. K , a remark- able person, to whose influence, and the mea- sures it procured, are unquestionably to be attributed the events of that and the following days. The Governor, to the surprise of all who were not prepared for Burmese treachery, ar- rogance, or caprice — for he had lately manifest- ed the sweetest of moods — refused to receive the deputation, on the pretext of a customary siesta, and kept the officers waiting at his gate like so many beggars ; his guards assuring them that it was as much as their heads were worth to disturb him, though the illustrious Worn of India himself (the Governor- General) should call " house! house !" The plea was plausible because consistent with the custom of all Indian people, but not the less crafty and insolent on that account, the Governor being well advised of the importance and friendly purpose of the depu- tation, and choosing to make capital of their humiliation. Those gentlemen were, most of them, uninstructed in the language and habits OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 83 of the Burmese, and were therefore almost at a loss how to act. At this crisis our Yankee parson appeared, who, with the shrewdness and ready resources of Connecticut united the quick conclusions and prompt execution of the backwoods. His knowledge of the people and their language, derived from twenty years of familiar inter- course in preaching and teaching, was almost perfect. Besides, he was not of the peace party. He was the apostle of a wholesome chastisement, and his laborious narratives of 11 harmless wretches poked to death with sharp elbows," and "innocent babes pounded in a mortar," had often made the old Commodore swear and everybody else laugh. On this occasion long-suffering and forbear- ance and the formal presentation of the un- smitten cheek were no part of his gospel. He advised the deputation of the insolence of the Governor, and of the tricks attempted to be put upon them, recommending them at the same time to report his conduct instantly to the Commodore. This they did, of course, and the measures 84 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; thereupon adopted by that officer were at once prompt and vigorous. He immediately took possession of the King's ship, warned all Euro- peans, and others claiming British protection, to embark in the merchantmen in two hours, and apprised the Governor that unless he came on board the flag-ship early the next morning and apologized publicly, and with all humility, for the insult offered to himself through his officers, he would not only not restore the ship, but would proceed at once to blockade the rivers, refusing to have any further intercourse with the authorities. Thereupon he dropped down with his prize to a point below the town and its immediate defenses, while the foreign residents of Rangoon proceeded to execute his order with more haste than prudence or self- possession. The merchantmen were preparing to receive the persons and property, as much as could be got off, of all Europeans, Americans, British-Indian subjects, (comprising Parsees, Armenians, Chittagonians, various Mussulman traders, timber-cutters, etc.) and the servants of the Honorable Company. Such was the aspect of affairs when the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 85 Phlegethon entered the river. Of course much property was lost. Books, medicines, surgical instruments, furniture, clothing — all the stock in trade of a missionary and a missionary doctor — were abandoned to the authorities of Rangoon, who, accustomed to regard such tools of witchcraft with all a heathen's hor- ror, doubtless consigned them to their shaven, yellow-coated poonghccs to be purified by fire in the sight of Guadma. It is much to be deplored that choice collections of Burmese manuscripts of rare interest and antiquity were lost at this time; for the poonghees are no contemptible scholars, and their ambitious re- searches are faithfully recorded on gilt-edged leaves of sandal wood, arranged in volumes, and religiously preserved in the holy places of their grotesque monasteries. We were busily engaged in towing out the merchantmen. Meanwhile, the Governor had sent a letter to the Commodore refusing to apologize in the manner required. He had, moreover, written to the Governor-General, stating his reasons for the insolent attitude he occupied, and complaining of Commodore 86 THE GOLDEN DAGOK ; Lambert as a quarrelsome and overbearing person, who sent " a deputation of drunken officers and a low American missionary to make a noise at his gate." Furthermore, he threatened that, if the Commodore presumed to send any of our vessels down the river again without his permission, his stockades should fire on them. The Commodore's reply to this challenge appeared in the form of an order to three of the steamers to proceed down the stream and past the stockades, one after the other, and at provoking intervals. The order was executed, but without suc- cess; we played off and on with them for half an hour without drawing a shot, and so left in disgust. We proceeded to the mouth of the river to see the merchantmen safely out, and then returned to the stockade more saucily than before, but, finding no work for us there, went back to the Commodore : another message from that "gassy" Governor, that if an attempt should be made to tow out the King's ship, the war should commence -on the morrow with an attack from him. In anticipation, but with scarely a hope, of OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKItAWADDI. 87 being fired into from the " Da Silva" stockade, as it was called, the Commodore dropped down with the Fox, early on the morning of the 10th of January, having previously ordered the Hermes to follow with the King's ship in tow, and ourselves in the wake of them. As we came down we found the Commodore lying, broadside on, at the stockade, the Serpent having got aground higher up the river. There was a hurry, and a rush, and a lively flourish of gold umbrellas on shore, as the Hermes ap- proached with her prize. Next came the order " beat to quarters !" Three minutes afterward, eleven guns from the fort right at the Hermes. Then up went the Commodore's signal to " en- gage the enemy," and the work began. The frigate, of course, opened first — broadside after broadside, a rapid and annihilating fire slap through the works. The Phlegethon took up a closer position and engaged them at short distance ; and the Hermes, which had cast loose from the prize, attacked the lower stockade, where w r as a small village — half barracks, half police station. In these positions an uninterrupted bom- 88 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; bardment was maintained for two hours and a quarter (from ten to a quarter past twelve) ; the enemy, who had comparatively few ser- viceable guns, expending their resources in a most desultory and ill-directed fire. The position of their batteries being high, and the advantages of " elevation and depression" not being taught in their exercises, their shots, for the most part, passed over us. Many times their fire was silenced, to be resumed in a few minutes by some brave fellow who would have his last crack at us. So long as a red rag of breech-cloth was to be seen, or one poor spear glittered in the sun, we pounded away with round shot and shells, with an occasional di- vertissement of " carcases" and rockets. At twelve o'clock not a man was to be seen ; the stockades were riddled in every direction ; the people who survived had fled into the jun- gle (with which, in every instance, the stock- ades were provided as covers for retreating garrisons) ; and one poor cock — the royal, not the national emblem, for in Burmah they change these things with their monarchs — done in white on a red flag, and left fluttering OR, DP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 89 in a corner, was all that remained of the insane pride of the gubernatorial blackguard. As soon as the ships' firing ceased, the Phle- gethoii's cutters were sent to destroy their boats along shore and pick up such arms as could be found. Among the latter were some vener- able United States muskets from the Harper's Ferry Armory. How came they there ? " Story, God bless you, they had one to tell, sir." One pretty incident occurred in the midst of this affair, which is worth narrating. Just in the hottest of the fire, and when every shot was telling on the stockade, two war-boats emerged from a narrow creek, behind the upper angle of the works, filled with armed men — perhaps sixty in each — and commanded by a distinguished-looking chief, very hand- somely attired, and wearing a dhar (or sword, curved like a scimetar, but not, like that wea- pon, terminating in a broad point), with golden hilt, and scabbard of chased gold. In many of these dhars the hilts were found to be hol- low and filled with amulets, jewels, miniature images of Guadma, inscriptions on bits of 90 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; silver — all consecrated by the poonghees. A bearer behind him held above his head the inseparable gold umbrella, which, in that coun- try, as much denotes the grandee as the star or garter does in England. Besides, his legs, tat- tooed nearly to the ankles (for none but the King can tattoo his feet) were his patents of nobility. There could not be greater courage in mor- tal man than was displayed by this fellow. He brought his boats down with the tide to a spot not twenty yards distant from where the frigate's shots were falling, until he got di- rectly over against the Phlegethon. Then he stood up in the stern, and stamped his foot, and waved his sword toward us, exerting himself furiously to induce the other boat to join him in the attack. At this moment, the officer in command of the thirty-two- pounder astern, brought that gun to bear upon him, and was in the act of firing a shot which would have sent the brave fellow to perdition, when the captain shouted from the bridge : " Don't fire at that man ! Let no one hurt that man!" So he escaped into the jun- gle, poor fellow, only to lose his head when OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 91 his failure became known to the King. To escape, in such a case, is the most atrocious military crime for which the laws of Meenyoo (a sort of Burmese Solon or Confutze) provide. Within the stockade we found only the wrecks of bamboo huts, many wooden guns (huge logs of teak bored like pumps, and braced with rattan), empty rice pots, and naked fish-poles. The only objects of curiosity and contemplation were multitudinous tom-cats, all carrying their tails aloft — those appendages, in all the specimens I was permitted to examine, being provided with a sharp twist or disloca- tion half-way between the attachment and the extremity (whether natural or artificial, for ornament or utility, science has yet to say), which imparted to that feature an expression indescribably droll, of mixed waggery and co- quetry. 92 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; OHAPTEE XL OUR BURMESE CLIENTS — WAR-BOATS A FUNNY PANIC. As the Phlegethon descended the river, skirt- ing the shores as she passed, we overhauled several war-boats well manned, some of which we seized and destroyed, making prisoners of the crews, about a hundred men in all. In other instances, the people took to the water, first contriving to capsize their boats, and sink the arms and ammunition they contained, which, though harmless enough in their hands, they had reason to apprehend might prove fatal in ours. These prisoners were conveyed to Moul- mein, where we unconditionally released them. They gladly became inoffensive and useful denizens of that place, after officiously impart- ing to our officers much useful information touching the numbers and condition of their own forces, the fortifications then existing or in process of construction, the movements of OR, UP AND DOWN THE IBRAWADDI. 93 the chiefs, their plans, as well as they had been able to ascertain them, and their corre- spondence with Ava. Indeed, throughout the war, in no instance were prisoners detained, even when active partisans and of high rank, save when they were possessed of important information, or their services could be made available in some special emergency ; and even in such cases they suffered under no restraint, save their brief detention, and were rewarded in proportion to their usefulness. Toward the close of the campaign, among the Company's best friends, were to be found many of these reclaimed Burmese. The disaffection of the people was unanimous. They had learned to appreciate, at a very early period of our intercourse with them, the personal security, encouragement to industry, and freedom of competition, guaranteed to them by British control, and in simple faith and in considerable numbers, they eagerly accepted British pro- tection, demanding no assurances of safeguard beyond a plighted word, and finding no odious conditions attached to the compact. Only the circumstances of their impressment (for a volun- 94 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; teer in Burmah would be an anomaly), their families detained as hostages for their good behavior, and their experienced apprehensions of the vengeance of their masters, deterred them. Ofttimes these reasons alone impelled whole towns to take up arms and engage in the strug- gle against us, which would otherwise, and by choice, have hoisted the white flag, and ex- tended the olive-branch. They asked nothing more than that we should not at any time, from the hour of their espousing our cause, withdraw our countenance and guns. This would have required a steamer at every village between Ran- goon and Prome, which our force was inade- quate to furnish. In this way, we had well nigh lost the alliance, if not even the neu- trality, of Pegu. In a volume entitled " Two Years in Ava, by an Officer on the Staff of the Quartermaster- General's Department" (8vo. London : Murray, 1827), occurs a description of Burmese war- boats, which will answer well enough for the present period, and may with propriety be quoted here, for changes in Ava are unfrequent and slow. There is no such thing as " Young OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 95 Burmah," though that precocious politician has got as far as Bengal on his way thither, and " Young Bengal" is as well known at Government House in Calcutta, as " Young America" in the lobby of the House of Repre- sentatives ; the meaning of " progress " is as mysterious to them as the politics of Punch or the Democratic Review. All they have learned in twenty-five years, is : that British batteries are not made, like their own, of teak timber ; that British guns shoot straighter than they did a quarter of a century ago ; and that eighty-fours make more noise and hit harder than thirty-twos. If " Young Burmah" does not apply himself, " Young Japan" may yet be at the head of the class. But, speaking of war-boats, the " Officer on the Staff of the Quartermaster-General's De- partment" says : " The Burmese war-boat is formed of the trunk of the magnificent teak-tree, first roughly shaped, and then ex- panded by means of fire, until it attains sufficient width to admit two people sitting abreast. On this a gunwale, rising a foot above the water, is fixed, and the stem and stern taper to a point, the latter being much higher than the other, and ornamented with fret-work and gilding. On the bow is placed a gun, sometimes of a nine pound calibre, but gener- 96 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; ally smaller ; and the centre of the boat is occupied by the rowers, varying in number from twenty to a hundred, who in the large boats use the oar, and in the small ones the paddle. " A war-boat in motion is a very pleasing object. The rapidity with which it moves ; its lightness and the small surface above the water ; the uniform pulling of the oar fall- ing in cadence with the songs of the boatmen, who, taking the lead from one of their number, join in chorus, and keep time with the dip of the oars ; the rich gilding which adorns the boat, and the neat uniform dress (?) of the crew, place it to the eye of a stranger in a curious and interesting point of view, and, in regard to appearance, induce him, when con- trasting it with an English boat, to give the former the preference. In point of swiftness, our best man-of-war boats could not compete with them, and of this superiority they generally availed themselves, when an action was impend- ing." It is difficult to imagine, in spite of the gene- ral accuracy of this description, what manner of men these could have been, whose " neat uniform dress" so pleased the officer. No doubt he alludes to " undress" uniform, which by Burmese regulation consists of about a yard of tattooing, half a yard of breech-cloth discretionary, and a foot of the invariable Turkey- red twisted in the hair. I retain a merry recollection of the first war- boats I saw at Rangoon, when belligerent mes- sages were beginning to be bandied between the Commodore and the Governor, who, in- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 97 spired witli Dutch courage, had summoned a flotilla from Prome. One morning thirty of these gilded craft (the Quarter-master's officer has described them well) came down the river, and approached the town in long-drawn file. Red flags fluttered in the bow and stern of each, spears glittered, and innocent-looking muskets. A thousand paddles, wielded by two thousand vigorous arms, swept the water as one, " falling in cadence" with the monotonous songs of the steersmen. A thousand triumphal gongs were banged as though they were about to sit down to simul- taneous dinner at a thousand Burmese Astor Houses. A hundred triumphal dances were executed by a hundred indecent gentlemen in Terpsichorean gymnastics, and the burden of their war-song was something in this sort : " Bur mall-man strong man ; Hum, hum, hah ! Kumpny-man no can ; Hum, hum, hah ! Burmah-man run fast ; Hum, hum, hah ! Kumpny-man coine last ; (An innocent compliment). Hum, hum, hah !" 98 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; With each " hah !" a vigorous plunge of every paddle into the brine in strictly musical time, and the low, slender craft shot through the water like a feathered shaft, her bow half- hid, beneath a pile of foam. Presently the Tenasserim, which had been hourly expected with dispatches from Cal- cutta, rounded the point and approached her anchorage under "full power" and with a rapid current. She was not on the Gover- nor's programme for the clay, nor was her "back-water," which — being a phenomenon for which the Burmese steersmen were wholly unprepared — caught the boats " broadside on" half way between the ship and shore, and thro wins: them for an instant into riclicu- lous disorder, and their crews into a panic, capsized them without exception. In a mo- ment every gong was silent, every singer dumb, every dancer paralyzed, every flag struck, every spear lowered, and arms and ammunition speedily "expended," — as the Company's pursers say of stores which cannot be accounted for. Poor wretches ! their dismay was complete, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRA-VVADDl. 99 their astonishment most ludicrous, their songs of triumph at once converted into vociferous lamentation; and all would have been su- premely droll but for the thought that more than one head must pay for the fun. Later in the progress of the war, a superb specimen of these war-boats was sent to the Queen. It was discovered by some of our men hauled high and dry in the jungle, on the left bank of the river as we were descend- ing from Prome. Some idea of its dimensions can be formed from the fact that it seated a hundred rowers. The stern was spread out like the tail of a graceful bird ; and the sides, above the water- line, were chastely carved in a style of art un- approachable out of Burmah, where skill in wood-carving is the most esteemed and lucra- tive of the handicrafts. The whole was elabo- rately gilded within and without, and carved oars were left in their places lashed to pins with thongs of cane, no row-locks being used. 100 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER XII. " ALL TOGETHER, ENGAGE THE ENEMY !" — THE STORMING OP RANGOON AND DALLAH THE SWIMMER'S CHARM. It is a lovely Sunday morning in the begin- ning of April, 1852. Seventeen British war- steamers, with a frigate and brig-of-war, as well as thirteen large transports, in tow, ascend the Rangoon river, between the stockades of Rangoon and Dallah, and falling, with well- ordered regularity, each into the position as- signed her, let go their anchors in long single line of battle. Thus far there has been no interruption from the Burmese batteries, which are unaccountably silent. The Commodore disapproves of Sunday work, and his orders are to respect the Sabbath unless it be first broken by the stockades. Scarcely, however, has Her Majesty's steam- frigate, Salamander, dropped into line and broken the almost silence with the prolonged rattle of her chain, when the boom of the OR, UP AND DOWN THE Dili AW A DDL 101 Pagoda guns is heard ; the Rangoon Woon, from his high Citadel in the Golden Dagon, has opened a heavy fire upon his own people in the river-side stockades — perhaps to force them to begin the fight, perhaps to cut off terrified runaways. Presently Dallah takes the hint, and chal- lenges the Rattler, Hermes, Mozuffer, and Sesos- tris, which have waited impatiently for an expression of her wishes. And at last the slow guns of the outer Rangoon stockade open their mouths, and speak unanimously in for- cible language. Then the signal flies to the Rattler's peak — " All together, engage the enemy." Both broadsides at once, into both towns at once — eighty-twos, sixty-fours, thirty-twos, twenty-fours, eighteens, twelves ! " all to- gether." Dallah retorts with spirit, but is taken in two hours and a half, and fired by a party of sailors and marines. On both sides of the river the Burmese display distinguished cour- age and endurance under a feu d'enfcr from the shipping, of shells and round-shot, and shrap- 102 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; nell, and grape, and canister, and rockets, and carcasses. A Burmese chieftain, mounted in an embra- sure of the Rangoon stockade, leans against a flag-staff and directs his gunners, his person bravely exposed to the storm. Suddenly he disappears in the smoke — Grod knows whither. A fair breach is opened, and a crowd of naked, delirious wretches are seen dragging down a huge field-piece on great clumsy wooden wheels, to close it. All that are left from a tornado of grape are finished by the bayonets of the "Eoyal Irish," who meet the enemy in the gap. Some wounded prisoners are brought to our surgeons. On the way, one poor fellow, wild with pain and fear, breaks from our men and takes to -the water of a wide creek, which sets in between the stockades. Snatching from his neck the charm which is suspended there — a round shell of lacquered cane, filled with miniature idols, bits of silver foil bearing sacred inscrip- tions, and perhaps some hieroglyphic impos- ture that he believes is his horoscope, the whole duly prayed for and paid for, as a busi- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 103 ness transaction between his poonghee and himself — he casts it upon the water far before him, in the direction of the opposite bank. Then, expertly, and with an extraordinary exertion of strength, making an eddying wake, he strikes out for it. Balls patter in the stream thickly around his head, but spare him always, as though there were indeed some virtue in his charm, his prayers, his incantations ; for, as often as he reaches his floating superstition, he hugs it to his heaving breast— and for a space, seemingly forgetful of the danger, he pauses and his lips move rapidly. Again, rising waist-high in the water, and tossing his brown arms aloft, he throws his shell across the stream, and dives, and dives again ; and when presently he comes panting to the surface, he dashes the water from his straining eyes, utters a cry of joy as he catches sight of his senseless toy, and strikes out lustily. Our men are touched with admiration, with compassion; they will not hurt him ; the few shots they fire now are but in the rude sport of soldiers and sailors warm with the chase ; thev 104 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; are careful for him, are even anxious for his life ; and when at last he reaches the opposite bank, and throwing himself prostrate, kissing his charm and clasping it to his forehead, lies pant- ing but safe, they treat him to three cheers. Now up goes the British ensign on a long bamboo (for the Burmese have cut down their flag-staff, surmounted by the Sacred Goose, to save it from desecration), and our people have possession of a formidable angle of the outer stockade. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 105 CHAPTER XIII. KEMMENDINE— FIRE-RAFTS CONFIDING CREATURES ! A WOOD- EN GUX — the STOCKADE THE ASPECT AND THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT RANGOON IS OURS BATHING UNDER DIF- FICULTIES. At this point in the assault, the Phlegethon was ordered to take the Serpent in tow, and proceed past the " King's Wharf and upper Stockade, to Kemmendine, some four or five miles distant by a sharp bend in the river — not half so far by land. Kemmendine had been always a rendezvous for war-boats. During the first Burmese war, numbers of fire-rafts, ingeniously contrived of canes, loose planks, and brush, saturated with petroleum and ignited, were constructed there and launched on the river to drift down upon the British fleet, to which they were dan- gerous as well as troublesome. A force, sent by Sir Archibald Campbell to burn the place, met with obstinate and damaging resistance. Our orders were to take Kemmendine at 5* 106 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; once, destroying all stockades and war-boats. As we passed the King's wharf the batteries there opened brisk fire upon us. We stayed to fight them for half an hour, when, the Sala- mander coming to our relief, we left them to be finished by her, and pushed on to Kemmen- dine. As we steamed up the river and past the village, the people appeared to be deserting it. Their small boats were plying up and down and across the stream, seemingly laden with household goods. As we passed through them, they made grand salaam, waving their arms in gestures of welcome and God-speed. Some on the ghauts and banks, and in front of the houses, greeted us with songs and triumphal dances, with beating of tom-toms and gongs, and flourishing of white flags. One fellow, who, by his airs and his fine clothes, we took for a person of note, hailed the ship and treated us to an off-hand speech, to the effect that he was delighted to welcome us to those waters, and begged us to accept, in the name of Kemmendine, his respectful assurances of distinguished consideration. He was happy OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKUAWADDI. 107 to say that, a little higher up the river, an inso- lent stockade, commanded by an insane clacoit, would be found, where, he had no doubt, a brilliant victory awaited his brave, handsome, and cunning friends, the Inglee Rajahs. We left him "hyfalutin," and, in half an hour, came upon a remarkably strong stockade. On the bank, between it and the river, a party of nearly naked fellows, commanded by a busy-body in a red helmet, were training a monstrous black gun on us, which they had mounted upon some logs of teak. The thing certainly looked formidable, and we had reason to apprehend that a well-directed shot from it would cut us clean in two. Before we could bring our forward gun to bear — the channel being too narrow, and the current too strong, to enable us to place the ship in position, en- cumbered as we were with the Serpent — they fired. Although they seemed to have got nearly the proper bearings and elevation, their shot flew wide — we could not discover whither. Crowding on steam, we pressed forward to reply, withholding our fire for a short range 108 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and a sure aim. With surprising celerity they had reloaded, and now fired again. This time we heard their shot sing as it passed, over us, as high as the mainyard. The explosion was terrific — even the ship trembled. When the dense pile of vapor rolled away, all that was to be seen of gun or gunners was a disordered pile of smoking logs, some fragments of wood floating on the stream, half a dozen blackened forms prostrate and writhing, and one or two yelling savages scam- pering into the jungle. The gun was but a teak-log bored, and bound with bamboo strips and rattan ; they had crammed it to the muz- zle, and it had burst — the engineers were hoist with their own petard. We at once briskly attacked the stockade, which defended itself with spirit. When night fell, having* accomplished but little with our heaviest fire, except to silence their guns for the present, we dropped down, opposite the village, and waited till daylight to renew the attack. All that night, as we afterward learned, the villagers were engaged — not, as we at first generously imagined, in the innocent and con- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 109 fiding labor of removing their little alls, but — in conveying boat-load after boat-load of rice and fresh water, and mats with small arms, and sometimes even heavy guns, concealed beneath them, into the stockade. Every man in those boats had left in the village a wife or an aged parent, every woman a child or a young sister, as a hostage for their faithful and successful execution of the enterprise. On their courage and their cunning hung many a dear life. At day-break we returned to the stockade and began six hours of uninterrupted assault, covering every loop-hole, and making a target of every Burman who dared to show a lock of his hair, much more the color of his breech- cloth. But, although we afforded them no ojDportunity to retaliate, they sustained but small damage at our hands. Their stockade was one of the strongest in the country. A square of five hundred feet on each face was inclosed in a double row of high teak logs, of enormous girth, driven, like piles, deeply into the earth, and as close together as possible. To these was added, on both sides, an embank- ment of twelve feet without an opening. The 110 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; interior was in trenched in every direction — the trenches eight feet deep and covered in with the heaviest timbers, so as to be quite bomb-proof. On all sides the approaches were armed with a sort of vegetable bayonets, short bamboos, sharpened and stuck upright in the ground. Our shot seldom reached them, save when they voluntarily exposed themselves, as in ex- tinguishing, by means of great hollow bamboos filled with water, the flames which eight times our carcasses lighted in vain — the teak was green, and would not burn. One man — per- haps an " Invulnerable" under the inspiration of opium — climbed to the top of the stockade, and struck up a war-dance. Our second officer knocked off his head with a round shot. An attempt was made to land a storming party ; but hardly had the boats left the ships' sides, before the face of the stockade was all alive and yelling, and our men were immedi- ately repulsed with a wild but very dangerous fire, from near a thousand bad muskets. We covered the retreat with our guns, and safely drew off the storm ers. At night, our ammuni- OR, UP AND DOWN THE LRRAWADDI. Ill tion being almost expended, we again dropped down to the village. Next morning we sent to Rangoon for rein- forcements — a stronger storming party, and heavier guns. Joined by the Mozuffer and Ferooz, we took the stockade in an hour, with- out a casualty. The other steamers, with the Serpent, returned forthwith to Rangoon, we remaining to burn the stockade. That was a dark night — no moon, and a cloudy sky ; but as we lay off Kemmendine, listening to the roar of our artillery at Rangoon, the booming of mortars, the ringing of tubes, the whizzing of rockets, the rattle of musketry, and, now and then, the hurrahs of British and the yells of Burmese, our landscape was all alight with fire-balls floating over the town, the burst- ing of shells around the tinkling tee of the Golden Dagon, and in the high seat of Boodh's unshaken calm — the sky redly uniformed in the reflection of Rangoon's lurid flames, the crack ling conflagration of the stockades, the chain of beacon-fires linking the northern hills. In the jungle there was panic, and all its voices were up — tigers growled, and wild dogs ran 112 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; howling to and fro. Wings, blacker than the darkness, flapped among the shadows heavily. Overhead there was a whispering as of many witches, and the Peguan nightingale shrieked with the tongues of all the angry Nats, and of the damned that fret in the midst of the great stone Silipatavi. At dawn, three Chittagong men, who had formerly been merchants of Kangoon, came out of the jungle, where they had been hiding since the bombardment began, and implored us to rescue them. Their worldly goods were all gone, they said — seized by the Woon, when they fled ; they were beggars now, and they trembled for their lives. Rangoon was taken — our people in the Pagoda, and the Burmese flying into the jungle. On the second day of the assault, the Governor, with his household and some favorites of his court, had escaped on elephants, burning villages in his flight, and slashing among his own people, in the wanton- est lust of blood. The Pluto came and confirmed the story — Rangoon was ours, and the British ensign fly- ing on the upper gallery of the Golden Dagon ! OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 113 That afternoon the Purser and I landed at Kemmendine with a watering party — the village seemingly deserted, and picturesquely desolate. A few rods from the landing brought us to the one long, narrow street, of dirty, low-eaved bamboo huts, which, following the line of the shore, was floored with little black bricks, and roofed with multitudinous and various foliage, downhanging and dense. A pariah dog or two, skulking and spy-like ; a forgotten cat or two, singed and sorry-looking ; one famished mina, screaming from a cage, were all the inhab- itants. Two or three hundred yards from the land- ing, to the left, in the middle of the village and of the pavement, was the well from which our men filled their casks. To the right, and much nearer, was a shadowy banian grove, through which a whispering alley led up to a temple, many pinnacled and grotesquely carved, where- in was an ampitheatre of shelves, piled high with images — little and big, of wood and stone, and lead and plaster — of the Stagnant Calm. A rude paling inclosed the whole, and on the right was a thicket of thorny underbush. 114 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; In the pavement before the porch was an- other well, with cord and bucket, and I staid to bathe amid the embowered beauty and cool- ness, and quiet and security. The Purser mount- ed guard, with a musket we had brought. Suddenly there was a stampede in the thick- et, and five Burmese, armed with muskets, broke through the palisade, at the poonghee- house, and came down on us — their breech- cloths, their top-knots, their shining, naked skins frightfully near to us. At the moment of their apparition my body-guard's back was turned to them ; he was marching down the alley, playfully going through the exercise; I was quite naked, and, of course, unarmed. The Purser, turning quickly, saw at once how it was. Leveling his musket, which had its bayo- net fixed, he ran at the fellows, at the same time shouting for our men — a vocal exercise in which I joined. The Burmese turned at once, and precipitately fled ; leaping the palisade and crouching low, they glided through the under- bush and disappeared. We returned to our party. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 115 CHAPTER XIV. MAGNANIMOUS ! — THE STOCKADES OF RANGOON THE STREETS THE MACHINERY OF BOODHISM — THE GOLDEN DAGON THE GREAT AND LITTLE BELLS BOODH AND " BACCY" THE INGATHERING YOUNG SHWAY-MADOO. But a few days had passed since the taking of Rangoon, when the late Woon — now an out- law, no better than a dacoit, without distinc- tion, without reverence, without authority, without followers (save a few desperadoes, who, having shared his crimes, and fearing to share his punishment, made a virtue of sharing his desperate flight) without abiding place, marking his drunken progress with indiscrimi- nate rapine and slaughter — had the insolence to send to General Godwin a deputation, with a flag of truce, to say : that the Governor of Rangoon addressed himself to the great Cap- tain of the Inglee Rajahs, because the Captain was a very rich and powerful man ; so, also, was the Governor of Rangoon, who acknow- ledged that the Inglee Rajahs had beaten him in 116 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; one great battle — undertaken when his omens were bad — with terrible loss on both sides. This, however, was but the first of three terrific engagements ; in the two that were yet to be fought, the Golden Foot would surely trample upon its enemies. Therefore, the Governor of Rangoon, entertaining no bitterness of resent- ment against the Inglee Rajahs, but only the magnanimity of an invincible warrior, gener- ously advised the rich and powerful Captain, Godwin Woon, to retire in time. To which the General's reply was more military than diplo- matic, and certainly extremely ungrateful : " Tell the impudent beggar to go to Sili- patavi ; I mean to hang him yet, even if I have to take him from among his women." Rambling through the streets of Rangoon, and around the Great Pagoda, observing the fortifications, I did not cease to wonder how it could ever have been taken. Surely, one thousand English or Americans would hold just such a place forever, against twenty thousand of their own countrymen. Yet the garrison of Rangoon numbered fifty thousand. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 117 Shway-Dagoung, the Golden Dagon — an octagonal pagoda of solid masonry, without an opening, holding up its jingling coronal even with the spire of the proud St. Paul's, gilded from base to pinnacle, tarnishing in the rains of many wet, and glaring in the suns of many dry seasons — formed the centre of an area of fortification four miles square, and planned in this wise : The outer lines w r ere marked by a stockade, having four equal sides, of four miles each, one side fronting on the river. Many small batteries flanked this at different points ; and the ground between it and the river, and on both sides, bristled with such vegetable bayo- nets as those we found at Kemmendine — short flinty bamboos, planted thickly, their sharp- ened points projecting some six or eight inches. These were for the benefit of storm- ing parties. Beside these, mines of gunpowder were discovered, ready to be sprung by means of trains conducted into the jungle. Within this largest stockade, which com- pletely encompassed the new town of Ran- goon — for the old town, along the river's edge, as it was a few months previous, had been 118 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; carried back, bodily as.it were, two miles and set down around the Pagoda — were two others, the last or innermost, which was by far the strongest of the three, immediately enclosing the Dagon. These were, all alike, constructed of the heaviest teak timber, loop-holed every few yards — giant logs, from twenty to thirty feet high, with deep ditches, and bamboo chevaux- de-frise, such as I have described, in front, and solid embankments of brick and earth, inside and out. Within, were numerous deep trenches, like those of Kemmendine. Around and between the stockades, the ground was covered with villainous jun- gle, affording a perfect cover for Burmese mus- ketry in the day-time, and for tigers, dacoits, and vagabond dogs at night. Along the walls, in the ditches, on the plat- forms under the guns, our men found hundreds of Burmese bodies. The Governor had chained his gunners to their own engines, and so they were found dead. While the wives and young maidens brought powder, and the links of chain that were fed to the guns for want of proper shot, the aged, the crippled, and the babes OR, UP AND DOWN THE 1RRAWADDI. 119 were penned trembling in the trenches, to an- swer with their lives for the courage and loy- alty of men whose fear was greater than their own, and who had only oppression to be faith- ful to. The only passage, then, through these con- centric lines of stockade, and so on, up to the Dagon, was by a paved causeway of two miles and a half, over recent bridges of logs thrown across ditches ; through gates where the anxi- ous regards of a dozen cannon were gathered in a focus ; through dim, barbaric streets, full of the devices of Boodhistic deviltry and all man- ner of pitiful im-Christness — streets, once all bosky and picturesquely vista'd, now encum- bered with the wreck of war, and disfigured with the rubbish of haste confounded and panic- stricken ; past many a dark, mysterious poon- ghee-house, whose grotesque gods kept grim watch within, and whose portals were guarded by most hideous warders — staring creatures cut in stone, and in the mixed fashion of cock, crocodile and tiger. And so you reach the Golden Dagon, the pagoda of first importance in the empire, hav- 120 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; ing, beneath its ponderous base, millions of ru pees in gold and silver and jewels, the offerings — partly voluntary, partly extorted — of millions of poor fanatics, trembling, and at their wits' end, between the dhars of their captains, and the curses of their priests. By a lofty flight of dark stone steps under a low roof fantastically sculptured, and between great balustrades, mottled green and black with moss and damps, whereon two swarthy croco- diles measure their monstrous length, their gaping jaws supported by colossal Nats, you mount to the upper of the two vast terraces which encircle the base of this proud monu- ment, reared to the Stagnant Calm. By a narrow gate you pass out upon the wide platform of the upper terrace, and there stands Shway-Dagoung in all his golden glory — acres of senseless shrines about his knees, and on his towering head, three hundred and thirty feet aloft, a crown of multitudinous tiny bells, swayed by many a playful breeze in gusts of silver tinkling. Lesser pagodas, griffins, sphynxes, and all manner of barbaric nondescripts, hold the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 121 ground around. To the four "airts" four carved aud pillared temples face, wherein are lodged the high company of Boodh. The eastern of these surpasses, in its arabesque cornices, triple roof, spiral columns, and airy- spire, the dreams of the boy Solomon — a gold- en throne, a temple all of gold. Near the pagoda, under a sacred canopy, still golden, of its own, from gilded beams hewn from the proudest teaks in Pegu, hangs, within two feet of the ground, the Great Dagon bell. Straining my arm from the shoulder under its vibrating rim, I could touch only with my finger-tips its inner edge ; yet never did my Lady's silver toilet-bell utter mellower music. Pali inscriptions and hieroglyphics chase its surface from shank to rim ; and a dozen funny demons of indescribable absurdity guard the portal of its lodge. To the Burmese t.iese bells are the dearest objects of pride and veneration. At the dedi- cation of any pagoda of consequence, the people flock, from all the country round about, to the founding of its great bell, and cast into the molten mass, with eager devotion* bits 6 122 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; of copper, brass, silver, and gold, and even jewels. The silver scabbards and gold betel boxes of the men; the polished jars of house- wives ; the ear-rings and store of pretty bau- bles, much prized by coquettish maidens ; the armlets, anklets, and toelets of nautch girls ; even the small metal toys of the young chil- dren, and here and there a bit of shining foil called by a baby's name, are flung in without stint, that the Nats may be propitiated and the demons averted. Everywhere within the pagoda grounds lesser bells are to be seen, of a like costly com- position and almost unearthly sweetness of tone. Tongueless, all of them, and stationary, a blow on the rim from a joint of bamboo con- jures their melody. The hundreds of young pagodas which are gathered in the shadow of Shway-Dagoung, have, each, their tinkling coro- nets. Unlike the giants of their kindred, these little bells have tongues, from which light gilded leaves are hung to catch the wandering breeze ; and, from every landmark on the river, every headland of noticeable height, their songs come down forever. For the Burmese are OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 123 profuse in pagodas, and seem sincerely to exult in the labor, danger, and patience with which those shining jewels are flung up, by the hand of superstition, to the tojDs of apparently im- possible crags. During the first Burmese war the British would have transplanted the Great Dagon bell to London, but, in the effort to embark it, its great weight carried away the tackle ; it cap- sized the boat in which it had been shipped, and sank to the bottom of the river. The Burmese fished it out again and restored it to its sacred office ; and ever since, they have believed that so long as its voice can be heard in the land Burmah cannot be di- vided. But where was all the picturesqueness, all the " keeping" — where were the " calm, eter- nal eyes," when the genius of shops sat in the high seat of Boodh, and the " ISth Royal Irish" had their quarters at the head of the grand staircase, amid tall gilded columns and imperturbable, absent-looking giants of gods — pipe-clay abounding on their altars, and red coats and flannel shirts, short pipes and baccy- 124 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; boxes, hanging around the necks of Ghiadma and his three forerunners ? And yet, even so soon, all the more harm- less portion of the Rangoon population — small traders and handicraftsmen, salt-dryers and boats-people — were flocking in by companies of thousands to reestablish themselves in their old places, inspired with confidence in British magnanimity and mercy, and eager to escape to foreign protection from the ruthless extor- tion and tiger-like blood-thirstiness of their native masters. For many days, looking from the upper terrace across the low-lying jungle, to where the silver skirts of the Salween spar- kled, we beheld the long-drawn procession of elephants and ponies, and oxen with carts, and men with parts of bamboo houses, and women with domestic utensils and rice, and little chil- dren with pigs, and fowls, and kittens — the happy march of a helpless barbarism bringing its tribute of trust and reliance to an all-sub- duing civilization. Before I close this chapter, I must say what I mean by " young pagodas." Twenty-four hundred years ago, two famous OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 125 princes, brothers, on the eve of some stirring en- terprise, military or political, built, gilded, and consecrated a little pagoda — a mere " butcha," as they say in India, a brat, of some twenty feet or so, but perfect in his beautiful proportions as he is this day. Therefore they found favor with the Nats, and attained to power and proud dis- tinction. So, other Woons and princes and great captains made much of the young Shway- Madoo, and each in turn gave him, according to his means, one or two or three layers of bricks and stucco, and a new coat of gold over all, and a larger, finer, and more melodious tee; and thus he attained to his present exalted stature, and held up his head beside the highest in the land, and became the haughty Shway- Madoo Prah, the Golden Supreme of Pegu. And thus many pagodas, which are lofty and illustrious now, were once little fellows that might have stood erect inside the Great Dagon bell — so little, that the children w T ho were learning to count could make a lesson of the bells in their tees. Sometimes, as happened to Shway-Dagoung, the growth of the young pagoda was secretly helped by the Nats, w T ho, 126 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; when pleased with the liberality and zeal of its founder, would contribute as much to the progress of the work in a single night as the pious builders of the shrine had been able to effect in a whole moon. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 127 CHAPTER XT. THE LOTOS-TANKS — TESTING THE WATER — THE POONGHEE- HOUSE— BLACK- ART. That May-day out-Julyed July, when we of the Phlegethon set out from Rangoon on an ex- cursion to head off the Dallah Woon, and him of Ingeboo, who were said to be somewhere up the Irrawaddi, levying on the villages and driving in recruits. Having instructions to ascertain on the way all the facilities of water- ing for the shipping and troops, and having almost empty casks ourselves, we dropped anchor next morning at a picturesque landing place in a quiet cove, where were a poonghee- house, some pagodas, and a numerous banian. In this quite deserted spot we found three small tanks, and a watering party was landed at once. We had been forwarned that in the first war it was the custom of the Burmese, fleeing before an enemy and deserting their villages, to 128 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; poison their tanks with the juices of deadly plants, and accordingly I was ordered to test the water, and our thirsty crew to wait for my report. Now, in the vagueness of the best accounts I could get, the variety and strange- ness of the poisonous agents, and the absence of all needful appliances, a chemical test was an impossibility. Moreover, we had but one ration of water left, and the men had been working furiously under a parching heat. But I went to look at the tanks, and when I found their pure and innocent bosoms hiding under a green veil of broad lotos-leaves, and that Cleo- patra among flowers drowsily rocking her cheek on their ripples, and all around wearing an aspect of blessedness and self-sufficing beauty, I thought the physiological test would do. So I tossed off a bumper to the Daughter of Egypt, and retired to my state-room to make a sonnet about her before I died : As often as I'm with thee I recall A languid lotos nodding in a pool, A reverie of ripples, where a cool, Still tent of bamboo-shadows curtains all. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 129 Hard by, a bulbul joins her " dying fall" To the low crooning of an evening breeze, Singing of slumber and soft Indian ease, To fold my sleeper in faint, sensuous thrall : Couched in the quiet of her beauty, fanned By unseen slaves of Queen Mab's retinue, Like a Sultana leaning on her hand, Whose dreams Haroun-al-Reschid's realm renew. Be thou my lotos, thine her gorgeous gleams — Thou maker and partaker of my dreams I Most like a lotos in thy languid air — ■ Most like a lotos in thy red and white — Not in the arrogance of gems bedight, But in the queenliness of being fair — Most like a lotos, that thy veins prepare Some subtle potion to enthrall the sense Of jaded wayfarers, and lift them hence, To bathe in oceans of empyrean air : The dusty Bedouin, alighting down From his fagged camel at a lotos bath, Straightway emparadised, his houri hath, Forgets the desert and his bandits brown. I lighted from my camel at thy door To kiss thee — must I dream for evermore ? The poonghee-house had evidently been a place of note. It had only one apartment, but that was of imposing dimensions, and furnished in a superior manner for a Burmese building. There were cornices elaborately carved, and 6* 130 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; slender spiral pillars stained yellow — the sacer dotal color, appropriated by the priesthood for their sacred vestments and the adornment of religious houses, and strictly tabooed to every other class, however rich or powerful. There were no retiring rooms, no closets or curtained recesses ; a few rude, hard benches, without even the affectation of ornament or conveni- ence, the only couches. A part of the chamber at the back was divided off from the rest by a yellow curtain stretched across ; and within, on an elevated dais, also laid with yellow cloth, was a small cabinet, profusely carved and gilded, wherein was a resplendent image of the god, and several sacred volumes of great age, such as are espe- cially the charge of the higher poon ghees or rahaans — books in sacred parable and tradition, in astrology and the black art, in the science of charms and omens. The Captain's butler, a Hindostanee who had lived many years in Bur- mah, and was familiar with the written and spoken language, made prize of a volume of necromancy, which was regarded with ortho- dox horror by a Burmese servant who accom- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 131 panied him, so that the man refused to touch it, and as long as it remained in the boat con- tinued to mutter prayers and pour water on his head. 132 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER XVI. A PRIZE AND A PRISONER PLENIPOTENTIARY ABDOOLAH HIS CHARACTER AND COSTUME STICKS AND CHICKENS THE GREAT BATTLE OF PONTALONG. We soon got under way again. As we ascended, the river widened, and the channel followed the left bank. The right shore was thickly wooded, the trees overhanging the stream, and their lower branches often swing- ing in the water. Presently a small covered boat, like the family boats of the fishermen we had seen at every village, emerged from a narrow inlet in the right bank and pulled swiftly up the stream in the slack water, close under the trees and in their favorable shadow. Our natives were sent to hail it from the bridge with shouts and waving of white cloths — to call it along- side, that we might overhaul it for arms and news. Four stout fellows were in the bow laying OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 133 out all their strength on their paddles, and a steersman was perched on the high stern. We could not distinguish their faces — the distance was too great ; nor could we decide whether there were others under the sampan. They gave no heed to our hailing, but pulled straight on, seeming not to turn their eyes or thoughts in our direction. A gun, already charged with grape, was fired across their bow ; the shot threw water over them and cut up the bank be- fore them. At once they dropped their pad- dles, and, leaping into the water, swam a few strokes; then clambered up the bank and fled into the woods. With the impression that there might still be others concealed under the covering of mats, a few muskets were dis- charged — at first with blank cartridges, but afterward with balls, thrown tenderly over and around the boat — to dislodge them. But see- ing no sign of life, we sent one of our cutters to bring the canoe away. As the men came alongside tow T ing their prize, their faces wore an almost foolish ex- pression, as much of shame as of pity. There were two paddles, some fishing poles, and 134 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; an empty rice basket. And under the awning were two brass bowls ; an earthen pot, in which was a handful of cold rice ; a roll of filthy mats ; a filthier garment that once was red, and might have been a woman's; a broken- hearted duck ; a desperate cock that fought like Horatius ; the bleeding body of a white- haired man, far gone beyond his three-score- and-ten, whose temple had been pierced by a ball the devil must have guided ; and a creature with elf-locks whiter than his, whose portion in womankind was scarcely distinguishable — partly paralyzed and wholly idiotic — the for- lornest wretchedness I ever saw. We took her on board, and tried to make atonement with tenderness, but all kindness was lost upon her wandering wits. So we comforted the poor creature as best we could, and committed her, with ample provision for her present support, to the charge of some kind-hearted people at the first village we came to. This was a place of some size, called Ponta- long. Having waited there a day without see- ing or hearing from any citizen of credit and OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 135 renown, beadle or train-band captain, we sent Abdoolah to demand an explanation of such very sophisticated disrespect, and forthwith, by dint of much bluster, a profusion of Company's buttons, some gold lace, and a pair of ship's pistols — which in his hands were not so harm- less as they looked — to bring off the head man, willy-nilly, with the necessary apologies, to say nothing of the poultry and plantains, the fish and mangoes. On such an embassy Abdoolah was in all his glory. His barbarian vanity made the most of the buttons and the lace, wherewith he glorified himself exceedingly, and filled the vul- gar minds of Pontalong with special wonder. Though really a brave man, with strong sense as well as cunning, he affected an extravagant con- tempt for the Burmese, and invariably played Thersites before them, though strongly sus- pected of mingling their blood with the Malay element in his veins. He had a great gift of rant, and heartily rejoiced in an opportunity, such as this, to display his talent for tearing passions to tatters. It was his pet boast that when once he got a Burman by the throat he 136 THE GOLDEN DAG ON ; could shake anything out of him, from red- legged ducks to rubies. And yet all this seemed no more than an amiable contempt, indulged in principally for the gratification of his own vanity. We could discover in his eccentricities no characteristic cruelty. I have even known him to display, on occasions, a highly Christian quality of kindness. Ever since that black day in the calendar of his heroic career, when his gallant navy, consisting of three rickety war-boats and the "Old Yaller," struck all its ragged flags at once to overpowering odds, he had served his gallant foes, with the accommodating ardor of a Swiss, in the complex capacity of pilot, inter- preter, bargain-maker, and brow-beater-gener- al ; and his loyalty was as admirable as his accomplishments. If, in holding on by " the great wheel when it went up hill," his adherence was prompted by the pure love of loot, as he called plunder, he had the rare candor to affect no more sen- timental motive, and we were sure of his staunchness so long as our crop of loot throve better than our enemy's. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 137 Abdoolah's costume was picturesque; there is many a less striking portrait in the National Academy of Design. On his back he sported a pea-jacket, originally made for a very tall man, with very long arms and a very low waist, and remarkably narrow between the shoulders; for Abdoolah had cut out a triangle from be- tween the shoulder-blades and spliced in a broad slice of Turkey-red — by which private bit of vanity he could be distinguished with a good glass at the distance of a mile. To the modest half-dozen of regulation buttons which, in the beginning, adorned this elaborate com- position, he had added two rows extraordinary of the same, with the lion on them, if any- thing, more rampant than usual. Somebody had given him a rusty epaulette, which, with a sharp eye to symmetry, he had hung on to his collar behind, precisely amidships. For his nether man he affected the Burmese costume, and ventilated his thighs in a breech- cloth freely adapted to the dog-star influences of the climate. On reaching his short, sturdy legs he became British again, and those brown pillars of the Abdoolah constitution were plant- 138 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; ed — no doubt, for the sentiment — in a pair of uncommon Wellingtons. After this I need hardly say that Abdoolah was a chunk of a man, short, brawny, and tough. On his chest, which, between knocks and the weather was actually parti-colored, he had the scars of three old gashes, about which he told a different story every time you asked him how he got them. On his head — I had well nigh forgotten that — he sported a palm-leaf hat immensely wide in the brim, with three gold bands an inch or two apart, and a red rag sticking out at a hole he had made in the crown. You may complete his outfit with a broad black belt, clasped by a brass buckle as broad as one's hand, wherein were stuck a pair of ship's pistols and a dhar, more familiar to his hand than a cutlass. Then caricature his heels with a pair of brass spurs, into which he had been fooled by a sharp ensign, who, at the same time, duly knighted him Sir Bardolph Pistol for his splendid swag- ger — and you must acknowledge he was a likely man to teach the City Fathers of Ponta- long good manners. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 139 As for his face, it was a hard face, a scarred, and battered, and defaced face, a face that had been much used and much abused, that " knew all about that," and had made up its mind, and would stand no nonsense — such a face as you might make by taking the beauties of feature and expression of Rough and Ready, Billy Bowlegs, and Sir Charles Napier, and mixing them together. In a little while Abdoolah returned, sticking out all over, and, to a stranger, seeming not in the least inclined to laugh. Three uncom- fortable-looking individuals, of whom it was hard to say whether they were most dirty or scared, followed after the jingling of his spurs. These pretended to be bewildered by the scene at which they unwillingly assisted, and begged to be told why the fierce General in the breech-cloth and buttons had commanded their presence, and by w T hat wonderful dispensation such pariahs as they had attracted the attention of so tremendous a Rajah. They were told w T e were in want of fire- wood and fowls, and that we expected Ponta- 140 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; long to provide both without delay. They swore they could riot see what they had to do with that; that they were three of the most miserable of men, who barely managed, with infinite pains, to 'keep body and soul together ; that for their own funerals, if they died that hour, they had neither faggot nor pullet where- with to burn their bodies or pay the poonghee ; that the rich men of the town had gone off with the Dallah Woon, and taken all the sticks and chickens with them. They implored permis- sion to return to the miserable obscurity from which they had been dragged, no doubt by mistake. But the real ragamuffins of Pontalong — they who had never been seized of faggot or fowl in their lives except they stole it — protested vo- ciferously, as they squatted about the deck, that Abdoolah's prisoners were, in spite of their pathos and dirt, the true Gilpins of the place, men of substance as well as renown — as, indeed, the superior quality of their tattoo- ing betrayed — who counted their poultry by the hundred, and their fuel by the cord. So Abdoolah stormed exceedingly, and patted his OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 141 dhar, and said " damn" a great many times — that potent monosyllable before which all ob- durate barbarians soon learn to bow — and led his pathetic friends to a thirty-two pounder, and demanded the sticks and chickens in its name. Whereupon his victims confessed to their hen-roosts and wood-piles, and consented to fill our coops and bunkers forthwith, pro- vided we would assist in a happy plan of theirs for the saving of their heads. They made it plain to us, that if they con- tributed "aid and comfort to the enemy" — if they yielded to a forcible forage without resist- ance — their heads would fly from their shoul- ders immediately on the reappearance of their Myosugi or Mayor, who would return as soon as the ship left. Therefore they besought our aid in getting up a mock fight that night. They would bring off the wood and poultry in the afternoon, as much as we wanted ; and when the moon rose we must fire into the town as good-naturedly as possible, and they would fire back, with a jinjal and some mus- kets, in a perfectly friendly manner. This funny programme was duly performed, 142 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; with brilliant effect ; and the best of all was, they borrowed some of our powder for the occasion. Soon after dark — the fire-wood and fowls, as well as some pigs, and fish, and mangoes, having been shipped (and liberally paid for), in the midst of much merry-making with the pretty mimas, who visited us con- fidingly, the free interchange of toasts in rum and wine, and no end of mutual admiration — all the petroleum of Pontalong was brought into requisition, and a general illumination opened the spectacle. Then a mixed herd of citizens, abundantly greasy, but not at all fat, headed by Abdoolah's confidential friends, and having in their midst the biggest white flag the town could raise, as if, still timid, to signify that their friendly sentiment was in propor- tion to its dimensions, ran down to the bank, yelling, and firing their muskets in the air. We opened the attack with one of our broad- side guns — of course with blank fire — and im- mediately their old jinjal uttered its small roar. For nearly an hour the set-to was smart and noisy. The moon was full, and very bright ; the stars were out in unusual strength ; the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 143 illumination by torches and bon-fires was brilliant, and with a few blue-lights we con- tributed largely to the splendor of the scene. Altogether, our grand engagement at Ponta- long was an uncommonly showy affair. When we had burned as much powder as we thought it necessary to expend for such a moral impression, we permitted our fire to be silenced, and retreated precipitately, according to arrangement ; whereat fresh bursts of shout- ing, dancing, gun-firing, and general glorifying on shore. Let us hope that when the Myosugi re- turned, he treated our friends to the thanks of the city and a public, dinner, made heroes of them off-hand, and postponed their decapita- tion, which was pretty sure to happen one day or another. 144 THE GOLDEN DAGON CHAPTER XVII. OUR MIRACLES-THE FISHERMAN'S BUTCHA THE TRIBUTE OP ROTTEN EGGS BLOWING-UP A POONGHEE. Many a poor wounded prisoner whom our surgeons had made whole again before he was set free, had returned to his native village with a wonder-moving story of the skill and kind- ness of the Inglee doctors ; so the fame of our miracles had spread from Rangoon to Prome. The poonghees practice no surgical arts ; the halt Burman must go halt forever, and the poor bazaar girl, struck by a shot from the musket of a dacoit, if she does not die outright, must carry the ball till her time comes. Neverthe- less, they believe that however grave the wound, however prostrating the shock, if by any conjuring they can get at the ball, so as to see and feel it and toss it in their hands, they will surely recover. Thus, it was our gun-shot practice which most astonished them, inspiring them indeed with superstitious faith, and a OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 145 reverence akin to worship — this regard pre- vailing among them all, from the most peace- able fisherman to the most murderous dacoit. I have more than once got down into a boat alongside to extract one of our own balls from the body of a tattooed ruffian who, a few minutes before, was war-dancing and hooting, and flourishing his dhar and blazing away with his musket at our ship, and who now, on catching the lead in his ugly skin, with touch- ing confidence came begging me to take back the bullet. True, if the fellow had got his de- serts he would have been swung up at the yard for a scarecrow. But what could we do? There was no dealing "judgmatically," as my countrymen say, with such an appeal to the hospitalities : you lost sight of the wholesale thief and kidnapper and Thug, and saw in the fellow only a helpless, beseeching animal, crip- pled and moaning, and showing us its wound. At Yangeenchinyah I had a dozen patients. A fisherman and his wife brought off their butcha, a beautiful child, who, in playing with another baby Burman, had fallen down the high bank aud dislocated his thigh* The in* 146 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; jury was recent, and the reduction easy. As the deck happened to be in great confusion at the time, I had my patient removed to the " bridge" between the paddle-boxes, and operated there. Young as the boy was, he displayed much of the savage's temper under physical suffering, and bit and scratched rather than cried. His mother remained on the deck below in an agony of impatience, but with no doubt or fear. Although we urged her repeatedly to come up to her child, she resolutely refused — "it was not for her to stand above the heads of all the Inglee Rajahs." Another was a poor chatta-maker, who was quite blind with ulcerated corneas. His wife paddled him off in a little canoe, and I found them squatting together under the rail, close by the gangway, waiting to be noticed. With perfect faith and patience and tenderness, she sat holding his hand between her own ; or with child-like simplicity manifesting her solicitude, and her anxiety to get me interested in the case, she rattled away without a pause, and with an infinite variety of gestures, never per- ceiving, never understanding, that her pretty OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 147 prayer was all lost on me. But I did my best for the sufferer then, and left careful instruc- tions with the most intelligent of his neighbors, as well as a supply of medicines, for his future treatment. Five weeks after that, being in Yangeen- chinyah again, I was rewarded by finding him wonderfully improved : the sight of one eye was quite restored, and the other was recover- ing rapidly. Poor fellow! his gratitude was not very demonstrative ; but his delighted wife embraced and kissed my feet, and laughed and cried together, and presently, running off in high excitement, returned — with a basket of rotten eggs. She had saved them for me ever since the morning he could first see the light. Good creature! to her they were not rotten, they were only saved — she perceived them with the nose of her heart. I told her they were yery nice, and I hope I thought they were. At Yangeenchinyah we witnessed the obse- quies of a poonghee, not the least curious of Bur- mese ceremonies. The defunct had been among the most reverend of the yellow cloth in Pegu, and his funeral called out the town in 148 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; extraordinary preparations. It had been just fifteen months since he died, and all that time the material part of him had been lying em- balmed in a carved, painted and gilded coffin, under three white umbrellas, on a high staging hung with yellow paper, in the principal poon- ghee-house. The process of embalming him was very Egyptian : First of all they steeped him in honey, and left him to soak for some weeks; next, they took out his " insides," and filled up the hole with all manner of spices ; then they encased him in a sheathing of wax to make him air-tight, and over that they payed on a layer of lac, and over that again a coat of gold-leaf; and when they had made him all splendid and shining, they left him on his staging, under his umbrellas, to dry. Finally, by his side, they built a kneeling elephant of thin wood, paper, and glue, and fastened the coffin on its back. And after many months, when the stars, and the cards, and the mango seeds, and the eyes of the yellow owl, had appointed a lucky day, they called all the people from round, about to OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 149 see him start for Nieban. The people came, and brought gongs, drums, horns, and flowers ; there were singing boys and dancing maidens with fireworks — every street its own fireworks. And rockets, wheels, and fountains were stuck thickly on the sides and backs of elephants, oxen, horses, and bears, of wood, paper, and glue. Then they laid the golden mummy in its golden coffin, and hoisted it, elephant and all, atop of the staging under the white umbrellas ; and they mounted the whole upon wheels, and dragged it forth outside the town, to an open place they had cleared in the jungle with fire, banging their gongs the while, beating their drums, blowing their horns, waving their flags — the priests howling, and the boys sing- ing, and the demi-nude girls dancing, the young men flourishing their paddles and dhars, and the old women scolding for alms. All the next day they were letting off the fireworks, — street vieing with street in the pro- fusion, brilliancy, and fantastic variety of its pyrotechnics; for much fizzing and whizzing and spitting and cracking was thought pleasing to 150 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; the Nats and good for the soul of Poonghee. On the third day, which was the last, all the people were distributed in two equal parties, and many- ropes, both long and strong, being attached to opposite sides of the car, they pulled against each other for the possession of Poonghee. Drumming, gonging, tooting, singing, jump- ing, howling, laughing, scolding, waving flags and flourishing dhars, they tugged and swayed and tugged, then fell and were dragged awhile, then rose again and tugged, then rested and panted, and then tugged again. And all this time recruits from other villages were strag- gling in to swell the ranks of this side or of that, and to make the strain and struggle wilder. At last some of the ropes on one side gave way with a loud report. A thousand screaming people at once went down on their backs, roll- ing over each other, spluttering and wrig- gling to disengage themselves ; and the other side, with a sky-splitting shout of victory, ran off with Poonghee, dragging, on their feet or their backs or their bellies, the few of the dis- comfited party who still held on by the ropes that were left. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 151 Then, coffin, staging, elephant and all, they carried Poonghee and set him down inside a bamboo house, erected for the occasion, and hung around with white and yellow flags ; and they dashed the walls with petroleum, and laid combustible matter all about the room, on the staging and in the coffin. Then they stood off and fired rockets at the whole ; till presently roaring flames burst forth, Poonghee went up to Nieban in the blaze, and everybody else went home. 152 THE GOLDEN DAGON; CHAPTER XYIII. THE BOODH. Sangermano describes Nieban as a state of perpetual ecstacy, "wherein those who attain it are not only free from the pains and troubles of this life — from death, illness, and old age — but are abstracted from all sensation ; they have no longer a thought or a desire." By taking refuge only with the Boodh ; by approaching him with pleasing offerings ; by glorifying him with high hymns and elo- quent praises; by keeping your eyes fixed for- ever on the ecstatic, imperturbed abstraction of his gaze ; by striving always and without faint- ing for the highest ; by meditating and repeat- ing eternally the three mystic words, Aneizz'a, Doecha, Anatta : you may reach this Meban through a milky way of worlds. The years it will take you to make the jour- ney may be as few as the days you have lived — may be as many as the drops of rain that fall OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 153 over all the world in seven seasons. You are climbing a mountain of round, rolling stones, and on many a smooth sin your foot may slip and cast you to the bottom. As often as you fall you must be born again, as often as you rise ; and your new state among animate things will be as the depth of your fall, as the height of your exaltation. From the power and be- atitude of a prince among the Nats, you may descend to the crawling nuisance of a louse. From out the fiery, howling centre of Silapatavi, you may rise to the infinite hush and moonlight of Nieban — but step by step, and every step a new birth; through Ammutzi, the place of beasts and creeping things; through Preitta, the place of sorrow ; and Assuriche, the place of anger, heart-burnings, and blows ; and Niria, the place of extreme fire and extreme cold, with Silapatavi at the heart of it. Guadma had lived in four hundred millions of worlds before he was born into this. Imme- diately on emerging from the womb of the Maha-Mai, he said: "Now am I born for the last time — next comes Nieban !" Then the Boodh that had sat on the throne of 7* 154 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; trance five thousand years closed his eyes and dissolved, and the wishless calm became Gruad- ma*s, and G-uadma became the fourth Boodh — the Incomparable; the Supreme; Teacher of the Three Worlds, of Grods, Men, and Devils; the World's Compassionating, Divine Friend ; Lord and Comforter of Sanka (Ceylon) ; the Incomprehensible ; Lord of the Divine Sages ; Deity of the Felicitous Advent ; Illuminator of the World ; Maker of Light ; Prince of Healers ; Supreme Protector, who has made vacant the mansions of distress ; Scholar, Sage, whose un- derstanding is pure and brilliant ; who is cele- brated in the three worlds; who is profound in the three kinds of science ; who hath the thirty-two characteristic signs complete ; who hath memory of all things, with discernments and fore-knowledge ; who, with tranquil mind, cleareth the troubled times — Muni ! whose heart is at rest, who hath suffered much, who resteth ! For my part, I am satisfied to believe that the devout Boodhist, who, maintaining the eternally uninterrupted concatenation, has at- tained to the supreme presence — and the good OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRltAWADDI. 155 and faithful Christian servant who, by the merit of faith and works, hath entered into the joy of his Lord, kneeling, hand-in-hand, at the foot of the throne, will see in Him who sitteth on the right hand, this, his Christ, and that, his Guadma. A devoted missionary, Mr. Malcolm, said of Boodhism : "In almost every respect it seems to be the best religion which man has ever invented." And when, at Doonoobyoo, I asked a poonghee : " What is Boodh?" he answered : " Boodh is you, and I, and all men ; when you are I, and I am you, and both are at rest, that is Boodh." I think I understood him. 156 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER XIX. DOONOOBYOO THE GRAVE OF THE MAHA BANDOOLA HIS TALIPOT TREE HIS PLUTARCH THE STORY OF ZINGUZA. At Doonoobyoo, whither we were now go- ing, the Maha Bandoola, Burmah's adored hero, the man of flying marches — who, after he had defeated Captain Noton at Ramos in 1824, swore he would march on and take London, swore he would swoop down on Calcutta and bring away the Governor-General in fetters to Ava, and was actually provided by the Golden Foot with chains of gold for that purpose — at Doo- noobyoo, where, in great force, and with a body-guard of " Invulnerables," he had made a stand, in 1825, to oppose Sir Archibald Camp- bell on his way to Prome, and drive him back to Rangoon, the illustrious Bandoola was killed by a shell, dying as a great captain should. In his answer to General Willoughby Cot- ton's summons to surrender, he had written his own epitaph in one of the most fameworthy of OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 157 military laconics : "If you wish to see our pagodas, come as friends and I will show them to you ; if you come as enemies — Land !" But now Doonoobyoo was a half-deserted village, an innocent hamlet, whither, seem- ingly, the outcry of war and the smoke of the burning had never come. Not a stockade, not a trench, not a jinjal, not a dhar ! neither gold umbrella nor red flag was there. When we asked " the oldest inhabitant," who hobbled out to offer us the hospitalities of the city, and show us the public buildings, why the chief of the district had not erected stockades and thrown a brave army into the place, to fight us for the honor of the Great Bandoola, he said : "What is there here to fight for? — a poonghee-house, a grave, and a recollection." Historic Doonoobyoo could take care of itself. And in the midst of the old lines which Bandoola himself had made, between ditches green and slimy with stagnant water, or quke choked with rubbish from the ruined wall, he showed us a solitary mound of broken bricks, a disordered pile, with sprouting weeds and grass, its base supported by three inverted jhi- 158 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; jals, and its top crowned with an old British shell — a more classic monument for a soldier than many an elaborate design contributed by the pencil of refined art to the Pere-la-Chaises of the world. Above it a talipot-tree, a tall, straight, slen- der shaft, nodded high in air its gracefully- drooping plume. Bandoola had planted it with his own hand, even with Sir Archibald's bugle-call in his ears ; and he promised that, if he fell and died there, as he surely would if the Nats forsook him in his hour, he would come as bird or serpent, when the fire war-boats were at Rangoon, to watch in its branches for their smoke, far down through all the windings of the golden-fountained Irra- waddi ; and no harm from Inglee Rajahs, nor any foreign foe, should come to his beloved Doonoobyoo, so long as the plume of that tali- pot nodded in the sun. The old man pointed to its crown and smiled. Nor was his faith shaken, if he lived till Febru- ary, 1853, to see Captain Loch's force caught in ambuscade and all but cut to pieces by Nya- Myat-Toon, the jungle chief of Doonoobyoo. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKKAWADDI. 159 As a crowning mark of his distinguished con- sideration, our venerable friend brought from some inner temple of the poonghee-house, and reverently opened before us, a curious volume which he said had once been the favorite read- ing of Bandoola. About a hundred leaves of the smooth white palmyra, written upon on both sides, in the round Burmese character, with a sharp-cutting stylus, and gilded on the margins, were held evenly and firmly together between thick covers of sandal-wood, lacquered and gilded. The surface formed by the edges of these leaves when the volume was closed was paint- ed a flaring red, in the style of some old English books, and further embellished with designs in black, representing military objects, such as flags, dhars, lances, and helmets. A hole at either end completely perforated the volume, through which yellow cords of silk were passed, and held together by means of a golden tag and button a few inches from the cover, so as to allow the leaves to be turned without being separated. The old man explained to us, through the 160 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; captain's servant, Jacob, a most fluent inter- preter — and, for a Bengalee, a person of rare intelligence — that the book was a collection of true stories in Burmese history, of heroes, famous generals and illustrious favorites, either legitimately of the blood royal, or adopted and cherished in the confidence of the Golden Foot. We asked for a taste of this Bumian Plu- tarch's quality. So, sitting together on Ban- doola's grave under the talipot — we choosing the seat for the sentiment, and the venerable spokesman for Doonoobyoo, far from objecting, seeming rather to be flattered by the choice — the old man read to us, Jacob interpreting with astonishing closeness and facility, THE STORY OF ZINGUZA. Shembuan Prah, the Unlucky, had made his last blunder and died just when he was needed most; so his scapegrace son, Zinguza, the Scamp, was lord of the Golden Foot, and Boodh-descended mounter of the White Ele- phant. At once he turned the palace of a thousand OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 161 kings into a p>ace of orgies, and made wild riot and obscene feasts, boisterous and unbounded, in the high seat of Alompra, the Vowed to Budd'ha. To crafty and unscrupulous minis- ters, and servile, treacherous courtiers, he left the administration of the laws, the execution of wholesome measures of reform, the collec- tion of the revenues, the disbursement of the public moneys, the dispensation of justice, the rewarding of such as had deserved well of the State, the punishment of offenders. To the evil-minded and cunning Mentara- gyee, to the ambitious Momien, to the foolish Paongoza, he said: "Make war or peace, build or burn, spend or gather, kill or spare; only leave me to my mimas (women) and my ' strangers' drink ;' my players, and my gam- bling, and my chess ; my hunting and fishing ; my processions and my fireworks ; my ele- phant-fights ; my fencers and racers and wrest- lers ; my dancers and puppets ; my music, and my mimas, and my strangers' drink. Rule you, and I will make merry." And so he did, and all Ava murmured ; w T hile Pegu, greatly rejoicing, began to sharpen 162 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; her dhar and think on her old- king, Beinga- Della, that was murdered. Then Momien, that was cousin to the king, said : " My right is better than his. It is I who should have the G-olden Foot ; it is I who should sit in the howdah of the White Ele- phant, that feasteth from golden plate and sleepeth on cloth of gold." And the evil-minded, crafty Mentaragyee said : " Aye — only wait." And presently Zinguza called together his hunters and fishers, his wrestlers and fencers and racers, his players and his puppets, and his musicians — them with the seven-stringed harps, and them with the tzeings of seven drums, and them with the kyay-wyngs of seven gongs, and them with the cymbals and bells and horns — and his mimas, the fairest and warmest ; with store of rare viands and betel and pipes, and dream-drug from over the China border, and strangers' drink from the Inglee Kajahs at Bassein. And they sailed in golden barges between the bamboo shadows to Keoptaloum, the lotos-floored, twelve leagues away, to abide many days, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 163 debauched, panting, drunken-eyed, incestuous, stupefied. Then Momien, the Ambitious, crept at night to the chamber of the king, that was all disor- dered, as when last he romped there in his royal robes and tumbled among his women, making tipsy sport with the sceptre and the crown. And Momien stole away the golden- velvet robe and hid it in a ditch without the gates, and went and called Mentaragyee, the Crafty. And they two made a rendezvous and gathered there their friends, and all the con- spirators that were with them, beside a great force of dacoits, won by the promise of plunder. So, when the night was very dark, Momien clad himself in the golden-velvet robe, and came to the gate and knocked, and bade the guards open in the name of the king. And no sooner were the gates flung open, than Mo- mien and Mentaragyee, and all their wicked, traitorous crew, rushed in and took the city and the palace, slaying many, many people even while they slept ; and they sent off swift runners and cunning swordsmen to take Zin- guza, and slay him also. 164 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; But the evil tidings had reached Zinguza by some who, flying that dreadful night, had made their way straight to him ; and he broke away from his women, and fled across the river to Chagaing, over against Ava. Immediately, Momien and the evil-minded Mentaragyee be- sieged him there, so that his courage failed him, and he would fain have escaped to Cassay, to seek asylum with the Munnipoora Rajah. But when his mother — the aged widow of Shembuan Prah, the Unlucky, whom he had left in his palace at Ava, and who now, having fallen into the bloody hands of Mentaragyee, the Evil-minded, must die — heard that Zinguza would save his life by such a slave's flight, she found means of sending to him a secret messen- ger, to say : " My son, thy blood is black and bad, and thy life hath been a shame and a ruin. Better die a king in the precincts of thine own royal palace, even though thou fall by the dhar of a Peguan dog, than live a beggar and a coward at the court of a ragged dacoit." When Zinguza heard the words of his mother, the blood of Alompra was stirred within his veins. He clad himself in the garb of a simple 165 gentleman, and, followed only by a single slave, got into a small fishing-boat and pushed straight across to Ava. Never staying nor turning back, he strode proudly to the great gate and demanded admittance ; and when the guards challenged him and bade him give his name and errand, he answered : "Zinguza nam- dogy-yeng Prah" — " it is Zinguza, your lawful lord!" Then the guards, astonished, bewildered, flung open the great gate, and. Zinguza with his slave passed, in, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, nor accosting any man, but silently marching up the paved way, in the middle of it, straight to the palace ; and all the people fell back before the royal outlaw, and many there were that made, yet did not make, salaam. And so he reached the lower wicket of the palace, but his name had gone before him, and Mentaragyee, the Evil-minded, stopped the way. And Zinguza cried: "Thief! let me pass; I come to take mine own, and rule it too, at last !" Mentaragyee answered not a word, but he snatched a dhar from the hand of an officer* 166 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and with a quick, cruel stroke cut Zinguza across the bowels, so that he fell down there and died. And all the people said the Scamp was a god after all. Of such traditions came the inspirations and aspirations of the Maha Bandoola. The old man smiled complacently at the end of his story, as much as to say, " So Burmah, also, hath her heroes and her history, you perceive." So too, thought I, has the Choctaw Nation ; but neither the breech-cloth nor the scalp-lock, neither the tattoo nor the war-paint, neither the dhar nor the tomahawk, has left marks in mounds or caverns which the slate-pencil of a Yankee schoolmaster shall not scratch out. At Moulmein a "Mission Press" prints the New Testament in Burmese ; at Kangoon a Baptist Eliot teaches the Christian catechism to the Karens, in a tongue for which he helped to invent a written character and an alphabet. I think the materials for the History of Burmah OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 167 are to be found in the plans of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions — that Christ will be the hero there before Ban- doola is forgotten. From Mr. Vinton's school- house door the Golden Dagon looks shaky. 168 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER XX. SHELLING THE WOONS. Twenty miles above Doonoobyoo, at a spot where the narrow, shaded pass of the river ab- ruptly expanded into a wide range of flat pad- dy fields, bounded on every side by woods, our little steamer suddenly ceased her busy pad- dling and stood still, as though astonished. A remote, multitudinous murmur, with now and then reverberations and clangor, as of dis- tant thunder, came over the plain to us from the east, and with the glass we could see a moving darkness, like the shadow of a cloud, on the young rice — that was all. Then we crept up nearer, making no smoke, and pray- ing that the noise of our paddles might not betray us yet; and presently we discovered a great flashing and sparkling over all the moving shadow, and the far-away thunder acquired a brazen quality, and the multitudinous murmur was as of many men. Nearer and nearer, plainer and plainer, and OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 169 — By Jove, it was ! — an army with elephants, horsemen and wagons, banners and gongs and cymbals, brazen helmets, gold umbrellas, flash- ing spears ! The Woons of Dallah, Martaban, and Inge- boo, with four thousand men, and gathering as they went, were on their way down from Prome to Kangoon. Leading the array, three stately elephants marched, bearing the Woons in gilded howdahs under gold umbrellas ; and on the painted cloth, behind each howdah, knelt two body-servants, one with the betel- box and drinking-cup, another with the fan. Next came five lesser elephants, bearing bag- gage and arms, and more servants ; and behind these, twelve stately beasts again, ridden by the sons and nephews of the Woons, with other young noblemen and officers. After the elephants came horsemen — or rather say ponymen — to the number of three or four hundred ; tall fellows, without stirrups, their long, brown legs dangling near the ground, gilded helmets on their heads, green jackets, red breech-cloths. Each had a long dhar suspended from his neck by a red cord, a 8 170 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; slender lance of reed in his right hand, an ill- conditioned musket across his back- Then followed the bangers of gongs and cym- bals, and the blowers of horns, and the war- dancers, and boasters, and "attitude-strikers," and strong men. After these came the general camp, the sut- lers, pioneers and all — the common herd of va- gabonds and mischief-making scoundrels. The oxen with wagons, and the hostages, brought up the rear. Drawn out in imposing array, with martial flourish and hubbub, they slowly swept across the plain — the feet of the elephants, the legs of men and horses, and the low wooden wheels of the carts, half hidden in the waving paddy. I think their first intimation of our proximity was the boom of our bull-ring guns — which at first were not charged for so long a range — and the bursting of two shells in quick succession in the rice on their right, where they had fallen short. Before they could recover from the su- perstitious consternation into which our fiery apparition and the stroke of those thunder-bolts had thrown them, we were in among them with OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 171 our biggest bombs — into their very midst, down upon the backs of the elephants, between the legs of the horses and oxen, and right among the leaping, falling, flying, yelling herd of thieves and scamps. The act was soon played out — the grand finale began with the first shot. The scream of the steam-whistle, joined to the crash of the guns, made the panic and the ruin complete. Five or six elephants toppled and descended with reverberations, while a dozen umbrellas, gold and white, with yellow arms and legs and streaming white cloths attached, went fly- ing through the air. The rest broke through the tumultuous terror, down-bearing, tram- pling, crushing, lashing with their trunks, rolling forward or swaying from side to side, rebounding from monstrous jostles, then rock- ing for a while and almost overtoppling, like mountainous icebergs in collision. Then, squealing like Titanic pigs, they thundered across the plain to the cover of the woods, and tore off golden howdahs and miserable men against trunks and low branches, and vines like cables. 172 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; Some scores of horses, falling in the first discharges, rolled over their bewildered riders, kicked a little, and then lay quiet. Two hun- dred more went scampering madly everywhere, toward us no less than away, the long, naked legs of their riders making streaky wakes in the rice. The ox-carts were overturned, and the hapless, helpless creatures that dragged them lay crippled and bellowing. As for the foot-men and the " general camp," they got their unconditional discharge. Some went home; some went to Preitta, the place of sor- row ; some to Niria, the place of the damned. Either was better than going to Ava. As for us, we had no flag of truce to receive, no dead to bury, no prisoners to exchange ; so we turned and paddled back again, some of us thinking we had done a fine thing, others — not. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 173 CHAPTER XXI. OUR CONVOY — THE DACOITS' AMBUSH — LYNCHING FRA DIAVOLO THE WOUNDED WOMEN THEEN-GYEE. At Yangeenchinyah, on our return, a cheer- ing scene awaited us. The river was quite bridged across with more than seven hundred of the covered boats of the country. Huddled under the bank from one end of the town to the other, and tethered to stakes on the edge of the channel, they were filled with the women and children of poor vil- lagers, mostly Peguans — salt-dryers, fishermen and laborers — with their simple household effects, their rude tools and utensils. Since we passed up, they had hastily gathered into these little boats their moveables of every sor,t, re- solved, if we would convoy them, to return with us to Rangoon and live under the safer sky of the Company's rule. We cordially assured them of our protec- tion ; and with boisterous joy, to say nothing 174 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; of the funny confusion, the infinity of blun- ders, they cast off their fasts and followed us, every boat " on its own hook." It was amus- ing to watch the eagerness of all to seize the places nearest the vessel ; for this they dis- puted and wrestled, and often fought, and some- times paid. They so crowded the ship that it was only with indefatigable watchfulness and pains-taking, lest many of them should be killed, that she could be steered. And in spite of all our care, more than a score of boats were crushed against the sides, or caught in the wheels and swamped — the people in them be- ing rescued not without some severe hurts. Three thousand child-like barbarians, less than three hundred of whom had ever seen a steamer before in their lives, ever heard a steam whistle, or seen the water churned up by wheels — three thousand astonished savages, ex- cited,, terrified, awe-struck, bewildered, pulling seven hundred frail and clumsy boats, inextric- ably intertangled, on a narrow stream, in a tortuous channel and a racing current, be- tween ambuscaded shores, every minute in collision and often under the wheels, were OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 175 enough to make distracting din — and so they did : women bobbing wildly from under the sampans and back again, screaming and scold- ing ; naked, brown babies screeching themselves into fits and tumbling overboard ; men tugging, pushing, climbing from boat to boat, and hoarsely shouting all the while ; 'interpreters in the stern of the steamer advising and bully- ing in four languages at once ; quarter-masters and boatswains damning in one language enough for four. The fact was, our proteges were in mortal terror of an attack from the shore. And pres- ently it came. Ten or twelve miles below Yangeenchinyah, we came upon a cluster of bamboo houses in a clump of low crooked trees. Here, we had been forewarned, a strong party of dacoits, who for years had made the place their rendezvous, would fire into our convoy. As we approached the spot, the excitement of the boats-people at first rose to the highest pitch of defensive pre- paration, and then subsided into a watchful stillness, quite awful after the bedlam din that had never lulled till then. The women crept, 176 . THE GOLDEN DAGON ; whispering, under the sampans, and even the babies became as still as though a thousand nipples stopped their mouths at once. Presently some twenty or thirty fellows with muskets and dhars, naked but for their breech-cloths and scanty red turbans, emerged from a thicket a few rods below the houses, and ran along the bank toward the steamer. They seemed to have no care to conceal them- selves, but, on the contrary, studiously exposed their persons, waving white cloths and cordially hailing us as they ran, crying " dacoitee !" "dacoitee!" So boldly was the manoeuvre executed that there was not one of us, even of the natives, who did not believe these men to be of our own party — a few of the boats- people, perhaps, who had landed to ferret out the dacoits and set our " dogs" on them. When they reached the houses, they passed around and behind them, and disappeared in the thicket beyond the clump of trees. At this time the steamer was quite dis- engaged from the flotilla; the captain, in order to disembarrass her movements in the event of her guns coming into play, had ordered the OK, TP AND DOWN THE UlRAWADDI. 177 boats to drop astern when we first sighted the village. Thus, although we were presently- relieved of the crush and confusion, our ap- parent protection to the great body of the boats, which was just now passing the sharp bend by which we approached the town, was materially diminished. The Phlegethon had dropped anchor, and the guns were being run out for the enemy, when the boats arrived opposite the houses. At once, nearly two hundred dacoits, headed by the very men who had hailed us, rushed from between the thicket and the houses, and, run- ning to the edge of the bank, fired a volley into the thickest of the boats — and again, and again, before the steamer, now lying quite across the stream, could answer. Many were wounded and not a few killed, and the uproar and con- sternation were at their height. But in those three volleys the dacoits had done their worst. Our first discharge of grape cut many of them down, and sent the rest fly- ing in every direction. An old Peguan chief, with twenty men from the boats, armed with ship's muskets, chased them through the bam- 8* 178 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; boos and caught their Fra Diavolo. They brought the fellow down to the bank, and, having tied him to a tree, shot him dead ; then, decapitating him, they mounted his head on a pole and hoisted it in the branches of the tree for a scare-dacoit. They would have burned him alive, and earnestly besought Captain Neblitt's consent to that picturesque addition to the programme. But we had neither the time nor the ferocity; so to their disappointment and disgust they had to content themselves with a more civilized and Christian style of thing. Be- fore returning to the ship they were ordered to burn the houses, a duty which they brilliantly performed, amid the outlandish glorification of their friends, male and female, big and little, and some astonishing gymnastics of a warlike character on their own part. Among our wounded were seven women, more or less severely hurt, from whose bodies musket balls — or, rather, irregular plugs of lead, hastily hammered between two stones — were extracted by the ship's surgeon, with a fortunate result in all the cases. One was an old woman of more than sixty OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRATVADDI. 170 years, shot in the neck. The ball had struck the lower jaw, carrying away a splinter of bone, and glanced obliquely downward under the integument, lodging near the clavicle of the opposite side. This shapeless lump of lead had all the appearance of being the half of a crooked plug, partly bitten, partly torn with nippers ; for it had a sharp point and a ragged edge. In another case the ball had been quite flat- tened against the sacrum, and rebounding, had dropped out among the woman's clothes, where we found it. Another had entered the back near the spine and traversed at right angles, to be imbedded among the muscles over the lower ribs. In fact, in almost all the cases, both of men and women, the balls were found to have been deflected, in some cases with extraordinary circuit. This was to be attributed to the irreg- ular surfaces of the balls and the inferior quality of the dacoits' powder. With only two exceptions the women had been struck in the lower part of the back, owing to the fact that they were in the act of creeping under the 180 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; covers of the boats when the villains fired upon them. I shall always retain a tender recollection of one poor creature — quite a child, though a mother — who was under my care for several weeks after this affair. Her wound was of a desperate character, its complications most dangerous, the ball having penetrated her ab- domen, and lodged in the muscular tissue below the navel, on the right side. She bore the ex- traction, which was tedious and agonizing, with touching fortitude, convulsively pressing the hand of her old mother, and between the cruel twinges addressing the fondest expressions of endearment to her little yellow baby, which, quite naked, lay wonder-eyed and quiet on the old woman's shoulder ; and when at last I gave her the ball in her own hand, to play with and keep, there was no mistaking the hopefulness and capabilities of life in her min- gled sobs and laughter. She occupied my state-room after that until we removed her to the deck, which it was not safe to do for many days ; and so long as little Theen-gyee lay in my narrow bunk laughing OR, Ur AND DOWN THE IKKAWADDI. 181 feebly at the baby, and, in obedience to my in- junction to be quiet, 'folding her arms against it and forbidding her heart — so long as the patient old mother sat on the floor, lowly- minded and full of faith, holding little Theen- gyee's hand all day and night, waking or sleep- ing still holding the hand, keeping baby quiet with a string of bright "goolden" navy-but- tons, and whispering, now to the mother-child, now to the child-child, those dear old familiar phrases which, however strange the tongue, the eyes so readily render into household words — so long as baby kicked and crow T ed and had his little homely functions, and protested with all his lungs against the substitution of the rice-spoon for the nipple — there were some less missionary places under the sky of Boodhism than my cuddy in the Phlegetho?i, and many a more hopeless heathen than Theen-gyee or I. Poor child ! how eloquent — I mean how flattering — her gratitude was ! For nearly a fortnight she would take a cup of water or a plantain from no hand but mine, and when I brought it, would clasp my fingers and pat and smell them — the Burmese never kiss ; and when 182 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; she lay on deck, as often as I would rise to leave her after sitting try her side awhile to play with or feed her, she would hold me fast by the ankle with both hands, sobbing, laugh- ing, talking, all together — never understanding that I could not understand. I began to think " great beer" of myself, and a very small vari- ety of that beverage of her husband, whom, in spite of the baby-doubt in his favor, she une- quivocally snubbed. When Theen-gyee was to be removed to the missionary hospital on shore, no one but I must lift her into the boat — no one but I must carry her into the doolee — none but I must lift her from the doolee into the house where Mr. Vinton and his excellent lady helped to make her whole again. And when at last little Theen-gyee was up and all about, the heartful of grateful love she brought me, went further than the blind man's basketful of rotten eggs, to show how much less worthy I was than she thought me, how much better than I thought myself. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 183 CHAPTER XXII. YOUNQ IXGEBOO — HIS SHADOWS — HIS TATTOO. Near Pontalong we intercepted four large boats, of which one, much carved and gilded, contained the young Rajah of Ingeboo with his women and servants, and the others, pulled by some of his people, were filled with household effects and provisions. This young fellow had crossed from Martaban, and was on his way up to join his father, who, with the Woons of Martaban and Dallah, had led the magnificent array which our shells so suddenly brought to nought. Under the rice, in one of the boats, we found eleven thousand rupees in little cakes of raw silver, beside about fifty muskets, lances, and dhars. The young Rajah lost also his gold umbrella and a fine dhar in a silver scabbard. As a type of the Burmese aristocrat, this young gentleman was well met : Tall — more than six feet, I should think, a rare stature among the Burmese — erect and well-pro- 184 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; portioned, though robust even to fatness ; his skin, several shades lighter than in the common herd, smooth and polished ; his chin and cheeks effeminate, his lips amorous, his eyes lazy, his hair-knot worn petit-maitrcly on one side, his feet sandaled, his tattooing elaborate, his breech- cloth voluminous, his turban jaunty, his whole attire foppish ; proud, apathetic, supercilious, or fawning, as the occasion demanded; formal, politely treacherous — and, I doubt not, cruel in his own jurisdiction, for the attendant who bore his betel-box and spittoon had alert and timid eyes. When Mrs. Judson described the Burmese as " a lively, industrious, and energetic race, fur- ther advanced in civilization than most of the Eastern nations — frank, candid, destitute of that pusillanimity which distinguishes the Hindoos, and of that revenegful malignity which is a lead- ing trait in the Malay character," she had in her mind's eye the unsophisticated, confiding fishermen or peasants, or, perhaps, the gentle, patient, honest Karens, not courtiers of the stamp of this coxcomb of Ingeboo. The differ- ence between the peasant and the noble, the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IHKAWADDI. 185 ruled and the ruler, in Burmah, is just the dif- ference between primitive ingenuousness and studious guile. The first often deserve the *best which the partial Symes has said for them ; on the latter even our bitter Abdoolah was not too severe. The foppery of the young Rajah afforded us infinite amusement. As long as his floating menage was towing astern he honored us with two visits daily, before and after noon, hauling alongside in a very humble dug-out ; and on these occasions he ostentatiously presented himself in fresh vanities for each new visit, as if to astonish us with the splendor and abund- ance of his wardrobe. I do not remember being called upon to admire him twice in the same combination of superlative fashion. With each new suit he put on new airs, and, in spite of our laughter, patronized or snubbed us with magnificent ease. Though but nineteen years of age, as was said, he had engaged largely in the business of love, and invested no little of his leisure and condescension in certain dainty material where- with to do his best for the scanty population 186 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; of the Barman empire. Plainly, our charming prisoner was a Burmese sensualist of the warm- est sort, and if his wives and concubines were less numerous than Solomon's, it is certain that they had, therefore, no sinecures among them. Sometimes, in the evening, as we sat in the stern, smoking cheroots on the bull-ring and looking down among the shadows of young Ingeboo's boat, toward where the petroleum taper glimmered behind the Turkey-red curtain that veiled his inner temple, we could spy shadows that were like young bosoms, and catch sounds that were like the laughter of romping girls ; and as generous conquerors should, we rejoiced that our prisoners were not pining. Once a shadow stepped out into the foreground and stood on the edge of a stream of moonlight ; next morning I gave the lord of that shadow two bottles of Heidsick champagne, and beg- ged that he would keep it for the entertainment of the vision. For once, the conceited young prig, astonished exceedingly by the gold labels and the silver tops, looked truly humble and sa- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 187 laamed accordingly. Abdoollah " hoped that he appreciated the honor done him," assuring him that I was a lord of a great many gold umbrellas and the chain of nine strings, and that in my kingdom rajahs of my degree drank only silver wine — except when princes called on us, when we opened the gold. Young Ingeboo was seemingly overpowered. With really tiresome salaams he backed into his canoe and retired to his mysteries, jealously grasping the silver tops, and still astonished. All that day we saw no more of him. On the morrow he came aboard looking headachy and disappointed, and reported in confidence to Abdoolah, that " that fussy stuff" was a hum- bug, and but small beer compared with brandy. The puppy ! I have a suspicion that the Shadow knoweth not the bubble of Heidsick to this day — that he never even gave her the silver tops, or my love. The tattooing of young Ingeboo was laid on by a master-hand. It was high art even in Burmah, where artists in lampblack and fish- galls are held in the first esteem, and exten- sively fostered by the State. The elaborate 188 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; grotesques and arabesques of a Burmese gen- tleman are, to the rude, unmeaning rings, stripes and patches of a Polynesian man-eater, what the " Portrait of a Lady," on the breast of the boatswain of the Susquehannah, is to the " Bill Stubs — his mark," worn by the cook of canal-boat No. 9, under the hair on the back of his hand — which, by-the-by, resembles an old-fashioned trunk with the " mange." An inch or two above his navel, young Inge- boo was encircled with fabulous birds, impossi- ble birds, such as the artist could have seen only in the aviary of the Prince of the air spirits. These were done in vermillion — thirteen birds, and every bird standing on a monkey's head. Thus, thirteen blue monkeys girded him round about, just where his j^'s^o was tucked under at the waistband. A small crimson serpent with a blue head was coiled about his navel, half within and half without — a cunning de- vice, so expertly done that the little creature seemed just emerging from the hollow. The thirteen blue monkeys grinned on the backs of thirteen blue hogs of Bassien, with blush- ing tails ; and after that all were blue, and OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 189 blending one into the other. The tiger, that was a hog at first, digressed into a lion before it arrived, by way of a rhinoceros, at the shape of an elephant on its route to a crocodile ; and having got by such a zoological concatenation — with a better idea, than when you started, of the doctrine of transmigrations — to the condi- tion of a Nat in young Ingeboo's loins, you were prepared for the fiery demons that occupi- ed the pillars of his thighs. Yet were these diverse shapes so softly blended — with no interstices of naked skin, or abrupt transitions from bird to beast, from reptile to devil — that you drifted gently down the tide of pictured grotesqueness without a vul- gar surprise on either hand. A little way off, our Ingeboo Brummel might have passed for an eccentric young gentleman in very tight blue breeches with a red waist-band. Indeed, I saw, last winter, in the window of a tailor's shop on Broadway, a pair of French " pants," the pattern of which was evidently designed by somebody who knew somebody who had seen our young Rajah without his pu'sho. 190 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER XXIII. THE PAGODA ROAD — POONGHEE AND MISSIONARY — THE BA- ZAAR DISEMBOWELING THE GODS BURMESE VENERATION. Rangoon, on our return thither, is filled with bustling builders and lively bazaars. The panorama of the Pagoda Road, from the river up, presents some strange encounters and con- trasts. The yellow-draped and meditative poon- ghee, barefooted and with shaven crown, at- tended by a boy, himself in little, quietly raises his impurturbable eyes to salute the searching, interrogative, solicitous Yankee mis- sionary, in white beaver hat and white neck-tie, the same as at home — his head erect, his eyes everywhere ; his thoughts divided between the scene around him, his latest instructions from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the prospects of his Karen school, the site of his new hospital, the number of native Testaments he must procure from the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 191 Mission Press to-morrow, the sore on his pony's back, and the side-saddle which must be al- tered for his little girl. Poonghee meditates along, unruffled, quite content — wondering, perhaps, why this dis- tracted Kula, this stranger, should come so far to fret for him, whose soul is comfortable, whose conscience is satisfied and still — won- dering if there is no Nieban, no perfect and eternal calm, for the strange priest and his God. Missionary hurries on, asking his crowded heart how, in the time which is left to it, it can save all these souls alive and heal the pony's back. Perhaps a dozen Karen youths, of both sexes, follow at his heels, like attached and honest dogs — carrying, even as good dogs would carry them, hymn-books and catechisms : timid, non-resisting though sorely oppressed ; shy and shrinking, holding themselves aloof from cities and strangers; pastoral, industrious, hospitable in their own communities ; grateful for the least kindness, whether to their bodies or their souls; hoping much from the white man's God, and believing in the coming of a fair Immortal from the west. 192 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; The lower part of the Pagoda road lay among the ruins of the middle stockade, and near by were some handsome poonghee-houses and small temples, old and very curious; as well as many grotesque monsters in stone — Nats, griffins, and crocodiles. This quarter was now lined with shops and stalls, and stirring with a new-born trade in earthen jars and lacquered boxes, trays, and cups ; Turkey-red for turbans ; thabi and engi cloth for jackets and skirts ; sandals, palmyra fans, ear-rings, and feathers.; tobacco, betel-leaf, areca-nuts, gnajpee or putrid fish for sauce, ghee or clarified butter, a little venison, dried lizards, beetles, pulse, garlic, and greens. Here garrulous old women, giggling girls, and sharp-looking boys pressed their outland- ish wares upon ensigns, drill sergeants, mid- shipmen, boatswains' mates, and pursers' stew- ards, receiving with their annas and pice a great variety of personal compliments more free than refined. Here was the gathering wherein to study the Burmese in their political and social peculiarities ; to observe their do- mestic industries, their native productions, and OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 193 their personal charms. This certainly was not the place for you to be eloquent and con- vincing in, against annexation in its Dalhousiean asjDect. Along the Pagoda road, on both sides of it, from the King's wharf to the Golden Dagon, were many idols, respectable by their age and stature ; pot-bellied old fellows, each in a road- side shrine to himself. These our fellows, both of the land and sea, had robbed, mutilated, and variously vandalized, in a most Christian- ish manner — characteristic of a people who devour warm flesh, among whom butchers are an institution, and whose priests go abroad in ships and take their women into the pagodas. Soldiers, sailors, and marines, with hatchet and chisel, had performed upon the corpulent persons of these sacred fogies a sort of rude Caesarean operation, by which they were de- livered of sundry manikin gods in silver, solid or plated : to say nothing of little silver scrolls inscribed with Pali characters of mysterious import, as well as small utensils of strange shapes and unknown uses, and many images of fabulous animals. 194 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; It was from such sources as this that our fellows derived all their loot, as they called plunder ; nor had the unscrupulous appropria- tion at any time a revolting aspect to even the most Quixotic minds among us. No popular affection was wronged, no religious pride in- sulted, no superstition alarmed. The Burmese are satisfied to let their gods and devils, from Guadma to the Sacred Goose, take care of their own images, never doubting that they can do that if they are fit to be gods at all ; and though they do not go the length of lick- ing them into good behavior, as some African tribes do, they would hardly fight for their silver outsides except the treasure were great, certainly never for their wood, or stone, or lead. The manufacture of these gods is a popular branch of industry, and their sale a mere busi- ness transaction. Symes visited an image-yard where Guadmas of all sizes, and in every style of material and finish, were planted in rows like fancy gravestones, or stacked in piles like fashionable coffins. When a cunning Burman would court good OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 195 luck for his affairs by "a deed of exalted merit" — as his poonghee calls every pious investment, from the consecration of a six-penny image to the founding of a supreme pagoda — he buys an idol in lead or alabaster, hires a reverend gen- tleman to sanctify and consecrate it, deposits it in a temple with ceremonies more or less expensive, and never again fashes himself about it. If the god was worth his money, it can keep itself whole and in good repair ; other- wise it deserves to be smashed. 196 THE GOLDEN D AGON J CHAPTER XXIY. THE SPORTS OF THE GROVE — FOOT-BALL — PUPPETS — THE DRAMA A BURMESE RACHEL. Passing through the bazaar by a paved passage leading back from the main road, you emerged into a secluded grove, very charming with vines and low shrubbery and the swing- ing shadows of Palmyra palms. Here one of the most considerable poonghee-houses of Ran- goon had already been degraded, by an Arme- nian trader, into a sort of omnibus shop for the troops and shipping. Here Burmese idlers were gathered from morning till night in the hope of catching British gold, by holding ponies, or carrying bundles, or running by your side with umbrellas when you came into the sun ; exhibiting dancing dolls, or nautch girls — scarcely more life-like than their wooden imitators ; making distracting concerts with gongs, and drums, and stringed instruments and horns ; or, when the long shadows of OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKKAWADDI. 197 evening fell, suffering the flying foot-ball to alight at last, which had danced in mid-air since morning'; or later, by the red light of petroleum bon-fires and innumerable flame- dropping torches, enacting, in mythological plays, the doughty deeds of Burman demigods : the abductions, imprisonments and tortures, the endless persecutions and perplexities, of the Silver Princes^ of the Golden Mountain : the wondrous transformations, far flights and mighty labors of the Nats : the wicked spite of witches : the enchantments of potent magicians : the small sharp tricks of microscopic fairies : the mischief and the terror of fire-spitting imps : and all the plot and personnel of the goblin drama, the same in Burmah as in the latitude of Harlequin and Columbine — with a differ- ence, in the amount of sublimity and legiti- mate horror, decidedly in favor of the Silver Princess of the Golden Mountain. Foot-ball, as it is played in Burmah, is among the most lively and graceful of all sports of agility. A light wicker ball, as large as a man's head, and sometimes containing jingling bits of metal, serves for any number of young 198 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; men and boys, the more the merrier. Some- times the open road is chosen for the game ; sometimes the green sward of a clear space around a poonghee-house ; or else — but this must be during some gay religious holiday — the pagoda terrace, or the smoothly paved court at the foot of the broad stairs. The party being all ready — sandals, if any, thrown off, and engis, or whatever else might bind the elastic limbs and impede the free, lithe movements of the players — the ball is tossed aloft by whoever happens to have it at the mo- ment, and the game begins, to end only when the toy has touched the earth, or been struck with the hand, or caught in the arms. As it falls, it is met by the nearest with his ankle or his elbow, or, best of all, the sole of his foot, and with a quick, sharp impulse, sent flying up again. And so they lead it an aerial dance all day — sometimes shooting higher than any house- top, higher than the carved gallery atop of the great monastery, higher than the upper terrace of Shway-Dagoung, and half way up the spire, over the tops of the kioums, up the tall bam- boo flag-staff as high as the Sacred Goose, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAVVADDI. 199 flying in the very face of the colossal Guadma, rebounding even from his breast — but always, on its return, finding the nimble foot, the quick elbow, ready to receive it and send it back on its airy flight again. In the course of the day scores, sometimes hundreds, of idlers, coming up, fall in to keep the game alive and fill the places of those who are continually dropping off; so that the few who saw the tossing of the ball in the morning are rarely " in" at its final descent at dusk. The puppets are most ingenious and amusing toys. They are dolls of wood and cloth, from twelve to eighteen inches high, numerously jointed, and the joints played upon by means of strings which pass through holes in a stick held in the performer's hands. They represent both sexes ; and in figure, costume, complexion, and expression, are ridiculously faithful. There is a complete pantomime enacted by each, with orchestral accompaniments, in which the plot almost invariably turns on the amours of some very fat old nobleman with a mima of great terpsichorean qualifications and the freest morals. For this occasion the prodigal maid 200 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; affects at first a chary mood, to afford her fat inamorato an opportunity to bring out the full force of his seductions ; and the coyness on the one side and soft siege on the other, closing in surrender and high triumph, are conveyed in attitudes, gestures, expression, everything hut words, somewhat too exact for the most fas- tidious ; nor is any touch of nature lost in the climax. In the Burmese theatre — which, as I have said, is extemporized, with a bonfire and abund- ance of petroleum torches, in any sufficiently wide street of a village where the houses are not so crowded as to be in danger from the sparks, or in some sacred grove or court of a temple — the plot of the play is usually drawn from the Ram ay am of Balmiec, a collection of fables and mythological parables of the widest popularity among the Hindoos. Only the out- line of the story is preserved, the language being improvised by the actors with astonishing cleverness and harmony of effect. The female characters are usually personated by men — the profession of an actress being con- sidered a hundred times more disreputable than OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 201 among our most strait-laced communities. Nevertheless, at a dramatic performance which I witnessed at Moulmein, a handsome and very graceful young woman appeared, whose performance drew rounds of applause from the most sophisticated of our party — gentlemen who had graduated in dramatic criticism at the Queen's Theatre, and the Comedie Frangaise. Her pantomime would have held its own with the sublime declamation of Rachel; and she depicted the passions of fear, anger, grief, astonishment, gratitude, joy, with a power that made the barbaric scene and its superstitious surroundings almost awful. With her armlets and anklets of silver and copper, her rich engi of crimson silk, her volu- minous scarf of pink gauze, discovering, with her every graceful pose in the ruddy light of bonfire and torches, glimpses of a bosom free, but dim; with her slender arms naked and nut-brown, her fine fingers and flexile toes thickly ringed, her great ear-hoops of gold, and the silver snood in her hair, she was the Princess of the Silver Mountain — (there is always a Princess of the Silver Mountain). 9* 202 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; But this Princess had been almost as naughty as unfortunate : she had had a Huntsman-lover (there is always a Huntsman,) and a little baby, unbeknown to her royal father, (the play cannot go on without a King,) who, instigated by the devil in the shape of a machinating minister, (there must also be a Minister, very pious or very crafty,) had banished her, baby and all, to the Cave of Fear in the Pit of Witches, where the witches plagued her, and set imps (Imps likewise are essential,) at her with snakes that bit the baby, so that it came near to die. And as she watched by the moaning boy, her own life waning with the light of his eyes, many devils came, making the usual faces and noises, to snatch the baby away and take it to feed the hungry Crocodile that bellows in the Black Eiver. But, with the spell of the Three Whispers and the Seven Thoughts, and the charm of the water-beads, (a Charm is as invariable as Harle- quin's sword of lath,) she kept them at bay, till her Huntsman-lover came and routed them out- right, with the Gong of Thunder and the Dhar of Flame. Then immediately the baby was OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKKAWADDI. 203 made whole, and the scene changed to the Garden of Gold by the River of Ivory, where the Huntsman was blessed by the Royal father and married to the Princess of the Silver Mountain, to reign over the Immortal Pea- cocks. Considering the meagerness of the plot, the poverty of the properties, the impromptu qual- • ity of the scenery, the discordant elements of the orchestra, the inappropriateness of every- thing but the lights, this representation was not bad. Nothing could be sicker-looking than the child, or more devilish than the devils, or more weird than the witches, or fiercer than the Huntsman, or more tremendous than the King. The performance of the Princess was won- derful, and in a degree painful. As she sat rocking to and fro over the moaning child, and half maundering, half crooning, a song of la- mentation — or as, on the entrance of the imps, she started to her feet and began dancing round and round, or from side to side, at first very slowly, then faster and faster, then whirling madly between them and their prey, her 204 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; long hair standing straight out from her head centrifugally, her armlets and anklets clashing and jingling, her eyes fixed in a spasm of ter- ror — or, having driven them off once more, as she threw herself, exhausted, panting, trem- bling, convulsed, upon the ground beside her dying boy — in all she was cruelly tragic with true barbaric passions. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 205 CHAPTER XXV. MINDAKEEN ONE LITTLE ROMANCE OP A SHOULDER-STRAP, AND ANOTHER OF PAIJAMAS. In spite of the Armenian's cheese and crockery, sardines and hardware, clay pipes and curry-powder, there was an angel in the old poonghee-house, who sometimes, at twi- light, filled the grove with the loveliness of her apparition. An angel in a plaid engi, and, instead of a thabi, a Cashmere scarf; with gold- embroidered sandals on her dimpled feet, and a rose — by Jove, a rose ! — in her hair : where- fore we called her the Lady Mindakeen — a Burmo-Armenian angel, with short locks like a boarding-school girl, and a blue silk umbrella instead of wings. As often as seclusion and stillness had the grove to themselves, and the falling shadows would serve her for a veil, Mindakeen came forth with her little Burmese handmaidens, to whisper tip-toedly under the banians and down 206 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; by the pool-mirror back of the kioum. And often, as I plyed between the pagoda and the ship, and, just at the witching hour, came to the pretty road-side shrine that marked where the foot-path turned off to the poonghee-house, and, throwing the rein of my heathen pony over the neck of the fourth Boodh, sat down to think, upon the very wood or stone that some man as good as myself had lately bowed down to (how hard it was to think, to feel, to dream in such a scene, and come away remem- bering it!) have I peered for Mindakeen in among the shadows, that were just thick enough to confound the nice hues and fine lines of half-a-dozen ankles, though adding lustre to the whiteness of the solitary rose-star. Not even her peddling husband, nor the curry, clay-pipes and hardware, could make Mindakeen common-place ; for she had a history. An old Armenian, long resident in Rangoon, a man of wealth and note among the foreign merchants, and who exercised, it was said, a marked influence with every Woon of his time as to measures for the regulation of the foreign trade, took to wife a young and beautiful OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 207 Burmese girl of the lower orders, whom he had ransomed from slavery by the payment of her father's debts. In a year she died in giving birth to Mindakeen, who, fostered by slave- nurses, lived and waxed in surpassing beauty. The old man, despising in his heart the whole Burmese race, reared her strictly in the Arme- nian faith and ways, and directing toward the child of his old age and his weakness the most cunning vigilance, pursued her with spies when she went abroad to bazaar or tank, and challenged every comer who presumed to wear his top-knot on one side and fee musicians for her sake. Especially was the "stern parient" a hearty English-hater, politically and socially. He had caught more than one pair of eyes reconnoiter- ing his porches and compound from under a gold-band, and more than once he had ex- plained to his own satisfaction the unwonted fidgets of Mindakeen, as she sat in the door making fig-leaf cigars, by the proximity of some shining rows of Company's buttons. So the loose trowsers and impudence were tabooed to her forever. 208 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; But in this, Armenia worked at a disadvan- tage. Bolts and bars for romantic runaways are not the fashion in Burmah ; nor are veils, even, imposed upon pretty faces by law. Min- dakeen's area of freedom was almost as wide as her curiosity, and her presence in bazaars, at weddings, and in holiday processions was not stranger than it was welcome. So once, as she led the choir of maidens at a poonghee's funeral, a gleam of brave romance from a gold shoulder-strap dazzled the eyes of her filial obedience, and at the same instant a side-long glance of Woman's Eights from under the Mindakeen lids flashed sharper than a two- edged sword straight to the heart that was nearest the shoulder-strap. For weeks after that, the bones of this Ran- goon Juliet's nurse ached with jaunting up and down between her lady-bird and the honest gentleman, " and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous;" till one day Mindakeen was up and gone with her Shoulder-Strap over the river to Dallah. And immediately the old Armenian in a fit of rage burst his spleen and died, which was timely for OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 209 the lovers, who might else have tasted the bamboo, to say nothing of the stocks. When they had been married (not to be too particular) only a year, Shoulder-Strap took ship to Calcutta, and that was the last of him for Mindakeen. Six years, according to law, she waited for him ; and then, with all an East- ern woman's faculty of reconciling herself to circumstances, she consented to the clay-pipes and curry-powder, and went home to live with her father's countryman and idyllize the poon- ghee-house, in spite of three babies. Once Mindakeen had the fever-and-ague and came near to die, but with some quinine I restored to the banians their celestial visitant ; whereupon she rewarded me with a pair of disappointed silk paijamas that else would have clung — happy paijamas! — to the sweetest knees in Burmah. I cherish them still ; and as long as a thread of the original gift can be dis- covered through these Yankee darns, they shall serve, as well as a lock of her hair, to keep my memory green and her ankles slender. It is law in Burmah that if a doctor lets a sick girl die he must pay the price of her body, 210 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; which is about twenty-five ticals — twenty dol- lars ; but if he heals her she becomes his own, and he may take her away to his house. By that wise ordinance Mindakeen was mine, and the paijamas are a legal document. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 211 CHAPTER XXYI. AN EXPERIMENT — BANDOOLA's BLUFF — GIVING A LITTLE HERO THE SLIP. General Godwin had all along argued that there was not water enough, even in the high rains, to carry the small steamers to Prome ; or, granting the possibility of their getting there, how were they to get back ? The Commodore replied by sending us to try. Accordingly, when the Pldegcthon joined the Proserjmie, Me- dusa, and Mahanuddy at the rendezvous above Jaloom, Captain Tarleton of the Fox, com- manding the flotilla, immediately got us all under way for Prome. We steamed up the river against a powerful current, and at 1J P. M. came upon a six-gun battery with fifteen hundred men, at Pah-now. We attacked them at once, and they fought well, firing irregularly until half-past four, by which time most of their guns and themselves had been knocked over. Our orders were posi- 212 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; tive, on no account to land anywhere short of Prome ; so we left them unceremoniously, a small party, plucky to the last, firing two or three shots after us as we left. Such an opportunity always afforded them peculiar satisfaction, and I doubt not they dispatched a courier to Ava to report that they had driven us off disabled. On our passage up, villagers hailing us from the banks said a son of the Maha Bandoola had intrenched himself in a strong position at Akok- toung, with twenty-five hundred men and twen- ty guns ; and, sure enough, we found him there — only his men were seven thousand and his guns were forty— occupying a position of pictur- esque strength on the top of a high bluff at a bend in the river, just where it separates Pegu from Burmah proper ; in fact, this conspicuous landmark is the key to the kingdom of Ava. It is twelve hundred feet high, and inaccessible save by a difficult foot-path at the back. To imposing ramparts erected by nature Ban- doola had made extensive artificial additions. He had his heaviest guns at the base of the bluff on the river's level, to hull us ; his lighter guns and musketry were stationed all over the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 213 face of the eminence up to the very top. By this disposition, had we been compelled to pass within range, he could have sunk every steamer; with his musketry alone he could have swept our decks. The current runs powerfully around the point, and we should have been an hour or more under the full weight of his fire, without the possibility of returning a shot. ' But we gave him the go-by. Right over against Akoktoung, as Bandoola's bluff was called, was the village of Youngtzay, lying in the hollow of the river's elbow; and at the upper end of Youngtzay a narrow arm, quite out of Bandoola's range, was separated from the main stream by two small islands, to join it again two miles above. Two months before, this creek was entirely dry, and of course it had never entered the sagacious pate of the Little Hero, " the son of his father," that ves- sels of our apparent draught would adventure the passage. By this we dodged him. As we approached the village, thousands of the gentle, child-like people, forever treat- ing us to surprises of foolish trust and fear- lessness, were seated on the shore — old men 214 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and women, maidens, young mothers, and children. They salaamed to the passing steam- ers, the mothers bouncing their little ones and laughing, the girls waving white cloths and tossing flowers in the air, and the young men and little naked boys running along the bank to point out to us the safe way to Prome, by the creek. And this under the very eyes and guns of a fierce, unsparing savage, at whose mercy they would be even before we were out of sight. But so it was everywhere. In the lower provinces, which we had just left, the inhabit- ants were flocking by thousands to take refuge under the British flag, imploring and finding protection and aid. Wherever the people had been allowed the use of their eyes and ears, they had been quick to perceive the advantage of an alliance with the enemies of their cruel, crushing government, and had hailed our ad- vent with a thousand welcomes. It was now late, and the current was torrent- like. We pushed on under full power till the moonlight left us, and then anchored in the dark. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 215 CHAPTER XXVII. PROME THE LADIES AN INDIGNANT BLOOMER — SURPRISING A GREAT GENERAL — ASTONISHING HIM. At day-break we were abreast the ghauts of Prome. We found the inhabitants unadvised of our approach, and unprepared to oppose us. With the insane confidence peculiar to the Burmese, they had been making themselves comfortable in the conviction that either Ban- doola would blow us out of the water, which would be good for them, or we should blow him off his rock, which would be better. They had guns enough, but no powder ; Bandoola had taken it all with him, assuring them that there would thenceforth be no use for guns or ammunition above Akoktoung. So, like all the rest, they came down to the bank and squatted there, seeming even glad to see us. At first they supposed we had finished " the son of his father." We took twenty-three guns, three state 216 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; boats, and seven superb bells. There were many tons of shot which we had not time to remove. The Promans themselves were active in aiding us to ship the guns. The landscape at Prome is Ehine-like in its picturesqueness. The lands, which have been low-lying and jungly ever since Rangoon, now suddenly swell into green hills, or are broken and upheaved in irregular piles of grim granite ; and the outline of timber-crowned mountains is sharply defined against the Northern sky. The river, too, widens as suddenly, and becomes a lake-like expanse, flashing and canoe-dotted. Then Prome has its golden pagoda, and its ruined fort, and its pillared banian, and a curious alley of palms. There are some very Westernish slopes opposite, that look as though they might be hiding a Christian barn behind them, in spite of three snowy pagodas not a long gun-shot off. That day, bevies of merry girls, a score at a time, came off to see us, matronized by certain half-bearded " females," very ugly, very garru- lous, and by no means nice. The pretty crea- tures were too curious to be over shy, if they 217 were not also too innocent ; and the unsophis- ticated way in which they made free with the freedom of the ship which, of course, we gal- lantly offered them, was certainly funny enough, and, perhaps, would have been em- barrassing had they not been only heathens. They rummaged our bunks, and without a blush made merry over the mysteries of gun- room penetralia. But, alas ! not one of them had ever fainted in her life — they were as igno- rant of sal-volatile as of the Sacrament. One strong-minded puss — who, from her un- terrified study of our costume, must have been a tailoress, or a transmigrated Bloomer — man- aged, with the aid of a midshipman, to get into a pair of my drawers — red flannel ones, left from Cape Horn. The thing was easy to do, Middy being a handy lad, and the only impedi- ment one short skirt of Turkey-red, open at the side from the hip, and betraying every moment " some modest lines of nut-brown limb." Our Proman Bloomer was highly elated, showing her Woman's Rights even more than is necessary in crossing Broadway after a shower, and when asked how she liked 10 218 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; red flannel, answered in a Burmese syllable or two, which, being politely rendered into English, meant " tickle." Indeed she was in high glee, until I asked the most knowing of the old "females" — one who claimed to be mother, first to this maid, then to that, and who displayed first-rate business qualities — " How many rupees for the merry mima ?" No sooner were the playful words repeated to the pretty creature, than instantly, her April face overclouding, she flung all my little gifts on the deck with a beautiful angry gesture, and, with exclamations of mingled astonish- ment, indignation, and terror, flew to the deck and over the gangway, ere we had guessed the reason why, and flung herself into her boat. Pushing off into the stream, she slowly pad- dled "off* and on" between the steamer and the shore, sobbing and scolding with the most charming child-likeness. No explanations, no coaxing, no for-shames could move her ; and when I went to the side of the ship and tried to look my sweetest, and a little injured, she became highly dramatic. Dropping her paddle OR, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 219 in the bottom of the canoe, she dipped her pretty fingers into the water on both sides of the slender craft, and holding them on high, all dripping, she literally "washed her hands of me." As for the others, they tittered, and giggled, and simpered, and smirked, and pouted, and bridled in {he good old way, the same in Yan- geenchinyah as in Yankee land. When we pointed to the guns, and made faces, and said "boom!" they screamed little screams, and fluttered off a yard or two, and then returned, did-you-evering and no-I-nevering as plainly as mouths, and eye-brows, and hands could do it. And when we pointed to the white rolls of "stowed" hammocks in the nettings, and said "boom!" to them also, they played over again their little foolish trepidations as naturally as before, and as prettily. With pieces of Turkey- red, and handfuls of bugle-beads, and some artificial flowers, long before provided for such occasions, I secured the intercession of a dozen of them, by dint of which, my outraged Bloomer was induced to accept from me, for a peace-offering, a Ger- 220 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; man-silver match-box, with little wax matches, the crackling of which would, in her amiable moments, have delighted her exceedingly. She caught it in her nimble fingers, I tossing it from the gangway, and that was the last I ever saw of her. We lay off the town all night, and in the morning, after reconnoitering for a few miles up the river, we started homeward, with every prospect of having to run the gauntlet past Bandoola. We had seen, as we came up, that the right-hand side of the creek presented, at its narrowest part, a formidable cover behind rocks for a few heavy guns and any amount of musketry, and that if Bandoola were capable of average celerity of movement he could post at least a thousand men there to cut us off as we returned. Certainly, under such circum- stances, there would be scarcely a chance of escape for any vessel that might get aground. Our guns could avail us nothing in a position so " crowded," and the water was falling rap- idly between the rains. Accordingly, a barricade of heavy pieces of timber was erected on the bridge to protect OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 221 the Captain, and a similar defense was fur- nished to the man at the wheel. A few picked men, with muskets, lay down close under the rail, and the rest were sent below. Thus we made ready for the creek and an ambush. The Medusa ran on with Captain Tarleton, and, as she entered the passage, showed the signal to close and support her. Just then we discovered four large war-boats crossing over from Bandoola's bluff. Each boat contained from 100 to 150 men, and had a light gun in the bow. It appeared that, although Bandoola had ex- erted himself with creditable activity, we had been too fast for him. As soon as his boats were made out, all steam was crowded on, and, running down upon them, we " pitched in" with grape, canister, and round shot. They gave us their musketry, from the boats and the town, as well as they could, but with no effect. Our fire never slacked for two hours. At the end of that time we had killed a great many of Bandoola's people, burned more than half the town — of which he had taken posses- sion since we passed up, most of the poor crea- 222 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; tures who had hailed us from the bank flying he- fore him into the jungle — captured seven more guns, destroyed a fleet of war-boats, and made prizes of three gilded state barges and Ban- doola's standard. Never was barbarian's mili- tary ambition more effectually nipped in the bud. Leaving her consorts then, the Phlegethon ran down to Kangoon. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 223 CHAPTER XXVIII THE OATH AND IMPRECATIONS — MAIDENS, WIVES, CONCUBINES AND PROSTITUTES. At Bangoon I attended the Police Court to see Captain Latter, the Provisional Commis- sioner, administer the famous Burmese oath to some fellows on trial for dacoitee. This oath, as adapted to Boodhist consciences, is so inge- niously terrible that even a Burman dacoit shrinks from taking it in vain. It is inscribed on leaves of palm, bound like other Burmese books, and held over the head of the witness with certain foolish rites, such as the chewing of pickled tea, sticking out the tongue, etc. In the excellent translation of the Padre San- germano, from the Book of Imprecations, it is almost literally as follows : " False witnesses, who assert anything from passion, and not from love of truth — witnesses who affirm that they have heard or seen what they have not heard or seen — may all such 224 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; false witnesses be severely punished with death by that God who, through the duration of 400,100,000 worlds, has performed every species of good work and exercised every virtue. I say, may God, who, after having acquired all know- ledge and justice, and obtained divinity, leaning upon the tree of Gaudma — may this God, with the Nat who guards him day and night — that is, the Assura Nat — and the giants, slay these false witnesses." [Here follows the invocation of many Nats.] " May all those who, in consequence of bribery from either party, do not speak the truth, merit the eight dangers and the ten punishments. May they be infected by all sorts of diseases. "Moreover, may they be destroyed by ele- phants ; bitten and slain by serpents ; killed and devoured by the devils and giants, the tigers, and other ferocious animals of the forest. " May whoever asserts a falsehood be swal- lowed by the earth ; may he perish by sudden death; may a thunderbolt from heaven slay him — the thunderbolt which is one of the arms of the Nat Deva. " May false witnesses die of bad diseases ; be OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 225 bitten "by crocodiles ; be drowned. May they become poor ; hated of the king. May they have calumniating enemies. May they be driven away ; may they become utterly wretch- ed ; may every one ill-treat them and raise law- suits against them. May they be killed with swords, lances, and every sort of weapon. May they be precipitated into the eight great hells, and the one hundred and twenty smaller ones. May they be tortured. May they be changed into dogs. And if, finally, they become men, may they be slaves a thousand and ten thousand times. May all their undertakings, thoughts, and desires ever remain as worthless as a heap of cotton burnt by the fire. "I WILL SPEAK THE TRUTH. If I Speak not the truth, may it be through the influence of the laws of demerit, viz. : passion, anger, folly, pride, false opinion, immodesty, hard-hearted- ness and skepticism ; so that when I and my re- lations are on land, land animals — as tigers, elephants, buffaloes, poisonous serpents, scor- pions, etc. — shall seize, crush, and bite us, so that we shall certainly die. Let the calamities occasioned by fire, water, rulers, thieves, and 10* 226 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; enemies oppress and destroy us, till we perish and come to utter destruction. " May we be subject to all the calamities that are within the body, and all that are without the body. May we be seized with madness, dumbness, blindness, deafness, leprosy, and hy- drophobia. May we be struck with thunder- bolts and lightning, and come to sudden death. "In the midst of not speaking the truth may I be taken with vomiting clotted black blood, and suddenly die before the assembled people. When I am going by water, may the water Nats assault me, the boat be upset, and the property lost ; and may alligators, porpoises, sharks, or other sea-monsters, seize and crush me to death ; and when I change Worlds, may I not arrive among men or Nats, but suffer un- mixed punishment and regret, in the utmost wretchedness, among the four states of pun- ishment — Hell, Preitta, Beasts, and Athurakai. "But if I speak the truth, may I and my rela- tions, through the influence of the ten laws of merit, and on account of the efficacy of truth, be freed from all calamities within or without the body ; and may evils which have not yet come OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 227 be warded far away. May the ten calamities, and the five enemies also, be kept far away. May the thunderbolts and lightning, the Nat of the waters, and all sea-animals, love me, that I may be safe from them. May my prosperity increase like the rising sun and the waxing moon ; and may the seven possessions, the seven laws, and the seven merits of the vir- tuous, be permanent in my person ; and when I change worlds, may I not go to the four states of punishment, but attain the happiness of men and Nats, and realize merit, reward and Socially, the women of Burmah enjoy, as I have said before, in some respects the largest liberty. They are not immured, as elsewhere in the East. Among themselves they go and come at will. They interchange visits, and are admitted to the privilege of a friendly inter- course as free as that w T hich their most in- dulged sisters of the West enjoy. They are great gadders-about, famous peddlers of small talk and neighborly scandal. Every village has its Mrs. Grundy, and wherever two or 228 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; three are gathered together in her name there is much unbosoming. The did-you-ever and no-I-never, of this land of tea-fights, quilting, and liberty, are familiar in their mouths as household words, though the words be hard to pronounce. They have their spinnings and their knittings and their darnings, their cuttings-out and bast- ings and back-stitchings ; instead of crochet they have gold-flower embroidery; the latest stories of Umerapoora or Prome, brought by some neighbor in the up-river trade who went up with cotton goods and came back with petroleum, serves them for the last new novel ; and they have got as far as sandal powder on their way to rouge. They have their love- affairs and engagements and breakings-off, their small jealousies and heart-burnings — the vani- ties for the girls, and the household cares for the matrons. So that, in these respects, our freest western society has no advantages to offer them. Marriage is a civil contract merely, and divorce easy to the disgusted wife; but the husband cannot repudiate the wife, except by OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 229 expensive legal forms. The law recognizes but one wife ; and though unlimited concubinage is allowed, that institution is ordered in a manner at once flattering and convenient to the true Mica, the wife of the bosom. The concubines must serve her in menial offices ; when she goes abroad they must attend her with drink- ing cup, sandal box and fan ; and at the death of the husband they become her life-slaves. No married woman can be seized upon for the royal pleasure ; and that was a noble inno- vation of Alompra's, when he seated his wife on the throne beside him in full court. At a wedding, the bride is made much of, and consoled with compliments and gifts. On the bridal day, according to Symes, the happy man must beseech her acceptance of three loonghces or lower garments, three tubbecJcs or sashes, and three pieces of white muslin. But on the other hand, it must be con- fessed, woman in Burmah is subject to certain political disabilities to which the " strong- minded" of her sisterhood — if aught so loud and ugly existed among them — might, with a fair sftow of justice, demur. 230 THE GOLDEN D AGON ; They have no voice in the imposition of taxes, although, as will be seen presently, they often pay those taxes with their bodies. Like the female of every other kind, they are not permitted to emigrate, though often married, with or without their consent, to foreigners. Although they are frequently sold into prosti- tution by their parents or the State, voluntary prostitution is punished with the utmost rigors of the social code ; and when a suburb of Ran- goon, called Mima-shun-rua, was set apart for the daughters of shame, its outcast denizens were regarded as slaves of the State. The evidence of two women will not balance the weight of one man's, nor can a woman enter a hall of justice or even stand in the porch, but must deliver her testimony from the house-top. If the head of a family have fallen into arrears for his head-tax, and become liable to a sum- mary visit from the Myosagi with an armed posse, he raises the money on the body' of a daughter, or even, if the case be pressing, of his wife. The value of an old woman's body, where indemnity is to be paid for her accidental killing, is about seventeen ticals, or ten dollars. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 231 In the laws of Meenyoo, which are the Law of Burmah, it is laid down that " the punish- ment of his crimes, who judges iniquitously and decides falsely, shall be greater than though he had slain one thousand women, one hundred poonghees, or one thousand horses;" and in another place, pious Burmans are advised that " the good wives are of three sorts — the wife that is like unto a sister, the wife that is like unto a friend, and the wife that is like unto a slave ; but the best of these is the wife that is like unto a slave." 232 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; CHAPTER XXIX. HOW IT SEEMS TO OWN A WOMAN LITTLE MAYOUK HER AD- VENTURES. When our New York Howadji and his friend, the Pacha, were in the desert together, under the eyes of Kadra, the Pacha was seized " with a laudable curiosity to know how it would ' seem ' to kill a man." So I, yielding to the flattering temptation of these women-laws, be- came possessed of a devil of longing to know how it would seem to own a woman — some fair and tender slave who should fan me when I slept, knuckle and knead me in the diurnal shampoon, lull me into high-noon naps with the tinkling of her patola and the comfort of household songs, and sew on my moral but- tons. Accordingly I imparted my romantic whim to my Chittagong Sancho, who forthwith set about finding a mima to my mind, and Mayouk was the fruit of his faithful search. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IEKAWADDI. 233 Poor little Mayouk ! her father owed a hun- dred and fifty rupees ; his goods had all gone in the fire that swept away the old town when we applied our rocket-torches to its tinder houses ; his creditor was stern, and the law was plain ; so they were trying to raise the money on little Mayouk, who had nothing at all to do with the negotiations, save to make the most of her prettiness, and wait at home for the coming man. Goods like her were not a drug in town, nor were buyers, such as I, plentiful and competing. I had at once the rupees and the Quixotic sentiment — my com- rades were rarely possessed of the two together. So we were not long in concluding " an opera- tion." Insolvent parents demanded two hundred rupees — cautious Chittagong offered one hun- dred ; insolvent parents pleaded their poverty — insensible Chittagong fairly boasted of mine ; insolvent parents extolled the charms, the ac- complishments, the virtues of the chattel — a rose among the mimas, a singing-bird in the porch, an ant in the house, a bee in the bazaar — practical Chittagong made light of her endow- 234 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; merits and magnified the rupees. So they compromised, and closed at a hundred and fifty — Mima, who had been plainly bored through- out, seeming merely glad that the thing was over. Then we chewed some pickled tea all round according to law, the old people laughing con- sumedly at the wry faces I made over that imposing ceremony ; and I took little Mayouk's hand, and should have said something tender to her, only she laughed. I besought her to promise me that she would be happy, and she said she thought she could be, with a pair of ear-horns and a new loonghee. I assured her she had but to give utterance to the wish and she was free as air; and then she laughed again. So I built a little house for Mayouk next door to her mother's, and gave her some fine clothes, and the ear-horns, and a goat, and a new idol, and did not teach her English in exchange for Burmese which she did not teach me ; and I employed the old lady to do my washing, and paid the old gentleman to take charge of my pony, and was responsible for OR, UP AND DOWN THE IBRAWADDI. 235 the "family-tax," and all that sort of thing. So little Mayouk was very happy and vir- tuous, and I was very virtuous and proud. When little Mayouk came tripping, at dawn, from the tank among the mangoes at the turn of the Pagoda road — barefoot and with glancing ankles ; her raven hair twisted in a barbaric top-knot ; the pendulous lobes of her ears jeweled with young lilies; the "bare possibility" of a dainty bosom peeping over the top of her engi ; her right leg, nut-brown and springy, showing to mid-thigh where her loonghee opened as she stept out smartly; her lips brightly parted for sherbet-draughts of the early air ; her teeth fairly flashing, innocent of betel ; her form erect and swaying ; her head thrown proudly back, and crowned, like Hebe's, with a brimming jar: at such times little Mayouk was the sweetest heathen unconverted. She was a famous story-teller, animated and eloquent, with an expressive countenance and impressive gestures. As she related the hor- rors and the marvels of the three days' bom- bardment, with Chittagong between us to in- terpret, she was altogether charming. 236 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; She told how, when she was a little bazaar- girl and sold rice, the naked soldiers came to her begging handfuls to keep them from starv- ing ; how, when the air was all alight with thunder-balls that cried " woon, woon," and fire-snakes (rockets) that flew through the night and bit the head of Shway-Dagoung, and when women and children clung to each other scream- ing in the dark, with a post in the midst of them to keep a family together, their faces turned in an agony of wonder and fear to the Great Dagon — then the very soldiers they had fed, came and stript them naked to search in the hems of their garments for rubies ; and how, when they fled through the fiery storm to hide under the terrace of Shway-Dagoung, she bore her blind grandfather on her back. Little Mayouk was a good investment. When I left Rangoon forever, she cried, and begged me to take her silver spittoon for a keepsake ; and she promised to be a good girl, and send an offering to the Pagoda every new moon. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 237 CHAPTER XXX. MY ADVENTURE AT PEGU. One day a message came down from the Myosugi, or head man of the friendly people who inhabited the interior town of Pegu, stat- ing that they had been attacked by a superior force of Burmese, driven from their homes, and compelled to take refuge in the jungle. The Peguans are naturally a brave race, en- tertaining a bitter hereditary hatred for the ag- gressive Burmese, always armed against them, always warring with them on continually recur- ring pretexts, and always disposed to join with any force hostile to them. They, therefore, in- formed the General, that if he would send a small party of British troops to their aid, they would attack and retake the place. Meantime their families were in the jungle suffering great privation and exposure, their households scat- tered, and their property destroyed. The town of Pegu — city of the great pagoda 238 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; Shway-Madoo, the Golden Supreme — lies in a beautiful valley, one of the very few in that country which are watered throughout the dry season, and the one upon which the people depend, for the most part, for their supplies of rice. Accordingly the General determined to send a force to aid these poor people, and ordered the Phlegethon to repair to the place imme- diately, with — in addition to her own crew — a detachment of Bengal (Sepoy) rifles, numbering about a hundred and fifty, a small party of marines from the frigate Fox (Commodore Lam- bert's flag-ship), and a company of sappers and miners, in case of the necessity arising of throwing up field-works, should we not suc- ceed in taking the town in the first assault. One morning, about five o'clock, when we were within twenty miles of Pegu, the steamer got aground and stuck fast. Finding that there was no prospect of getting nearer with her, as the river was very low, it was determined to send the force up in the boats. The steamer not being large enough to hold all the men, we had been towing astern the launch and two OR, UP AND DOWN THE 1RRAWADDI. 239 cutters of the Fox filled with sailors and ma- rines ; and these, with our own three cutters, were sufficient to convey our men to the at- tack. We started soon after day-break, and pulled up between the high banks of the river, making our way past the Burmese villages that, at short intervals, occupied the shores — the men all well armed, and three surgeons, of whom I was one, in the boats. We were all on the alert, expecting an at- tack every moment, as we went up with the flood-tide, which runs in the Pegu like a mill- race. Soon we began to hear the native war- gongs beating in every direction; and the distant cry of warriors giving the alarm — a guttural, monotonous hoo-hoo — was hayed on every side. This lugubrious warning was more like the baying of countless dogs than any other civil- ized noise, and we knew that its object was to gather a force to intercept us, or, at all events, to strengthen the defense of the town of Pegu. Occasionally, however, we passed a Karen vil- lage where the inhabitants were friendly. Only 240 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; women, and children, and old men were left in these places, and they saluted us joyfully with shouts and waving of white cloths, dancing and running down to the river bank in crowds, pointing up the stream, and hurrying us on to the town, which they hoped we would take. The higher up we got, the louder grew the alarm ; the gongs became as innumerable as the voices of runners and scouts carrying on the warning, and the whole produced a melan- choly harmony, now like the sighing of the wind, now like the dying away of thunder. All this time we were exposed to the in- tensest heat of a tropical sun, a heat such as is experienced nowhere but in Burmah; for, whatever may be the indications of the ther- mometer, heat is not felt in any other spot on earth as it is in the low, flat lands along the delta of the Irrawaddi. It has a peculiarly de- pressing effect ; it makes you faint ; it seems to steam and stew your head, and you find your- self bending under it as under a great and growing weight. We had no awnings over the boats, and most of us were dressed in thick cloth uniform. I wore a heavy cloth navy-cap OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 241 — the regulation cap of the Company — an un- dress blue cloth frock-coat, trowsers of the same material, and, in a belt at my waist, a sword and a pair of heavy ship's pistols. Very soon after the sun rose I had begun to experi- ence the wilting influence of his rays, and, as he mounted higher and higher, rapidly acquir- ing strength, I was fast becoming sick. At first I was seized with a slight fit of vomiting ; then my mind became confused. For a mo- ment I would forget where I was, but only for a moment ; the next I would recover my recol- lection. I had a sense of dried peas with hot water poured upon them, swelling in my skull ; I became violently excited, raved, said I don't know what to the men around me, seized one, thinking he was about to attack me — and then fell over on my face in the bottom of the boat — coup de soleil ! How long I remained insensible I have never known; but my -first consciousness was of lying over the side of the boat, with a sailor dipping up water in his hat and pouring it over my head. My clothes were loosened as much as possible, and saturated with water. I recog- 11 242 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; nized some of the officers, particularly an assistant-surgeon of the " 18th Royal Irish,'' my intimate friend, and was more or less conscious from that time that I was in a re- mote spot, and on a dangerous expedition, although I did not recollect the nature of the enterprise nor even the name of the country. In recognizing the officers, I could not recall their connection with the events then recur- ring. I heard the beating of the tomtoms along the land ; I heard the same multitudinous hoo-hooing, baying, wailing, and it filled me with irrepressible horror at times, while at others it excited me to madness. By degrees I became more quiet, and, as soon as it was safe to do so, I was removed from the cutter to a large Burmese rice-boat, housed over with mats and capable of containing from a hundred to a hundred and fifty persons. This floating house had windows and doors, and had been fitted up with hospital traps of every sort — a complete surgeon's and apothecary's outfit. Here I was laid upon a doolee, stripped, and water poured on me by the bucketful, especially over my head and breast. The doolee was OK, UP AND DOWN THE IKKAWADDI. 243 stretched in the middle of the boat, between the doors and windows. Occasionally, I relapsed into insensibility, but under the medical treat- ment, which was vigorous and pertinacious, I recovered sufficiently, every now and then, to recognize the faces and voices of the two medi- cal officers who had kindly remained in charge of me, as well as the doolee-bearers — half-naked Hindoos, who belonged to the hospital depart- ment — and a cabin-boy of the frigate Fox, a handsome, spirited little fellow of fourteen or thereabouts, who had been permitted to ac- company us for the purpose of witnessing an action. I had scarcely recovered my consciousness sufficiently to understand where I was and what had happened, when a message arrived from Capt. Tarleton — great-grandson, by-the- by, of the troublesome Tarleton of our Revolu- tionary war, and a dashing leader — command- ing these medical officers to join immediately' their respective detachments, and to leave me in the best care they could provide. Accord- ingly, they asked whether they could safely leave me alone, relying upon my sense and 244 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; experience to do that for myself which there would be no one to do for me in their absence. I urged them to go. Shortly after they left — it seemed to me not more than half an hour — the little boy, of whom I have spoken, approached the side of the doolee, and, while bathing me with a sponge, giving me water to drink, and chang- ing the mustard-poultices, told me where we were. He said this hospital-boat had been moored on the side opposite the town, under a high bank, where there were only jungle and the ruins of a burnt village a few hundred yards off. He assured me that I had no cause for alarm ; that we were perfectly safe ; that the officers had explained to him that the boat had been moored there for safety, because there were no Burmese on that side, and that, in a very short time, they would rejoin us. My excitement was thus partially allayed, and I became comparatively calm ; still, that horrible banging of gongs, mingled with the rattling of musketry — for our troops were then storming the place — and the occasional discharge of the twelve-pounders we had brought up in our OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 245 boats, were, at times, frightful in their effect upon me, and it was with great difficulty that I could master the impulse to leap into the water and hurry toward the scene of action. All these sounds seemed to go through and through my head. The effect of the coup de soleil on my sense of hearing was, to intensify it beyond endurance. If one of those guns had been fired close by my ear, it could scarcely have produced an effect more shocking than it did at the distance of more than a mile. How long the engagement lasted, it is, of course, impossible for me, under circumstances of such confusion and even delirium, to re- member ; but presently there was a pause ; not a gong was to be heard; that dismal slogan was no longer to be caught ; the artillery and musketry were still ; all was perfect silence. The doolee-bearers were squatting around on their haunches, and one or two of them had lighted hubble-bubbles. The boy went to the door, and, presently returning, whispered to me, seeming anxious to communicate something important ; but, in my condition then, I could not under- 246 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; stand him, and hardly gave him my attention. Then there was a stir among the coolies — a quick expression of alarm ; they laid down their hubble-bubbles, and went to the windows on the side next the bank. Immediately they rushed back in great confusion and terror, crying: " Burmee, Burmee man; Sahib, Sahib, Burmee man !" The boy again went to the door, and, after reconnoitering, returned and informed me that a large force of Burmese were gathering on the bank over the boat ; and, as he spoke, I could hear their shouts. They had come from below, probably, to assist their friends, but had taken such care to keep at a safe distance from, our men, that they had blundered upon this boat in its exposed and helpless situation. There was hardly an appreciable interval between the announcement of their presence and the dis- charge of their muskets. The roof of the boat was quickly perforated in every direction, and bullets whistled about the bed ; they struck the timbers over my head, and by my side, and, more than once, struck the bed itself. With a scream of terror, the doo lee-bearers OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 247 leapt into the water, and then I was alone with the boy. For a minute or two, there was a pause in the firing, the attention of the Burmese being distracted by the panic of the Hindoos ; but it was immediately resumed, this time directed upon the swimming coolies. Now, remember that I was stark naked, in- tensely excited (except at blessed moments of insensibility), in a high state of cerebral exalta- tion, reckless of danger, possessed by a sort of devil resembling mania a potu in all its pheno- mena. The little boy, now my only companion, preserving wonderful self-possession and calm- ness of demeanor, came to me, seized me with both hands, and shook me hard, as if to wake me. He cried : " Get up, sir ; get up, sir ; no time to lose now !" and asked me if I could swim. I answered, " Yes," he all the time dragging over my arms and legs a pair of pilot- cloth trowsers and a pea-jacket, after which he led me — almost carrying me, feeble as I was — to the side of the boat furthest from the Bur- mese, who, probably on hearing his exclama- tions, had resumed their firing, and were rapid- ly drilling the roof, but still afraid to come 248 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; down upon the boat, perhaps suspecting an ambush. He led me to the door, and pointed to where, some five or six hundred yards up the stream, our boats were aground, in charge of seven or eight men, under command of a midshipman. Remember, now, that all our force was engaged at the town of Pegu (but how far off, or in what direction that lay, I knew not then); that there had been only a pause in their firing, which by this time was resumed with increased rattle of musketry and roar of cannon. Pointing to the boats, the boy asked me if I could swim so far. I replied, " Yes," and asked him if he also could. He said, " Yes." I then plunged into the river, and struck out in the direction of the boats, bidding him follow close behind me. I imagined at the time, though now I know it to have been but imagination, that I heard him leap in after me, and I con- tinued to fancy, not only that I heard him striking out and blowing the water, as swim- mers do, but that I even saw him; and I spoke to him frequently, believing him to be at my side. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRKAWADDI. 249 The Burmese, perceiving me as I made the plunge, instantly redoubled their fire, and bullets fell thickly around me. I could hear them hiss close by my head and back, pelting the water like nuts thrown upon the surface by the handful. Fortunately, the tide was in my favor, and I swam rapidly, being at all times an expert swimmer. Now I seemed to recover my presence of mind, and to have the balance of my nerves restored. I became perfectly calm, unalarmed — master of myself in every respect — with more self-possession and a cooler comprehension of the circumstances surround- ing me than I had ever had before in all my life : nor can I refer all of this to other than almost supernatural influences, though, of course, something is to be attributed to the cooling agency of the water. I let my body down into the stream as low as possible, so as to expose only the back of my head, thus making my human target for the bullets of my iiunters as small as I could, and as low also ; for I was well aware, from precious experience acquired in a busy cam- paign, that they fire very high, holding the 11* 250 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; stocks of their muskets under their armpits, and not against their shoulders, as we do ; be- sides, their fire-arms are of the most wretched description, and every man makes his own powder. Their balls, therefore, generally passed over my head, and fell into the water, a little beyond them. I had no fear at any moment ; a strange and omnipotent faith in fate took possession of me ; I did not even take the trouble to make np my mind that I should escape. I literally had no idea that it was a possible thing for me to be shot then. Yet, when I had almost reached the boats, I was seized with extreme faintness — whether from the reaction of hope, inspired by the proximity of my friends, depriving me of the strength and courage of despair and rage, or from what other cause I know not ; I became suddenly sick, and felt myself rapidly sinking. I could make but a few strokes more, holding up my hand, and crying for help. The smallest of the boats, our third cutter, with a solitary man in it, came to my rescue, and, just as my strength was finally failing, he dragged me out of the water. As I fell over between the seats, OR, UP AND DOWN THE 1RRAWADDI. 251 gasping and exhausted with the shock of relief and safety, but by no means insensible — on the contrary fully appreciating my position — that man said to me : "I think it's all up with us now, sir ; but you stand by me, and I'll stand by you: we're two lonesome Yankees here." He then sculled his boat back to the others — the Burmese, meantime, having suspended their fire in the direction of the hospital-boat. You must not forget the boy, whom I had quite for- gotten, and did not again remember until I saw him, some days later. When we reached the other boats, I was lifted into the large launch of the Fox under the awning (all the boats were now covered), and laid in the bottom, with my head on an ammunition-box. The midshipman in command of the party hastened to assure me that I was safe ; and, finding me in a state of great mental excite- ment, endeavored to soothe me. While he was thus kindly employed, I became insensible for a time. These intervals of unconsciousness must have been comparatively brief, as the whole amrir occupied only the middle of a day. I was roused by another alarm, another rapid 252 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; firing of musketry, and again bullets whistled near me ; I could see them penetrate the can- vas awning of our boat, making little round holes, which let in the hateful sunshine upon my face. Several struck the seats, some hit the sides of the boat, and some fell into the water close by ; but, very strangely, no man was hurt as yet, although all were together in this launch. Here, as lower down, the bank was very high and steep. The Burmese, who had driven me out of the hospital-boat, had followed me hither ; they were still immediately over us, so that, in firing, it was necessary for our men to elevate their muskets almost perpendicularly. Possessed with the energy of despair, unable to get their boats afloat — as there were not enough of them for some to defend the others while they worked — and seeing no hope of communicating with our friends on shore, who were engaged in the assault of the town, my companions were fairly brought to bay, and de- termined to die hard. One man after another, as he loaded his musket, would run out to the bow, "spot" his "John Burmah," and bring him down. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 253 The Burmese, who were arrant cowards, would creep cautiously forward, shoot, and run — firing very hastily their wretched mus- kets, with the most uncertain aim of the worst of all possible marksmen; so that, while our shots were never wasted, theirs had, as yet, done no harm. In a little while, however, one of our men received a ball in his shoulder — a flesh-wound merely, from which he soon re- covered, but which disabled him for the time. Soon after that, my countryman — he who had come to my rescue when I was sinking — loaded his musket under the awning, occupied, in his turn, the bow of the boat, which had just been vacated by another, and taking deliberate aim at a Burman — who, in that ridiculous spirit of bravado, so familiar to all who have had deal- ings with the tattooed rascals, was performing a war-dance, .making grimaces, and gesticulat- ing with all sorts of insulting antics — shot him dead. Immediately a dozen muskets replied — fired straight at him. Quietly walking back to where I was lying, in the bottom of the boat, and laying down his musket carefully, as if he had merely paused to rest, or to speak to me, 254 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; he sat down by my side. Never suspecting that he was hurt, I scarcely noticed him, being oc- cupied with watching for the holes, which still, from time to time, the bullets would make in the awning. Presently, he laid his hand softly upon mine, and said: "If you ever go to Bos- ton, tell my mother, sir." " Why, nonsense, man," I exclaimed, "you're not hurt !" I stared in his face ; death was there, and his eyes were closing He made no reply, but, still clasp- ing my hand, fell back and died. After this, there was a brief pause in the fight ; the Burmese ceased firing, as if to de- liberate on some change of tactics — possibly with the intention of coming down on us all together. That was the fear we should have entertained all the while, had we had time to reflect. Now, we saw the danger plainly, and that something must be done promptly, to pre- vent them from taking us by a coup de main. The midshipman, in a few hurried words, asked me to suggest something. I advised him to load and fire the twelve-pounder in the bow. He objected: "But you see my fire will be harmlessly wasted in the bank, far beneath OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRKAWADDI. 255 their feet, and that, once perceived, may bring them down on us. It's only the sight of this piece, and their recollection of the noise it makes, and the havoc some of them have seen done by guns just like it, that keeps them where they are." "But," I argued, "we can't stay here for- ever ; our friends know nothing of our danger ; the Burmese will presently discover that your piece is harmless, from the very fact of your not using it ; we are only postponing the mo- ment of our destruction. Fire the gun — load it heavily with grape, and fire it into the bank, with all the elevation you can get. Thus you may terrify them, as well by the noise as by the cutting up of the earth beneath their feet ; at the same time you will have the advantage of communicating with our friends by the only means available." He did as I advised ; but, after the first few discharges, the Burmese would run up while our men were loading the gun, and fire upon them. So we lost another — not killed, but disabled. Then our fellows were panic-stricken ; they saw they could not hold their ground till 256 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; friends came up ; they were wavering, one by- one ; they began to hang back, and to look around for help — when men, under such cir- cumstances, begin to look away from the foe, the game is always up ; they never will look back again. The midshipman suddenly cried : "I've done my duty; every man for himself;" and plunged into the river: the whole party followed him. Neither of the wounded men was seriously injured, and they were, of course, so occupied with the urgent danger as to forget their wounds ; they struck out lustily. Still prostrate, and weak almost to death, I dragged myself heavily to the side of the boat, and let my body roll over into the stream, like a log, under the full gaze of the Burmese, who, when they saw our men take to the water, of course opened fire on each black head as it swam away. I came last, and formed a solitary target for them, as I was still in the stream after all of my late companions were up and off into the jungle. I employed the same tac- tics as before, and with the same success — letting my body low down into the water, and swimming in a straight line directly away from 257 them, so as to present a mark which it would have been difficult for any but an expert sharp- shooter to hit. Being thus repeatedly exposed to the most fearful danger, and seeming to have death and devils crowding upon me from every side, I became frantic with downright rage. When my feet touched the mud I did not rise, but, keeping under water, dragged myself along on my belly, till I got to the bank. Then clambering up, I stood on the top of it, and shook my fists at the savages, and cursed them. Next I sat deliberately down on the ground, and exulted for a while in watching their balls fall short of me. After this I arose, and wan- dered into the jangle. What was the scene?— a jungle in the heart of Burmah, where, perhaps, no white man had ever been before that day ; the only passage a tiger-trail — a path very much like those made by the negroes through our southern corn-fields by cutting away a narrow lane of stalks. By this, no doubt (though tiger signs were fresh upon it), our men had made their way ; but where to look for them? That dismal howl 258 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; still reached my ears ; I could even hear cannon — but could not, if I had tried, have told in what direction they were. Don't forget, now, that I had lost all but a confused sense of something dangerous that was near, something saving that was distant. I had no recollection of details ; I could not tell on which side of the river our little army was ; I had never seen the town of Pegu ; I had forgotten all topography, all points of time, nor have I ever clearly recollected them since. It all seemed to me like a dream of some- thing horrible, that had happened years before. Even what was presently occurring around me seemed something that I was remembering re- motely, rather than the event of the moment. At the same time that I was conscious of the scene before me, and of my progress over the ground, I was in the maudlin state of a drunken man, reckless of danger ; any number of Bur- mese directly in my path, I should probably have met, then, with a laugh ; I was in the mood to laugh — did laugh. Night would before very long be upon me, but I cared not for that; I could have laid OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 259 down in the tiger-trail and slept — because I was crazy. And yet I was not crazy ; for I knew there were enemies, and I hated them ; I knew there was danger, and I was cunning. To a degree, I was delirious ; and yet some of my faculties were intensified, like my physical senses. I was delirious only in not compre- hending the danger to the extent of dying with fear. Recollect that I was bare-headed and bare- footed ; my jacket was open, and my breast exposed to the sun ; I had dragged myself through the black, oozy slime of an Indian river full of crocodiles ; I was ugly as Satan, from head to foot, and like him in many other respects. In this plight I stumbled forward, through the jungle. Presently a form started up from between the canes and stood before me, across the path. I thought it was that of a Burman — an armed enemy — and my first feeling was one of levity. The next instant I recognized the blue jacket of one of our own men. He belonged to the boat's party, had escaped, and hid himself there, and (Heaven knows how !) had recog- 260 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; nized me. When his hand grasped one of mine, and I put the other upon his shoulder, and looked into his familiar face — when I saw in him a companion and a friend, and we two stood together there, in that place of wits' ends and vague fears— I became aware of my situ- ation with a horrible shock, and fell to the ground, sensible, at the same time, of wretched- ness and of relief, of danger and of protection — of one as much as the other. Then he raised me, and made me realize again, as well as he could, who he was, and where I was ; and he lifted me up, and carried me forward, a part of the while on his back and sometimes in his arms, stopping, now and then, to rest. Then, at last — and God knows, God only knows how it all was ! — I do remember being with a party of our men ; I do remember some Sepoys in British uniform ; I do remember officers, soldiers, sailors, friendly Peguans. At this moment I vividly recall such a group, and I recollect standing in the midst of them. Then, I remember, there was a sudden stir, and this party broke away from me amid rattling of musketry and the shouts of officers, and the OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 261 next instant I was in the water again. I, too, had partaken of the alarm, but, not understand- ing its nature, had rushed down the bank, and into the river, and was striking out once more for the very shore whence I had just been driven. I swam across and clambered up the bank. Is there anything picturesquely frightful in story — anything in German legend of solitary men beset by fiends, and beasts of hideous aspect and horrible cries — that will do to describe this by? Think of the knight in Undine, as he rides through the haunted for- est, waylaid by Calibanic shapes; or take the lady in Comus, put a pea-jacket and regulation- trowsers on her, and you have me. Everything proper to a safe man's mind had left me ; nothing remained but cunning and insensible courage. I had never once thought of praying, of pleading for mercy ; I had never once asked forgiveness for my sins ; I had not given a thought to my family or friends ; I was busy only with the damnable inventions, the hellish traps, set for me, and I remember the Bothwell-like resistance I felt — I feel it 262 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; now. Then I speculated: "Perhaps by wan- dering along this bank I can reach some friend- ly village; perhaps by following this river I shall find human habitations, where I shall be received hospitably." I was even possessed with a delirious hope that I should reach Kan- goon — which now and then I would clearly recollect — by pursuing the stream down to the bay. So, groping along in what I supposed to be that direction, I had gone perhaps a mile or two, when I saw a small boat — such as is called a sampan in China ; I have forgotten the Burmese name — lying close under the bank. It was covered with mats, arched like the awn- ing of a western wagon : the poorest fishermen of Burmah house their families in such craft, as the Chinese do. I came upon it suddenly ; on the bank, immediately above it, but below me, stood two natives — tall, stalwart fellows, tat- tooed from their navels to their ankles — with paddles in their hands, but not armed. Now, observe that the Burmese, both men and. women, have their ears perforated with very large holes (indeed, a circular piece seems OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 2G3 to be punched out of the lobe), in which the women wear gold, brass, or copper ornaments, sometimes of great weight — not in the shape of rings, but cylindrical — and the men cany cigars ; indeed, by means of this hole, they make the ear a sort of rack to hang many little things upon. All the hostile Burmese I had seen during the campaign invariably wore tiny red flags in these holes ; while all the Peguans, and other friendly natives, w T ore white ones. But these two men had neither ; they appeared to be harmless fishermen (perhaps Karens), who were glad to hide themselves away, and had not yet been found by any of the Burmese recruiting officials, and pricked into the service at the point of the lance. When I came upon them, they uttered an ex- clamation of great alarm, and rushed towards the river ; but when they got to the bank they stopped, looked at each other and at me, spoke together, stood transfixed in wonder. I had come suddenly from the side opposite to that on which the British were ; they could make out neither my race nor my color. My hue was that of the river-mud, but my hair was differ- 264 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; ent from theirs, and my dress also. If they had ever seen an Englishman, they would, by the latter, have taken me for one. But what could they understand from my making straight up to them, and instantly laying my hands one upon a shoulder of each? I had no arms ; they had been taken from me in the cutter before I was removed to the hospital-boat. With the savage's quick appreciation of danger, they at once perceived that I was helpless in that respect ; but they knew not how to regard me in others. My head, if an enemy's, was worth five hun- dred rupees to them ; but, then, if'it should hap- pen to belong to a friendkj Englishman, it was worth a thousand such heads as theirs— if I were an enemy, five hundred rupees was the royal reward offered for it ; but if a friend, they and their families and kindred would have died a death for every hair they hurt. So, puzzled, they stood with their paddles in their hands, making no demonstration of anger or of fear ; they stared like children at me, but did not move. For a few moments I held them thus, look- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRUAWADDI. 265 ing them straight in the face. Then, to make myself understood as well as I could, I pointed to the boat, and, touching my forehead and breast with my clasped hands — as is the cus- tom in Burmah to express respect or gratitude, or to ask a favor—I appealed to them. I laid the palms of my hands flat together, and said : " Yangoon, Yangoon, twa, twa; bucJcsheesh, back- sheesh do; hurra bucksheesh do" — a jargon of mixed Burmese and Hindostanee, both shock- ingly broken, meaning, " I will give you a sight of presents if you will take me in that boat to Rangoon." After consulting together with hurried ges- tures, they led me, gently but firmly, one by one wrist, and the other by the other, down into the boat, and, placing me in the stern, indicated to me to hold on by the top of the sampan, which came up to my waist. They then got into the bow, and pushed off with their paddles to the middle of the stream. As I watched their movements, I was occu- pied with but one thought, and that was never to turn my back to them. All my intelligence, all my cunning, all that I was capable of as a 12 266 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; human being, was concentrated in that, "don't turn your back on them." I had no arms, not even a stick, nothing but my nails and teeth. So I watched them impishly. I could still hear noises — a confused clangor came from a distance to my ears like something that one dreams of; but it was real noise — a noise of a far country ; of tigers, and elephants, and monkeys, and wild dogs ; of gods and a tattooed people ; of crocodiles and great pagodas — all audible heathendom conglomerated into one diabolical howl ! I cannot describe it ; I can- not analyze it as a noise ; I cannot tell you what particular big gun it sounded like, how now it clattered like an omnipresent tin-pan, or this time " went off" like a park of sixty- pounders ; but I can tell you that it sounded like all " Afric's sunny fountains and India's coral strand" — drunk ; I hope you can under- stand that. I had let myself somehow into the idea that my Charons were going to Rangoon. For one instant I turned my eyes away from their faces to the scene before me ; the next, the bow of the boat was driven fast intp OR, UP AND DOWN THE IltltAWADDI. 2(37 the mud of the opposite shore. They leaped to land and ran up the bank, and from that hour I never saw them again ; they left me there alone. A large tree grew out of the bank near the spot, and its roots hung over and ran down to the water ; it was a solitary tree ; all the rest was cane. I could see the black posts, with a few bamboos still standing, of a house — not very near, but at no great distance ; and, here and there, others like them, as if the ruins of a village from which the inhabitants had been driven by robbers. One often sees in Burmah three or four houses together, thus charred and half fallen — all that is left by the dacoits of some little town. From the moment the men disappeared I forgot their existence ; to lose sight of them was to lose all recollection of them, care for them, fear of them. I never once contemplated the possibility of their returning with compan- ions, although, had I been in a condition to reflect, I must have known that they would inevitably pursue an object of such wonder, to discover whence it came and what it meant. 268 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; But then my mind would follow up no idea; I was alive only to the instantaneous event. I had the momentary instinct of danger ; with it came the momentary instinct of resistance. For that, my cunning was beyond all cultiva- tion : it was the animal's cunning — memory, only so far as the present occasion called up memory to my protection. I thought, " What shall I do next ?" It was growing late, and, I fancied, even dark — was I to remain there all night ? I looked at the jungle — I looked at the river; at once I filled the one with reptiles, and the other with fierce beasts. Was I to lie there and die ? Then rage seized me ; rage, rage, rage, wholly possessed me — a determination to conquer all this, and to come out of it safe and triumphant. When I asked myself the question, " Must I die here?" it was only to answer, "No," almost with a shout. Then I thought of a weapon — where I was, there was not even a paddle. I crept under the cover of the boat to look for a knife. A woman and a child ! Under the sampan was a woman with a little baby! OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 209 She crouched in her death-fear ; she had made no sign, betrayed no curiosity. The Burmese woman is too well trained to make her existence apparent in the presence of men, unless she is called for. There she had been hiding, stifling her baby between her breasts to smother its small cry, and, like myself, wondering what would come next. I crept in on my hands and knees, and we squatted face to face. To me, she was an angel — the realization of all that is beautiful in heaven. To her, I was hell — a black, fiendish thing, of which she had a. superstitious horror as fright- ful as it was vague. I was a something that was cruel, something that killed, something that fired great guns and made infernal noises and ghastly gashes, something that, wherever it went, spread death and flames before it, and left ashes and dead bodies behind. For a minute, we stared at each other. The child uttered a feeble wail ; she hugged its face closer to her bosom, and choked out the cry; she held it fast with both her hands and shrank away from me as far as the boat would permit. She was naked to the waist — Bur- 270 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; mese women generally are, after they have borne children. The remembrance I have of that woman now, is the remembrance that a jaded and wounded man must have of a cool pillow, a cup of water, and a tender hand. I put my palms together with a gesture of respect and tenderness, and cried : " Yay, yay, fay" — " Water, water, water." As soon as she heard my voice, she seemed to be pos- sessed with a new horror, and at the same time to imagine that some conflict was about to occur between us — that something was to be threatened on my part, and to be feared on hers. So, turning up the palm of her hand, she pressed me vehemently to go away, and iterated: " Twa, twa, twa," — "go, go, go," as fast as she could utter it. I repeated my ges- ture ; this time prostrating my forehead to the floor before her, I made suppliant salaams, after the Burmese fashion, and cried again : " Yay, ija.y, yay." At last she gave me to drink ; turning to her side, she took from an earthen vessel some water in a small lacquered cup, and handed it to me — still clasping her OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 271 child to her breast — and, on my eagerly snatching it, shrank back immediately. You remember the story of Mungo Park, and the African woman who brought him milk to drink, and sang to him the song of the " poor white man," who had no mother, and " no wife to grind his corn?" That water restored me, filled me with new confidence, made me quite calm and even thoughtful again ; and so, seeing the great horror with which I inspired the woman, I left her and returned to my place outside. I took with me a carved rice-stick which I found in a pot, such as is used throughout that country to stir rice with while it is cooking. I waited with this in my hand, I should never be able to guess how long, or how short a time — it might have been hours, it might have been but a few minutes. For some time I had heard no guns or cries ; all had been quiet. But now there came from a distance the shouts of a number of men ; they rose on the air and grew louder and louder, soon separating, so that I could distinguish individual voices. At first, there 272 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; was the same dismal baying I have already described ; next came human articulations, which, however, I could not understand. Then there was a crash in the jungle, and some eighty or ninety men — as was afterwards estimated — burst through the canes, and stop- ped very near the boat. They were in hot haste ; I could not tell whether they were pursuing or pursued. All were armed ; and the tattooed devils wore red flags in their ears, every man of them. They stood startled at the water's edge, and wondered at me. Breath- less as they were, they stopped and reflected. Some turned to each other and talked hur- riedly together ; some brandished their wea- pons, and looked as if about to use them. Thus we stood ; I alone in the boat, brandish- ing the stick ; my hair matted with mud, which by this time had dried ; my pea-jacket wide open, and my exposed breast as black as my face ; unarmed — a white man and a stranger ; to many of them a new creature altogether, even if I had presented my ordinary appearance ; but in that aspect, to all of them, a thing of peculiar dread, operating upon their supersti- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 273 tious terrors. For the simple reason that they could not account for me, they were awfully afraid of me. That cunning, which I have described to you as being all that was left to me, again filled me with a sense of power and safety, which it is quite impossible to explain to you now. I felt that I could outwit them, that I could seize the thousand doubts by which they were perplexed, and on the strength of which I was sure they would not dare to touch me. They could not know whether I was friend or foe. Why should I be thus helpless and alone, if I were of the number of their victorious enemies? There were Englishmen about the person of their king; their officers of highest rank were foreign ; there were Englishmen (so it was afterward reported) in that very town, fighting for its defense. Three men stepped in front, and a few feet in advance of the party. One of them had on a red jacket, with gold or yellow stripes — it might have been a marine's jacket which he had bought or stolen. He wore, also, the gilt helmet, which distinguishes their officers, and 12* 274 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; a red breech-cloth was folded voluminously about his thighs. He was tattooed from the navel to the ankles, and his complexion was much lighter than the rest, as is usual with the men of rank, who are protected from the sun by umbrellas carried over their heads when they go out. This man, also, had red flags in his ears ; he carried a musket and a dhar. His two companions seemed to be subordi- nates ; they were rude, and more savage-look- ing than he ; their complexions were darker, and they wore on their heads only a bit of red cloth. Both were armed with dhars and lances, the latter having strips of the same red stuff twisted round them, a foot or so from the point, to form streamers. The herd behind stood still, while these three seemed to be taking my case into consideration. They would cautiously approach me, and then retire and consult ; this manoeuvre they re- peated frequently. Finding, then, that it was necessary for me to act promptly, in order to turn their hesitancy to my advantage, I almost prayed for a hint — and immediately the idea of playing the madman flashed upon me. It OR, UP AND DOWN THE 1RRAWADDI. 275 seemed to come from Heaven. I knew that savages set up madmen in their temples and worship them, accepting their ravings as oracles. I knew that if I could make them believe that I was mad, I should not only be protected by them, but regarded as something almost divine. So I beckoned to them to come to me, dancing as I did so, yelling, shouting, and pulling my hair; taking off my jacket, I threw it down upon the deck of the boat and stamped on it ; I capered, I made strange noises, and I sang — all the while beckoning them to approach. The chief came first of all. He walked toward me very slowly and cautiously, halting every few steps. But I sharply commanded him to come on board, and he came; so we stood together on the deck of the little boat. I laid my hands upon his shoulders as I had placed them upon the shoulders of the two boatmen. He stood perfectly erect. Now here was the scratch ; I knew that I must make him crouch — the Burman comes down on his haunches to every superior, 276 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; whether of his own or another race ; until that man crouched, my life was not worth a curse. The success of my experiment depended on that ; he must do it. I pressed him down by main force to the deck, stamped my feet, and made faces at him. Down he went, at last, squatting low on his haunches and holding his hands together in the true Burmese style. His dhar was suspended by a red cord which passed over his right shoulder and under his left arm, and he still held his musket at his side, with the butt of it on the deck. Stooping down, but carefully avoiding every attitude resembling his own, I took hold of the gun, and we held it together — he with his right hand, and I with mine. Then I signed to him to give it up to me. The "twa" and the li yay" I had used before, were the only Burmese words I could remember. I knew not the word for " give," but I did know the gesture for " I will take ;" so shaking the musket violently, and angrily threatening him with my voice, and with "faces," I made him understand that much, and he surrendered his gun. I laid it down on the deck and put my foot upon it. Then re- OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 277 peating the same pantomime, I next pulled the red cord by which his dhar was suspended over his head, and held that also. All that may pass for courage, but it was nothing of the kind. A glimmer of the truth had but to creep across the minds of these men — they had but to guess my artifice — they had but to suspect that I might, after all, be no madman, but an enemy — and quick death would be delightful to the fate that I must suffer. Intellectual mastery of the occasion was all that could serve my turn — cunning, and nothing but cunning. I had no friend nor weapon — I had even thrown away my stick — when that man gave up his dhar to me. Then, standing erect before him, in the attitude of a master, I told him to twah, and he twahed. And I actually had a musket and a sword ! I cannot tell you with what exulting joy I looked on them, and wondered if all Grod's beautiful earth was enough to buy them from me. Now I am naturally not a brave man ; I am too excitable. I have not coolness, "nerve;" I have only the passion of courage. But in that moment, I had the heart of the wounded war- 278 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; rior who only asks for a wall to set his back to, and a weapon. I had been hunted, baited, it seemed to me, the whole day long; when these dogs were not present in person, their phantoms were there, ten times more devilish than they. All the hatred in my heart was uppermost, and with that sword in my hand, I felt capable of hacking the whole pack in pieces. This will explain to you the appearance of intrepidity ; I believe the arrantest coward that ever trembled would have felt just as defiant, on that spot and in that predicament, as I did. Not only do I believe that no unde- veloped courage of mine had anything to do with it, but I am sure that the insanity of fear was the whole secret of my apparent heroism. I mean that imagination, inspired by fear, had exalted me for the time — made me superior to the occasion ; I saw more in the weapon than was really in it. Now I went through the same pantomime with the two others, only they approached me crouching lower and lower from the first, until, when they reached me, they were already OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 279 quite down on their haunches. Perhaps, be- cause, being too suddenly reassured, I was off my guard for a moment, I squatted down be- side them in order to get closer to their faces. It was a dangerous mistake. Unmeaning, even absurd as it may appear to you, that posture is everything to a Burman ; for him it has grave significance in religion and social intercourse. But I did so stoop, and one of them — I re- member their faces perfectly — was a stupid- looking fellow, with a rather good-natured ex- pression, if he had any at all ; the other was a dark, scarred, scowling ruffian, who looked altogether dacoit-like — a practiced brigand, and a born cut-throat. Now, mind you, this is the impression they left upon my memory, or my imagination : I don't mean to insist that they did really look so ; for, likely enough, if I could see them now, I should be ashamed of the injus- tice I have done them both. I caught their colors from my fancy and my fears. You have only the facts that they were two dangerous men, and that they were there. The picture they impressed upon my mind is, no doubt, a 280 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; daguerreotype of my mental condition then ; just as I believed I heard the boy in the water, and spoke to him, although he was far off. But there were the two men, squatting side by side. I seized the dhar of the foolish-look- ing fellow, and tried to pull the cord which held it, over his head. Both had laid down their lances ; their dhars were sheathed, and their hands pressed together. When I made the attempt on my foolish friend's sword, he smiled — I remember how — a silly, childish, Indian smile, like that of a slave whose master condescends to jest with him. But his ugly comrade did not smile — far otherwise. He laid his hand upon the other's dhar as I was in the act of removing it, and, holding it fast, shook his head in a threatening way, as if, less super- stitious and more cunning than the rest, he had already half detected me. " He's trying you" — the thought came to me with such suddenness and force as to produce the impression of a warning, actually whispered in my ear. He was trying me. He knew that if I were really mad, this attempt to thwart me would be of no avail ; whereas, if I were merely OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 281 dissembling, I should probably be frightened, or, at least, confused. Whether all that did really pass through his mind, God only knows; but, certainly, I made my sagacity his. I was careful to betray no astonishment, no alarm ; but, without agitation, stooping down, I took, up the musket which the first man had left, very coolly and deliberately placed the muzzle to his chin — and pointed to the dhar. He in- stantly and eagerly jerked off his own dhar, and laid it at my feet. Then, leaving their lances, both twahed when I told them, and went back to their party. They had hardly left, when a remote noise of many feet and voices grew into a regular rush and an Irish yell. A party of wild bog- trotters of the "80th" came down upon these Burmese, fired volleys right and left, and then charged them. That moment was to me the most dangerous in the whole affair, because these fellows would not recognize me — would not believe in me. They would not discover in time that I was one of their comrades, who had got into such an infernal plight. At first 282 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; I thought of hallooing to them ; but in another moment I was hiding myself under the cover of the boat. I felt that if I but showed just one hair of my head, there would be fifty bul- lets through me in a flash. They would fire, of course, at any head emerging from that boat. Good God ! how long it was ! the poor woman, paralyzed with fear, crouching oppo- site me, and I, shutting out the light from my eyes, awaiting a horrible death at the hands of my own friends— death after all. But there was an end of it by-and-by. Whe- ther they heard the recall, or had been ordered to return immediately, I know not ; but they went back over the bank, and I could hear the glorious brogue, as they hurrahed and shouted to each other. As the last man disappeared, I ran after him, dragged myself up the bank, and cried: "Help, help, boys !" as loud as I could; some of them returned, thinking, perhaps, that one of the party was hurt. When the sergeant — who was behind the rest, and, therefore, the first to hear my cry, and turn — saw me, he presented his bayoriet close to my head. I was down then, and OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 283 quite helpless. He asked me " who the hell" I was, and where I came from. They at first took me for a renegade, and all came crowd- ing around me. But one recognized my navy-blue trowsers, and said: "Why, don't you see he is one of the ship's men ;" and another, who, the day before, as we were steaming up the river, had come to me for some tobacco, said : " I know him — that's the doctor, that's the doctor of the ship. Good God ! where did he come from ?" Then they put me into a doolee, which had been brought with the party, and carried me some little distance, where I found myself among officers and per- sonal friends. One circumstance will serve to show the state of my mind at this time : As I lay in the doolee, a Burman passed by, and, although he was a friend, the sight of him excited me so, that I struggled to take a musket from a soldier who was walking by the side of the litter, to shoot the fellow with. My rage was still upon me. It was singular how it drove off even gratitude — the brought-to-bay feeling would not leave me yet. 284 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; I lay then on the porch of a bamboo house, with my friends around me, and, after a while, was sufficiently composed, under the influence of a powerful draught given me by one of the surgeons, to sleep a little. Towards dusk, the place being fairly taken, the Burmese routed, and the Peguans mingling with us joyfully, Captain Neblitt determined to return to the ship and take me with him. We started down with the tide in two boats — I with the boat- swain and eight men in one, and the captain, also with eight men, in the other. I have an affectionate remembrance of that boatswain ; his name was Haswell, or Haslett, or something beginning with H, and sounding so ; and he was one of our best men — cool, very brave, and a first-rate gunner. That night, and in a strange scene, he told me that he was an American from Fall River, Mass. My country- men in the Company's service were under the impression, that if their nativity became known, they would not get their fair share of prize- money. And so when the men were gathered in knots on the forecastle-deck and around the forward gun, talking of Yankees, these would OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 285 often chime in against themselves. That the boatswain was a good man is shown by his having been intrusted with the command of this boat, to take her through an enemy's country at night. When we started, night was falling rapidly, and waiting for orders from the captain, who was detained, we lost the best part of the tide. All were armed, except me ; I was still without hat, or shoes, or shirt, or a weapon. We pulled along with perfect confidence until it was quite dark. There was no moon. We knew that the Burmese were scattered, and were not likely to attack us ; but as the dark- ness deepened, there came over us the gloom of mystery, and an indefinite apprehension. The men fell into profound silence, but pulled steadily and " with a will," so as to make the most of the tide. At last the ebb began to slack, and before we had accomplished one-third of the distance to the ship, it had turned and set flood so hard that we could make no head against it, and were compelled to anchor. Then the boat- swain told his men to lie on their arms and 286 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; sleep while he kept watch. He lent me his boat-cloak and bade me sleep also ; but I could not. As often as I fell into a doze I lived the whole horror over again. For a time Haswell sat upright and silent, occasionally laying his hand on me warningly, as if to say, " I hear something." After a while he relaxed his vigilance in a degree, and leaned over to talk with me in a whisper. It was then that he first told me he was an American, and spoke of Shields, our comrade, who was killed. I could feel that tears were in his eyes. He said, that the three of them (alluding to another who was on the sick list and had been left behind) had always kept an eye on me ; for I was then a somewhat reckless person. He told me, with a certain rough delicacy, that Shields had often watched me " to see that I did not fall into trouble." But Haswell was still the weather-eared sailor, and as he whispered he listened all the while. Presently we heard again that same low bay- ing ; he touched me quickly. The other men still slept. The sound grew louder and nearer. He whispered to me, " Burmese boat — don't OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRKAWADDI. 287 move !" Then cautiously approaching each man, and putting his hand over his mouth, he roused him, and bade him take up his arms. You will recollect that the Burmese war crews have not oars like ours, but short pad- dles, with which they make two sharp, per- pendicular plunges, followed by an interval of pause. They utter, in concert, a kind of yelp, to keep stroke together ; and although the stroke is very quick, they all strike the water at the same instant by help of this dismal monotone. Their boats are immensely long, sometimes holding a hundred men, who sit in close single files along the sides of the alligator-like craft. Our men recognized the sound, and gathered their arms together as noiselessly as possible. Some drew their cutlasses and laid them on the seats beside them; some took off their jackets, loosened their straps, and examined their pistols. The question with us then was, would the Burmese come down on our side of the stream, or on the other. In other words, were they about to run into us, or to pass on the other side, in the dark, without perceiving us? There were only eight of us, and, proba- 288 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; bly, not less than eighty of them ; but then we were waiting for them, while they would not see us till they felt us. We were well armed and active, and they would surely believe they had fallen into a swarm. The tide was against them ; but Burmese boats do not stay for that — they are con- structed with an expert eye to those racing rivers. Being so long and sharp, and the paddles dipping perpendicularly, they can be run close under the bank, in slack water, or a counter current. So the tide, which com- pelled us to anchor, presented no material ob- stacle to our enemies. Thus, we lay in the darkness — every man with both hands on his weapons, ready to use them the next moment. There were no more than the proper complement of arms ; but the boatswain drew one of his own pistols from his belt, and laid it on my knee. They did pass by on the other side (the stream was very narrow there), without dis- covering us. I will not enlarge upon the scene. Here was our little party, hidden under the jungly bank, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IHEAWADDL 289 waiting for an accident — heads or tails, right or left — to decide whether or not we should sud- denly come into deadly conflict with ten times our number of savages, in pitchy darkness; and there were the invisible devils, perfectly un- conscious of our proximity, iterating their mo- notonous war-note — so near, that w T e could almost have touched them with our oars. When the tide turned again, the captain over- took us ; they had passed him in the same way. The little English boy was found by Tarle- ton or Neblitt, on the bank, very near where I had landed, wandering about stark naked, and entirely crazy, with little lance wounds, mere scratches, in the fleshy parts of his arms and legs. When I plunged into the stream, he paused to observe what w T ould happen. When he saw how they fired at me, he was afraid to follow, and went down into the hold of the boat, where he hid himself among some hos- pital traps. On taking possession of the boat, the Burmese rummaged it thoroughly, in search of booty, and found the boy. They dragged him out from among the doolees, and took him on deck, where they played with him, and 290 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; tumbled him about, felt of his limbs, wondered at his skin, laughed over his little clothes, and made game of him generally. With their dhars, they cut off locks of his hair. Then, to try his courage, they stood him up against a beam, and threw darts at him — slender, armed reeds, be- tween arrows and lances ; with these they grazed the skin of his arms and legs. At last, the boy became quite maddened with fear, and, suddenly breaking through the very centre of the party, jumped into the river. Swimming down the stream with the tide, he finally landed where the captain found him. He was taken down to the frigate, where he eventually recovered. Poor Shields ! A ball had struck the top of his left shoulder, just inside the collar-bone, and severed a main artery. Although, when we fled, we left his body in the boat, which the Burmese took possession of immediately — and although so high a price was set on British heads, his was spared, nor had the slightest insult, apparently, been offered to his corpse. In the search for plunder, hurried in momentary fear of our return or of a surprise from some OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 291 other quarter, they had forgotten their human prize, or feared to seize it. Indeed, their hot haste was evident in the fact that they had even left the flags at the sterns of the boats, although they had made away with the camp-boxes of the officers — among the rest, with one, contain- ing three hundred rupees, brought up by a young ensign, no less verdant than amorous, who had heard of the charms of the maidens of Pegu. Poor Shields ! he sleeps in his loneliness un- der the shadow of the Shway-Madoo, and the young Yankee sailor's grave was watered by tears as true as ever eyes let fall. In Boston I have sought in vain for his mother. His share of prize-money awaits her order, in the office of the Superintendent of Marine, at Calcutta. After that, I was invalided to Calcutta, whence, in a few days, I sailed for home. When last I heard from my friends, British and Burmese, on the Irrawaddi, the former were erecting an electric telegraph, and the latter were regilding the Golden Dagon. The Stagnant Calm was stirred as though an angel had troubled it. APPENDIX, i. THE GOLDEN DAGON IN 1590. — " They consume many canes, likewise, in making of their Varellaes, or idol temples, which are in great number, both great and small. They be made round, like a sugar-loaf; some are as high as a church, very broad beneath ; some a quarter of a mile in compass : within they be all earth, done about with stone. " They consume in these Varellaes great quantity of gold ; for that they be all gilded aloft, and many of them from the top to the bot- tom : and every ten or twelve years they must be new gilded, because the rain consumeth off the gold : for they stand open abroad. If they did not consume their gold in these vanities, it would be very plentiful, and good, and cheap in Pegu. "About two days' journey from Pegu, there is a Varellae, or pagoda, which is the pilgrim- age of the Pegues : it is called Dagonne (Da gong), and is of wonderful bigness, and all 294 APPENDIX. gilded from the foot to the top. And there is a house by it wherein the tallipoies, which are the priests, do preach. This house is fifty-five paces in length, and hath three parones or walks in it, and forty great pillars, gilded, which stand between the walks ; and it is open on all sides with a number of small pillars, which be likewise gilded. It is gilded with gold within and without. "There are houses very fair round about for the pilgrims to lie in, and many goodly houses for the tallipoies to preach in, which are full of images, both of men and women, which are gilded over with gold. It is the fairest place, as I suppose, that is in the world : it standeth very high, and there are four ways to it, which all along are set with trees of fruits, in such wise that a man may go in the shade about two miles in length. And when their feast- day is, a man can hardly pass, by water or land, for the great press of people : for they come from all places of the kingdom of Pegu thither at their feast." — Ralph Fitch, a London Merchant. APPENDIX. 295 II. THE KARENS. " When I first came to this coast, the Karens were regarded as the aborigines of the country, but they were probably, in reality, the last peo- ple to enter it among the various tribes that the British found here, when they took possession of the provinces. " They regard themselves as wanderers from the North, and one of their traditions states that a party of them came across ■ the river of running sand,' on an exploring tour, before the Shans were established at Zimmay, and returned again. The crossing of the ' river of running sand,' is regarded as having been an arduous work. They understand by these waters, or river, of running sand (the words admit of either rendering), an immense quicksand, with the sands in motion like the waters of a river. The tradition was quite unintelligible to me until the Journal of Fa-Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, who visited India about the fifth century, threw a sun-beam on the expression. He constantly designates the great desert north of Bunnah, and between China and Thibet, as ' the river of sand ;' and in the Chinese map of India, a 298 APPENDIX. branch of this desert is seen to stretch down south, for several degrees of latitude, and then turn and run westward for a long distance. This desert is marked ' quicksands.' There can, therefore, scarcely be a rational doubt that this is * the river of running sand,' which their an- cestors crossed at a remote period before Zim- may was founded. " Tradition further states, that when the Karen nation immigrated to this country they found the Shans, contrary to their expectation, dwelling in the region of Zirnmay. Serica and Sera, and the river Serus, are represented by Ptolemy as in the region north of Burmah ; and, from incidental notices in the old poetry of the Karens, it appears that there was, a country north of these provinces, known to them in anci- ent times, by the name of Sairai. One stanza runs thus : " ' The waters of Sairai, of Sairai, The country of Sairai, of Sairai — It is famous for the frogs that are there, It is famous for the fish that are there.' " Malte Brun, on the authority of Marco Polo, says : — ' The country of Caride is the south- east point of Thibet, and perhaps the country of the nation of the Caraines, which is spread over Ava ;' and Teen — a word signifying Heaven, APPENDIX. 297 but used by some of the Chinese to signify God — occurs in Karen poetry, as the name of the God of a people with whom they were formerly connected. The Karen language also indicates a connection with tribes on the borders of Thi- bet. " Besides the Khakyeens north of Ava, there are known to be two distinct tribes of Karens. One tribe call themselves ■ Shos,' but are called by the Sgaus, < Pwos,' and by the Burmese, * Meetkhyeens,' or, < Tailing Karens.' The other tribe call themselves Sgaus, but by the Burmese are designated ' Meelthos,' or, 'Bur- man Karens.' " To these some add the Karenees, or Red Karens, but they are more usually regarded as a Shan tribe. Their language, from Karen testimony, and from the examination of a few words, appears not to be so nearly related to either Pwo or Sgau as the latter are to each other ; but there are manifestly many roots com- mon to all three, as in Karen and Youngthu. The Burmans call them Red Karens from a por- tion of their dress being red ; and the Karens call them Mannegpha, or Kidnappers, from their practice of kidnapping their neighbors and sell- ing them into slavery. None of them live within the boundaries of the British territories, or Bur- mah proper, nor have they ever been visited 13* 298 APPENDIX. by missionaries ; but Dr. Kichardson traveled through their country in 1837. They appear to occupy a strip of land in the valley of the Sal ween, between Burmah and the Shan States. Dr. Richardson wrote that they were in the lowest state of civilization, and appeared few in number, — perhaps as numerous as the Young- thus. " The Pwos and Sgaus are scattered all over the Tenasserim provinces, the southern parts of Burmah, and Arracan. Their languages, though dialects of a common language, and both easily acquired when one has been mas- tered, are sufficiently distinct to make a Pwo unintelligible to a Sgau, and a Sgau to a Pwo, unless both idioms have been studied. " The Sgaus are remarkable for the Scriptu- ral traditions that exist among them. They have traditions of the creation, the temptation, the fall, and the dispersion of nations, in prose and verse, nearly as accurate as they are found in the Bible. The following is a single speci- men : " ' Anciently, God commanded, but Satan appeared bringing destruction : Formerly God commanded, but Satan appeared deceiving unto death. The woman E-u and the man Tha-nai pleased not the eye of the drasron, APPENDIX. 299 The persons of E-u and Tha-nai pleased not the mind of the dragon, The dragon looked on them, — the dragon beguiled the woman and Tha-nai. " ' How is this said to have happened ? The great dragon succeeded in deceiving — deceiving unto death. " ' How do they say it was done ? A yellow fruit took the great dragon, and gave to the children of God. A white fruit took the great dragon, and gave to the daughter and son of God. " ' They transgressed the commands of God, and God turned his face from them. They transgressed the commands of God, and God turned away from them. They kept not all the words of God — were deceived, de- ceived uuto sickness ; They kept not all the law of God — were deceived, deceived unto death.' " The languages of both tribes have been reduced to writing, and various works pre- pared in the two idioms. In the Sgau, a dic- tionary and grammar have been printed ; the whole Bible has been translated ; two editions of the New Testament ; one of Genesis, Exo- dus, and Psalms, printed ; and between thirty and forty other books. In the Pwo, a gram- mar, a small vocabulary, and about half the New Testament, have been printed, and less 300 APPENDIX. than a dozen other works. Newspapers are also printed in both dialects, and in Burmese. In the Tenasserim provinces alone, more than fifty different villages and hamlets have been occupied for a longer or shorter period by native assistants, under the direction of the missionaries, most of whom have had charge of schools." — Rev. F. Mason. APPENDIX. 301 III. THE POONGHEES. "In Pegu they have many tallipoies, or priests, which preach against all abuses. Many men resort unto them. When they enter into their Kiack (Kyaong) — that is to say, their holy place or temple — at the door there is a great jar of water with a cock or ladle in it, and there they wash their feet, and then they enter in, and lift up their hands to their heads, first to their preacher and then to the sun, and so sit down. " The tallipoies go very strangely appareled, with one gamboline, or thin cloth, next to their body, of a brown color; another of yellow, doubled many times on their shoulder ; and these two be girded to them with a broad girdle ; and they have a skin of leather hanging on a string about their necks, whereupon they sit bareheaded and barefooted — for none of them weareth shoes — with their right arms bare, and a great broad sombrero, or shadow, in their hands, to defend them in the summer from the sun, and in the winter from the rain. 302 APPENDIX. "When the tallipoies, or priests, take their orders, first they go to school until they be twenty years old or more, and then they come before a tallipoie appointed for that purpose, whom they call a Kawli : he is of the chiefest and most learned, and he opposeth them, and afterwards examineth them many times, wheth- er they will leave their friends, and the com- pany of all women, and take upon them the habit of a tallipoie. If any be content, then he rideth upon a horse about the streets, very richly appareled, with drums and pipes, to show that he leaveth the riches of the world to be a tallipoie. In a few days he is carried upon a thing like a horse-litter, which they call a Serion, upon ten or twelve men's shoulders, in the apparel of a tallipoie, with pipes and drums and many tallipoies with him, and all his friends ; and so they go with him to his house, which standeth upon the town, and then they leave him. "Every one of them hath his house, which is very little, set upon six or eight posts, and they go up to them with a ladder of twelve or fourteen staves. Their houses be, for the most part, by the highway's side, and among the trees, and in the woods. "And they go with a great pot made of wood or fine earth, and covered, tied with a APPENDIX. 303 broad girdle upon their shoulder, which cometh under their arm, wherewith they go to beg their victuals, which is rice, fish, and herbs. They demand nothing, but come to the door, and the people presently do give them, some one thing and some another; and they put all together in their pot ; for they say they must eat of their alms and therewith content themselves. "They keep their feasts by the moon; and when it is new moon, they keep their greatest feast, and then the people send other things to that kiack, or church, of which they be. And then all the tallipoies do meet, which be of that church, and eat the victuals which are sent them. " When the tallipoies do preach, many of the people carry them gifts into the pulpit where they sit and preach ; and there is one which sitteth by them to take that which the people bring. It is divided among them. They have none other ceremonies nor service that I could see, but only preaching." — Ralph Fitch, a London Merchant. 304 APPENDIX. IV. BURMESE LAW. " All writers are unanimous in the cry that there is no potentate upon earth equally despot- ic with the Lord of Burmah. There is no dis- guise about the fact, and he openly asserts in his titles, that he is lord, ruler, and sole pos- sessor of the lives, persons, and property of his subjects. He advances and degrades ; his word alone can promote a beggar to the highest rank, and his word can also utterly displace the proud- est officer of his court. His people is a capa- cious store-house, whence he obtains tools to work his will. As soon as any person becomes distinguished by his wealth or influence, then does he pay the penalty with his life. He is apprehended on some supposed crime, and is never heard of more. Every Burman is born the king's slave, and it is an honor to the subject to be so called by his sovereign. " It is, however, an honor, both to the insti- tutor of the Burman law, and the sovereign, who, though absolute, obeyed it, to mention that no married woman can be seized on by the APPENDIX. 305 emissaries of the king. This, of course, leads the Burmese to contract marriages very early, either actually or fictitiously. " The property of persons who die without heirs is swept into the coffers of the State, and by law, the property of unmarried foreigners is subject to the same regulation upon their death. Jetsam and flotsam belong to the king. He alone decides upon peace and war, brings the population to the rescue. All serve — all are conscripts. The only effectual restraint, as Crawfurd remarks, on the excesses of mal- administration, is the apprehension of insurrec- tion. " However, notwithstanding that he is ac- knowledged as absolute, he has two nominal councils, — a public one and a cabinet. But he is neither bound to abide by their advice — nor does he. His measures are predetermined, and, should they prove unwilling to give an imme- diate and unconditional assent, he has been known to chase his ministers from his presence, with a drawn sword. " The workman who built the present palace, committed some professional mistake in the construction of the spire. The king remon- strated with him, saying that it would not stand. The architect pertinaciously insisted upon its stability and sufficiency, and was 306 APPENDIX. committed for contumacy. Shortly afterward the spire fell in a thunder-storm, and about the same time accounts were received at court, of the arrival of the British expedition ; upon which the architect was sent for from prison, taken to the place of execution, and forthwith decapitated. This, although upon a small scale, is a fair example both of the despotism and superstition by which this people are borne down. " On another occasion, the king, for a very slight offense-, had forty of his highest officers laid on their faces in the public street, before the palace wall — kept for hours in a broiling sun with a beam extended across their bodies." The following is the form of address which an English envoy received with the recommend- ation that he should pronounce it before the king: " ' Placing above our heads the golden majesty of the Mighty Lord, the Possessor of the mines of rubies, amber, gold, silver, and all kinds of metal ; of the Lord, under whose command are innumerable soldiers, generals, and captains ; of the Lord who is King of many countries and provinces, and Emperor over many Rulers and Princes who wait round his throne with the badges of his authority ; of the Lord, who is adorned with the greatest power, wisdom, APPENDIX. 307 knowledge, prudence, foresight, etc. ; of the Lord, who is rich in the possession of elephants, and horses, and in particular is the Lord of many White Elephants ; of the Lord who is the greatest of kings, the most just and the most religious, the master of life and death ; we his slaves, the Governor of Bengal, the offi- cers and administrators of the Company, bowing and lowering our heads under the sole of his royal golden foot, do present to him with the greatest veneration, this our humble petition.' " Crawfurd and Sangermano mention in- stances of the strange proceedings of the Bur- man courts : — ' In 1817, an old Burmese woman, in the service of a European gentleman, was cited be- fore the Rung-d'hau, or Court of Justice, of Ran- goon. Her master appeared on her behalf, and was informed that her offense consisted in having neglected to report a theft committed upon her- self three years before, by which the government officers were defrauded of the fees and profits which ought to have accrued from the investigation or trial. On receiving this information, he was about to retire, in order to make arrangements to exonerate her, when he was seized by two messengers of the court, and informed, that by appearing in the business he had rendered him- self responsible, and could not be released, 308 APPENDIX. unless some other individual were left in pledge for him, until the old woman's person were produced. A Burman lad, his servant, who accompanied him, was accordingly left in the room. In an hour he returned with the accused, and found, that in the interval, the lad left in pledge had been put into the stocks, his ankles squeezed in them, and by this means, a little money which he had about his person, and a new handkerchief, extorted from him. The old woman was now put into the stocks in her turn, and detained there until all were paid, when she was discharged without any investiga- tion whatever into the theft. " A poor widow, who was hard pinched to pay the tax demanded of her, was obliged to sell her only daughter to obtain the sum. The money was received, and, heavy at heart, she returned home and put it in a box in her house, intending to lament that night and carry the money to her inexorable creditor in the morning. But the measure of her sorrows was not yet full. Some thieves broke into the house and stole the money. In the morning she discover- ed her loss, and this additional circumstance caused the bounds of her grief to flow even beyond that of silence, and, sitting before her door, she gave herself up to loud lamentations. As she was weeping, an emissary of the city APPENDIX. 309 magistrate passed by, and inquired into the cause of her sorrow. He, upon hearing the sad story, related the matter to his master. The poor creature was then summoned to the Court of Justice, and commanded to deliver up the thief. Of course, this was impossible. She was detained in the stocks until she could scrape together money enough to satisfy the rapacity of the judge. "Sometimes these affairs are very comical: " A woman employed in cooking fish for dinner was called away for an instant. The cat, watching her opportunity, seized a half- roasted fish and ran out of the house. The woman immediately ran after the cat, exclaim- ing: 'The cat has stolen my fish!' A few days after she was summoned before the magis- trate, who demanded the thief at her hands. It was of no use that she explained that the thief was a cat. His time was valuable, and the expenses of the court must be paid." — Mackenzie's " Burmah and the Burmese." 310 APPENDIX. V. IMPERIAL PEGU, "Pegu is a city, strong, and very fair, with walls of stone, and great ditches round about it. "There are two towns, the old and the new. In the old town are all the merchant strangers, and very many merchants of the country. All the goods are sold in the old town, which is very great, and hath many suburbs round about it ; and all the houses are made of canes, which they call bamboo, and be covered with straw. In your house you have a warehouse, or godon, which is made of brick, to put your goods in, for oftentimes they take fire, and burn, in an hour, four or five hundred houses ; so that if the godon were not, you should be in danger to have all burnt in a trice. " In the new town is the king and all his nobility and gentry. It is a city very great and populous, and is made square, and with fair walls, and a great ditch round about it, full of water, with many crocodiles in it. It hath twenty gates, and they be made of stone : for every square, five gates. There are also many APPENDIX. 311 turrets for sentinels to watch, made of wood, and gilded with gold very fair. The streets are the fairest that ever I saw — as straight as a line from one gate to another, and so broad that ten or twenty men may ride apart through them. On both sides them, at every man's door, is set a palm-tree — which is the nut-tree — which makes a very fair show, and a very com- modious shadow, so that a man may walk, in the shade all day. The houses be made of wood, and covered with tile. The king's house is in the middle of the city, and is walled and ditched round about ; and the buildings within are made of wood, very sumptuously gilded; and great workmanship is upon the fore-front, which is likewise very costly gilded. And the house wherein his pagoda or idol standeth, is covered with tiles of silver, and all the walls are gilded with gold. "Within the first gate of the king's house is a great large room, on both sides whereof are houses made for the king's elephants, which be marvelous great and fair, and are brought up to wars, and in service of the king : and among the rest he has four white elephants, which are very strange and rare ; for there is none other king hath them but he : if any other king hath one, he will send to him for it." — Ralph Fitch, a London Merchant. 321 Broadway, September 1, 1856. LIST OF WORKS PUBLISHED BY DIX, EDWARDS & CO. JUST PUBLISHED. In Two Volumes, 8vo., Price $1.50. 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