THE 1 [BRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES (ft A. THE GOLDEN DAGON; OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. BEING f assap flf Jrttetaw in t\t furman BY AN AMERICAN. NEW YORK : DIX, EDWARDS & CO. 1856. Entered, according to Act of Congress, iu 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. MILLER & HOLMAN, Printers & Stereotypers, N. Y. 3s i WITH NO LESS GRATITUDE THAN AFFECTION, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY WIFE. 515267 I 1R CPTS CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. PAGE 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 . j . : . . . . . . 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. Dacoitees A Burmese House 73 Viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGE Honorable John and Dishonorable John " The Old Taller " The Fighting Missionary Our first Stock- ade A Hero ' . . . 78 CHAPTER XI. Our 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-TanksTesting the Water The Poonghee- House Black Art . . . ' I i * . 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 Doouoobyoo The Grave of the Maha Bandoola His Talipot Tree His Plutarch The Story of Zinguza 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 Paijamas . . . . . . 205 CHAPTER XXVI. An Experiment Bandoola's Bluff Giving a little Hero the Slip 211 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVII. PAGE Prorae 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 Woraan^-Little Mayouk Her adventures V -." '"-"' .'.".' . .232 CHAPTER XXX. My adventure at Pegu 237 APPENDIX. I. The Golden Dagon in 1590 . . . . .293 II. The Karens . . . . . . . . 295 III. The Poonghees .- ' ' ' V . . "'" , . * . 301 IV. Burmese Law . 304 V. Imperial Pegu _.' .310 " Next came one Who rnourn'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 Gath, 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 1 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 tankaraen ; 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. 3 Comprador's, Custom-House, Club-House, G-ov- 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 4 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 Eoad, 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- OE, UP AND DOWN THE IERAWADDI. 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 Kumpny's 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 the sailor. Bayard Taylor says if bear-skins and blankets were the fashion in the West-End, the true 8 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 I* 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 ?" OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 11 4 '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! Really, I'm quite at a loss, Sir. What have you to propose ?" " Enough, I hope, to extricate you from your 12 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; 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, yi 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 ; the 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 I 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, low 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 among 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 countrymen. 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 IERAWADDI. 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 day'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 IRKAWADDI. 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 P they were hung, but they laughed at that to the last. Your Malay is your only sincere, OR, UP AND DOWN THE IREAWADDI. 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. OVER 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 Earth, To be part of a rosy truant's prize, Or the crown of his Christmas mirth. OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 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 her's, 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. 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 1 '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- OB, 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. >he 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. PENANQ 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- OB, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 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 lauds, 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 Phlcgetkon 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 WEEE 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, was 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, ndt 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, Rangoon, and Prome, would seem to abound, being confined in the country by OR, UP AND DOWN THE IERAWADDI. 35 the severest penalties imposed on its exporta- tion, and enforced even unto death j 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 jangle, 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 Rangoon 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 IRRAWADDI. 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 Rangoon, 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 Rangoon 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 OR, UP AND DOWN THE IRKAWADDI. 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 ; Eangoon 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 Governor- 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. .OB, 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 OK, 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 only that, in the former latitude, their manners have somewhat more of the Shekinah 44 THE GOLDEN DAGON ; and less of " der masheen"; 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 IRRAWADDI. 45 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 dinghee-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 full length, and, in agreeable privacy, smokes, or reads, or sleeps, as he travels. The palkce-wallahs, 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 IRKAWADDI. 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 1" 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 3 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. OB, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDL 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 IRRAWADDI. 58 (such an one was Mindalceen!) 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 arid 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- ad venturer 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, which are like other pic-nics all the world 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 DAQON ; that most superb of Chin-India's flowering trees, named for a vice-royal dame worthy to be its patron, the Noble Amhcrstia. On every hand its crown of lively green is seen, and its rustling skirts hang low, fringed and corded and tasseled in green and gold and crimson. OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 57 CHAPTER VIII. ELEPHANT-BACK " OLD INJIN-EUBBEB" 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 ; I 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 IRKAWADDI. 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, fording 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 up" 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 j 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 carried with him the bamboo front of the howdah. Then Behemoth rose to his feet, contemptuous, indignant, with "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 with 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 down 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 IRKAWADDI. 63 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 ! 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 ; In 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 Huiiothrombo'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, which 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 walls, 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 IRRAWADDL 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 DAGOH ; 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 dacoita." 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 OB, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDL 75 which they are built grows in abundance a few yards off in 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 Rangoon, 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 OK, 'UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 81 i 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 Royal 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 DAQON ; 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 Woon 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 OK, UP AND DOWN THE IRRAWADDI. 85 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 " 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 wai the aspect of affairs when the OE, UP AND DOWN TUB IREAWADDI. 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 poonghees 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 DAGON J 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 IRRAWADDI. 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 was 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, UP 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- gethon'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 Phlegcthon. 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 AKD 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 ; CHAPTER XL OUR BURMESE CLIENTS WAR-BOATS A FUNNY PANIC. As the Phhgethon 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 OB, UP AND DOWN THE IEHAWADDI. 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 OK, UP AND DOWN THE IKRAWADDI. 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 t 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