Married,
In New Kent county, on the 7th instant, by the Rev. Mr. Caroway, Mr. Chas. E Yeatman, of Gloucester, and Miss Harriet R. Royster, of the former place.
At the same time and place, by the Rev. T.V. Moore, Mr. Robert P. Southall, of Richmond, and Miss Ellen Royster, of New Kent.
"On mature reflection it can scarcely be considered extravagant to say that the average cost of operations this year are ten fold what they were before the war when as appears by the annexed table taken from the Report of the General Superintendent that the prices of many leading articles of expense have increased since the year 1860 from thirty to fifty fold and when it appears by the vouchers of the Company that the cost of a single barrel of oil this year exceeds by upwards of $600 the whole cost of Oil Tallow Lard and Grease for the year 1862 .
COMPARISON OF PRICES 1860 1864
Clothing and Subsistence of a negro $60.00 1,870.00
Iron castings and wrought iron .04 1.00
Brass ditto .34 4.60
Car wheels each 15.00 500.00
Oil and tallow per gallon .90 50.00
Coal for shops per bushel .12 2.60
Lumber per 1000 feet 12.50 100.00
Shovels per dozen 10.00 300.00 t
In 1862
oil used 1,227 gallons
do tallow used 1,984 pounds
do lard used 4.586 pounds
do grease used 7,488 pounds
Cost of a bbl of oil 42 gallons at present price $100 per gal $4,260 00
Cost of barrel 10.00
4,200 00
Cost of oil tallow lard and grease used during the year 1862 3,054.48
$605.52
AN OFFICER'S DIARY OF A TWO MONTHS BOAT
EXPEDITION IN BURMAH.
Part IPart II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
September 18th. — Thermometer 104 degs. in sun, in shade 88 degs. Dull work lying here inactive, in a crowdy boat along the river's muddy bank, too hot to step ashore. The only break in our monotony is watching the natives, men, women, and children, come out to bathe, and swim astern of our boats, in which art all are alike adepts, hanging on from time to time for rest by our "painters," with the exciting change of watching their pantomimic critiques upon our manner, acts, and gestures, all squatting on their hams or "sit-upons," with arms across, both men and women, like so many overgrown apes. From morning to dewy eve they sit in wondering rows upon the summit of the bank, especially at meal times on deck, watching in jibbering amazement each movement of the spoon, or knife, or fork, to them great novelties, no doubt, chewing the eternal "betel nut," and chunem wrapped together in a green leaf, and carried by the convenient round perforation in the "ear-lobe." They use this betel preparation to blacken their teeth, and turn their lips a rose colour vermilion red; in Burmese man or woman, the outward proof of style, or fashion, in fact, the Burman equivalent for crinoline or peg top. As I was taking my accustomed bath at the stem of our boat this morning, an unmistakable sniff came floating down to leeward, I looked, and lo, a Burman corpse with bloated face upturned, swimming by me in the current, just clearing me in its course.
September 19th. — thermometer 103 degs air, shade 86 degs. Sunday, our usual tin of hot cocoa and biscuit at 5 a.m. Our more than usual dressing to-day after the swim, previous to the performance of Divine Service, after which (I presume the better day the better deed) we found ourselves in the midst of a rather strange scene. Our friend, the "Head man" of the town, having got up, I suppose for our amusement, a "piece" of a regatta with four of his war canoes, each paddled by some forty naked warriors accompanying each stroke most vigorously with all kinds of passionate gesticulations and outlandish yells. These canoes are low, and very long built of a single log, high-stemed where the steersman stands to ply his powerful guiding paddle— each carries a gingall in the bows; they are very swift, and with their many squatting paddlers convey to one's mind the idea of an enormous centipede, no doubt as venomous in war. The chief got up a "match," or kind of Indian ballet-dance, in which the Burmese women excel as in the drama too, to edify us barbarians when all the rank and beauty were assembled to gaze upon us "lions." One of our consorts went yesterday (to amuse a victim) to Sumbawa, a village said to be hostile, a short distance off, but returned at evening without the expected adventure. We also had a letter off, from the chief of a village a little higher up, scratched with a nail upon a piece of plantain leaf, most primitively, which being interpreted, we were told meant that the said chief being in league with Ava, challenged us to meet him at our own time. Our crafty chief of Hausedah (being a wooding station for our steamers) wished to destroy the message without interpreting it to us, fearing to lose the protection of our boats, being doubtless compromised with Ava, by aiding and supplying us with necessaries. Thermometer this day in air 102 degs., in shade 90 degs., water 85 degs.
Tuesday, September 21. — Glass in air 103 degs., shade 91 degs. Four or five cases to-day and yesterday occurred of vertigo and diarrhoea.
September 22nd. — Air 100 degs., shade 90 degs. ; wet and overcast. A boat came up to-day to say the Dacoits were at Sooloon, but not trusting to the informant's good faith or correctness of recital, we told the chief to send his war canoes to punish them.
September 24. — Air 103 degs., shade 91, weather hot and dry. I find that vertigo and diarrhoea are on the increase. Still at anchor; our first case of cholera appeared to-day.
On the 26th, I find that I have been so busy for the last few days that i can scarcely now collect and resume the thread of my subject. On the 24th we all went to a "sing song pigeon," or dramatic entertainment, got up by the Rajah in our honour, first having sailed some few miles up the river through a narrow creek— so narrow that we frequently got jammed in the coarse bulrushes, and had to drag the boat through it by main force, which, added to the invitation of the mosquitoes (now in full swing, as bad as ever), and a lurking attack by the Burmese being momentarily apprehended, exposed as we were to be raked by them from the canoes, whilst our gun could do nothing, made the prospect of a night spent so exceedingly uncomfortable, when, much to our relief by dint of sheer exertion, we found ourselves at midnight, again out in the open "Irrawaddi," and soon were back to our old anchorage. Tired out by the exposure of the day, I was in the land of dreams, of sweet and balmy slumber, when I was roused at three o'clock in the morning by an officer coming from one of our consort boats with a sick man who proved to be the most able of our party, now prostrate in the collapse of cholera. The pulse weak and fluttering, the countenance cadaverous, blue and pinched, not half the size of health an hour before, dry and parched, with eyes so far retreating as though the head were eyeless, having only hollow sockets, the extremities cold, shrivelled, bloodless, blue, in fact, a living corpse within three hours to be a corpse indeed. We interred him on the same morning on an uninhabited island beyond the river, marking his rude grave with a bamboo cross. Peace to his manes.
AN OFFICER'S DIARY OF A TWO MONTHS BOAT
EXPEDITION IN BURMAH.
Part IPart II
Part III
Part IV
September 14th. — External air 103 degs., shade 85 degs. by the glass. The process of serving out the morning ration of "bark," as a preventative against intermittent fever, affords an excellent opportunity to the "wits" in the boats to launch their jests at one another, as each by name is mustered to take his dose; the rum part of the ration by all being said to be most rational; they think "one good thing spoils the other," and would, to a man, prefer the alcohol by itself alone. No more formidable enemy, however, as yet, has attacked us than our old friends the mosquitoes, which, though of a smaller breed than those in the "Panalan creek," made up the deficiency in the vigour of their attacks, and prevented us all night enjoying the favours of much-courted "Somnus."
September 15th. — We turned out early this morning, and gazed at one another with a feeling much akin to wonder at seeing our mutual safety, and being able tolerably to recognise each other's features, which afterwards became impossible in many cases, so blurred and blotched, and openly ulcerated were several, both in limb and face, that even their "long-billed tailors" would have scarcely sworn to their identity, if in their debt, unless by coats alone. We got under; way with the "grey" of the morning, and sailing on for a mile or so in a narrow creek, made the main river again, when we fell in with one of our consort boats, she having "come to" during the night, at the opposite side of an island, which we, in ignorance of the river's course, unsurveyed, and new to all of us, poking our way without an interpreter of any kind, had simply circumnavigated. Previous to our dropping on her, we had landed at a small village, where the work of desolation had been completed about a month previously. Our inducement to land here was a suspicious-looking boat lying alongside the bank, which we rightly supposed belonged to the Dandas or Dacoits; but we found ourselves too late, as these gentry had stripped the villagers, our allies, of every moveable, even the clothes of their scanty wardrobe, and burned the houses. However, we succeeded in securing a few stray fowls, and a savage looking wild water buffalo (which, by the way, had to be knocked over by a musket ball), for the boats' crews; for which the Head-man of the village received an "Indent" on the Indian Government for payment. The herds of wide-horned buffalo are here quite wild and unmanageable,"feroces natura"* and on being driven up out of the muddy river, to be honoured, by one being selected from amongst them, for that morning breakfast, be it said, and our dinner subsequently, the chosen one appreciated not the honour; but charging with down-pressed head, and butting into the midst of us, upset in a trice a tiny midshipman, who, naturally, most terrified by the fierce brute's sudden angry foray, was flung right over its body without annihilating him, as all (himself included), thought must be the case, or even bruising him severely.
September 16th, 17th.Thermometer in external air 102 degs.shade 86 degs. Having breakfasted and dined off this beef yesterday which, though very tough, furnished a welcome change for the crews from the continued salt meat, we find a small portion remaining this morning to be quite tainted, and unfit for use! The bullock that was nigh routing our assembled forces yesterday morning is this morning unfit for human food! We consequently are breakfastless, contrary to fond anticipation. So much for the decomposing effects of a few hours of this weather, which has been most close and rainy. At the next village "Sooloon" I went with a companion, to inspect a handsome little Pagoda, with an alabaster joss in the doorway, and, as usual, gilt tinkling bells surmounting the summit of the minaret. This was evidently a modern one, of a white composite material, smaller and plainer than any I saw before. The masons' marks of workmanship were still fresh seen upon it— the votive offering, I suppose, of some entroubled family of modern times to one of their protecting deities — standing in a large, rich paddy plain, park-like, dotted here and there with noble oaks and chesnuts, and leaning palms, and graceful cocoas, studding the river's banks in the distance. Here it began to rain tremendously, and, on looking to our boats, we found it impossible to stem the current, when, finding an open pasture, clear of bush along the river's edge, we jumped ashore, and tackled on the tracking line — canal-boat fashion. Thus tramped along, in cadence, our hardy blue jackets, keeping time, the while, to the burthen of their merry song, when, rounding a point, we came suddenly upon another village, and a number of native boats moored off the bank. In slacking off the towing-line, to pass outside them, it got foul of one of their outriggers projecting from a Chinese "Sanpan," and an active seaman jumped down from off the bank upon the Bamboo cabin's roof to cast it free; when, lo! a most unearthly howl uprose, rending the outward air, and "Jack" was to be seen sinking, leg foremost, right through the flimsy wicker root, plump on a little round tea-table in the boat's cabin, where a Chinaman and Mrs. Chinaman, with all the junior branches of this Celestial family, were very harmoniously seated at their "Bohea," most unsuspectingly, as if in Central China, whence they had travelled during the last few weeks on their journey to Bengal; a frequent route, and with these nomade people (that is, such of them as are at all nomade) much in vogue, travelling westward up the Chinese rivers, and building fresh "Sanpans" on the sources of the Irrawaddi, which thus transport most swiftly themselves and "household gods" straight from Inmost China to the free waters of the Bengal Bay via Rangoon. However, the tiny China pot and thimble cups (not, mark you, quart measures like our tea-cups), and saucer of rice with fowl and fishy curry (as one meets it in China) were forthwith ground most accidentally to powder by ponderous Jack's descent, "Jack boots," and all. At this mishap— enough, forsooth, to savage any people— the China party (a lesson to our Western constitutional irritability) after the due explosion of a few impetuous "Hi yawes!" "How can?" "What for you do dat ting?" "Dat no plopau pigeon," laughed at the contretemps themselves most heartily of the lot, showing the true philosophy of these followers of "Confucius," When they came to find it was no design nor wicked frowardness, thus abruptlj and most unceremoniously, as a "dropper-in," to intrude unasked upon their tete-a-tete, with rocket-like, most damaging celerity. This Mr. Chinaman forthwith attached himself, as acting or occasional interpreter, in tolerable Hong-Kong English, hence-forward to our varying fortunes, as long as we stopped at this station. Bowel complaints increasing! River water for drinking, very thick and bad, despite of filtering, or alum. Here clouds of very large locusts, in fitful clusters, fill the air, the mouth, the nostrils, even the bowl of tea or cocoa as it goes up to your lips, converting the contents into a thick soup of locusts, or call them prawns for nicety. At first, in one of these conjunctures, you shut your mouth, your eyes, your ears, your nostrils; you take a spoon and fish the drowning, scalding hoppers out, each not at all unlike a large shrimp. You fish one out at one side of the bowl, and six come hopping in at t'other, repeated trebly, nay, a dozen times with like result, a tyro, you throw away the mess in deep disgust, and go without it. Next time, taught wisdom by a hungry stomach, you shut your eyes and gulp away most heartily and unscrupulously, unless, as I have seen, a centipede, attracted by the steaming savour, drops in, to sip your cup, then be advised and leave it to him, it's not with every stomach he'll agree! We are now, pro tem., at Hausedah. It is a large, straggling village, having one long principal street on the river's bank and two or three in rear, with several large pagodas, with their attendant prominent poonge-houses, also a large palace in a compound, belonging to the Rajah, an ally of ours, who came forthwith on board to tender the homage of his friendship and esteem. I may here observe, en passant, as a specimen oi the intricate navigation of this passage, that for half last Thursday we passed through a devious and an unknown creek, so narrow that our oar-blades touched the tall dense hedge of bamboos on either side, straight and even like a wall, impenetrably fringing in the water's edge; save it, nought but the muddy sky and muddier water met the view; yet, strange to say, so deep was it, that even under the very bamboos we found not bottom, poling our oars! At length we all breathed more freely when we gained and recognised the open river, all being total strangers to this navigation. Just as one feels with a load relieved from chest and brain, when first, after days of pent-up travel, he emerges from the dubious, half blazed Indian track tnrough an American primeval forest to the lightof sun-lit day and the familiar objects of the settler's clearing— most welcome sight to him I The water seems to be the highway; in fact, no other thoroughfare, as in many parts of China, is known here. No roads, no paths, except along the river's banks, or edges of the "paddy fields," as also holds in the Celestial Empire. No beasts of burthen, if we except the elephants, which are to be seen along the river, pushing and hauling logs and other suchlike things, almost immovable otherwise, at least so far as any other mode of draught is concerned. Mighty masses fixed are to them trifles light as air. Many of these docile monsters, obedient to the "Mahout's'' stake and order, you see at work upon the beach near Rangoon, and at other places that, if they knew their strength, bungalows, natives, bamboo huts. et cetera, nay, most things in this fragile country, would crumble underneath their crush.
AN OFFICER'S DIARY OF A TWO MONTHS BOAT
EXPEDITION IN BURMAH.
Part IPart II
Part III
September 11 — Anchored for an hour in slack water, for breakfast; under way again till 12. Had dinner cooked; ship's fare, with plantains, and a glass of brandy or rum and water, with a pipe, or cheroot to follow, became the order of the day. Rest from the greatest ardour of the sun for a couple of hours, and then under way again, to anchor awhile at five for tea and pipes, and then away again; "hands up anchor" for the rest of the night till early morning, in these sleep-forsaken regions, where even the "fat-boy" of"Picwick" would find his aptitude for slumber of no avail. Night falls quickly here, with as little twilight as at some seasons one finds in North America, when night immediately succeeds the disappearance of the sun; however, every bough and spray along the river banks, on either side, are tufts of glittering coruscations with the fireflies.
September 12th, — The fleet of native canoes are still hanging on close in our wake, anchoring when we anchor, and getting under way, by day or night, with us, never a stone's throw from us, most anxious looking, and watching every turn of the stream, as if each moment they expected some denouement. The banks abound in plantains, to which we help ourselves from out of the boats as we pass on, as well as large white grub, which, in abundance, the natives brought off to us, the delicacy evidently of the season, but un-native-like would take no pay, lest for dealing with us they should be ransacked and maltreated by the King of Ava's people. This day passed much like yesterday for the remainder. On Sunday morning we had a most delightful sail, as beautiful as could be through the most luxuriantly clad country; the river banks variegated with curious trees, and flowering parasitic shrubs of every shape and size, and hue, and now and then an open paddy plain of surpassing verdure, with a comfortable looking Bamboo bungalow or two, dotted here and there in the recesses of the chameleon-hued foliage, the very beau ideal as snug contentment; but, alas! we soon found out that the hand of the despoiler had been most ruthlessly at work, in just such another place, a little higher up the river, the "Red right hand" of devastating war. We are now put of the "Panalan" Creek, which is as yet intact. Fish of the largest size seem to be here abundant, somewhat in shape like the cat-fish of the Mississippi, jumping on all sides of the stream. This being Sunday, we had the Flotilla anchored in the forenoon, in a line abreast the principal village, and dressed ourselves in frock coats, the men in white shirts and duck trousers, Divine Service was extemporized for the first time at the head of the mousquito-filmed Panalan Creek, a name remembered, I warrant, with an uneasy buzzing sense of tingling in the ear to this day by many a brave fellow, whom more powerful enemies could not succeed in daunting; though now all out prostrated by their ceaseless tiny torments; verily in them the Burmese had efficient allies against their European invader whilst the fire-flies pointed out to us the devious way along the river at night. Here to-day, at the head of this Panalan Creek, we dipped our oars for the first time since we started in the waters of the Irrawaddi proper, which is decidedly a noble, wide, expansive river fit, as is destined at some future day, to carry on its swelling bosom the teas and silks of far "Cathay" — the trade of Imperial China (despite the exclusiveness of imperious Chinese Emperors) from China confines, through a British province to a British port, for easy shipment to Great Britain's self. In this way we shall want no costly little wars with China ; no treaty signed with Chinamen, signed only to be broken, the moment our men of war are hull down on the horizon from out of the sight of subtle, lying Chinamen; no deadly occupation of more filthy Chinese ports or capitals, but with the inland people, by the head waters of the Irrawaddi and Tang-tse-Kiang, to the heart of China; with the Chinese people we can then most fairly trade on terms of easy mutual reciprocity. However, to retrace our course, this river is nearly two miles here, I'd say, from side to side, embosomed in heavy, park-like timber, ash, evergreen oak, teak, and chesnut, &c., with intervening patches of laurels, sugar-cane, bamboo, and smaller shrubs. Here we got a welcome lift (the stream being very rapid, so much so that our boats even close in shore, hung sometimes for an hour in the same spot, uncertain as 'twere, whether to forge ahead or drop astern, so nicely balanced was the might of sail, and double-banked sturdy oar against the force of the contrary current), a very welcome lift indeed we had, by being towed for some miles by a passing Indian steamer going up the river with troops, and with her proceeded up the stream till the afternoon, passing on either side several very picturesque villages on our way, and a very rich and pretty, though flat country. Aboard this steamer we were enabled to stretch at full length for the first time for several days, our wearied, cramped-up limbs; and gladly exchanging the boat's stem sheets for the roomy deck, enjoyed a sound refreshing sleep between the guns, a luxury whose extent such voyageurs alone can truly value. Refreshed in brain and limb by a few hours rest, we re-embarked aboard our boats towards evening, and casting off, struck out across the rapid mid-stream for the port bank, where there came in view a fine tract as level grass grown pasture land, begemmed with Eastern flowers of many hues, and most expansive “paddy-fields," of whose smooth verdancy we cheerfully availed ourselves, to track our boats along the river banks (the crews being landed and tackled on to hawsers), where first we witnessed in our proper persons the desolated scenes of civil war. Alas! the ravages of all-destroying war were here too painfully evinced on every side. May England, maiden England, never know invasion's horrors. The beauteous villages erst-while were sacked and burnt by the marauding native bands, the crops ripe for the harvest in many instances lying wastefully neglected, — the cattle straying ownerless about through the enclosures and rich paddy-rice fields— not a living human being about. A skulking, hungry-looking cat, or dog, or a few half-starved, frightened looking cocks and hens, perched in the neighbouring trees, which latter fowls suggestive as they were of nightmare and dyspepsia to more highly organized digestions, yet, I'm bound to say, figured, ere many hours, in an impromptu appetite- appeasing curry, a culinary specimen not much belying our natal "Soyer's" skill. The neighbouring town, pagodas, Poonge houses, all were desolate, except about the latter a priest or two, more daring, or more lazy than their fellows, with shaven crown and cunning, stealthy glance askew, followed us about in sulky silence.
September 13th. — A little farther on we came on a like deserted, straggling town, a mass of ruins, too, just past a creek, in which some natives, howling with frantic gesticulations, paddling along in their canoes, endeavoured to entice us to follow off the main river up this creek, so as to join their goodly company, but in vain; and well it was so, for an ambush, as the "interpreter" afterwards told us, was probably their object. A few empty, half-burnt bamboo houses, ransacked of all contents, and a Pagoda, on a largish scale, intact from its solidity, marked out this place — the former famous, or, more properly, infamous "Donabew;" and sphinxes of colossal magnitude in stone, and with them a few josses of wood or marble, too useless or too enormous to destroy, along with a half-ruined Poonge-house, which I had nearly forgotten to mention to my readers.
This said "Donabew" was notoriously the scene of European ambushed slaughter, even in the former war. It and the country round about the depot of the Burmese troops and bands of lawless freebooters, the cruel, rascally "Dacoits" of Pegu, whose handy work we saw far off, last night, in flaming village conflagrations here and farther up the river. This day the heat is registered, I find, at 103 degs. in the external air; in shade, 85 degs. of Fahrenheit. I took to-day under treatment, as a beginning, four patients — two with intermittent fever, and two with bowel affections; one of the latter, almost a giant in stature, was chaffed by his companions for "letting a plantain," as they said, knock over such a sturdy fellow with diarrhoea. Poor fellow, his ridiculers little thought, ere many weeks passed over, this plantain-sickened, hardy giant was to fail amongst the first, a victim to "the scourge of eastern scourges" — cholera; and that his bones, with others of his "chaffing comrades," were doomed ere long to whiten on a lone island in the Irrawaddi, apart from home and kindred, their last resting places soon to be marked only by a rude bamboo cross over their grave, surrounded by bamboos, and extemporized by the very hand that tells the tale to-day. "Peace to their names."
AN OFFICER'S DIARY OF A TWO MONTHS BOAT
EXPEDITION IN BURMAH.
Part I
Part II
September 10th. — Dodged the mosquitoes after dinner by taking a nap in the stem sheets for a couple of hours, whilst they, for a wonder, were not on wing; these, unlike most others which repose themselves by sunlight, being insatiable, ready to draw blood generally at any moment throughout the day. All officers and men enjoyed the anchor being down this afternoon, to have a couple of hours' much needed refreshing sleep, coiled up in the most economical dimensions; the urgent need for which will doubtless appear from the fact, that some 50 officers and men were destined to live for an indefinite period in a small open boat, not near as large as many of our family pleasure barges on the Thames, in this fiery climate, provisioned, accoutred, and fully armed. Within a foot or two of the cooking stove, and howitzer, and underneath the seats, were 14 days' complete provisions, rum and pork, salt beef and biscuit, with ample magazines of ammunition, shot and shell, grape, canister and shrapnel, with rockets, and ball cartridge. To sum up, the only thing we still required was water, good drinking water, for which we had to substitute the pea soup-like element that floated us (a fertile source of dysentery by the way), dipping it from alongside the boat as we required it, and frequently obliged to strain this thickish mixture with our lips when drinking, as horses do. However, this could not be helped, for even had we the water handy to carry, we yet had not the room to stow it.
So, when ashore, in the neighbourhood of spring water, be sure we made the most of it, "camel fashion," as Jack says, "having a regular blow-out thereof." To make matters worse, the dead Burmese floating down from the scene of various skirmishes, carrying each his loathsome load of gorging vulture passengers, sometimes even got foul of us in bathing, or "Hoogly-like" got jammed across our hawser, scenting the air for miles around, for half an hour before their actual advent with any fragrance but the "Millefleur." Meanwhile, the filthy "harpies," roused from their hurried feast, hovered grudgingly above our bamboo mast, until each corpse resumed, half dissected by their beaks and talons, its eddying voyage, when their feast commenced afresh — Oh, horrid ! To day we passed several villages quite close, with beautiful Pagodas, and enormous stone "Sphinxes," on either side of the massive marble steps leading to the elevated platform, on which invariably is erected the graceful shaped Burmese Pagoda. Each Sphinx was close on four-and-twenty feet in length, and twelve feet high, beautifully carved out of one solid stone; though in that stoneless country, where that stone came from! and what the means of transport! is a puzzle itself, a perfect "Sphinx" to me, known only to the former native generations that built such mighty temples, sometimes of brick and stucco-work, but often of solid masonry, in a country where there are no roads, nor draught save of the elephant, as a rule, unless at the largest towns, and which for the most part are half-year under water in the rainy season, the streets being traversed by boats between the piles on which the bamboo houses are built. Possibly some archives in embossed and curiously gilt chests, in the Temples of "Donaboo" and other places, might, properly interpreted, let in a ray of light on the formation of these structures. There were in the sacred chests strong paper scrolls, as records of some kind, jet black, with round hieroglyphic characters in white writing, running from right to left.
These strong, mighty monuments, now hidden in tangled bush, incline one to associate the Burmese in a somewhat similar common origin with the degenerate denizens of the "Central American" forests; the countenance, "Aztec-like," the posture handed down on their idols, the carved log canoe, are much the same, all differing widely from the Indian proper, the Chinese, and Chin-Indian. Marble and wooden josses, and silver, too, from a couple of inches in size, the latter up to the former twenty feet in height, gilt, and inlaid with mirrors and precious stones, and various strange grotesque devices, the smaller ones often placed upon the projecting portions of the others, like votive offerings, were all guarded most zealously from our defiling touch by watchfull "Poonges," whose stealthy, vigilant dance seemed to say most plainly, " look on, but touch not." These Poonge priests, I may observe, like many of their brethren in other lands, are certainly the best conditioned of the natives. The Poonge houses are the best in all the country, verandahed, two-storied, highly decorated with carvings, the whole of solid teak as well. The "Dagon," however, and its acolyte pagodas, several in number, all around, surpass all else in size and gilding, apparently of brick, and cemented underneath the gilding. It stands on an immense platform, approached by many terraces and flights of steps; solid it is said to be, and has been gilded over every tenth year by customary golden contribution from the country generally. A strange coincidence I may mention here: — I turned one day, whilst holding a pantomimic conversation with an aged Poonge, to seek a light for a cheroot, on which he drew from out his odd-and-end-containing sash across his waist a short cylinder and piston of hard wood, and fixing a piece of cotton in a depression on the piston's end, by a rapid stroke, and the consequent aerial concussion within the tube, he unfailingly drew forth, with chuckling glee, a light — repeating the experiment (to my amazement, as he thought) with it; an instrument I saw in use with only one other man before, and that a priest too, but of the English church, and in a distant land. The Burman Poonge's wonder was excited to find in me no stranger to this effect produced by science from the "lightning theory:" and by an imperfect interpreter, much to his delight, I explained to him the cause of the phenomenon, before unknown. Here we were attended by a convoy of canoes, with one or two, or half a dozen Burmese in each, loaded with rice or sugar cane, or plantains, or some such article, who were afraid to try the passage up the river by themselves, in consequence of the "dacoits" or river pirates, who, they made signs, were killing all before them and burning the villages, which we shortly found to be too true, by the dead floating bodies and other relics in the river.
AN OFFICER'S DIARY OF A TWO MONTHS BOAT
EXPEDITION IN BURMAH.
Part I
September 8th. — Provisioned for fourteen days, and armed to the very teeth, having — besides each man's small arms — musket, bayonet, pistol and cutlass to wit, a rocket-tube, and twelve or twenty-four pound howitzer in each boat. Our ultimate destination, we now believe, is Prome, and we may be absent likely for two months, or three Starting this day, we were luckily awned in from actual spouts, not showers of rain, by thickest canvass. No. 1, lashed like a roof on bamboo ridge and upright poles. That evening we anchored some five miles from Rangoon, off a thick village, the current being very strong against us, and the banks clothed most luxuriantly with trees, sugarcane, bamboo, plantain, and evergreens of every kind, now soaked in copious torrents — rain, in fact, peculiar to this river — so dense as one may seek for in vain elsewhere. The Burmese boats were very numerous of all lengths and sizes, and for the most part of a single log of monster teak, covered in, aft, with a bamboo thatch, and having a high, carved steering-seat astern, and a huge, round-bladed, long-levered paddle fixed on as a shifting rudder, at which the Head man takes his seat, and umbrella-protected by his slave alike from scorching heat and rain, in pride of "clout" and tattooed thighs, belabours with a long bamboo his howling, paddling crew. The natives seem far superior in intellect to the Indians generally, something, one would say, between a Chinaman and a Malay in the social scale. The males are exceedingly robust-limbed, broad-shouldered, wearing a "clout" only round the loins, and sandals on the feet, but, without exception, having a " nature's" pair of breeches of elaborate tattooing, according to a fashionable pattern, by a regular "government artist," from the knee to the waist, indelible. Many warriors have also ennobling honourable medalions and ribbons elaborately transcribed on their chests, some blue, some red, no doubt the Burmese "Orders of the Bath." They are of all shades of copper (the men), down to true "snow-ball," and wear their long, horse-like black hair tied in a hard knot on top of the head. Their features are only to be described by the gilded and alabaster "josses," now found in the museums and curiosity dealers' shops at all our naval ports where Jack resorts, and occasional grocers' windows of our towns — those figures seated, some-what like Egyptians, with the hands envariably across. The native women (Lord bless me!), they are like water-dogs, swimming and diving, and grinning and chattering, astern of our boats all day, and though reserved enough, and vanishing — goodness knows where! — when the boat touches the shore, yet, on one pretence or another to wash their clothes or bathe their infants, are otherwise always in the water, holding on sometimes by a rope astern in the rapid current. Their dress is easily adapted for fashionable watering places — simplex mundtitiis — a single square of a species of native cross-barred cotton, being wrapped tight round the body, beneath the arm- pits, and the end tucked in with a hitch. This envelope, therefore, is most easily laid aside, in stepping into the muddy bath, and donned again on walking out; to which, on state days and "sing-song pigeons," is sometimes added, as fullest dress, an " opera cloak," or short "polka jacket," of white linen. The fair sex, I need scarcely say, are not tattooed, but all, of either sex, piercing the lobes of their ears with tubes of horn, convert them (as we do a chimney vase in bachelors' houses) from childhood, into holders of tobacco, betel-nut, cigars, &c. Sometimes the nostril cartilages are turned to the same account, by no means thereby adding to their beauty, in our eyes. No sleep this night for the mosquitoes, which are most formidable here, the men spending the night singing and swearing at them alternately beneath the close packed awning; we aft, in the stern sheets of the boats, in much the same predicament, or rather worse, being " aft to leeward." However, at length in despite of the traps the lanterns were almost a solid mass of " stingers" around the candles, I perched myself outside the awning on the bamboo ridge pole, and, nodding like an owl the whole night through, I dozed and smoked, and smoked and dozed, Palinurus like, having tied a rope's end firmly round my wrist wherewith to bring me "up" again if "Somnus" should overbalance me into the dark and noisome gurgling flood below; a caution, as the sequel shewed, not lightly to be treated. However, the novelty of the scene had its effect, despite the want of rest and labour of the day in heat and rain, upon the spirit of the crews, who jeered, and punned, and laughed, and chaffed each other from boat to boat all night, as only British sailors can, in hearty, reckless style. Here, however, to remain all night at anchor was worse than the pains of purgatory, therefore, the men at last worn out, begged hard in the middle watch to get their well-crammed little vessels under weigh up stream again, in order that the friendly draught of air thereby might drift, in some degree, away from underneath the stuffy heated awning, the subtle clouds of sleep-repelling, torturing mosquitoes. 'Twas granted during that night of necessity.
Athough we double-banked some half-score oars on either side, pulling right lustily against the impetuous current, and resting the wearied oar betimes, sailed in, when wind permitted, close by the bush along the shore; sometimes, however, we were unable with sail and oar combined to stem the stream, when if perchance a stretch of bank was clear of bush along a pasture ground, we tracked the vessels along with hawsers, tackling on our gangs of rolicking human draught of sailors, in lieu of quadrupeds, (whenever it was light before the sun blazed forth in Eastern fierceness), scaring the natives by their quaint, outlandish sailor cut, and to them stranger antics, from their muddy amphibious dwellings pitched on poles some ten feet high, and much resembling the Malay nuts, only filthier, if possible, being reached by boats from all sides half the year, which now were grounded in the village streets, 'erst while no more nor less than aqueducts. Even the vicious water buffaloes, with horns diverging full six feet, from wallowing in the muddy dykes, turned tail and fled. The tortoise on the snag turned up his snout in mute amazement, pulled toes and tail within his "testudo," and toppled with a "flop" into the liquid mud. From this we passed several bamboo fishing traps along the bank; many the counterparts of our salmon-weirs in Britain; others Woven like our lobster-pots in shape, the interpreter said, for catching eels, perhaps it was; but the rascal was an ignorant, lying Portuguese "half-caste," picked up from some of the native coasters of Rangoon, one "Jose" something, who told the truth by very accident, for which, whenever happening, I believe he was most sorry, and lied the deeper next time as amends. The fire-flies are dazzling here at night.
The botany Is very new and beautiful, gorgeous flowers and flowering shrubs bathed in the stream, are creeping luxuriantly along the larger trunks, as parasites; most noble parks of chesnut trees o'erdot the plains like English parks, with here and there on bolder points, the palms and cocoa-nuts. In places, too, the banks are hedged with all-sustaining plantains and bananas; thus here 'tis the land of plenty, "pull and eat." The plantains, boiled like our potato, sliced and fried with navy pork, are not so bad, as many a hungry stomach testifies, most nutrient. Bananas, sweet and luscious, answer better for dessert.
After getting ashore several times, we anchored for the night, in a harrow nook close in shore, our anchors not holding in the open rapid stream. There, the mosquitos feast was repeated, if possible, with variations of the most blood-thirsty description on their part. In vain every expedient was tried to banish them, such as burning wet wood, tar, et cetera, in the boats beneath the awning, in &ct fumigating them as rats are sometimes banished from ship-board; but all to no avail, the attempt at remedy being almost as bad as the affliction itself. At length, again, I lashed myself on the ridge-pole of the roof as 'twere; yet wherever one's "sit upon" and heels were tangents to the canvass roof, there stung the mosquitoes through and through, clustering round the lantern at the inside of the awning. They poked and probed, and stung through the grain of the thickest canvas awning, upwards, through trowsers, stockings, seams of shoes; so that fain was I without delay to sadly sacrifice this "tangent posture" as affording the smallest mathematical surface for attack, and to do the sleeping for the rest of the night perched like a "bantam cock," or paddy bird on top of a bamboo frame to which the awning was stretched out astern. Again, to-night, the second, without sleep, though they had toiled at the oar two hot and long oppressive showery days, with little intermission; the men begged to set under way; though they were nodding over their oars, still with indomitable resolution on they pulled. We sadly lost a seaman overboard last night, by dropping from his mosquito's-dodging perch, out of the arms of "Morpheus" into the rapid circling eddy, from which he never to the surface rose, nor was heard of after, though the souse into the water and his shout in falling were plainly heard by many in the dark; doubtless, he stuck fast in the thick glue-like mud, head and arms impacted, or most likely was carried by the under-tow far down the stream beneath the surface before he came to upper air, if ever. A sailor's life soon brings oblivion on all such accidents; attached to their messmates as sailors are proverbially, yet the song and jest went round this evening almost as jovially as last night, tho' grieved his comrades not a whit the less on that account for him
Anchor is dropped for breakfast and dinner, after which we had a swim off the stem sheets, being most tenacious, however, in holding the while a tight grasp of a well-secured rope, first ascertaining by occular demonstration that the knot was safe and sound. So brisk was the current, that a piece of wood thrown over, never came up to view: a lesson on the laws of gravitation under peculiar circumstances not overlooked (one may vouch for it,) by me.
