SAIL TO MANDALAY IN OUR OWN BOAT 221 



islands and shot a number of corn-quail, which in the Lower 

 Provinces are very scarce. We also killed hares, jungle fowl, 

 and pigeons sufficient for our wants, and in one place we came 

 across a lot of goggle-eyed plovers, which had been fattening 

 on grain, and found them uncommonly good eating. We 

 spent two days at Pagan Myo, before mentioned, where the 

 pagodas are so numerous that if a Burman wishes to express 

 an impossibility, he says, " Such and such is as possible as for 

 a man to count the pagodas at Pagan." 



Including all our stoppages we reached Mandalay without 

 any assistance on the eleventh day. We sailed up a creek 

 and anchored close to the town. The people at its mouth 

 tried to induce us to stop there, but we pretended ignorance 

 of their language and sailed on. We looked up Mr. Spears, 

 and though he was kind enough to offer to put us up, as we 

 intended remaining only a few days, we declined with thanks 

 and remained in our own boat. In 1857 the king had decreed 

 that Umrapoora was to be abandoned, and a new capital 

 formed four miles higher up the river. It was thought that 

 the position of Mandalay would be safer from the guns of our 

 war-vessels than Umrapoora, but the science in gunnery has 

 made such strides of late years, that the new capital could have 

 been as easily battered down as the old one, which was on the 

 river's bank. The new town was in embryo. It had been 

 admirably laid out, and the streets were 100 feet broad, and all 

 laid out regularly in parallel lines with the cross-roads at right 

 angles. The king's palace as usual in the centre. We walked 

 to the site of Umrapoora, where two years ago all had been 

 beautiful to the sight, but which was now a mass of ruins and 

 desolation. The inhabitants had been forcibly removed, the 

 ramparts thrown down, the brick houses demolished, wooden 

 ones burnt Nothing was left but charred remains and rubbish, 

 and numbers of half-starved dogs, who were lying about; why 

 they had not followed their masters to the new capital I can't 

 conceive. There are large marble quarries near Mandalay, 

 and alabaster is also found, and hundreds of artisans were 

 busy modelling images of Gaudama of every conceivable size, 

 from an inch or two to 10 and 15 feet in altitude. Nothing 

 was finished, but several thousand people were at work 



