222 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



excavating the fort-ditch, throwing up ramparts, and making 

 bricks. 



The officials could understand Butt coming up to admire 

 the country, but what could have brought me up a second 

 time they could not make out, and evidently looked on me 

 as a spy ! 



Phayre's abode during his embassy had been burnt down. 

 We saw the hairy woman and her family, and some very 

 clever jugglers, who did the Davenport trick long before that 

 family was heard of. We wandered all over the place, no 

 one objecting, and, after seeing all that could be seen and 

 purchasing knick-knacks, and obtaining a certificate from 

 Spears that we had arrived on a certain date, to satisfy those 

 who had bet that we should not reach the capital, we crossed 

 over the river to Mendoon, where there is the largest mass of 

 brickwork in the world and the second largest bell. The 

 former was intended to be an immense pagoda, and a model 

 alongside shows that it was to have been 600 feet high when 

 finished, but after it had been raised 200 feet, the great earth- 

 quake of 1839 shattered it, and the Burmese, thinking it a 

 bad omen, abandoned the work ; but there it was, just as it 

 was left, even portions of the scaffolding were still up ! Close 

 by it is the great bell, with an inner diameter of 16 feet. 1 



1 " Since our occupation this bell has been raised, by public subscription, 

 on a proper scaffolding. Steps were taken by the District Magistrate to 

 obtain funds for raising the bell. The appeal having been generously 

 responded to by all classes of the community, and sufficient funds having 

 been raised, the committee appointed to superintend the work entered 

 into a contract with the Irrawady Flotilla Company to raise the bell and 

 re-hang it on iron pillars. The work of raising it by means of powerful 

 jack-screws and levers was successfully accomplished in March 1896, and 

 the massive iron columns and beams from which the bell will depend are 

 now being cast at the Flotilla Company's works at Dalla, opposite to 

 Nangoon. The beams and pillars have been made of a strength sufficient 

 to support a hanging weight of 100 tons, a weight exceeding by 20 

 tons the estimated weight of the bell. As it has no clapper, it will perhaps 

 be necessary to provide some mechanical contrivance to elicit sound from 

 its huge lips." (Extract from Wanderings in Burma, by S. W. BIRD.) 



The bell is called Mingun Bell. I never saw a large bell in Burma 

 with a clapper. I have seen them struck with the horn of a deer 

 generally a sambur. F. T. POLLOK. 



