224 WILD SPORTS OF BURMA AND ASSAM 



a gale. So we took in the kite, hoisted the sails, and went 

 down at a good fifteen miles an hour till dark, when we furled 

 the sails and brought the kite again into play. No one 

 steered ; we lashed the helm amidships, and expected to be at 

 Menloon early next morning. When we woke at daylight we 

 could not conceive where we were, but we thought Menloon 

 was still ahead, but hour after hour passed, and at last to our 

 surprise not Menloon, but Meaday loomed ahead. We had 

 gone eighty miles in twelve hours by the kite alone. As we 

 approached Thayet Myo we saw all the pagodas a mass of 

 ruins, and thought they had been demolished by the Executive 

 Engineer, but we found on landing that on the day of the full 

 moon, about two in the afternoon, an earthquake had shattered 

 the pagodas, and caused the stream of the Irrawady to run up 

 towards its source, which fully accounted for our progress being 

 barred that day. 



Thayet Myo is not a nice place to be stationed at. The 

 rainfall is very trifling and the heat excessive. Cholera, too, 

 is very prevalent. There is very poor shooting anywhere 

 near even snipe are scarce. In the floods there is good 

 boating ; but a huge sand-bank formed, and when I was last 

 there the steamers had to lie fully a mile ofT. 



Going from Thayet Myo, fifty miles west to Mendoon, very 

 good large-game shooting can be had. Near Meaday there 

 was very fair snipe and francolin shooting and occasionally 

 some hares. I believe Meaday and Tongho were some years 

 ago connected by a road. 



Robberies were very frequent at Thayet Myo. Ponies were 

 frequently abstracted and taken across the frontier. At one 

 time a cordon of sentries with loaded muskets were placed 

 round the station, but the Burmese, who are daring and expert 

 robbers, used to creep through, and a night seldom passed 

 without some one being visited and despoiled. 



There is excellent sport between Prome and Rangoon in 

 the vicinity of the railway. When I surveyed that line in 

 1855 I found yit (pheasarits), the Burmese francolin, and 

 jungle fowl abundant in many places. In the Irrawady 

 district at the foot of the Yomahs, in the forests, big game 

 abounds, and in the more open country thamine or the brow- 



