218 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



terest centres more in the story of the ill-fated royal 

 line, from the coming of good King Mindon Min 

 through to the final disaster, when Thebaw and his 

 brilliant wife, Supayawlat, surrendered to the Brit- 

 ish and were exiled, on November 30, 1885, a 

 story which, with its plots and counter-plots, pos- 

 sesses all the dramatic qualities of an Arabian Nights 

 tale, and is indeed all that one finds romantic about 

 Mandalay. 



Through a resident to whom we had letters, we 

 attended one evening the chief form of Burmese en- 

 tertainment, the Pwe, or drama, about which there 

 is nothing remarkable, except its duration. It be- 

 gins in the evening and continues till dawn, and if 

 ever the quality of a dramatic entertainment was 

 sacrificed to quantity, it surely is so in the Pwe. 

 Many of the audience bring their bedding with them 

 for the pit is devoid of stalls and t sleep peace- 

 fully through those parts of the play which lack 

 particular interest or dramatic thrill. 



On September 4 we set sail from Rangoon by the 

 British India Company's S. S. Pentakota, stopping 

 at Penang, passing down through the Malacca 

 Straits, where on account of the heavy atmosphere 

 the sunrises and sunsets surpassed in magnificence 

 anything of the kind that I previously had seen, and 

 arrived at Singapore five days later, whence on the 



