28 Mission to the Court of Siam. [No. 97- 



release Mrs. Breisley.* I expressed my sense of the friendly 

 act of the king in receiving the letters himself; the Praklang 

 replied that the Siamese government were equally anxious with 

 the English for the increase of existing friendship, and were 

 much obliged to the government of India and to the com- 

 missioner for sending, and to myself for coming through such a 

 desolate jungle as that I have crossed. I was asked the usual 

 questions as to the health of the Right Hon'ble. the Governor 

 General of India and other members of Government; how long 

 I had been on the road ; how I had been received ; and whether 

 all my people were well ; to which I returned the usual answers, 

 and expressed my thanks for the kindness which I had re- 

 ceived. I mentioned the deception practised by the governor 

 of Nakoutchathee ; he said it was all out of kindness and con- 

 sideration for my own comfort, and laughing heartily, he said 

 he could not conceive how any one could prefer travelling in 

 the sun to lying quietly on his back in a boat, and progressing 

 by the labour of other people. He then alluded to what I had 

 mentioned to him through Mr. Hunter in the morning ; the 

 indignity they had offered in making the walls of the hall 

 they had prepared for me and my people of materials which 

 had been used in the funeral of the late queen, than which, 

 according to the superstitious notions of the Burmans, and of 

 course of the Siamese, no greater insult can be offered in Bur- 

 ma ; no one but the Toobayazah (who with his whole family 

 are so degraded that no one will associate with them) will touch 

 any article which has been so defiled ; in fact, with the pecu- 

 liar notions of these people ; it was impossible for me to avoid 

 mentioning it ; he said they had no such feelings regarding these 



* The wife of an English gentleman who left Mergui with his family 

 in the disturbance in 1829, with the intention of applying to the Penang 

 government for assistance. They were supposed to have been murdered 

 by their Malay boat's crew as they had a good deal of property on board, 

 but as reports reached Penang and Maulmain, where some of the lady's 

 friends reside, that she had been seen in some of the Siamese Malayan 

 states the commissioner in the Tenasserim provinces wrote to the min- 

 isters, who at once sent for the people described, they however turned 

 out to be Burmans who had accompanied some ship's officers many years 

 ago, and had no wish to return. 



