1837.] Journal of an expedition from Moulmien to Ava. 1007 



On the 6th February I took my leave, having hired a guide to whom 

 the chief gave his orders touching his good conduct, and directing that 

 we should be supplied with rice. From hence the route is perfectly 

 unknown, no European having ever travelled it. The first two days 

 and a half our march lay through a hilly or rather mountainous jungly 

 country nearly destitute of inhabitants, the road bad and difficult for 

 bullocks, water sufficient though we had no streams of any note 

 to cross. The next two days the hills continue but covered with 

 a considerable depth of soil with few large trees and little underwood, 

 the population pretty numerous, and nearly the whole of the hills 

 brought under cultivation, which is performed with considerable care 

 and neatness. During the next three days which brought us to Ka-doo- 

 gyee, the first Burman village, we were obliged to make a detour to 

 the eastward, the proper road being said to be blocked up by fallen 

 trees, and consequently impassible for the elephants which are never 

 used here. This threw us out of the line of the inhabited part of the 

 country, and we saw only one small village of deserters from Mok-mai 

 and no cultivation. The red Kareen country is considerably more 

 extensive than I had been led to believe from the information obtained 

 on my last mission, and the population more dense, if density may be 

 applied to any hill people. The part of the country crossed by me 

 was said by no means to be the most populous part of it, which indeed 

 might have been inferred, as it lay along the borders of the desert 

 waste they have made, separating them from the Burmans, against 

 whom they entertain the most rancorous enmity. It will be long 

 before there is any considerable demand for European manufactures ; 

 they are in the first and rudest stage of an agricultural population ; 

 their habitations are miserable and destitute of every thing that con- 

 duces to the comfort of human beings, to which they are scarcely 

 allowed by the Burmans to belong : nearly all their present limited 

 wants are supplied within themselves. Their only traffic is in stick-lac 

 which is produced in great quantities, and slaves, whom they capture 

 from the Shan villages subject to the Burmans lying along their 

 frontier. From three to four hundred are annually bartered with the 

 Siamese Shans for black cattle, buffaloes, salt and betel-nut. This 

 horrible traffic has within the last few years been somewhat diminished 

 by the asylum afforded to the fugitive slaves of the Shans, in our 

 possessions here. 



The only articles of exchange they are at present known to possess 

 available as returns to this market, are tin and stick-lac, both in abun- 

 dance, but the former is too heavy and the latter too bulky to be avail- 

 6 m 2 



