30 The Remains at Pagan. [No. 1. 



formed of the same succession of members, but it is only from tbe 



Returning from this digression, we find in 1583 Gasparo Balbi, a jeweller of 

 Venice, visiting Pegu with a stock of emeralds. As with all the travellers about 

 this period, his ship made a port in the river of Bassein or one of its channels, 

 called by them Cosmi or Cosmin,* winch seems at that time, distant as it was 

 from the capital, to have been the principal port of Pegu. 



In entering the Bassein river his description of the gilded beacon temple of 

 Modaen on Pagoda point, and of the swarms of flies attracted by the ngapee 

 manufacture at Negrais, are pleasant to read in their graphic truth, after three 

 centuries nearly have past. 



From. Cosmin the travellers appear to have taken a route through the rami- 

 fied channels of the lower Delta, and Balbi mentions several great and fair cities 

 by the way.f In seven days they reached Dalla (near the mouth of the Rangoon 

 river,) and next day the " citie of Dogon" (Rangoon,) where he describes the 

 great Pagoda, &c, in a manner still very recognizable. 



Mr. Ralph Fitch, merchant of London, is the first Englishman who has given 

 an account of a visit to Pegu. He follows the same route as the last traveller, 

 by Cosmin to Dalla, Sirian and Pegu. 



Pitch's account of the capital appears to be borrowed to some extent from 

 that of his predecessor Frederick, which I have partly extracted in illustration 

 of my description of Amarapoora.J From Pegu he extended his travels to 

 " Iamahey which is in the country of the Langeiannes whom we call Iangomes ; 

 it is five and twenty days' journey north-east from Pegu." This Iamahey or 

 Jamahey is undoubtedly the Shan town of Zimme, which has been very rarely 

 reached by any European traveller in modern times. Fitch describes it as " a 



the place where goods for the royal city were discharged ; and where the king had 

 his gardens and his boat-races. 



During the three years that have elapsed since the war that terminated in the 

 annexation of Pegu, in some of the districts which, directly or indirectly suffered 

 most, such as Padaung and Mendoon (West and North-west of Prome) scarcely 

 any favourable reaction has taken place. 



The writer had an opportunity of seeing the state of the former small district 

 between the Arracan hills and the Irawadee, once covered with beautiful and 

 thriving towns and villages, in travelling from the Arracan coast to Prome in 

 March 1853, just as the war was closing. And one may conceive how deadly 

 and enduring would be the results of war, repeated year after year in such a 

 country, by various hosts of barbarians. Such, all these race3 eminently are in 

 war, whatever they may be in peace. 



* I had always supposed from the narratives that Cosmin must have been 

 Bassein itself. But in Wood's map (1795), the last which gives the name, 

 Cosmin is placed on another channel, to the eastward of the main Bassein river. 



t Frederick states that at all the villages on this route " hennes, pigeons, 

 eggs, milke, rice, and other things be very good and cheape ;" a very different 

 state of things from the present, when our hungry surveyors complain that they 

 can get neither " Hennes" nor eggs, let alone " other things" for love or money. 



X See Major Phayrc's Mission to Ava page 160, (unpublished.) 



