424 Itinerary in the district of Amherst, Tenasserim. [No. 5. 



mat awnings. They are pleasant enough for two or three hours, but 

 get terribly irksome afterwards, from the confined crouching position 

 they entail. We had the flood tide with us, and, rapidly skirting 

 the suburb of Obo, turned into the Attaran river about 1 p. m. and 

 proceeded up it at the rate of about five to five aud a half miles an 

 hour. Stream at its mouth about 150 yards wide ; deep and muddy, 

 with low country on either bank. High grass and mangrove-like 

 jungle to our left hand, and the open and populous space surround- 

 ing Moulmein to our right. Course S. and S. E. Scattered hamlets 

 on either side, with low (high bush) jungle, till 2 p. m. when we 

 got to Kyik parang, where we were to have halted ; but, finding it too 

 early, proceeded and reached the next eligible place for passing the 

 night, Kwan-ngan, at 5.15 p. m. Heartily wearied. We brought the 

 flood the whole way with us, aud I calculated the distance at twenty- 

 three miles. About three miles back we passed most romantic scenery. 

 A range of perpendicular rocks, called the Pya douug, of mural lime- 

 stone, rise sheer out of the water to six or eight hundred feet, on 

 the right or eastern bank of the river ; and some extraordinary 

 bold, scarped, insulated rocks are scattered also along the opposite 

 side. On the pinnacles of these rocks we observed numbers of 

 adjutants. These huge birds breed here annually and the rocks are 

 in many places conspicuously white with their dung. There are 

 two species of adjutant — Leptoptilos Argeela (our old Calcutta 

 friend) and L. Javanicus (a rarer visitor in Bengal), and both breed 

 together on these inaccessible places. The Argeela is notably 

 larger than the other : but the eggs of the two species are hardly 

 to be distinguished apart. The villagers of Kwan-ngan are Talyngs. 

 — a heavy, large, good tempered set. They had prepared and cleaned 

 out for us a tolerably comfortable zeyat or serai. Close to this 

 was the village Kyoung, which is always a handsome substantial 

 wooden building, occupied by Phoongyees or priests, and serving 

 generally as schools for the village children, who are taught reading, 

 writing and cyphering by the phoongyees ; the latter thus make some 

 return for the benefits they receive from the parents, and this miti- 

 gates in some respect the disgust that the whole system of priest 

 worship in Burmah excites. 



Eated the Chronometer at 8 p. m. and found it had sensibly 

 changed, in spite of the very gentle motion it had had. 



