40 AN ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY ACROSS THE MALAY PENINSULA. 



customary amount, and no doubt divided the profits. More- 

 over the boat was small, one had to crawl into it, and when 

 there lie on one's back. The Chinaman was an old Perak 

 miner who had come up to Mergui, married a woman of the 

 country, started trading on the river, and now had two daugh- 

 ters to assist him in ( chowing ' the boat. 



The following morning we arrived at Tenasserim, once the 

 proud capital of a kingdom of that name. Its ruler, its 

 power, its people and its fleet are all gone, and all that re- 

 mains to mark its ancient claims of a Venice of the East is 

 the dilapidated remains of a terrace leading up from the 

 river. The inhabitants are mostly Burmese and do not num- 

 ber more than 600, and there seems to be no life in the place. 

 Yet it occupies a situation surpassingly fine. The foot of the 

 high bank on which it sits is swept by the smaller Tenas- 

 serim River, which a little below the town bends to meet the 

 larger river coming circling from the North and enclosing 

 between them an expansive 'haugh' of green sward. The 

 ' haugh', the circling rivers and the town are enclosed in a 

 circuit of forest-dad hills, so that Tenasserim sits on the 

 South side of an amphitheatre. 



Just as we were leaving Tenasserim, two little Burmese 

 boys came running down to the boat and asked in good 

 English "Where are you going, Sir?" They were wonder- 

 fully intelligent lads ; they attended school in Mergui, but 

 were then home for holidays, their father being a merchant 

 in Tenasserim. 



The river between Mergui and Tenasserim is broad and 

 deep, in many parts it really looks like a series of lakes 

 surrounded by hills ; and here and there along its banks are 

 fishing villages. During the rainy season steam launches, 

 drawing four or five feet of water, can go to Tenasserim, and 

 formerly one of the British India steamships used to pass up 

 the river to within eight miles of Tenasserim, where her fur- 

 ther passage was prevented by a bar of rocks that cross the 

 river there. 



The mouth of the river is surrounded by numerous swampy 

 mangrove-covered islands, and sailing along these we came 



