42 JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
ing-place,” which appears to me to be murder- 
ing a Bur in an idiom, with the view of attain¬ 
ing an English one. This pressed fish, or Nga- 
pi , is a main article of the diet of the Burmans. 
It is of various qualities and descriptions. In 
some, the fish is mashed, or pounded, like the 
blachang of the Malays, and the trasi of the Ja¬ 
vanese, and this description generally consists 
of prawns. In the coarser sorts, the pieces of 
fish are entire, half putrid, half pickled. They 
are all fetid, and offensive to Europeans. Be- 
gyen means “ the water ceasedin conse¬ 
quence, it is said, either of the tide occasionally 
coming up as far as this, or from a tradition 
that it had done so upon some remarkable occa¬ 
sion. This village is in the Province of Sara- 
wadi, at the mouth of a small river navigable 
in the rains, and by which the teak timber is 
floated down from the forests of that district, 
the most abundant, or at least the most con¬ 
veniently situated for the market, of any in the 
dominions of Ava. We had not yet seen a 
single tree of this timber, which, however, 
grows in abundance, at no great distance from 
our course, on both banks of the river, especially 
the eastern. The land column of our army, in 
its march, passed through extensive forests of 
it. The Irawadi is here fully more than a mile 
