TO THE COURT OF AYA. 
105 
bitants complained that little or no rain had 
fallen, and apprehended a famine. 
We counted eighty trading boats at this 
place, some of them the largest we had seen. 
The trade consists in palm-sugar, terra japo- 
nica, onions, capsicum, and cotton. Sale has al¬ 
ways be^n a place of considerable traffic. It 
was the only one in the country where the 
shopkeepers were in the habit of coming to 
passing travellers to hawk their goods. This 
mark of prosperity was now no longer visible. 
Sept. 24. —At half-past three in the after¬ 
noon, we reached Pagham-mew (Pugan). In 
our journey we had a range of hills along the 
west bank of the river, from two hundred to 
four hundred feet high. The eastern bank was 
much less elevated, and here a low country, 
with occasional gentle swellings, extended, as 
far as the eye could see, to the south-east. In¬ 
land from Pugan, there is an insulated range of 
rugged and bleak-looking hills. 
The rock formation, wherever we had an op¬ 
portunity of examining it, consisted of nothing 
else than sandstone and breccia ; the soil being 
composed of the debris of these materials, with 
little or no vegetable mould. The hills were 
but partly covered with trees, and these were 
little better than brushwood. In the narrow 
