136 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
current ticals, or about thirty rupees the hun¬ 
dred viss, which is greatly dearer than the same 
article in the market of Calcutta. 
Sept . 28.—After passing Samai-kom, we came 
to the termination of the largest island which 
we had met in the Ira wadi, and which extends 
all the way from the confluence of the two rivers 
to the place we were now at: it is called Ala- 
kyun, or middle island: it is high and generally 
cultivated. After this the Irawadi expands to 
a breadth which was at present not less than 
four miles : it is full of low islands, evidently 
inundated during the highest rise of the water, 
*—therefore uncultivated, and covered with the 
same tall grass which we had traced, under si¬ 
milar circumstances, throughout our whole pro¬ 
gress : the sacclictrum spontaneum. 
At one o’clock we passed Ra-patong, a village 
on the east bank. This was the spot at which 
the Burmans contemplated making their last 
effort, had the British army not been arrested in 
its progress by the Treaty of Yan-dabo. Mr. 
Judson told me, that on his way down, he here 
found the Burman force encamped, under the 
old Chief Kaulen Mengyi, who had been de¬ 
feated at Melun. The Chiefs, he said, were 
quite dejected and dispirited, and their troops 
did not exceed one thousand men, composed 
