78 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
ma.* At four o’clock, we began to descend the 
river, and at seven, with the assistance of the 
ebb-tide, the current of the river, and the full 
power of the steam, reached Martaban. 
“ The cultivation of the fertile tract of country 
which we had passed in the course of the day is 
meagre, and proportionate to the oppressed and 
scanty population of a country, which hardly con¬ 
tains three inhabitants to a square mile, and these, 
of course, neither industrious nor intelligent. 
The objects of culture which we observed,—all 
in small patches, but growing with much luxu¬ 
riance, notwithstanding the too obvious unskil¬ 
fulness of the husbandry by which they were 
reared,—were indigo, cotton, and tobacco. Be¬ 
sides these, the upper part of the country, which 
is not subject to inundation, appears to be pecu¬ 
liarly fitted for the growth of the sugar-cane and 
coffee plant. Martaban, indeed, is a province of 
very various useful produce ; for, besides the ar¬ 
ticles already mentioned, it yields pepper, carda- 
murns, areca-nut, and teak wood, not to mention 
rice, which seldom exceeds in price twenty annas 
* I showed the dry specimens of this plant to my friend Dr. 
Wallich, on his arrival at Rangoon, about four months afterwards, 
and he soon ascertained that it constituted a new genus. He 
afterwards examined it in person on the spot, transferred it to 
the Botanical Garden at Calcutta, and described it under the 
name of Amherstia nobilis , in compliment to the Countess of 
Amherst. 
