TO THE COURT OF AYA. 
T9 
the maund. This is a list of valuable indigenous 
productions which can scarcely be matched in any 
other part of India. 
“ On the morning of the 5th, we went through 
the town of Martaban, a long, straggling, and 
mean place, consisting of miserable huts," accor¬ 
ding to the custom of the country. It is situated 
at the foot of a conical hill, and is said to have 
contained a population of nine thousand souls, 
chiefly Talains. The Chinese are very few in 
number, a fact which, in a country understocked 
with inhabitants, calculated by nature for agri¬ 
cultural and commercial pursuits, and removed 
from their own at no very inconvenient distance, 
must be considered the certain sign of a bad go¬ 
vernment. We found the inhabitants preparing 
to move across to the British side of the Saluen. 
Such is the poverty, and such are the unsettled 
habits produced by oppression, that these emi¬ 
grations are no very arduous undertaking to the 
Peguans. Yesterday we heard that one thousand 
two hundred families from the district of Zingai, 
with three thousand head of cattle, had arrived 
on the banks of the Saluen with the intention of 
crossing over into the British territory, there to 
establish themselves. But these are trifling emi¬ 
grations in comparison with the great one which 
took place from the same quarter, in 1816, into the 
Siamese territory, and which, at the lowest com¬ 
putation, is said to have amounted to forty thou- 
