244 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
ratio as the neighbouring one of Hindustan gene¬ 
rally, it would contain about one hundred inhabi¬ 
tants to the square mile ; or its population would 
be 20,000,000, or five times more than its present 
amount, Were it peopled in the same proportion 
as Bengal, that part of India to which in soil and 
climate it bears the closest analogy, it would con¬ 
tain double this number, or ten times the number 
of its present inhabitants. The consequence of 
this would be, supposing no corresponding im¬ 
provement in the government, that wages falling, 
and the price of corn rising, the people would 
be reduced to a state of poverty and misery, of the 
most abject and degrading description. That 
such is not now the case, but, on the contrary, 
that labour is well rewarded, affords of itself a 
sufficient presumption, that former estimates of 
the populousness of the country were prodigiously 
exaggerated. 
The great diversity of tribes or nations occu¬ 
pying the territory of Ava, differing in language 
—often in religion, manners, and institutions, 
affords a proof at once of the scantiness of popu¬ 
lation, and of the uncivilized condition of the 
inhabitants. The Burmans themselves are said to 
be divided into seven tribes, but these are in 
reality nearly distinct nations. Their names are 
as follow :—Mranma, or the proper Burmese; 
Talain, or the Peguans; Pakaing, or the Arraca- 
nese; the Yau, a people residing to the westward 
