TO THE COURT OF AYA. 
247 
Wun, or the Burmese chief who has charge of 
them, informed me that they amounted in all to 
sixteen thousand. The Cochin-Chinese amount 
to one thousand persons, according to the state¬ 
ment of their Wun, or chief, who was unable, 
however, to state to me under what circumstances 
this colony had first settled in the Burmese ca¬ 
pital. I imagine, however, that the first settlers 
were prisoners carried off when the Siamese ca¬ 
pital was sacked by the Burmese, and during 
other incursions into Siam. 
The number of Chinese settlers at the Bur¬ 
mese capital was stated to me to amount in all to 
no more than three thousand two hundred; viz. 
three thousand for Amarapura, and two hundred 
for Ava and Sagaing, between them. In other 
towns of the empire, where there is any thing 
like trade, a few also are to be found; and, as 
stated elsewhere, some are engaged in working 
silver-mines within the dominions of Ava. Upon 
the whole, the number is extremely trifling, com¬ 
pared to the crowd of settlers of this nation found 
at the Siamese capital, and throughout the rest of 
that country. Political distrust, arising out of 
the neighbourhood of China, has, no doubt, a 
share in discouraging the settlement of the Chi¬ 
nese in Ava. The Chinese settlers, or sojourners 
here, are not only fewer in number, but inferior 
in enterprize, intelligence, and industry, to the 
class known in Siam and the Malay countries. 
