TO THE COURT OF AVA. 
805 
of the East Indies.” In interest, perspicuity, and 
accuracy, Hamilton’s narrative is far inferior to 
that of Fitch, written a hundred and twenty-three 
years earlier. It is flippant, vague, and superficial, 
and bears all the marks of having been composed, 
as he himself acknowledges, “ chiefly from the 
storehouse of his memory.” Pegu, in the time of 
Hamilton, was subject to Ava; and the capital, 
so well described by Fitch, was a ruin. Hamilton 
gives some account of Ava, the Bur man capital, 
which, he states, he had from a Mr. Roger Alison, 
who had been twice on an embassy to the King 
from the Government of Fort St. George. Of 
these embassies there is no account extant that I 
am aware of. 
We have no farther account of the Burman do¬ 
minions until the period of the wars carried on 
between the Burmans and Peguans, in the mid¬ 
dle of the last century; when the East India Com¬ 
pany, in the year 1755, deputed Captain Robert 
Baker, the commander of an East Indiaman, as 
their ambassador. The embassy was to the cele¬ 
brated Alompra, and at a highly interesting mo¬ 
ment of his career, immediately on his conquest 
of Pegu. The East India Company upon this 
occasion appeared rather in a shabby light. Their 
present, for example, was certainly a gift not fit 
for a King. It consisted, according to the am¬ 
bassador’s own account, of the following list :_ 
VOL. II. * x 
