170 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ February 23, It 91. 
fashion as prevailed when the Pharaohs ruled over Egypt or the 
Assyrian kings over Nineveh, thousands of years ago. At last the 
train rolled into the fine station of Mandalay, and in five minutes 
we were settled in the Dak Bungalow or Government rest house, 
and our servants unpacking our ample supplies of eatables and 
drinkables. The old city was enclosed within thick battlemented 
walls of brick and rubble 20 feet high, and occupied a space 
IJ mile square ; these are surrounded by a large moat some 
GO yards wide, which is covered with sheets of purple Lotus 
flowers, the Sacred Lily of the East. The centre of this space was 
and is marked by the king’s palace and a vast collection of 
minor buildings occupied by his queens, ministers, and officers of 
high and low degree, and round these lie extensive grounds, 
gardens, and artificial lakes, the whole being formerly surrounded 
by an inner wall and a great palisade of baulks of teak. The 
entire city was indescribably filthy, and the only scavengers were 
herds of black pigs, who performed their sanitary offices even within 
the precincts of the palace. The people were extremely poor, 
while the king and ministers rolled in ill-gotten riches, nor was 
there any inducement for the humbler classes to improve their 
condition, for the slightest sign of prosperity was but the signal 
for fresh exaction ; even for worse than exaction, for sudden and 
violent deaths were common, and many a corpse found its last 
resting place among the Lotus stems of the great moat, or was 
cast out headless among the bushes outside. The first thing the 
English did after the easy cajiture of Mandalay in 1886 was to evict 
the entire population, and bid them take up their quarters outside 
the walls. This sounds a harsh proceeding, but it was a necessity 
alike for sanitary and military reasons. Moreover, as a Burman 
builds a house in three days, and as everyone received fair money 
compensation, and there were no vested rights of publicans or 
others to be considered, no hardship whatever was inflicted. 
Now broad roads intersect the great square space, and the barracks 
of our troops and the bungalows of the officials and other European 
dwellers in Mandalay alone occupy it, save that the old palaces 
remain intact. The queen’s palace is converted into the English 
club, and many of the other buildings are occupied as offices of the 
military and civil powers. But a large part of the minor cjuarters 
of the old regime have been swept away, being found to be in a 
condition of general ramshackle, which involved either extensive 
repairs (which were out of the question) or removal before they 
tumbled to pieces of themselves. 
Vast rambling buildings are these old king’s palaces ; audience 
and throne rooms, banqueting halls, and chambers for queens, 
concubines, ministers, and officers, all built of teak, with endless 
carving and decoration, consisting of geometric patterns worked 
mainly in pieces of silvered glass, intermingled with profuse 
gilding and acres of vermilion, the whole rude in execution but 
producing an effect of barbaric richness and splendour. Over the 
end of the huge pile rises a gilded Chinese pagoda-like tower of 
seven lofty storeys, each narrower than the one below it, and of 
great height, glittering against the blue sky. We stood on the 
raised dais on to which Theebaw was wont to step through a 
gorgeously decorated doorway from his private audience room to 
give his commands to the crowd of grovelling courtiers who thronged 
the outer court below, and touched the ground with their foreheads 
as token of servile obedience when he appeared, and on a door 
close by we saw the marks of a bloody hand, which told where one 
of his queens had executed summary vengeance on a maid in 
waiting whom she suspected of casting too affectionate a glance on 
her own amiable spouse. V/e wandered among the Palm groves of 
the gardens, and gathered Ferns and Selaginellas in the summer¬ 
house in which Theebaw gave himself up to his captors. These 
and many other interesting things we saw in and about the imperial 
palaces, but I must hasten to a close, and only tell you in con¬ 
clusion of what, for want of a better term, I must call the 
ecclesiastical architecture of the place. In Theebaw’s time he 
himself maintained 1000 brethren or monks, and when a new 
monastery was required or an old one needed repair or decoration 
an extra turn of the imperial screw or the decapitation of a 
minister and seizure of his wealth, generally as ill gotten as that 
of his master, furnished the needful funds to this pious Defender 
of the Faith. 
Time fails me, and power is denied me to describe in detail 
the marvellous religious buildings which rose by scores in these 
palmy days of state-protected Buddhism. Of these*three, the King’s, 
the Queen’s, and the Golden Kyoung (fig. 31) stand pre-eminent 
for beauty. Supported on a vast framework of teak timbers— 
whole trunks of forest trees—they rise in tiers of woodwork 
adorned by the most skilful carving, and are surmounted by spires 
or towers similar to the one which forms the crowning adornment 
of the king’s palace, and from floor to topmost pinnacle every foot 
is gilded, so that they rise in fairy delicacy of intricate fretwork 
tier upon tier, and storey upon storey, and shine in the tropic sun 
against the cloudless sky, until the eye almost aches with excess 
of light and beauty. Within are temples, images of Buddha,, 
dormitories for the priests, libraries of sacred literature. Yellow 
robed abbots, brethren, and acolytes pace round the corridors 
which always run round the first stage of these monasteries, or sit 
in the shade printing in quaint characters on prepared Palm leaves 
fresh additions to their libraries, and everywhere these good 
people received us with dignified and studied courtesy, which we- 
endeavoured to reciprocate. 
Then there is the great and sacred structure known as 451 
Pagodas, where a central pagoda is surrounded by 450 miniature- 
ones, each with a chamber in its base where stands a stone sorne- 
thing like a tombstone, but broader at top than bottom, on which- 
is carved a passage from the Buddhist scriptures—a pious work 
executed some centuries ago by a Burmese king, who declared 
that he would make these writings imperishable for all time. Finally 
there is the wonderful Aracan Pagoda, its entrance guarded by 
huge lion figures 40 feet high, strange and barbaric, but inde¬ 
scribable vzithin my limits, with its great bronze Buddha, its- 
thousands of strange votive offerings, its approach through galleries- 
and chambers horrible with pictures of an Inferno more ghastly 
than that which Dante painted in words, and above all its wonder¬ 
ful assemblage of pilgrims and devotees of wild aspect and strange 
physiognomy—men and women from the plains and hills of the 
northern extremity of Upper Burma, their habits and ornaments- 
as quaint and barbaric as themselves, for what in sacred associa¬ 
tions the Great Schway Dagon of Rangoon is to the people of 
Lower Burma and Ceylon, the same is the Aracan Pagoda of 
Mandalay to the tribes of Upper Burma and the great tracts of 
country between it and the border of China. 
I must not dwell on our return to Rangoon or describe the- 
wonders of tropical vegetation which we saw on the way home at 
the foot of the vast peaks of the Himalayas ; the Tree Ferns- 
70 feet high and the Gold Ferns which we gathered from our seats 
on the Darjeeling railway ; the sights of Calcutta or the broad- 
waters of the Hoogly and the Ganges ; the festivals we witnessed 
in the sacred city of Benares, its temples and its crowds of devotees,, 
its holy fakirs, some with withered arms, others with amputated 
fingers, and others again wiih nails grown through from the palm- 
to the back of the hand ; the engrossing interest of the Residency 
at Lucknow and the fatal weU at Cawnpore ; the palaces of Jeypore ;• 
and the thousand wonders oc our journey home across India. 
Were I to do so, long before I had finished my recital, you would 
reverse the words of my Burmese friends, and say, “You can go,, 
but don’t come again.” 
I trust I have said enough to show you how interesting a country 
farther India is and how charming are its people. I would add that 
its future is one of assured and increasing prosperity. In four 
years the revenue of our new province alone has increased fourfold 
in many parts three crops of Rice are grown in the year, and every¬ 
where a clearance in the jungle is enough to convert the fertile soil 
into a garden of abundance. It is bounded on the east by a great 
country accessible to railways, w’hose people are born traders 
desirous of intercourse with Europeans, and through which a single 
line would suffice to tap the commercial wealth of the southern 
states of the great Chinese empire. 
Outrage and daooity—that form of crime of which we hear so 
much more here than is known there—vanish before the just and 
firm government of our commissioners. Stockades are falling to- 
decay, being no longer a needful protection to the villages. The 
people who two years ago dared not be even suspected of possessing 
more than the bare necessities of life, and who were forbidden by 
sumptuary laws from building anything better than a hovel, are 
already surrounding themselves with evidences of prosperity,, 
exercising their crafts of growing, dyeing, and weaving silk ;; 
embroidering cloth ; cultivating Rice, Maize, and Sugarcane in their 
fields. Oranges in their gardens ; dwelling in comfortable houses, of 
which formerly they dared scarcely to dream ; following their 
various occupations in peace and security ; travelling by thousands 
up and down the country in pursuit of their several callings ;; 
clearing, planting, trading, and prospering. 
Already this far-ofE country is the richest, yes by far the richest 
of our Oriental possessions. It is already, and it is destined to- 
remain, so long as English hearts are true and English heads are 
strong, the brightest jewel in the Crown of our beloved Queen. 
Empress of India. 
STACEYS TUBERIFERA (CROSNES DU JAPON 
OF THE FRENCH). 
During the last year or two much has been said and contra¬ 
dictory opinions have been expressed concerning this new Japanese 
vegetable. We were inclined to judge for ourselves, and last spring 
we planted a line of tubers in one of our gardens. The plants 
