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Sir Arthur P. PI 1 ay re —The History of Pegu. 
[No. 2, 
European voyagers appeared in Burma and Pegu, it is desirable to 
relate what can be gathered regarding those countries from the narratives of 
travellers which have come down to us. They give, as might be expected, 
an insight into the condition of the people, which is not to be obtained from 
the native chronicles. Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
European travellers had arrived in Indo-China, either by land, by sea from 
India, or after the Cape of Good Hope route was discovered, from Malacca. 
At that time there appears to have been no jealousy felt at their presence. 
That feeling was developed throughout Southern Asia by the conquests of 
the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, by which European dominion 
seemed, to the minds of the people, to loom like a dark cloud over their 
destiny. 
After Marco Polo, who came into Burma from Yunan towards the close 
of the thirteenth century, the earliest traveller’s narrative which has come 
down to us, is that of Nicolo Conti, a Venetian, whose travels have been 
edited by Mr. B. St. Major, for the Hakluyt Society. This traveller, 
leaving Europe on a trading expedition, arrived by land at Bussora, and 
sailing from the Persian Gulf reached Cambay. From thence he went to 
Ceylon and Sumatra, and sailed up the Malay coast to Ternasseri, now 
Tenasserim. Passing then by Pegu, he went to Bengal entering the mouth 
of the river Ganges. Bemaining some months in India, he returned 
southward, and sailing apparently from Chittagong, came to the city of 
Bachan (Bakhaing, or in the modern Europeanized form, Arakan), and river 
of the same name. 
From this city he travelled through “ mountains void of all habitations, 
“ for the space of seventeen days, and then through open plains for fifteen 
“ days more, at the end of which time he arrived at a river larger than the 
“ Ganges, which is called by the inhabitants ‘ Dava.’ Having sailed up this 
“ river for the space of a month, he arrived at a city more noble than all 
“ the others, called Ava, and the circumference of which is fifteen miles.” 
It appears most probable from the narrative that Conti was at Ava 
about the year 1430, which would be in the reign of Monhyin Meng-ta-ra, 
the eighth in the list of kings who reigned in Ava. The river Dava, it 
has been suggested by Colonel Yule, was originally written “ Fiume d’ Ava,” 
the name told to Conti for the Erawati on first reaching that river, after 
having crossed the Yoma Mountains. The country of Upper Burma he 
calls ‘ Macinus,’ derived from Mahachin, or Machin, a name which Colonel 
Yule has shown to have been applied by Muhammadan voyagers both to 
China and Indo-China. Conti, no doubt, was in company with Indian traders 
from Bengal, from whom he would learn this name. In the Ain Akbari, it 
is stated that former writers called Pegu ‘ Chin.’ Conti describes very 
correctly two methods employed in Burma for catching wild elephants. 
