ter, whether his nurture made him a more reasonable
being than are elephants in general.

How one's thoughts fly away over time and space! What a rush of
incidents crowd into my memory, merely from having mentioned this
circumstance of the white elephant. I did once intend to have written a
narrative of what passed during our sojourn in that country, for I saw
more of the inhabitants than most people; but others have forestalled
me, and it is now too late. Nevertheless, it will perhaps amuse the
reader, if, without entering into the military details, I mention a few
of the operations and scenes which then occurred. It shall be so then,
and we will discourse a little about the Burmahs.

An Armenian merchant who resided there told me a story one day which was
curious. The King of Pegu was possessed of the most splendid ruby in
the world, both as to size and colour. This was well known; it was the
boast of the nation. When the Burmahs subdued the kingdom of Pegu, the
old king with all his family were taken prisoners, vast treasure was
also captured, but the great ruby was not to be found, notwithstanding
the torture and beheading of thousands. With the usual barbarity of
these countries, the old king, a miserable paralytic little man, was
stripped naked and confined in an iron cage, which I saw when I was at
Rangoon. In this confinement he lived for ten or twelve years, every
festival day being brought out and exposed to the derision of the
populace. At last he died, and his body was thrown out to be devoured
by the dogs and birds of prey. One of the soldiers who assisted to drag
the body out of the cage, turned it over with his foot, and perceived
that his right hand grasped a hump of _damma_, (a sort of pitch,) which
curiosity induced the Burmah to force out with the point of his spear.
This had been observed before, but the Burmahs, who are very
superstitions and carry about them all sorts of charms, imagined it to
be a charm for his paralysis or palsy with which he was afflicted, and
therefore had allowed him to retain it. But when the Burmah took it up,
the weight of it convinced him that it was not all damma: he examined
it, and found that it was the great ruby of the Pegu kingdom which had
been lost, and which the old man had for so many years, in a state of
nudity and incarceration, held in his left hand. I asked one of the
Burmah chiefs whether this ruby now in the possession of the King of Ava
was s