d the town, which is perched on a high bluff, overlooking
the coasts, and contains about a thousand houses, built of bamboo,
and covered with palm leaves. Our dress, appearance, language, and
the manner of our arrival, excited great surprise among the natives,
and the liveliest curiosity; but with these sentiments some evidently
mingled no very friendly feelings. The Burmese were then on the eve
of a rupture with the East India Company, a fact which we had not before
known; and mistaking us for English, they supposed, or affected to
suppose, that we belonged to a fleet which was about to invade them,
and that our ship had been sunk before their eyes, by the tutelar divinity
of the country. We were immediately carried before their governor,
or chief magistrate, who ordered our baggage to be searched, and finding
that it consisted principally of silver, he had no doubt of our hostile
intentions. He therefore sent all of us, twenty-two in number, to prison,
separating, however, each one from the rest. My companions were released
the following spring, as I have since learnt, by the invading army of
Great Britain; but it was my ill fortune (if, indeed, after what has
since happened, I can so regard it) to be taken for an officer of high
rank, and to be sent, the third day afterwards, far into the interior,
that I might be more safely kept, and either used as a hostage or offered
for ransom, as circumstances should render advantageous.

The reader is, no doubt, aware that the Burman Empire lies beyond the
Ganges, between the British possessions and the kingdom of Siam; and
that the natives nearly assimilate with those of Hindostan, in language,
manners, religion, and character, except that they are more hardy and
warlike.

I was transported very rapidly in a palanquin, (a sort of decorated
litter,) carried on the shoulders of four men, who, for greater despatch,
were changed every three hours. In this way I travelled thirteen days,
in which time we reached a little village in the mountainous district
between the Irawaddi and Saloon rivers, where I was placed under the
care of an inferior magistrate, called a Mirvoon, who there exercised
the chief authority.

This place, named Mozaun, was romantically situated in a fertile valley,
that seemed to be completely shut in by the mountains. A small river,
a branch of the Saloon, entered it from the west, and, after running
about four miles in nearly a straight direction, turned su