RANGOON A GENERATION AGO
Pegu, in later days the
Og orOg eous and maognificent
city of Brangi-
noco, was almost itself
a seaport. There was
a time also when the
ocean brought less to
the gates of Burma
and took less away
than it does in its
iron ships to-day;
when the absence of
a strong hand and a
settled peace within
the country frightened
away Trade, as timid
as she is dar ing;
when war slew a
million of men in a
s in g le generation ;
when civilisation, in
fact, had not yet come
to marshal the r e sources
of the nation,
and to stay.
Moreover, there was
already across the water
a city which is now
forgotten; whose history
is the true history
-*> Its Beginnings
of the beginnings of Rangoon. It was at Syriam
that Rangoon, the city facing the sea and served
by a lordly river, the main artery of a nation, first
came into being. It was the fame of Syriam which
brought men trafficking to the mouth of the river on
which Rangoon is built, and it is the tale of Syriam,
broken by adversity, that the newer city has taken up
with new vitality.
Viewed from this standpoint, Rangoon is no longer
the nouveau riche loudly proclaiming his possessions,
but a city that has been growing for many generations, a
city which has known the flavour of great days in the past.
Syriam, according to the Burmese tale, began its
career as a king’s city five hundred and eighty-seven
years before the birth of Christ. But cities which
depend on kings are prone to lapse into insignificance,
and there is practically nothing known of Syriam till
the discoveries of Vasco da Gama, that great pioneer,
opened the gates of the East to Western adventurers,
and half the galleons of Europe trimmed their sails
for the new El Dorado. The known history of Syriam
is the history of their efforts to capture one of its great
prizes; and it is a strange circumstance that all, until
within the last century, should have failed. But Burma,
in spite of her charms, is apt, from her situation, to be
overlooked by travellers with the lust of India in their
eyes ; and to this circumstance she probably owed her
immunity, , Men straining every nerve for the conquest
of India had little attention to bestow upon her smaller
and less sumptuous neighbour.