it. Some, like Colonel Symes, the British Ambassador
who visited Burma a hundred years ago, give it a
character of importance ; others, like the officers who
accompanied the British Army to Burma in 1825, find
little to say in its favour. In Symes’ day it lay upon
the river shore and was a mile long and a third of a
mile wide. The inner citadel was surrounded by an
indifferent stockade, the streets were well paved, but
interior to those of Pegu. All the officers of Government,
the most opulent merchants, and persons of consideration
lived within the stockade. It had three
w'harves, and close to one of these there were “ two
commodious wooden houses, used by the merchants as
an exchange, where they usually meet in the cool of
the morning and evening O O to converse and transact
business.”
“ We had been so accustomed,” wrote Major Snodgrass
some thirty years later, “ to hear Rangoon spoken
of as a place of great trade and commercial importance,
that we could not fail to feel disappointed at its mean
and poor appearance. We had talked of its Custom
House, its dockyards, and its harbour, until our imaginations
led us to anticipate, if not splendour, at least
some visible sign of a flourishing commercial city ; but
however humble our expectations might have been,
they must still have fallen short of the miserable and
desolate picture which the place presented when first
occupied by the British troops. The town, if a vast
assemblage of wooden huts may be dignified with that
name, is surrounded by a wooden stockade, from sixteen
62
to eighteen feet in
height, which effectually
shuts out all view of the
fine river which runs
past it, and gives it a
confined and insalubrious
appearance.
There are a few brick
houses, chiefly belonging
to Europeans, within
the stockade, upon
which a heavy tax is
levied ; and they are
only permitted to be
built by special authority
from the Government,
which is but
seldom granted. The
Custom House, the
principal building in
the place, seemed fast
tottering into ruins.
One solitary hull upon
the stocks marked the
dockyard, and a few
coasting vessels and
country canoes were
the only craft found in
this great commercial
mart of India beyond
8
I Jißl
I1 wwm
II