For three miles above and three below the island fishing is prohibited by royal order, and the priests, who feed them daily, assured us that the fish never stray beyond the boundaries of their sanctuary. An offer of fifty rupees failed to secure a single specimen, but it may be here told that on another occasion, under cover of night, and without Burmese observation, one was hooked, and, though not easily, landed, photographed, and duly preserved. Two miles above the island we stopped at Thingadaw to coal. This is a depot for the produce of the coal mines, which having been accidentally discovered by some hunters were being worked by the king.
We set out to visit a newly opened mine, said to be two miles distant, but failed to find it after a walk of two hours over a broken undulating country covered with dense tree and bamboo jungle. The soil is poor and sandy, save in hollows, which afford good grazing to ponies and cattle. Fossilised wood abounds all over the surface, and soft white and reddish sandstones crop out, so soft that the cart wheels cut them into deep ruts. In these places the surface presented a remarkable appearance, being covered with symmetrical pillars of soft reddish sand, two inches high, and capped by a hard ashen-grey top of the consistence of stone, and as large as a penny piece. The little pillars in many places had crumbled away, and the soil was strewed with the little caps, giving it the appearance of an ash heap. In a later visit to the coal district, made from Kabyuet, a little south of Theehadaw, we had the assistance of the headman of the mines, who was most anxious to show us everything and secure a good report to the king.
At the first mine, called Lek-ope-bin, five miles from the river, the coal-bed, six feet thick, crops out in a hollow, and dips south-west at an angle of thirty-five degrees. A little to the north-east is the Ket-zu-bin mine, said to yield the best coal. During our visit a few men were quarrying the coal with common wood axes and wooden-handled chisels, so that they could only win a small quantity of broken coal. Under proper management these mines could give an abundant supply of useful fuel. We learned that the sand of an adjacent stream is washed for gold, and a single worker can make 303 yuey = 3s. per diem.
The black sand of the Pon-nah, a stream falling into the Irawady, is also washed for gold, which it is said to yield in large quantities at a place two days’ journey up the stream.
On the 17th of January, we reached the northern entrance of the defile, marked by two prominent headlands—the western one crowned by the pagoda of Malé, or Man-lé, formerly Muang-lé, and the eastern by those of the old Shan town of Tsampenago, above which none but Chinese could formerly trade.[11]
Malé contains about three hundred houses, and is the customs port for clearing boats bound from Bhamô to Mandalay, and the centre of a considerable trade in bamboo mats, sesamum oil, and jaggery. From it we beheld rising to the eastward the fine peaked mountains of Shuay-toung, about six thousand feet high, on which snow is said to lie in the winter.
Above Malé the river widens to a great breadth, with numerous islands, as far as Khyan-Nhyat. Thence it contracts to an unbroken stream about one hundred yards wide, flowing for twenty-two miles between high, well wooded banks.
Having halted at Tsinuhat, a little village to the south of a long promontory, on which are the ruins of Tagoung and Old Pagan, we made a short excursion to the sites of these ancient capitals. According to the Burmese chronicles, Tagoung was founded by Abhi-rája—of the Shakya kings of Kappilawot—who fled before the invasion of his country by the king of Kauthala or Oudh. After the death of Abhi-rája the succession was disputed by his two sons. They agreed that each should endeavour to construct a large building in one night, and that the crown should belong to him whose building should be found completed by the morning. As usual in legends, the younger son outwitted the elder. He artfully set up a framework of bamboos and planks, covered with cloth and whitewashed over, so as to present the semblance of a finished building. The elder brother, believing himself to have been vanquished by the aid of nats or demons, migrated to Pegu, and finally settled in the city of Arracan (Diniawadee).
The younger son assumed the throne at Tagoung, and was succeeded by thirty-three kings. An inroad of Tartars and Chinese, said to have come from Kandahar,[12] destroyed the city and expelled the last of the dynasty, who had married Nagazein, whose name indicates one of the mythical serpent race. This event may be referred to the century preceding the Christian era, and, according to the late Dr. Mason, must have occurred after the Tartar conquest of Bactria.[13]
After the death of the Tagoung king, one portion of his people migrated eastwards and founded the Shan states. Another, under the widowed queen Nagazein, settled on the river Malé. After the advent of Gaudama and the second overthrow of the cities of the Shakya kings, one of their race, named Daza-Yázá, migrated to Malé, and, having there found and married Nagazein, founded Upper or Old Pagan. A dense forest of magnificent timber and thousands of seedling eng trees surrounds and covers the sites and ruins of the ancient cities, of which nothing now remains but low lines and shapeless masses of brickwork. Near them stand pagodas of later date, still in tolerable preservation. Of the most ancient within the bounds of Old Pagan, only a single wall remained, behind a seated Buddha eight feet high. From the former we obtained small metal images of Buddha, and from the pagoda in Old Pagan bricks bearing in relief an image of Gaudama as the preceding Buddha. One of these was exactly the same as that described by Captain Hannay. Each bears an inscription in the old Devanagari character, beginning, “Ye Dhammá.”