Owing to further gross outrages, the Resident was driven to fulfil his threat of breaking off friendly relations with such a ruler; the British flag was hauled down in August 1879, and the Residency evacuated.
There were now no governors to keep order in the provinces: dacoits sprang up, traders were robbed and killed, the people were oppressed, and the land neglected. English merchants, however, continued to carry on their business at their own risk; their boats plied up and down the broad stream, and it was in their hospitable company that Gatacre spent Christmas 1882 at Mandalay.
RANGOON, January 11, 1883.
"MY DEAR FATHER,
"I send you a line to tell you my doings up-country at Christmas time. I was sorry to leave Alice just then, but the opportunity of seeing Mandalay for nothing was a great temptation.
"We went, a party of six, including myself, most of them merchants. We had a steamer to ourselves, and the head of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, a Mr. Swan, who took us, did everything in first-rate style. The River Irrawaddy is a very difficult one to navigate at this dry season of the year, owing to the constantly shifting sands. We did not get aground, luckily, but we passed several steamers fast on the sands; they sometimes remain there six months till the river fills and floats them off. The steamers only drew 4 ft. 6 in. of water.
"We took four and a half days altogether to go up to Mandalay, but I did not join them till the steamer reached Prome, so I had only three days on board going up. The country, as far as we could see from the banks, consists of large rich plains, covered with grass and scrub jungle; very little cultivation, owing to the poverty of the people, but if capital was forthcoming the soil would grow anything. Where the crops were sown the yield was very large. There are low ranges of hills on the right bank, and a highish range, called the Shan Mountains, on the left bank.
"We were told there was but little game inland; we saw plenty of wild-fowl, geese, etc. The poverty of the people is chiefly owing to the King having started lotteries, which bring him in 10,000 Rs., about £800, a day. The people have gone gambling mad, and barter everything they have for tickets—property, children, everything. The King ruins the country by his recklessness in squandering money; he presses the people to such an extent that an up-country Burman will hardly take the trouble to make money.
"Mandalay is nothing but a collection of mud huts and a few masonry buildings, laid out in a beautiful style, all the houses in rows, with large streets running between each at right angles. It was laid out by Italians. None of the roads are made, so the bullock-carts passing along them in the rains have cut them up to a frightful extent; and in the rains they are impassable except quite at the edges, and then only to pedestrians. Mandalay was only built twenty-five years ago; formerly the capital was Ameerapoora, about six miles off, but was changed to Mandalay by order of the King. Ameerapoora is a beautiful site—large trees, grass, and water everywhere. Some of the carved pagodas are very beautiful, but going very much to decay. The custom is, in Burma, that when a man builds a house or pagoda he only can repair it, or his relations; the consequence is that in course of time the building is forgotten and goes to pieces.