As the junior officer in the Secretariat, I was told off to board the _Thooreah_ on her arrival. I was thus the first officer in Rangoon to see the ex-King and his Queens. King Thebaw was in appearance a Burman of very ordinary type. He looked neither dissipated nor cruel; nor did he show any emotion or feeling of his melancholy position. His somewhat heavy features were unmistakably those of the House of Alaungpăyá. Both he and his elder sister (who died not long ago) closely resembled the familiar picture of Mindôn Min. Queen Sūpăyá-lāt’s features were more finely marked than is usual with Burmese ladies. She bore no appearance of special depravity, but she certainly looked a little shrew. The legend of Sūpăyá-lāt is that she was a monster of cruelty and wickedness, and that she was mainly responsible for all acts of State during her husband’s reign. From all that I heard in Mandalay, where I had many sources of information, for the most part unfriendly to the ex-Queen, I believe that both her wickedness and her influence have been much exaggerated. She seems to have been of a jealous temper, and to have checked any inclination on the part of her husband to follow the footsteps of Mindôn Min. Doubtless it went hard with any maid who attracted the King’s attention. On one of the golden doors of the palace used to be shown bloodstains, marks of a little hand, signs of the tragic end of a Princess who had incurred the Queen’s wrath. (I am aware of the learned explanation of these marks, but the legend is far more interesting.) Beyond this there is no credible evidence of her cruelty, nor is it well established that she ruled the State. Clearly she wielded some influence; but apart from the story of her speech to the Kinwun Mingyi, the most arrogant action imputed to her was that she used to have her meals before the King. Of course, this was very unusual and unseemly for a Burmese woman of any class. It hardly shows that she was paramount in the direction of the kingdom. The royal exiles were transferred to the R.I.M.S. _Clive_, and, after remaining for a few days in Rangoon, were taken to Madras. They were finally transferred to Ratnagiri in the Bombay Presidency, where King Thebaw and Sūpăyá-lāt still live. The poor little second Queen, of whom nothing, good or bad, has ever been heard, died last year. An irresponsible journalist lately suggested that Ratnagiri was an unsuitable place of abode for these fallen dignitaries. It is one of the best places that could be chosen. They and their family have been quite healthy. As they cannot be allowed to return to Burma, they are likely to be as contented there as elsewhere. Two of the Ministers and a few retainers were with difficulty persuaded to accompany their fallen master. The Ministers speedily returned to Mandalay. So did most of the retainers after one little Chin maid had given some trouble by running up a tree and declining to come down, because Sūpăyá-lāt, whose