There is certainly nothing which better shows the little real self-reliance possessed by the Burmese than the idle manner in which they neglected to pursue an advantage. One thing must, however, be always borne in mind, that up to this time they had always been engaged with energies whose fate might be decided by a single skirmish, or one complete rout. They had yet to learn how persevering the efforts of a civilised state are in war. They had now indeed met their masters, and were about to feel their inferiority; for the Indian government at Calcutta were already carrying out an excellent and well-conceived idea, the history of the progress of which it is now my office to relate. But first, it were not inapposite to listen to the following account of the Burmese war by the Burmese themselves; it will afford some amusement, though its strict truth cannot fail to be somewhat doubted. “In the years 1186 and 1187,” according to the Royal Historiographer, “the Kula-pyee, or white strangers of the West, fastened a quarrel upon the Lord of the Golden Palace. They landed at Rangoon, took that place at Prome, and were permitted to advance as far as Yandabo; for the king, from motives of piety and regard to life, made no effort whatever to oppose them. The strangers had spent vast sums of money in their enterprise; and by the time they reached Yandabo, their resources were exhausted, and they were in great distress. They petitioned the king, who, in his clemency and generosity, sent them large sums of money to pay their expenses back, and ordered them out of the country.”[273] Ere I proceed to give the English account, I think it right to let the Burmans speak for themselves; and therefore I have placed this before the serious history, just as, at Richardson’s, a comic song, by way of a _bonne bouche_, is placed before the deep tragedy, “Just a-goin’ to begin.”