After taking possession of the place, proclamations were immediately sent out among the inhabitants through a few stragglers, assuring the townspeople of protection, in the hope of inducing them to return. “The strictest orders were issued to prevent plunder, and a Burman having claimed several head of cattle which had been seized for the use of the army, they were immediately restored, in order to prove the sincerity of our protestations; but none of the inhabitants availed themselves of our offers, and we understood that the officers of government were driving the women and children into the interior, as hostages for the good conduct of the men.”[282] The soldiers while at Rangoon were billeted in a long street which leads from the Dagon Pagoda to Rangoon, and in this exposed situation, without fresh supplies, they had to await the arrival of information regarding the position assumed by the Burmese government. Space will not permit me to refer to the many anxieties which had to be considered in regard to the present position of our troops, but the reader will find them amply discussed in Snodgrass;[283] however, I shall lay before the reader a few remarks of that gentleman, which will amply show the many difficulties which beset the army. “The enemy’s troops and new-raised levies were gradually collecting in our front from all parts of the kingdom; a cordon was speedily formed around our cantonments, capable, indeed, of being forced at every point, but possessing, in a remarkable degree, all the qualities requisite for harassing and wearing out in fruitless exertions the strength and energies of European or Indian troops. Hid from our crew on every side in the darkness of a deep, and, to regular bodies, impenetrable forest, far beyond which the inhabitants and all the cattle of the Rangoon district had been driven, the Burmese chiefs carried on their operation and matured their future schemes with vigilance, secrecy, and activity. Neither rumour nor intelligence of what was passing within his posts ever reached us. Beyond the invisible line which circumscribed our position, all was mystery or vague conjecture.[284].... To form a correct idea of the difficulties which opposed the progress of the invading army, even had it been provided with land-carriage and landed at the fine season of the year, it is necessary to make some allusion to the natural obstacles which the country presented, and to the mode of warfare generally practised by the Burmese. Henzawaddy, or the province of Rangoon, is a delta, formed by the mouths of the Irrawaddy, and, with the exception of some considerable plains of rice-grounds, is covered by a thick and tenacious jungle, interspersed by numerous creeks and rivers, from whose wooded banks an enemy may, unseen and unexposed, render their passage difficult and destructive.