“Roads, or anything deserving that name, are wholly unknown in the lower provinces. Footpaths, indeed, lead through the woods in every direction, but requiring great toil and labour to render them applicable to military purposes: they are impassable during the rains, and are only known and frequented by the Carian tribes, who cultivate the lands, are exempt from military service, and may be considered as the slaves of the soil, living in wretched hamlets by themselves, heavily taxed and oppressed by the Burmese authorities, by whom they are treated as altogether an inferior race of beings from their countrymen of Pegu.... The Burmese, in their usual mode of warfare, rarely meet their enemy in the open field. Instructed and trained from their youth in the formation and defence of stockades, in which they display great skill and judgment, their wars have been for many years a series of conquests: every late attempt of the neighbouring nations to check their victorious career had failed, and the Burmese government, at the time of our landing at Rangoon, had subdued and incorporated into their overgrown empire all the petty states by which it was surrounded, and stood confessedly feared and respected even by the Chinese, as a powerful and warlike nation. When opposed to our small but disciplined body of men, it may easily be conceived with how much more care and caution the system to which they owed their fame and reputation as soldiers was pursued—constructing their defences in the most difficult and inaccessible recesses of the jungle, from which, by constant predatory inroads and nightly attacks, they vainly imagined they would ultimately drive us from their country.”[285] The confidence which the king of Ava had in his own military resources is amply shown in a speech reported by Snodgrass.[286] “As to Rangoon,” said the king, “I will take such measures as will prevent the English from even disturbing the women of the town in cooking their rice.” This speech, however, only lends additional force to the remark of the Edinburgh Reviewer, that “the Burmese are much too arrogant even to attempt to improve themselves; and such as their rabble of soldiery is now, such it will be found fifty years hence—utterly unable to stand for a moment against British troops, even when protected by stockades.”[287] The events at present passing in the kingdom of Ava are but a practical demonstration of the truth of this assertion. However, such preparations as could be made were completed. Armies were stockaded in all directions near Rangoon, nor was the river at all neglected. The boatmen, an enterprising and brave part of the community, all attached to the royal interests, were soon in readiness, and a respectable kind of fleet covered the waters of the Irawadi.