The principal native bankers are the Hindu Chetties from the Madras Presidency. They are a remarkable class of people, very wealthy, very keen at business, men of their word in all transactions, being fully alive to the value of keeping their credit by an unstained reputation in finances; and if one firm of their community find it difficult to make their payments, the rest of the Chetty firms will usually come to their help, to save the reputation of the whole. Yet with all this they dress, eat and live as if they had a very meagre income, and have the appearance of mere savages. The vast array of naked skin they show is almost black in complexion, and they have almost no education beyond the bare necessities of finance. Their food is of the simplest; their houses, all on the two sides of one street to be near each other, are substantially built to protect them from thieves, but almost devoid of all furniture. They are not negligent of religion, for as soon as they came they secured land and built a Hindu temple. Their dress, consisting of two pieces of thin white cotton cloth, one round the waist and the other loosely thrown over one shoulder, could be bought for three-and-sixpence; the closely shaven head has no covering, and the feet none. Such is the Tamil Chetty, the very last man in all Mandalay you would take for a wealthy money-lender; but he is in great request with the improvident Burmans who possess any property upon which it is possible to borrow. The Chetties came over to Mandalay when the country was annexed; their keen business instincts telling them two things—one, that there would now be plenty of business doing; the other, that it would now be safe to come and do it. The prospects of those who get into their clutches are not bright. The price of money is very high in the East. The late Earl of Beaconsfield speaks somewhere of “the sweet simplicity of the three per cents,” but the Tamil Chetty considers twenty-five per cent. per annum much simpler.