The Burmese Government was throughout characterised by oppression and misrule. No fixed salaries were paid to officials, but princes, ministers, queens, concubines and favourites were supported by the grant of a province, and known by the title of “Myo-tsa” (province-eater), a title which only too aptly indicated its own meaning. It was the policy of the Myo-tsa to squeeze as much revenue as he could out of the people, in order to pay the required amount at Mandalay and _to pay himself_. Subordinate to the province-eater came the functionaries in charge of circles of villages, and then of the individual villages; and in each case it was the same thing, all intent on making as much as they could out of it. This was with regard to the tax levied on each family or house. The same primitive and essentially vicious methods applied to the other items of taxation—viz., that on produce, fees on law cases, and occasionally, extraordinary contributions to Government for special needs—gave rise to the same kind of fleecing of the people. Towards the end of King Theebaw’s reign things grew worse and worse. The sale of monopolies became very common, and state lotteries for the benefit of the revenue did great harm amongst a people naturally fond of gambling. When at last Burmese rule came to an end it was a clearing away of much that was rotten and hopelessly out of date, and on the whole it was a great blessing to the people to substitute for it British rule. CHAPTER XIV. _BURMESE HOME LIFE._ The Countess of Dufferin’s fund for the training of female nurses in midwifery, for the benefit of women in the East, is nowhere more sorely needed than it is in Burma, for there are among the Burmans, in connection with that critical period, usages that render some more enlightened method of treatment urgently to be desired. Immediately on the birth of the child, it is the earnest endeavour of those in charge to place the mother as near as possible to a very large fire. Hot bricks are applied, rugs and blankets are piled upon her, irrespective of the state of the weather, in a country where for two months of the year the thermometer stands at 110° in the shade of the verandah. This continues for seven days, and is with a view to dispel the noxious humours supposed to be generated. This treatment, in addition to the drinking of much medicine at the same time, renders that crisis of life more than usually hazardous to the mother. [Illustration: “EVERY BURMAN YOUTH, AS HE GROWS UP, IS TATTOOED FROM THE WAIST TO THE KNEES.”]