An idea prevails indeed among the natives that the peacock follows such animals, but its only foundation lies in the coincidence that both love solitude. I remember on one occasion coming upon some hundreds of these beautiful birds committing rare havoc in a cultivated field. But they soon took cognizance of the intruder, and I had only just time to shoot a male and a young female, when all traces of them had vanished; the former for the sake of his feathers, the latter for the table. Certain shady trees bordering a canal near our encampment turned out to be a favourite roosting-place for them, but ere they could settle down for the night a general scrimmage would take place for the best seats: fine feathers may make fine birds, but do not always cover amiable dispositions—not, at least, in the _ornithological_ biped! Oh, my digressions! You wanted to hear about Burmah and its inhabitants, and here I have been discoursing on music and peacocks! Being subject to a heavy annual rainfall, all their dwellings are built on piles, and are thereby raised to several feet above the ground. This expedient, a sanitary precaution against damp floorings and emanations from the soil, a _sine quâ non_, in fact, under such climatic conditions, gave a special character to their villages, which were constructed for the most part of bamboos. But while steering clear of Scylla, they ran into Charybdis. Fire played great havoc with them, and its annual course was “short, sharp, and decisive.” The wonder was that it did not occur a dozen times a year instead of once; and I doubt whether a hydrant close at hand, with an unlimited supply of water, would have been of any real service. They never took the least precaution with regard to fire, although their houses, furniture, and mats, and all consisted of nothing but bamboo; perhaps they thought that the annual fire was as inevitable as the annual monsoon. Indeed—to borrow an illustration from our own historians of the seventeenth century—I am strongly of opinion that this annual conflagration stifled the origin and prevented the spread of epidemic disease. Witness the fact that, a few years later, when more substantial buildings had taken the place of these flimsy wooden structures, thereby reducing such visitations to a minimum, cholera raged with great virulence, a disease hitherto almost unknown to the country, where doctors had been occupied chiefly with cases of fever and dysentery. I have known a regiment up to its full strength so ravaged by these complaints as not to be able to muster a hundred effective bayonets after a few months’ residence in a certain part of the country. The annual incineration of Rangoon therefore possessed a redeeming feature, and was certainly a “thing of beauty” while it lasted.