In the morning of January 6, 1868, the steamer _Nerbudda_, which had conveyed the party from Rangoon, made fast alongside the landing-place of the present capital of Burma, three miles from the city, of which only the golden spires could be seen above the trees. As our stay was not to exceed three or four days, all the party remained on board until it should be time to embark on the _Yaynan-Sekia_. Beyond a jetty used by the Burmese in the floods, lay the royal steamer undergoing thorough painting and cleaning for our reception. She was moored in a creek, the royal naval depot, where numerous war-boats of the past and the present fleet of royal steamers are laid up in ordinary. For nearly three miles the river banks presented a busy scene. Native boats were loading or discharging cargo; houses extended the whole distance, those nearer the river being tenanted by fishermen. A large suburb stretched inland from the shore; each house was surrounded by a vegetable garden enclosed in a bamboo fence eight to ten feet high, while all were embosomed in magnificent tamarind, plantain, and palm trees. The women were busily engaged weaving silk putzos and tameins in various patterns.[5] Beyond this suburb lay a large flat of alluvial land, devoted to rice fields, some in stubble, from which the grain had just been reaped; in others men and women were irrigating the young crop, now about six inches high, three crops yearly being raised from these lands, which formed, as it were, an island of cultivation, surrounded by houses. The leader of the expedition, Major Sladen, came down to welcome us, and we rode with him to the Residency, situated on the banks of a canal, which runs parallel with the river, and halfway between it and the city. The bank of the canal is lined with houses, and broad streets lead to the city, over numerous strongly built timber bridges, the only defect in which is that the alluvial banks of the canal frequently give way, to the destruction of the bridges and interruption of the traffic. Our road lay through a populous suburb of houses built of teak and supported on piles. To the right lay a quarter occupied by the _demi-monde_; to the left numerous khyoungs, or monasteries, reared their graceful triple concave roofs. Phoongyees, or Buddhist monks, abounded; so did pigs and dogs, both of which are fed daily by a dole from the king, who, as a pious Buddhist, lays up a store of good works by thus preserving animal life. These ubiquitous pigs have given rise to a well-known saying, which tersely expresses the first impression made on the European visitor by the precincts of the capital. Our stay was too short to admit of more than a flying visit to Mandalay, its palace and countless pagodas.