The transshipment of ourselves and followers and baggage was duly effected, and in the afternoon of the 18th of January the _Yaynan-Sekia_ left her moorings. We only proceeded as far as Mengoon, on the right bank, a few miles from the capital. Thus far we had the company of Mr. Manouk, an Armenian gentleman, who held the office of _kala woon_, or foreign minister. We duly visited the huge ruin of solid brickwork, which, as Colonel Yule says, represents the extraordinary folly of King Mentaragyi, the founder of Amarapura in 1787. Intended for a gigantic pagoda, it was left unfinished, in consequence of a prediction that its completion would be fatal to the royal founder; the earthquake of 1839 split the huge cube of solid brickwork, and it is now a fantastic ruin. Yule gives the dimensions of the lowest of the five encircling terraces as four hundred feet square; if completed, the whole edifice would have been five hundred feet high. Near this is the great bell, twelve feet high, and sixteen across at the lips, and weighing ninety tons.[9] The most interesting object is the Seebyo pagoda, built by the grandson and successor of Mentaragyi in 1816, and named after his wife. The substructure from which the pagoda rises is circular, and consists of six successive concentric terraces. Each terrace is five feet above the one below, and six feet in breadth, and is surrounded by a stone parapet of a wavy design. In the niches of each terrace are images, fabulous dragons, birds, and _beloos_, or monsters. By a rough measurement the walled enclosure is four hundred yards in circumference, but an open space of thirty-five yards deep intervenes between the wall and the first terrace. The design of the pagoda is intended to represent the mythical Myen Mhoo Doung, or Meru Mountain, the central pillar of the universe, and the seven encircling ranges of mountains, or the six continents, each of which is guarded by a monster, the first by the dragon, the second by the bird Kalon. It might be also suggested that those terraces may represent the six happy abodes of nats which form successive Elysiums below the seat of Brahma. From the rising ground above Mengoon a magnificent panorama unfolds itself: the valley from the dry and treeless Tsagain hills, a few miles to the rear, spreads out for fifteen miles in width to the eastern line of mountains, which, emerging from the north bank of the Myit-ngé, stretch away as far as the eye can reach to the north-east. The long flowing sweep of these summits singularly contrasts with the irregularly peaked outline of the Myait-loung hills, south of the Myit-ngé. Immediately beneath the spectator, the Irawady, curving under the western hills, broadens, till opposite to the capital its main banks are nearly three miles and a half apart.