For three miles above and three below the island fishing is prohibited by royal order, and the priests, who feed them daily, assured us that the fish never stray beyond the boundaries of their sanctuary. An offer of fifty rupees failed to secure a single specimen, but it may be here told that on another occasion, under cover of night, and without Burmese observation, one was hooked, and, though not easily, landed, photographed, and duly preserved. Two miles above the island we stopped at Thingadaw to coal. This is a depot for the produce of the coal mines, which having been accidentally discovered by some hunters were being worked by the king. We set out to visit a newly opened mine, said to be two miles distant, but failed to find it after a walk of two hours over a broken undulating country covered with dense tree and bamboo jungle. The soil is poor and sandy, save in hollows, which afford good grazing to ponies and cattle. Fossilised wood abounds all over the surface, and soft white and reddish sandstones crop out, so soft that the cart wheels cut them into deep ruts. In these places the surface presented a remarkable appearance, being covered with symmetrical pillars of soft reddish sand, two inches high, and capped by a hard ashen-grey top of the consistence of stone, and as large as a penny piece. The little pillars in many places had crumbled away, and the soil was strewed with the little caps, giving it the appearance of an ash heap. In a later visit to the coal district, made from Kabyuet, a little south of Theehadaw, we had the assistance of the headman of the mines, who was most anxious to show us everything and secure a good report to the king. At the first mine, called Lek-ope-bin, five miles from the river, the coal-bed, six feet thick, crops out in a hollow, and dips south-west at an angle of thirty-five degrees. A little to the north-east is the Ket-zu-bin mine, said to yield the best coal. During our visit a few men were quarrying the coal with common wood axes and wooden-handled chisels, so that they could only win a small quantity of broken coal. Under proper management these mines could give an abundant supply of useful fuel. We learned that the sand of an adjacent stream is washed for gold, and a single worker can make 303 _yuey_ = 3_s._ per diem. The black sand of the Pon-nah, a stream falling into the Irawady, is also washed for gold, which it is said to yield in large quantities at a place two days’ journey up the stream. On the 17th of January, we reached the northern entrance of the defile, marked by two prominent headlands--the western one crowned by the pagoda of Malé, or Man-lé, formerly Muang-lé, and the eastern by those of the old Shan town of Tsampenago, above which none but Chinese could formerly trade.[11]