The Burmahs did not, however, attempt to resist the European force, but after a few shots made their retreat. Now, this is a very important fact: and it is a fact which cannot be denied, although it has not been made known. In India there is a nominal force of three hundred thousand men; but they are scattered over such a vast extent of territory, that, allowing they could be made disposable, which they could not, it would require many months before they could be collected, and if the Burmahs despise the sepoys, and the sepoys dread the Burmahs, the only check against the latter will be the European troops; and of them how many can be called out. Not ten thousand, at the very utmost; and the difficulty of collecting them was well known at the commencement of the Burmah war. There certainly is a great difference between attacking others in their own territories, and defending ourselves; but if the Burmahs could hold out against us, as they did, for nearly three years, without arms to cope with us, what might be the consequence if they were supplied with arms and officers by any other nation? We have now a footing in the country, and it must be our object to prevent the ingress of any other, and to keep the Burmahs as quiet and as peaceable as we can. But our very intercourse will enlighten them by degrees, and we have more to dread from that quarter than from all the hordes of Russia or Runjeet Sing, and the whole disaffection of India. As I have more to say relative to the Burmahs, I will, in my next chapter, enter into a short narrative of the expedition to Bassein. It was a bloodless one, although very important in its results: and circumstances occurred in it which will throw much light upon the character of the nation. CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.