The visits of ceremony to the four Woongyis, and to old Moung Pathee, the Nan-ma-dau Woon, were marked by circumstances of peculiar interest. At the house of the Magwé Menghi (Great Prince of Magwé), the most intellectual and influential of the Woongyis, the floor was laid with carpets, and chairs for the visitors were set at a long table. The large silk curtain which separated the reception-room from the women's apartment was partly raised at one corner; and there, on carpets, were seated all the ladies of the family. Breakfast was served, at first in English fashion, with bread and butter, muffins and tarts. But presently the hospitable Woongyi called out cheerily, "Come, come! they know an English breakfast well enough; let us have Burmese dishes now." Then came sweetmeats and dainties of various kinds, and in profusion,--in all, fifty-seven dishes. After the breakfast the usual Burmese dessert of betel-nut, pawn, pickled tea,[12] salted ginger in small strips, fried garlic, walnuts without the shells, roasted groundnuts, &c., on little gold and silver dishes; and, last of all, cheroots. The Woongyi led in his wife, and would have her attempt an English chair, next the Envoy; but the old lady, after several amiable efforts to reconcile herself to the foreign situation, bravely tucked in her scanty robes, and doubled her legs under her. From the Magwé Menghi's they passed to the houses of the Mein-loung, the Myo-doung, and the Pakhán Menghi, (all Woonghis,) and of the venerable Nan-ma-dau Woon,--breakfasting at each. At the residence of the Pakhán Menghi several ladies joined the party at table; these were the Woongyi's wife, who had been one of Tharawadi's queens, with her mother and two sisters,--all really lady-like and self-possessed, fairer than the generality of Burmese women, and of delicate and graceful figures, though not pretty. They wore the usual _tawein_, or narrow petticoat of gorgeously striped silk, polka jackets of thin white muslin, and ornaments of extraordinary brilliancy. Their ear-cylinders were gold; but instead of being open tubes, as commonly worn at the capital, they were closed in front, and set with one large cut diamond, ruby, or emerald, surrounded by smaller brilliants. The necklace consisted of a narrow chain of gold, plain, or set with pearls, and bearing table diamonds in two rows, one fixed and the other pendent. They also wore superb rings, in which were rubies of noble size. Among the ladies seated on the ground were two strongly resembling one another, and with the receding forehead which marks all the descendants of Alompra. These were daughters of the Mekhara-men, that uncle of King Tharawadi who used to translate articles from Rees's Cyclopædia into Burmese, and who assisted Mr. Lane, a merchant of Ava, in the compilation of the English and Burmese Dictionary which bears the name of the latter.