The route lay through the street called Ambassador's Row,--the very one by which the Chinese Envoys entered Amarapoora sixty years before,--toward the western central gate of the city. From lake to palace the way was fenced with troops; but such troops!--fishermen and convicts, old men and boys,--probably old women too, and girls,--the he and she Warts, Mouldys, Shadows, Feebles, and Bullcalfs of the Immortal City. At every cross street were officers on elephants, "men in gilt Mambrino helmets and mountebank costumes, decked out with triple buckram capes, and shoulder lappets, and paltry embroidery." But there were men in red jackets and _papier-maché_ helmets accompanying the procession, who appeared to be more at home with their arms than these motley musketeers. Inside the city the streets were flooded with water from a heavy rain the night before, and here the soldiers were propped on little stools of bamboo, to keep them out of the mud, while the officers occupied higher perches, each with his spittoon and his box of betel. A great rabble of spectators, of whom many were women,--not all uncomely or shabbily attired,--peeped through the endless white lattice, or thronged the cross-streets,--all still and silent, with wonder or suspicion. Just as the escort, with fixed bayonets and martial music, turned up the street leading to the eastern gate of the palace, and, halting, faced inward for the party to pass, the procession of the Ein-shé-men, or heir apparent, (Lord of the Eastern Palace,) came suddenly up from another road, and crossed before them to enter the enclosure,--a stale trick of Burmese jealousy and insolence to keep them waiting at the palace gate. Precedent, which is a god in Burmah, has bestowed a sort of respectability upon this exploit in bad manners, every British envoy having been treated so, from Fleetwood to Phayre. The prince himself was conspicuous in a massive gilded litter, borne by many sturdy fellows elaborately tattooed, while eight long-shafted gold umbrellas flashed over his head. When he had entered the gate, and it was closed behind him, his retinue, consisting of several hundred soldiers, performed some intricate and tedious evolutions, countermarching round an open circle, with the manifest purpose of magnifying the apparent strength of the force, as well as of prolonging the detention of the unwelcome strangers. When Colonel Burney, who was sent as Resident to Ava in 1830, was detained by the same manoeuvre at the stockade which encircles the palace wall, some of his party were sharp enough to discover that many of the retainers, as well as of the elephants and bands of music, after passing in the suite of one prince, made a sly circuit to the rear, and appeared as part of the tail of another prince.