Writing to me on April 2, 1888, he expressed his satisfaction with our work and with what had been done, in terms which are too flattering to be repeated by me. The constant recurrence of small encounters, small successes, and occasionally small disasters, was very wearisome at the time to all of us, and would be as fatiguing to the reader as to me to relate. I will give the history of some cases, which will be enough to explain how the province settled down. It will be remembered that the Village Regulation became law in October, 1887. It took some time to get the district officers, magistrates as well as police, to make themselves acquainted with it, and still longer to induce some of them to make use of its provisions. In the summer of 1888 the country generally had improved much. Few of the big Bos, or leaders of gangs, were left. But in some districts there was not merely a system of brigandage; it was a system, a long-established system, of government by brigands. The attacks on villages, the murder and torture of headmen and their families, were not so much the symptoms of rebellion against our Government as of the efforts made by the brigands to crush the growing revolt against their tyranny. Hence it came about that in districts where there was little activity on the part of British officers, and where the chief civil officer failed to get information, very little was heard of the dacoits, simply because the people were paying their tribute to the leaders, who did not need to use coercion. Sagaing was one of the worst districts in this respect. It had been under the domination of brigands for years before Thebaw was dethroned. It was held by a score of dacoit leaders, who had a thousand men armed with guns at their call. Each had his own division, in and on which he and his men lived, leaving the villagers alone so long as they paid their dues, and punishing default or defection with a ruthless and savage cruelty that might have made a North American Indian in his worst time weep for human nature. It was brought home to us by hard facts that the question was whether the British Government, or what may be called the Bo Government, were to be masters. The people were, everything considered, wonderfully well off. They found our officers ready to accept their excuses and to remit taxation, or, at the worst, to enforce a mild process of distraint or detention against defaulters. On the other side were the Bos, with fire and sword, and worse if their demands were refused or if aid in any form was given to the foreigners. If the people would have given us information, the dacoit system could have been broken up in a very short time. As they would not, the only course open was to make them fear us more than the dacoits.