Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/74

 {{center|

CHAPTER IV
}}

Almost from the moment when Lord Amherst addressed himself to the duties of his high office, the contingency of war with Burma occupied his thoughts. The occupation of Bengal had brought the authority of the Calcutta Government into contact at many far distant points with the huge empire over which the successors of Alompra either held sway or claimed sovereignty. Far away to the north the officers of the Company in what was then the outlandish district of Rangpur looked across with curiosity rather than with covetousness to the great valley of Assam. More to the south the British district of Sylhet marched with Cachar. On the seaboard of the Bay of Bengal, Chittagong was our farthest outpost, from which stretched southward along the coast what was once the famous kingdom of Arakan. But all the regions we have named, though for our present purpose they must be treated as held or claimed by the Burmese, were in truth mere outlying and detached fragments of the vast