Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 4).djvu/198

182 Toungoo. Toungoo (19,332), on the Sittaing river, 166 miles from Rangoon, is famous as the early capital of the conqueror, Tabin Shweti. Before the annexation, it was a place of arms on the frontier; and before the building of the railway it was quite remote, the journey to Rangoon occupying many days.

Pegu. Pegu (18,769), on the Pegu river, 47 miles from Rangoon on the railway to Martaban, is a somewhat melancholy relic of ancient splendour. In 1569, in the time of the great King Bayin Naung, it is thus described by Cæsar Frederick:

By the help of God we came safe to Pegu, which are two cities, the old and the new: in the old city are the Merchant strangers, and Merchants of the country, for there are the greatest doings and the greatest trade. This City is not very great, but it hath very great suburbs. Their houses be made with canes and covered with leaves, or with straw; but the Merchants have all one House or Magason, which house they call godon, which is made of brickes, and there they put all their goods of any value, to save them from the often mischances that happen to houses made of such stuff. In the new City is the Palace of the King, and his abiding-place with all his barons and nobles and other gentlemen; and in the time I was there they finished building the new city: it is a great City very plain and flat, and four square, walled round about, and with ditches that compass the walls about with water, in which ditches are many Crocodiles. It hath no Drawbridges, yet it hath twenty gates, five for every square; on the walls there are many places made for Sentinels to watch, made of wood, and covered or gilt with gold. The streets thereof are the fairest that I have seen, they are as straight as a line from one gate to another, and standing at one gate you may discern the other, and they are as broad as ten or twelve men may ride abreast in them: and those streets that be thwart are fair and large; these streets both on the one side and the other are planted at the doors of the houses with nut-trees of India, which make a very commodious shadow: the houses be made of wood, and covered with a kind of tiles in form of cups, very necessary for