Page:Provincial geographies of India (Volume 4).djvu/202

186 for ages. Cæsar Frederick's description of Pegu might be adopted almost word for word for Mandalay, save that there were no crocodiles in the moat and there was no ditch round the palace. The commercial and trading quarters extend along the river bank without a break to Amarapura. This low-lying area is protected from inundation by a double embankment built partly for that purpose and partly as a safeguard against hostile attack from the river. In 1886, at the height of the rains, the embankment gave way and the water poured through, flooding the lower part of the town. Boats and launches plied as far as the Zegyo, the great bazaar. In 1885, most of the houses were flimsy structures of wood and bamboo. The greater number of these were destroyed by frequent fires which raged at the end of the hot weather of the following year. Now there are many masonry buildings. Although not a commercial centre of importance, all industries characteristic of the country are practised at Mandalay. A specially flourishing trade is the making of sacred images in marble and steatite. In the middle of the town is the Zegyo, one of the finest covered bazaars in the East, where silks and jewels and miscellaneous goods are displayed in lavish abundance.

Some three miles from the river, stands the Myo or city, encompassed by a moat, 225 feet wide, once covered with lilies, and by battlemented walls, 27 feet high. Each face of the square enclosure is about a mile and a quarter in length. The walls are pierced by twelve gates, each approached by a bridge over the moat, and each surmounted by a pyathat or terraced spire, not used, I think, as sentry boxes. Between these are studded other pyathats making forty-eight in all. One of these surmounts Government House which, being designed in Burmese style, does not outrage aesthetic sensibility. In the middle of the square still stands the Palace. When Mandalay was occupied in 1885, the area around the Palace was crowded with houses