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II] and refreshed the soaring souls of persons accustomed to dwell on a deltaic swamp.... Far away to the East lie the plains, and over them, shining in sunlight luminous in the last rays of evening, hangs the haze of an atmosphere almost solid with dust.

Burma is usually regarded as an unhealthy country. The mental picture is of a land of dismal swamps and deadly marshes, far different from the glowing reality. The impression of unhealthiness is due to the hardships and privations suffered by troops, police, and civil officers during and after the three Burmese Wars. In unsuitable conditions, much sickness and mortality were inevitable. But on the mind of the visitor in ordinary times, who lived in normal surroundings, the contrary impression was stamped. Writing in 1795, Symes says: "The climate of every part of the Burman Empire which I have visited bore testimony to its salubrity ." It is true that his range was limited to Rangoon and the country along the Irrawaddy as far north as Ava. But his record is of interest as indicating his experience in comparatively early times before the dawn of sanitation. On the whole, his impression was accurate. Parts of Burma, such as Northern Arakan, Salween, Katha, and all tracts lying at the foot of hills, are notoriously unhealthy owing to the prevalence of malarial fever. Cholera is never absent throughout a whole year, though serious epidemics are far less frequent than of yore. Plague has not been extirpated by the efforts of seventeen years. But cholera and plague are accidents. With the more rigorous application of improved sanitary methods, these diseases as well as malarial fever should be banished. Subject to these exceptions, the Province, as a whole, is not unhealthy. In particular, the swamps of the Delta and the great rice plains, though enervating, are not deadly. But it must be admitted that, everywhere, vitality once impaired is not readily restored. The annual mortality is