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122 drawn up of the Province. The Gazetteer of Burma loses its character as a dry official record of facts from the magnificent story of progress which it relates. Since annexation by Lord Dalhousie in 1852, the inhabitants of the town of Rangoon have multiplied fifteen-fold. The trade of this sea-port, which four years after annexation barely exceeded two million sterling, had increased by 1883 to thirteen millions. The rural parts have equally prospered. Since 1855, the population of Amherst District has increased four-fold. The trade of the harbour and district of Akyab, annexed in 1826, has multiplied itself nearly three-hundred-fold during the past fifty years.

I have now narrated the wars by which Lord Dalhousie extended the British frontier at the opposite extremities of India. By the annexation of the Punjab, Lower Burma, and the outlying districts of Sikkim, Lord Dalhousie added to the British dominions in India territories equal to nearly twice the area of England and Wales. But the increase of territory was only one of the results, and perhaps not the most important result, of Lord Dalhousie's frontier wars.

By the annexation of the Punjab he threw down the old native breakwater between British India and external attack. He abolished the warlike Sikh power which had formerly stood between us and the races of Central Asia. Since that time