The bell is of yellowish metal, in which small pieces of gold and lumps of silver as large as a potato are easily distinguished, which have been thrown in without becoming completely fused in the "melt." It is 16 feet high, and 12 feet in diameter at the lip, with a thickness of from 6 to 12 inches of metal. The upper part, as seen from inside, shows some flakes of flat, round-linked chain, evidently put cold into the mould before the molten metal was run in, to strengthen the casting at the place where the strain is greatest. Like other Burmese bells, it has no

clapper, and must be struck from the outside with an enormous mallet, or, better still, with a battering-ram, if such were available, to elicit anything like an adequate volume of sound. Nothing but a couple of light spars were to be found near it, but by steadily and rhythmically striking it with these from opposite sides alternately, we were able to produce a considerable volume of deep, rich sound, audible some distance off. The bell has more recently been housed in an ornamental Burmese kyaung, of which Fig. 13, taken from one of my snapshots, gives a representation. The top of the great pagoda can be reached by climbing up the fissure and broken ruins in one corner. A recent visitor on getting to the

top had found it occupied by a leopard with a litter of cubs, but no such ill-natured residenter was waiting there to give me a similar warm welcome, and I had time to enjoy the splendid view of the river, and record the outlines of the landscape in my sketchbook. The foregoing illustration (Fig. 14), which will convey a general idea of the fine prospect, shows the river winding across the plain, with the Sagaing hills on the left, and an interesting pagoda in front, with the roof of the kyaung covering the great bell surrounded by trees in the immediate foreground.

Mandalay, the capital of Upper Burma, is quite a modern city, having been founded by King Mindôn, father of Thibaw, who flitted hither in June 1857 with his whole court from Amarapura, the former capital. Amarapura, about eight miles south of Mandalay, was in its turn founded in 1783 by Bodau-pya of Mingûn fame, who changed his headquarters from Ava, the previous and ancient royal city. Ava was founded in 1364, and was not finally deserted by the kings till 1837, when Tharawaddi, father of Mindôn Min, removed to Amarapura. These old cities, now silent and forsaken, are full of the most interesting and beautiful pagodas, temples, and palaces, in all stages of picturesque decay, which I shall not stop to describe, and which must be visited to be appreciated and understood.

Mandalay extends over a broad plain, a splendid view of which is to be had from the top of Mandalay hill, an isolated knoll rising behind Fort Dufferin to a height of some 600 feet above the city. At the base of the hill lies Fort Dufferin, the citadel of King Mindôn Min, with high crenelated walls of red brick, aligned in the form of a square, each side of which is 1 miles in length. The walls are surrounded by a moat 100 yards wide, full of clear water, and gay with water-lilies, crossed by five bridges leading to the great gates. The carved teak palace buildings in the middle of the great enclosure, where Mindôn lived and ruled, and where his degenerate young son Thibaw, with his dangerous wife Supyalat, played at hide-and-seek, and cruelly did eighty or ninety of their nearest relatives to death, after their old father had passed away, are now no longer the scene of subtle court intrigues and deeds of darkness, but are occupied by benevolent and industrious Government officials, with sober western ideas of a much tamer and more orderly description than those of their more lively, if less logical, predecessors.

Outside the walls the city is laid out in squares, with broad, straight streets on the modern plan. To the left of Fort Dufferin a large white enclosure is conspicuous, with a tall pagoda in the centre surrounded by what from the top of the hill looks like a rectangular encampment of pyramidal tents pitched in concentric lines, with mathematical precision. This is the famous Kûthodaw or Royal Work of Merit erected by King Mindôn in 1859, known also as The 730 Pagodas. Each of the little tentlike buildings surrounding the central pagoda is a small shrine or canopy about twenty feet high, built on four pillars, with arched roof covering a marble slab standing in the centre like a tombstone, and inscribed on both sides with closely and beautifully engraved Burmese

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writing. There are in all 729 (not 450 or 777 as some writers say) of these stone volumes, which record engraven on their faces the whole of the Buddhist law High walls with massive doors surround the sacred enclosure, the work of which is of brick plastered white, the central pagoda being, or having originally been, covered with gold and gems. Although somewhat the worse of the years, it is still a most interesting and fascinating spectacle.

The modern teak palaces and kyaungs, with their painting and gilded ornamentation, are often cheap and tawdry-looking, but there is nothing offensive or exaggerated about these white edifices, which are ornamental without being vulgar, and dignified in their chaste simplicity without being too bald or heavy in construction.

Away over the plain, beyond this biblical enclosure, the vision sweeps over the site of the incomparable (but not incombustible) pagoda, one of the former wonders of Mandalay destroyed by fire some years ago with other sacred wooden buildings, or rests refreshed on tracts of green wood dotted with the spires of lasting pagodas and the perishable wooden dwellings of the good folk who built them. Farther off, broad tracts of irrigated paddy land glisten in the evening sun, and wide grassy fields stretch hazily away to the base of the glorious purple hills that encircle the fascinating picture. To the right the silver belt of the great river meanders past the wooden town outside the fort, winding out and in among the islands in its changeful course.

But we must hasten on, and, leaving Mandalay with its lions to be described at length by a more competent pen, pursue our journey down the flowing river. Below Mandalay the banks are mostly flat and well cultivated. Large steamers, drawing five feet of water, ply between here and Rangoon. The river now receives several affluents, and below its junction with the Chindwin opposite Myingyan it increases notably in volume, meandering about among numerous islands and shifting sand-banks between shores often several miles apart. I do not intend to speak of the interesting old cities along this part of its course, which we had not much time to examine, but among the physical features of the Irrawaddy valley below Mandalay a few deserve some attention here.

After passing Pako-ku, the great Burmese ship and boat building town of the Irrawaddy, the extinct volcano of Popa heaves in sight, and remains conspicuous nearly as far down as Yenangyaung, rising over the plain on the left bank in an isolated lofty cone, with the broken truncated summit characteristic of a volcanic mountain, about twelve miles distant from the nearest part of the river. (Fig. 16.) Popa has not been active within historic times, and the rim of the crater has suffered much by denudation, being completely cut away at one side by a notch which provides an outlet for the drainage of the basin. The peak consists of ash breccia, and the trachytic lava-flows on the sides descend to the Pliocene gravels of the plain, some of which are interstratified with beds of ash, from which it is apparent that the volcano must have been in activity during the later part of the Pliocene Period. There are now no active volcanoes on the mainland of India or Burma, the mud volcanoes so called being really gas springs or salses, whose action is quite unconnected with