grow very long yet, and his majesty makes up his young, or top knot, with false tresses, as many humbler Burmans do, only they take care over it, which he does not. This is the worst sign of all; for when a Burman ceases to take pride in his hair he must be very far gone.

There are very considerable doubts as to his Majesty's legitimacy. In any case he is not a pure Burman. His mother had a good deal of wild Shan blood in her veins. Just before Theebaw's birth it was discovered that his mother was unpardonably intimate with a pohn-gyee, one of the mendicants of the Royal Monastery. The monk was thrown into prison and died there very suddenly of official colic. The queen was sent to a nunnery, where she remained till Theebaw came to the throne. She had better have stayed there for good. A year ago there was a fearful scandal. Some thirty people about the Court were beheaded and the queen dowager was relegated to the convent.

Theebaw himself was brought up in an uncle's house and used to be unmercifully bullied by his cousins. When Dr. Marks, the eminent S.P.G. missionary, came to Mandalay and established a school, the late king asked what was the best age for a Burman to commence learning English. The reverend gentleman said, "About twelve years old." King Mindohn called for "all his sons that were twelve years old or thereabouts." Eleven were produced and among them was Theebaw. The future king went to the royal school, but he sat apart from his late victims, and never came to school on the same elephant with them. He was a surly, morose boy, not very good at his lessons, and once or twice narrowly escaping the usual result of such conduct. I believe he was never actually birched, but he had several times to stand in the corner. When he left he was able to read a little, but he has

forgotten all his English now. He used to be fond of cricket and slogged away in fairly good pendulum form, but he never would field out and used unprincely language to any one who bowled him. He was the youngest of the batch by a month or two, and was always quarrelling with his brothers and bullying the wretched slave who attended him and carried his cheroots and betelnut. But nobody paid much attention to his vagaries then, for he was twentieth or thirtieth son, and the Mekhaya prince, the eldest, might very easily have been his father, or even grandfather.

After he left the S.P.G. Royal School, King Mindohn made him a koyin, a neophant, in the royal monastery. There he seemed to get on better. At any rate when his novitiate was over, he passed with honours as Patama Byan, an examination in the Beetaghat thohn-bohng, the three "baskets" of the Buddhist law, and sundry other volumes of ritual and controversy. This was what first drew the old king's attention to him. Mindohn Min was a very pious old gentleman and had a particular delight in his title of Convener of the Fifth Great Synod. When therefore young Theebaw made a score in the Turanian Theological Tripos, his father bored everybody with his talk about the juvenile divine, and was not far off imagining that he was an embryo Buddh. Theebaw an avatar of Areemadehya! Bradlaugh in the Salvation Army! Other people knew better even then. Even in those days Theebaw was a disgraceful little rip. The present Queen of the South and sundry other little petticoats came to flirt with him and his companions in the monastery. An ascetic should not even look at a woman, and the old kyoung-poh-goh, the abbot of the royal mendicants was terribly scandalised, and it is whispered about that he tied the raffish young princeling's hands up

to a tree and "spanked" him soundly. Some colour is lent to the report by the fact that Theebaw dismissed the venerable recluse as soon as he ascended the throne. However that may be, the old king heard nothing about it and went on believing the "Senior Theolog" to be a miracle of piety and learning, and the sacred cocks and hens on Mandalay Hill had double rations for a month in honour of the event. Nevertheless, he did not by any means intend Theebaw to succeed him on the throne. The Nyoung Yan was the man he named. But the mother of the Soo-payah Lat, now Theebaw's queen, took the matter in hand. She knew that Theebaw was deeply in love with her daughter, and thought she could easily manage the moon-struck, Pali-spouting novice. She communicated her views to the Kin Woon-min-gyee, the head of the ministry. That crafty old gentleman was equally deceived and thought he would have no trouble in leading the verdant recluse as he pleased. The matter was arranged; the elder princes were all seized and thrown into prison before Mindohn Min died. Theebaw humoured the Kin Woon-min-gyee for a short time and let him formulate a wonderful production which the Turanian Foreign Secretary called a constitution. When the simple quondam mendicant found himself firm on the throne, and when the Nyoung Yan, his great fear, had got away from the British Presidency in Mandalay, and was safe in Calcutta, Theebaw threw off the mask. Eighty-six of his blood relations were battered and choked to death, or buried alive. The Kin Woon-gyee's bastard constitution was crumpled up and chucked over the frontier, and Theebaw stood forth as the most inhuman of a long line of savage despots. The Kin Woon-min-gyee is now practically destitute of all power, and he has come to be very humble to the young innocent whom he fondly

VOL. II.

thought to mould to his will. More than all, Theebaw has achieved a certain kind of popularity with his subjects. He insulted our representative and blustered at all foreigners, and finally frightened the Indian Government by covert threats, into suddenly withdrawing the whole personnel of the Residency. Then it was announced by sound of gong all over Burmah, British as well as Independent, that the Sovereign of Land and Water, by reason of his great might and glory, had caused the hated English to flee from his sight, and would, in his own good time, carry the great peacock flag to the south and plant it once more on the shores of the Gulf of Martaban.

It is a great triumph for the shaven-headed, bastard mendicant, and it will be remembered about him quite as long as the fiendish cruelty of his massacres. We have certainly not done with Theebaw yet. We cannot go on for ever keeping strong garrisons at Thayet-myo and Toungoo, our frontier stations, where the soldiers have little else to do but die of fever and cholera, and heat-apoplexy. Constant scares ruin the trade in Rangoon, and as Lord Ripon says, when we are attacked in our mercantile interests we are wounded in our most irritable point. The abrogation of the monopolies is little better than a sham and the negotiations for a new treaty are little more sincere. Theebaw will not receive a new Resident in the Royal City, except shoeless and practically lying on his stomach. We can hardly agree to that again. Some day there will come a rupture and Theebaw's valiant soldiery will kill him and "strike for home," i.e., bolt as hard as they can. Then we had better annex the country.

CHAPTER XXI.

KING THEEBAW.

III. -A KADAW DAY.

'THE princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces were gathered together and fell down and worshipped at what time they heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music."

That is an exact description of the course of proceedings in Mandalay on a kadaw day. The gentlemen of the court and band as aforesaid, in the plain of Dura, must have greatly resembled Theebaw's worshippers, though we should

be

very sorry to asperse Nebuchadnezzar's name so far as to compare him with the bibulous young monarch of Burma. A kadaw-nay, means literally translated "a begpardon day." On such occasions all the officials and most eminent men in the country have to come to the palace and do homage and worship at the Golden Feet. There may be as many "Beg-pardon Days" during the year as his Majesty pleases, but the most regular and best-attended, as well as the most brilliant, are always at the beginning and end of Lent, which extends, roughly speaking, from