Burma : A Handbook of Practical Information - Khamkoo

MANDALAY 23
division and district. It stands a couple of miles away
from the river, on the left bank of the Irrawaddy, in 21°
58' N., and 96° 8' E., and is 315 feet above mean sea-level.
It is now divided into the town and the cantonment.
The cantonment is the area inside the old city walls, and
the town is what were called the suburbs in the kinf^'s
days. Mandalay covers an area of 6 miles from north
to south and .'> from east to west. The roads are now
good, metalled, lightened, and lined with trees. In
the king's time they were dust-heaps in the dry weather
and bogs in the rains. On the other hand, many of the
very fine monasteries have disappeared, burnt or fallen
into decay. The pagodas, however, remain in great
numbers ; so also does a portion of the palace. Mandalay
was commenced in 1857 and finished in I860, so
that
that
the only archaeological interest in its buildings is
they were all—city wall, palisade, and palace—built
according to old traditional measurements for capital
cities. In 1886, at the time of the occupation, there
were 6000 houses within the city wall and a4',00() outside,
and the population was estimated to be 186,000—considerably
more than Rangoon at that date. The census in
1891 showed a population of 188,315, which in 1901 had
fallen to 183,316 — a decrease of 3 per cent, in the
decade. It is more of a. Burmese town than Rangoon,
where from a quarter to a third only of the population
is Burmese. In Mandalay there are many and increasing
numbers of Zerbadis (Burman Mohammedans born of Indian
fathers and Burmese mothers), Mohammedans, Hindus,
.SuratiSj Jews, Slians, Chinese, and Manipuris, called
Kathe.
Moulmein.—Moulmein was the chief town in British
territory in Burma from the time of the Treaty of Yandabu
till the annexation of Pegu in 185'J. The site was chosen
by the military. The civil commissioner, Crawfurd, selected
Amherst for his headquarters. Moulmein was then a mere
spacious, irregular quadrangle, enclosed by an earthen rampart.
All within and without was mere tangled tree and
grass jungle. Now the town is one of the most picturesque
in the East. For a time a good deal of shipbuilding
went on in Moulmein, This lias now been given up, but