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BIRMAH. 165
gild it. At Old Pegu are many refiners and gold
and silver beaters, who work it into leaves as we do,
for the convenience of the gilders; for they gild the
very walls and towers, and their houses, after the
Persian fashion. New Pegu is almost all so built,
and nothing spared to make up a sumptuous, splendid
structure. Merchants and other tradesmen and shopkeepers
live in strong houses, well built of stone or
brick, close shut with strong gates and locks, and call
those houses^odon*."*
When Col. Symes visited, in 1795, the site of this
once magnificent capital, the building of the new
town was still going forward. He thus describes the
appearance which it then presented.
"
The extent of ancient Pegu may still be accurately
traced by the ruins of the ditch and wall that surrounded
it : from these it appears to have been a
quadrangle, each side measuring nearly a mile and a
half. In several places the ditch is choked up by rub-
bish that has been cast into it, and the falling of its
own banks ; sufficient, however, still remains to shew
that it was once no contemptible defence. The breadth
I judged to be about sixty yards, and the depth ten or
twelve feet. In some parts of it there is water, but in
no considerable quantity. I was informed, that when
the ditch was in repair, the water seldom, in the hottest
season, sunk below the depth of four feet. An
injudicious faussebray, thirty feet wide, did not add
to the security of the fortress. The fragments of the
wall likewise evince that this was a work of magni-
tude and labour: it is not easy to ascertain precisely
what was its height, but we conjectured it at least
thirty feet, and in breadth, at the base, not less than
* Asiat. Journ. vol. xix. pp. 651, 2.