Untitled - Sabrizain.org

196 BIRMAH.
in patterns adapted to the Birman dress. At a short
distance from the town are the ruins of a brick fort,
erected in a very judicious situation.
The next day, they made little progress, owing to
the violence of the current, which obliged the boatmen
to take to their poles. The Arracan mountains appeared
to the west, and a lofty conical hill, called
Poupa, was in sight to the eastward. A few villages
and numerous temples skirted the banks. At a place
called Yoo-wa, another small river enters the Irra-
waddy; and two days' journey up this river,
is a
large town called Yoo-miou. The district derives its
name from the people called Yoo, who were represented
to Colonel Symes as exceedingly ugly, having
protuberant bellies and white teeth, a great deformity
in the eyes of the Birmans, who stain their teeth, eyelashes,
and the edge of the eye-lids with black.* The
Yoos are said to speak the language of Tavoy. They
are subject to the Birmans, and are, like them, wor-
shippers of Guadma. Their territory skirts the great
chain of Anou-pec-tou-miou from lat. 21 to 23 N.
Small barren hills now form the eastern bank, abound-
ing with petrifactions, but relieved by fertile and wellcultivated
valleys ; till, after doubling a rocky point,
round which the current sets with formidable rapidity,
we come to the large town of Seen-ghoo, situated on
a green level bank, affording a fine range of pasturage.
For a great distance, small temples are built close to
the river. At Kea-hoh, a poor village, which Colonel
Symes reached in the evening of the third day (from
Yanangheoum), the inhabitants obtain a livelihood by
* The collyrium they use is called surma, the Persian name for
antimony. White teeth, they say, are fit only for dogs ! The
practice of dying the eye-lashes is common to the females of Hindostan
and Persia.