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BIRMAH. 227
majesty was busily employed in erecting a magnificent
pagoda. The city of Mheghoon was at this time
merely " an assemblage of bamboo huts, with a few
wooden houses, straggling along the western bank of
the river for about two miles, under a range of high,
barren hills." About the centre was a wooden palace,
externally of a mean appearance, a little beyond
which was the site of the intended pagoda. His ma-
jesty held his court in a large tent, about 300 feet in
diameter, supported in the centre by a stout mast
about sixty feet high, and the sides resting on an
arcade of a hundred arches, of bamboo work, with
wooden piers about
"
fifteen feet high. The throne,
which came close to the outer edge of the tent, was an
octagon of wood, like a large pulpit; each face was
about ten feet ; the floor elevated about six feet above
the level of the tent ; the sides open to the south and
east, the west and north sides skreened by a curtain ;
the floor was carpeted, and a raised bench, covered
with velvet cushions laced with gold, was placed near
the centre, a little advanced to the front. Below,
within the circle of the tent, was a raised seat like a
clerk's reading-desk, covered with green velvet, edged
and trimmed with broad gold lace, with large red
velvet cushions on it, trimmed in the same manner.
To the right and left of the throne, on the ground,
just within the arcade of the tent, were ranged twenty
of the king's body-guard, in satin gowns trimmed
with gold lace, with treble scolloped capes and cuffs,
and gilt hats like Mambrino's helmet. Nearer the
throne, to the right or west side, were seated in a line
with the body-guards, six eunuchs of the palace, na-
tive Mahommedans, in white jammas and coloured silk
lungees, with white handkerchiefs round their heads.
The princes of the blood, the chobwas
o 2
(petty tributary