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BIRMAH. 63
constant state of hostility against the rest of the
people, which makes them audacious and prompt to
execute any orders, however cruel or violent. It is
supposed that the emperor can muster from two
to three hundred of those boats.
" A Birman," adds Colonel Francklin, " is seldom
any thing else than a government servant, a soldier,
boatman, husbandman, or labourer. All their best
artificers are foreigners." His account of their cha-
racter is very unfavourable. " The Birman court
appears to me," he "
says, an assembly of clowns,
who have neither improved their manners nor their
have retained
sincerity by their transposition : they
their native chicane and vicious propensities, and have
not acquired the blandishments of polish to veil the
deformities of vice, or expansion of mind to check ks
domination. To their superiors, the Birmans are
abjectly submissive ; towards strangers, audacious and
ungrateful ; in power, rapacious and cruel ; in war,
treacherous and ferocious ;
in their dealings, litigious
and faithkgs ; in appetite, insatiable and avaricious ;
in habit, lazy ; in their ideas, persons, houses, and
food, obscenely filthy below any thing I had ever seen
that has claims to humanity.* It must not be denied
that they have brutal courage, but it tends to debase,
rather than to exalt them ; it is irregular, uncertain,
and not to be depended upon. They are strict observers
of the ceremonial parts of their religion, cha-
ritable to their priests and the poor ; in the country,
In their food, the Birmans are very uncleanly. Being fond of
animal food, but restricted by their religion from killing, (venison
is the only meat permitted to be sold in the markets of the empire,
a privilege allowed to hunters,) they will partake of any putrid or
diseased carcase. All game is eagerly sought for. Reptiles, lizards,
guanas, and snakes are devoured by the lower classes.