The romantic East: Burma, Assam, & Kashmir - Khamkoo

46 THE ROMANTIC EAST
became the capital until 1860, when the seat of
Government was removed to Mandalay.
The view of Sagaing from Amarapura is
extremely picturesque, and seen in the evening sun,
its gleaming pagodas gave back the light from every
eminence, including
the hillocks close
to the river,
to the distant mountain tops, and ranging from
Nga-dat-gyi near by on the west side to the great
round dome of the Kaunghmudaw
in the north.
We clambered up the ghat at Sagaing, followed to
the station by a crowd of girls and women carrying
our luggage, and we amused ourselves
by purchasing
samples of the fruit on sale there. Pineapples,
bananas, custard-apples, pomegranates, and kamrakh,
or carambolas, were to be had, the latter a bitter
fruit having a four -pointed star on the top and
better suited for cooking than eating raw. Between
Sagaing which was the capital of Burma in the
fourteenth century and more recently during
the reigns of Naung-daw-gyi
and some of his
successors and Ywataung, the modern railway
town three miles away, there is a pagoda with a
tree growing from the top.
There is also a large
brick dome-shaped pagoda, surmounted with a ti,