manufacturer has to supply, and nation after nation becomes a purchaser. It will be an advantage when the particular style of advertising common to sewing-machine warehouses can be dispensed with—the highly-dressed young ladies sitting at their supposed work in elegant attitudes, framed and glazed within plate-glass windows almost extending to the pavement. A crowd of male admirers, not purchasers, clusters round the charming picture of domestic virtue, and one salesman, with a higher appreciation than others of advertising effect, divided his premises on the diœcious principle. In one window were seen refined and interesting young gentlemen,—in the other, ornately fascinating females. Outside, the effect was truly galvanic. The public instantly arranged itself like the oxygen and hydrogen at the two poles of a battery. The former window was obscured by a compression of crinolines; the other by a queue wearing hats. There was certainly in this case no occasion for the notice seen in many shop-fronts,—“You are requested to choose from the window.”
FROM RANGOON.
Any Englishman, bent on visiting a Buddhist Cathedral, or desirous of seeing, in a small space, a vast mixture of races, and of hearing a vast confusion of tongues, may, with advantage, spend a day or two in Rangoon.
Leaving the comfortable little steamer of the Calcutta and Burmah Company, which has brought you thither from the metropolis of British India, and landed you on the Custom-house wharf, you will not have far to go before you will have been introduced to Burmese, Karens, Chinese, Jews, Mahometans, Hindoos, Madrassees, and Parsees. Seeking further, you will find Europeans of all classes and creeds; English, Scotch, Irish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Germans, Swedes, Italians, and many a mixture of one or more of all these. Of Yankees, also, there is a fair sprinkling. Rangoon is not badly situated for attracting these multifarious specimens of humanity. This town is situated on a noble river, itself one of the outlets of the great river of Burmah, about twenty-five miles from its junction with the sea, on whose blue depths the river leaves its muddy impress for many a mile,—not merely discolouring the water, but blocking up its own entrance with the mud which, free of all freight, it deposits there every hour of every day. The wary little skippers of the afore-mentioned steamers love not the entrance to the Rangoon River after sunset, and the pilots have a hard time of it in the south-west Monsoon.
But we suppose you to have passed Elephant Point, and the Hastings Shoal, and to be all safe on terra firma, even “the Strand” of Rangoon, along which you are now starting for a walk. It is not crowded equally with its London namesake, but still it is fairly filled just now with a motley group of pig-tailed Chinese, turbaned Moguls, tatooed Burmese, and chimney-hatted Parsees, to one and all of whom the advent of a steamer is an event, and not to be missed coute qui coute. Open, then, both eyes and ears: though, undoubtedly, you must possess the gift of tongues to understand all you hear. To the unmusical Tamil succeeds the saw-sharpening sound of Chittagong Hindustani. With the vociferations of a Burmese lady, to whose remarkable dress crinoline has not yet imparted elegance, are blended the pitiless rejoinders of her Chinese helpmate. For your Chinese is a citizen of the world, and altogether ignores the Malthusian doctrines on population. He takes up with things as he finds them, and with wives also. He sees his way far more speedily than Mr. Brisket. He comes to Rangoon, and there he settles, in the full spinster acceptation of that word, without keenly regretting the love that his Chinese wife may bear to her own country. The west-end of the Strand, and China-street, are full of Chinese shop-keepers thus settled; some of them, moreover, exceedingly well to do, carrying on a brisk trade with the neighbouring ports of Moulmein, Penang, and Singapore; and most of them industrious, hard-working fellows, who, with especial reference to their intercourse with Englishmen, have invented a sort of China-English language, applying many English words in a way that would astonish the Dean of Westminster, and absolutely scare the ghost of dear old Sam Johnson.
The modern town of Rangoon extends for about two miles on the left bank of the river. It has been regularly laid out, its streets all running north, with one or two main thoroughfares, running east and west, parallel to the river, the principal thoroughfare being named after Lord Dalhousie, the founder of the town, as it at present is. Beyond the precincts of the town, and to the north, lies the Cantonment, which stretches out beyond the celebrated Pagoda to the uncleared and beautifully-wooded country beyond. The Queen’s 68th Regiment, and a native Madras regiment, are now stationed there.
There is as little to be said of the modern town as of that which it succeeds. This was founded in 1753, by Alompra, king of Burmah. When this town was first taken by the British, in 1824, it was little more than a collection of wooden huts, raised on piles, and covered with leaf-thatching. Since the re-conquest of Rangoon, in 1852, and its occupation by the British, the town has been re-built more than once; as, on a fire breaking out—and fires in Rangoon have been the rule—there was positively nothing to prevent its continuance so long as any of the aforesaid wooden huts remained to be burnt. These very substantial edifices are now happily retreating more into the back-ground; the residences of European merchants, and the shops of Chinese and Moguls, are gradually rising; and, by consequence of an order, which, in the chief thoroughfares, prohibits the erection of wooden houses covered with leaf-thatch, fires are now not of weekly recurrence.
Turning from the Strand, in a northerly direction, along China-street, you soon see the Pagoda, and proceeding about a couple of miles, you find yourself at the principal entrance to the Pagoda platform, reached by a long ascent, partly of steps, and partly of well-worn earth.
Of this most curious building, one ought to know something before visiting it, though but