rendered so formidable that, in the judgment of Sir Archibald Campbell, ten thousand steady soldiers might have defended it against ten times that force.
When the British troops took possession of Prome the rainy season was not far off. There was, however, time before it set in to send a small corps to clear the inland districts of the armed bands which overran the country, plundering and oppressing the inhabitants, and driving them with their cattle into the jungles. This light corps, which consisted of eight hundred infantry and a troop of the Governor-General's body-guard, with two field-pieces, under the command of Colonel Godwin, left Prome on the 5th of May, and marched to the north-eastward, over a rich and fertile country, abounding in rice-grounds, with every appearance of fertility, industry, and population. This continued so long as they remained in the great valley of the Irawaddi; but when the column advanced into the interior these appearances rapidly diminished, the country gradually assuming the character of a luxuriant wilderness, overgrown with lofty forests and brushwood jungles, with a few miserable villages scattered about at great distances from each other. The inhabitants, though they seemed miserably poor and devoid of comforts, were found to be a cheerful, a frank, and a kind-hearted people; they soon became familiar, and even friendly, with our soldiers, who paid them for whatever they furnished.
As the monsoon rains were now beginning to fall, Colonel Godwin proceeded to the town of Meeaday, situated on the banks of the Irawaddi, about sixty miles above Prome. On this march our column occasionally crossed the track by which corps of the Burmese army had retreated from Prome. It was painful to witness the ruinous effects of their system of warfare: even Russia, in her memorable resistance to the armies of Napoleon, did not offer to the invading host such a continued scene of desolation. Neither man nor beast escaped the retiring column; and heaps of ashes, with
