"20th. – Marched two miles in advance of Meeaday, in the vain hope of getting away from the field of death. For fifty miles up the river, and all along the road by which the enemy retired, similar horrors presented themselves; while on some of our grounds of encampment, it was difficult to find room for pitching the tents without previously removing some dead bodies from the spot.
"21st. – The country through which we passed was wholly depopulated, and the villages either burned or laid in ruins; not a head of cattle, or, indeed, a living thing, except the sick and dying stragglers from the Burmese army, was met with in the march. We appeared to traverse a vast wilderness from which mankind had fled; and our little camp of 2,000 men seemed but a speck in the desolate and dreary waste that surrounded it, calling forth at times an irksome feeling which could with difficulty be repressed, at the situation of a handful of men, in the heart of an extensive empire, pushing boldly forward to the capital, still three hundred miles distant, in defiance of an enemy whose force outnumbered ours in tenfold ratio, and without a hope of further reinforcement from our distant ships and depôts."
On the 26th of December, when the division had marched 140 miles from Prome, and was within ten miles of Melloon, a flag of truce was sent to Sir Archibald Campbell from the last-named place, with letters communicating the arrival of a High Commissioner sent down from Ava with full powers to conclude a treaty of peace. The proposal was entertained, but the army continued its march to Patanagoh, opposite the Burmese intrenchments of Melloon. Continued communications, having reference to the proposed peace, were here carried on; and after much discussion a treaty was agreed to, upon the terms formerly proposed by the British authorities, excepting that three more provinces were added to the territorial cessions, and the pecuniary payment reduced from two crores to one.[1] The English copy of the treaty was
- ↑ A crore is a hundred lacs, or one million sterling.
