The following account of the murder of Mr. Margary and the attack on the expedition has been furnished to the London Times, and has also been kindly placed at our disposal by a member of the party On the Gth of February, 1875, we took up our quarters at Ise-kaw, " village situated on the left bank of the River Ta-peng. 1t consists of one street,—the Wastorn half of which in iulabited by Chinese, and the other half by the Burmese, and surrounded by a bamboo palisade as a protection againg Kakhyengs and tigers, beth of whom occasion prove unpleasant n Dr. Anderton, M Forde, Allen and Margary, 2 Chin writers, 15 Sikhs and servants of all descriptions, was lodged outside the town in a kyaung or priest's house, which was nothing more than a two-roomed frame building with mat walls and a bamboo floor raised on piles to a height of some six feet above the ground. A subordinate officer sent by the Woon of Bhamo, and entitled Tso-re-dawgyee, was supposed to protect us with the body of 150 men under his orders. Most of these soldiers were only raw peasants called in from the neighbourhood without the least experience in warfare, and armed with weapons varying from the dak or cutlass, which every one in these regions carries, to the matchlock, or flint fowling piece by Manton & Ca., gunmakers to the King. From the Gth to the Lath, the Colonel was occupied in receiving a succession of Tsawbwasand Pasymines, (chiefs and sub-chiefs or village head men,) who came to make arraugements for our transport, and to receive the customary presents which they exact from all who pass through their hills, Some of these gentry were the most repulsive specimens of human nature that it has ever been our lot to behold. Their persons and their clothes were filthy beyond description. One individual in particular, the Tsawbwa of Ponline, was a man whose appearance it is not easy to forget, He had very small eyes, even for a Mongolian, an enormous mouth stained with the inevitable betel nut, and " nose with no bridge whatever to it beauty was further improved by his wearing " ragged Chinese cap with a brass button, such as is worn by a lictor in a mandarin's Yamen, or by a public ¢xecutioner in China.
On the 5th we were told that all arrangements had at length been concluded. 'The mules—so many from each Kakhyeng villaze—to carry our luggage, had been collected; the hostages, who' were the Ponline Trawbwa and his son, the ton of the Tsurai Tsawbwa and the son of the Ponsee Paw wore taken claro of by Burmese officials at Tsekaw, and we finished our final packing and' prepared tout daylight on the following No Burman can, however, be be punctual, nor is it easy to satisfy the grasping demands of their wild neighbours; thus, though the European portion of our pany was ready at the appointed time, we found that there wus plenty to be done before we could hope to get elf. From six a.m, to4 p.m. the Ten-re-dawyee was coming to Colonel Browne at intervals of a fow minutes, to say how Ghat this Tsawbwa wanted tw be ytd all ule hire in advance, and th contented about some-a j but at the last mentioned hour we actually did yet under weigh, although we only accomplished a short march of four siles that afternoon, Our road Iny xeress 4 fertile rice-bearing plain, which slopes imperceptibly from the banks of the Peng to the Man Wung Lake, a broad but shallow sheet of water surrounded by reeds and jungle, in which wild fowl and barking deer are found in considerable numbers, The fields are covered by a regular carpet of pretty but tasteless wild strawberry We halted for the night in a yat or guest. house in the village of Sehit, " picturesque spot at the very foot of the Kakhyeng hills, and on the following morning we began the ascent. Our path, for it could hardly be termed a road, ran at firet up the side of asteep range covered with a tolerably dense tree jungle. We passed through Ponline, and After fifteen miles of very rough travelling reached the fourth of the guard houses which the Burmese Government have established along the roxd, Here the first report of trouble reached us, Travellers coming from Momein stated that a force of 400 El our passage near ye. daw-geo now declared that it was posi tively necessary tu #end on sovu tain what tral is report, and the arrangement arrived at was that we should march on the mor: ow to the next guard house, and dat Maryary, having been over the ground before, should go on to Manwyne with " fow men if the road was clear, bat thal if it was not, he was to return at once and tell us, On the 18th a march of 3 miles took us to the fifth guardhouse, in a lovely valley, through which
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.