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Captain Hiram Cox, the British resident at Rangoon in 1796-7, describes the town of Re-nau-khyaung, or as he spells it, Ramanghong, meaning the town through which flows a river of earth-oil, as “of mean appearance; and several of its temples, of which there are great numbers, falling to ruins; the inhabitants, however,” he continues, “are well dressed, many of them with golden spiral ear ornaments.”[8] Altogether the town or village, and its environs, are as bleak as bleak can be, if we may trust the description. We shall hereafter return to the consideration of the Petroleum trade as a source of revenue to the government.

The most important place about this portion of the course of the Irawadi is Prome, a city which we shall hereafter have to mention as one of those celebrated in the ancient history of the country; we will therefore omit further notice of it here. Exclusive of the Delta of the Irawadi, to which we must now turn our attention, there is very little low land in the Burman territory. Like the Delta of the Nile it is exceedingly fruitful, and it produces abundant crops of rice. It is, too, the commercial highway of the land.