"For all that the Karens have done, I unhesitatingly say that when the danger is over, the Karen will be as soundly hated as ever by the officials.

་

The Karen will not shiko* if he can help it, and will not have anything to do with those who enforce servility.

“The Hanthawaddy is the only district in which the standard of rebellion has not been raised. There we have the Karens enrolled and many of them drilled, and make things lively at every alarm.

"There was a horrible mistake in the translation of Mr. Bernard's amnesty proclamation of the 3rd of March. The English version offered a free pardon for all crimes committed 'before the issue of this proclamation' (March 3rd).

"The rebels are allowed till the 30th of June to give themselves up. The Burmese version reads 'before the above-mentioned date.' The only date mentioned above' is the 30th of June. This gives free licence for every dacoit to do anything but murder Europeans up to the 30th of June, 1886.

"When I attacked and stormed a dacoit camp, I found a number of these proclamations and letters to the dacoits' friends, begging them to

* Make obeisance on his knees.

save all the copies of the proclamation, so that each dacoit might have a copy to come in on.

"Much captured and intercepted correspondence shows me that the dacoits argue that as the pardon is the same on the 3rd of March as on the 30th of June, they had better take advantage of the extra four months allowed them.

"I first read the proclamation kneeling in a dacoit camp by the side of one of my schoolmasters, who had been shot dead in the fight, with my fingers dabbled in the blood I had vainly tried to staunch. As I had not seen the English copy, can you wonder if I felt savage enough?

"The want of scholarship in Burmese shown above is discreditable. Can it have been disloyalty in the translator? The mistake has caused much bloodshed, and much more blood will be shed in the coming six weeks before the 30th of June.”

"Rangoon, July 13.

"God has to use a Karen expression-hung thousands of lives around my neck, and I have had hard work trying to keep my people alive.

"Everything has been done to hinder me that the circumlocution office could do, and, even after eight months' hard work and the spilling of lots of loyal

Karen blood, I am not half armed to-day, and tomorrow the Burmese threaten their third insurrection. Loyalty such as the Karens have shown must be fire-proof to stand what they have borne. Would to God we could have one half-hour of such a man as Sir Arthur Phayre!

"The sepoy has been 'weighed in the balances and found wanting'in dacoit-hunting. The Burman professional dacoit is already learning he is fully able to lick the sepoy by harassing him till he is tired, and then pitching into him.

"I was lately with a Karen levy tied to the tail of the sepoys. Seven miles a day was the best we could get out of the poor creatures. My levies have repeatedly marched fifty miles on a forced march.

"Whatever service the Karens have done is not one hundredth of what I can get out of them. Red tape is choking the life out of us.

"Meanwhile the Burmese are slaughtering each other on the plea of patriotism, and dare not attack the troops or the Karens. Our levies are the only men who have not shown their backs meekly to the rebels. The mere marching of our 'red heads' has kept the Hanthawaddy district clear of insurrection (all our levies wear a blood-red turban). Your officials show an insane jealousy of the

missionaries, and seem to be ashamed that they have no influence among the Karens."

"Rangoon, July 24, 1886.

means ended. The

"The rebellion is by no Burmans must fight, whether they will or not.

The

most dangerous sign of the times is that the Burman villages have not laid in their usual stocks of paddy for their own use. The disloyal have expected to supply themselves from the loot of the hated Karen villages. The vacillating have from cowardice sold off their stocks, hoping to buy from the Karens. They said they could conceal their money, but their countrymen would burn their paddy if they kept it. Thirty years of peace had led them to suppose that if a man had money he could always buy food.

"From a deficient crop we have exported more than usual, and people are crowing over the deadliest sign of the times. For months to come we must feed Upper Burma from our diminished stocks. I seriously apprehend scarcity will, just before the harvest, force hundreds into crime who would gladly keep quiet. I have warned the Government, as I have all along, but with the usual result. My words weigh no more than Cassandra's.

"Yesterday I was horrified to find an official memorandum preventing the importation of arms, and ordering gun permits to be largely reduced. This order will be seized on by the disloyal Burmese officials, and used to disarm the Karens.

"I am sending in the sternest protest words can frame against such injustice. The Burmese officials and non-officials alike are all gnashing their teeth at the Karens, attributing (rightly) the defeat of the rebellion solely to those 'meddlesome Karens.'

"To enable them to disarm the only friends you have in the province is worse than folly; it is treachery.

"Were the sight not so piteous from the blood which has stained it, I should have been heartily amused to watch your 'regulation pattern' official confronted by the stern spectre of actual war—a spectre that 'will not down' at the exhibition of standard red tape and 'memoranda' written in full form on regulation office foolscap.

"The high official has been warned, and he comfortably turns in his chair, and says, 'Bother those meddlesome missionaries!' and reads over the rosecoloured reports of other officials based on the reports of his disloyal Burmese understrappers, and calmly says, 'How can those impudent fellows know any