fight. Their offer was, of course, politely declined, with a scarcely disguised sneer.

"The key to all this misconception is plain. No one, neither Burmans, Government officials, nor any one, had gauged the quiet work we have been doing among the Karens. You know no one knows Karens. They won't talk to these servilityloving officials. No one visits their villages and sees for himself what education and Christianity have done. The 'timid Karen ' has become a man,

but nobody knew it.

"Had that battalion marched due north from Toungoo, with a British force with them on carts, every Burmese soldier could have been disarmed and killed or captured. As it was, the arms which Sladen failed to take away were used against us. The ammunition and rifles were sent down even to

Rangoon for sale. I have seen and handled them myself.

"Thank God! the 'timid Karen' is now a phrase of the past. Nous avons changé tout cela'

with a vengeance.

"In the first days of the rebellion I was talking with C, and he laughed at me when I told him I would like nothing better than to raise and command a Karen corps. After spending months

with sepoys and these very levies, and seeing the Karens charge, firing one volley, and throwing down their guns and going to close quarters with their huge cleavers, C―― came and apologized, saying he was wrong to sneer at men who could fight like that. No one had gauged the unifying power of Christianity, or guessed that these loose grains of sand (the clans) had been welded into a terrible weapon. Men will fight when they know they are solid, and no traitors among them.

“A few weeks' desperate fighting changed everything. Captain Parrott was the first to act. Long before Karen levies were sanctioned, Captain Parrott and I had every able-bodied Karen enrolled, and seventy of them regularly drilled. The men were whirled all over the district, wherever the dacoits were sticking up their heads; and if 'prevention is better than cure,' we won more honour than a dozen bloody battles would have brought us.

"Without encouragement, the Karen fought his way through the sneers of the Government officials, till at the durbar, when the viceroy was here, Mr. Bernard said to me, 'I have never been so much astonished as at the Karens fighting so well.'

"The reticence of the Karen helped to disguise

him and foster the delusion of the 'timid Karen.' Look at old Thah Mway, or Myat Koung, two of the men who have most distinguished themselves in action. They are quiet, retiring men, with stolid, mask-like faces that show nothing of what is going on under the quiet exterior. No one would take them for heroes, sitting stolidly on my verandah. See those men under fire once, as I have, and you would hardly recognize them. See their eyes blaze then, especially when leading a charge, and you will excuse people for not finding out the work that had been going on behind the stolid exterior of the 'timid Karen.'

"Well, as I told you, the Karen fought his way into notice, and dispelled all these illusions. Then the jealousy of the Government officials of the mission wanted to get matters into their own hands, and get rid of the missionaries. The only good service the Karens have done has been when they have been let alone. They have served under their pastors and schoolmasters and hereditary chiefs; but the moment the first coil of red tape touches a Karen levy, it paralyzes it, and you get no good of it. The Burmans around the district officer at once try and disgust the Karens with military service, and send the men off here

and there on the most ridiculous wild-goose chases, where there is not the sign of a dacoit.

"No commissariat for the Karens, while the Burmans are feasting on the fat of the land. After thus systematically starving the men and marching their heels off for nothing, the men get surly, and are then reported mutinous and disobedient. Karens, marching every day in the rain, can't get the waterproof cloaks so freely served out to the wretched Burmese police, who never leave their comfortable barracks. All rough service is shouldered off by the police on to those 'Karen dogs,' and so you find the Karens surly, to say the least.

"Whatever the Karen has done-I speak advisedly, and as solemnly as if on my oath—is not the hundredth part of what he could do, and would gladly do.

"At the same time, I am asked to get the men to enlist for Thongwa and Hanthawaddy. Just see how I am treated! My Sniders, which the Karens have proudly carried all over the Hanthawaddy and the Tharawaddy districts, are taken away, and wretched muzzle-loaders issued instead. The Karens felt prouder of those Sniders than words can tell, and the poor fellows looked like death when they stacked arms for the last time on

my verandah.

They were promised in writing

other Sniders of a different pattern; but when the muzzle-loaders came instead, the poor fellows looked abashed indeed.

"Again, I had ordered all my villages for ballpractice, lest, when I called them out, they should 'shoot like sepoys'-a phrase that has become proverbial in Burma the past few months. This exhausted their ammunition (paid for, like their guns, by themselves). They came down for more, but by some 'new rules' begotten by the high official already described, they could not buy a kernel of powder for a year.

"I wrote and explained, and begged that, as I was to blame, I might be punished, but not to practically disarm the Karens by refusing ammunition. I offered to stop all ball-practice, though the order, I warned them, would be fatal to efficiency; but it did no good. I was informed by the same high official that 'the rule must be maintained.' The powder could only be obtained on 'enlistment tickets.' Not one of the hundreds of brave fellows who have served under my orders in the Hanthawaddy has ever seen such a thing. What is the result? Hundreds of Karens have gone home surly, to say the least. The Karen is