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—obviously a corruption of Maha Chin, Great China, a term applied by the natives of Hindustan at that time more or less indiscriminately to all countries lying to the eastward of the Gangetic valley. He also mentions the practice of tattooing, though he ascribes its use to women as well as men, which is no longer the case except among a few hill-tribes, and he is the first traveller to speak of the famous white elephant, the dust-coloured beast with. pink eyes and unsightly skewbald patches which is in re- ality such a disappointing object when seen in the flesh. In 1496 Hieronymo da Santa Stephano, a native of Genoa, landed in Pegu, which he is the first European to call by that name, but he was prevented from visiting Ava by one of the many wars between the two great Burmese kingdoms which was at that time raging. Ludovico di Varthema, whom we have already named in connection with the Moluccas, visited Pegu about the same time, and speaks of bamboos—"great canes as large as a barrel"—and of rubies. He too mentions that war was in progress between Pegu and Ava at the time of his visit.

After the fall of Malacca, Ruy Nunez d'Acunha was sent to Pegu on a friendly embassy by Dalboquerque, and in 1545 the redoubtable Mendez Pinto, of whose voyage along the coasts of Indo-China we shall have more to say presently, was there as a military adventurer. He repeats the myth which had long been current of a great inland lake whence flowed all the rivers of the Indo- Chinese peninsula—a tradition which may possibly have had its origin in the Lake of Tonle Sap—and he adds,