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characteristically enough, that he had himself seen it! At this period there would appear to have been a con- siderable number of Portuguese traders and adventurers settled in Lower Burma, men who did their best to keep the trade of the country in their own hands, sought service under the native kings as mercenary soldiers, and unlike the first of the Portuguese invaders discouraged the missionary endeavours of their priests as calculated to attract white men to the place and so to interfere with the monopolies they enjoyed. In spite of this, however, the Dominican Gaspar de Cruz visited Burma, which he calls "Bramer," some time between 1550 and 1560, and another Dominican, Bomferrus came to India from Pegu in 1557 after an abortive attempt to convert some of the inhabitants to Christianity. In 1569 a Venetian named Cæsar Frederick was in Pegu and gave a detailed and interesting account of the country, and fourteen years later he was followed by another Venetian, Gasparo Balbi, a jeweller, who went to Pegu with a stock of emeralds. Entering the river this man anchored at Bassein, then called Cosmi or Cosmin, whence he made his way to Dagon, the modern Rangoon, via Dalla. Robert Fitch, the merchant of London, to whom be- longs the distinction of being the first Englishman to visit Burma, followed the same route as Balbi when he came to Pegu in 1586.

The accounts which all these travellers, and more especially Frederick and Fitch, give of the kingdom of Pegu, even when every deduction has been made for glamour and its consequent exaggeration, prove that this