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for some years he held the position of a kind of rival prince, keeping the son of his benefactor as a hostage. for whose release he demanded a ransom of 50,000 crowns! "He also domineereth and careth for nobodie," says a contemporary chronicler, and so secure to all see- ing was the eminence to which he had attained that his son married a daughter of the King of Martaban who had established a separate principality upon the ruins of Pegu. In 1613, however, de Brito was besieged in Sirian by the King of Ava, and after a manful resistance was betrayed into the hands of his enemy. The unhappy wretch was impaled by the King of Ava, and actually lived two whole days enduring the most hideous torments.

From this time dates the beginning of the domination of Ava over the whole of Burma. Tavoi was conquered, Tenasserim besieged, although a Portuguese outlaw of Cochin, Christopher Rebello, with forty of his compa- triots and a handful of slaves, utterly routed the fleet of Ava which numbered some five hundred sail. Shortly afterwards an alliance against Arakan was sought by the Court of Ava with the Portuguese, and an envoy was sent from Goa to conduct the negotiations. He was treated with the studied insults which always character- ised the dealings of the arrogant Burmese Court with foreign embassies, and nothing came of the mission. None the less, step by step, all the country between Assam on the north and Siam on the south, between the Bay of Bengal and the frontiers of China was absorbed by Ava, and though this rule was often inefficient, the hilly region inhabited by the sturdy tribesmen called the