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a complete terra incognita to Europeans. The story of its subsequent exploration will be told in a later chapter.

To return now to the doings of the East India Com- panies in the other lands of southeastern Asia, it was not until 1618 that trade began to be conducted by the Brit- ish with the valley of the Irawadi, the exploitation of which by Portuguese adventurers has already been noted. Cu- riously enough the first of the Company's factors to visit Burma came, not from India, but overland from Siam. In 1618 the factor at the Siamese capital, Lucas Anthon- ison by name, sent a sub-factor, one Thomas Samuel, up the Menam to Zengomay (Chieng Mai), to investigate the prospects of trade in that place, which shortly before. had passed into the hands of Siam. The forces of the King of Ava retook Chieng Mai while Samuel was still there, and the unfortunate merchant was carried to Pegu with all his property, and soon afterwards died there. He was not the first white man to accomplish the journey from Ayuthia to Pegu, since the Portuguese contingent which aided the Peguan army in its invasion of Siam in 1548 must have traversed approximately the same line of country; but his arrival led indirectly to the opening up of commerce with that country by the agents of the British Company. Anthonison, who had meanwhile been trans- ferred to Masulipatam, no sooner heard what had befallen Samuel than he despatched two sub-factors to Burma, ostensibly to enquire for the dead merchant's effects, but really with a view to establishing trade. He was badly served by his agents, who tried to keep the commerce of Burma in their own hands and to discourage its exten-