WD540(1)

‘Rangoon - from plaform of the Great Pagoda.’

To the traveller who remembers Rangoon a very few years back, the modern town, but for its great and far famed Pagoda, would be perfectly unrecognizable. Six years ago it was pure Burmese, and its appearance, to European eyes, suggestive only of meanness and poverty. It was a large assemblage of wooden huts, intersperced with the better kind of edifices, the kioungs, or monasteries of the Priests, and numerous pagodas, mostly small and in decay, objects of so much taste in form and pictorial value as to be capable of redeeming any rude settlement of human beings from the charge of being savage.

A variety of non-descript kind of houses of brick, wood and thatch, were found here and there, inhabited by Armenians and Moguls; and one nearly solitary brick-building belonging to Captain Hugh Brown, one of the only two European residents of the place,-Captain Crisp, junior, being the second. The house here referred to, subsequently known as Mr. Bin-ell's, will be remembered in connection with the Flag’ disputation at the opening of the last war. Within a very few feet of the Main Wharf, the locality, it is understood, of the present principal wharf, stood the Armenian church, and, a little further in, that of the Roman Catholics. These, and nearly every building and hut standing between the river, and the great Shwe-Dagon Pagoda, which was converted into a fortress, were, in 1852, as a preliminary measure by the Burmese, swept from the ground. Thus swept, it was ready, at close of the war, for the civilizing hand of Europe, under guidance of the present popular and talented Commissioner, Major A. Phayre, to plant upon its surface a town which bids fair to be one of the most flourishing ports of Asia.

The advancement and improvement of the place have lately been rapid, though checked by the sad and extensive fires which have more than once destroyed large portions of the town. The progress secured, however, develops the growth of a judicious and tasteful plan. Smooth broad roads, one hundred feet in span, intersect each other at right angles throughout the town, between which and the great Pagoda, a large plain, cleared of jungle, has been reserved and smoothened as a military parade ground.

The view contained in the accompanying plate is taken from the platform of the Great Pagoda, looking over the town and river towards Dalla. The rustic tiled building in the foreground is a military store godown. The extensive line of triple roofs on the left, commencing at the large gateway which terminates the main street, covers the long flight of ornamented stairs, which gradually ascend the mound on which the great Pagoda stands, and lead to its principal entrance. The prominent object seen at the side is merely one of the accessary or petty pagodas, ornamenting the upper parts of the slope near to the entrance. Beyond are seen the capacious and healthy barracks for the British troops, ranged along the brow of the hilly ground skirting the north-east side of the town, Rugged and hitherto almost impassable ground in that direction has been levelled and cut into fine roads, leading to, and environing the picturesque lake, the scenery about which is exceedingly pretty and European in its aspect.

The Pagoda which may be observed converted into a signal tower, is memorable as Sale's Pagoda, a post held by Major-afterwards the celebrated Sir Robert-Sale, and a portion of Her Majesty's 13th Light Infantry, during the war of 1824-25. Of the two other pagodas seen nearer to the river, nearly solitary remnants of the old town of Rangoon, that to the right, octagonal in form, and in excellent preservation, has been made to mark the centre of the new town. In 1846 it was nearly surrounded by a swamp, and reached by a long wooden bridge. It is now the centre obelisk to a square, with its diverging roads, as dry, smooth and orderly as Charing-cross, or the Place de la Concorde. The more strictly native part of the town is observed on the right.