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But they have been much oppressed by their more civilised neighbours, the Burmese and the Shans, and their communities are widely scattered in the remoter parts of the country and are said to extend into Tenasserim far down the Malay Peninsula.
Your comrade told me that the hills that we saw to the east, from the forest at Ava, extended right down into Tenasserim; and were very high, and could not be traversed, for that no food could be obtained, and that tigers and wild animals and other beasts abounded.
Throughout the rest of Tenasserim, however; and indeed, throughout the whole country traversed by the troops later on, the inhabitants appeared to have entirely forgotten their ancient nationality, and the conquest of their country by the Burmans; and to have become completely absorbed by them.
We did not want to fight with them it was they who attacked us but, now that we have had all the expense of coming here, we shall go on fighting till the emperor agrees to make peace; but I don't think that we shall ever go out of Rangoon, again, and believe that we shall also hold the ports in Tenasserim that we have captured."
They would miss him when he was gone in another eighteen months, and most likely some retired naval officer had been pitchforked into the appointment a man that would understand nothing and care less. That steamer was a coasting craft having a steady trade connection as far north as Tenasserim; but the trouble was she could get no captain to take her on her regular trip. Nobody would go in her.
This there was no doubt that it would have been glad to do, but our occupation of several points on the coast of Tenasserim roused the fears of Siam, and inclined it to the belief that we might prove an even more dangerous neighbour than Burma.
Part of the Tenasserim coast was subdued, but a British force was defeated in Arakan. These reverses were retrieved in the following year, 1825, when one army under Sir Archibald Campbell made its way up the river to Prome, while another army conquered Arakan, and a third, moving along the valley of the Brahmaputra, established itself in Assam. The Burmese now abandoned further resistance.
Assam, Arakan, and the Tenasserim provinces were ceded to the company, whose protectorate was also recognised over other territories upon the course of the Brahmaputra. It was not until February, 1826, that the King of Ava could be induced to sign the treaty embodying these cessions, and many years were to elapse before the port of Rangoon was opened to British commerce.
They are still maritime in their habits, and very competent practical sailors and boat-builders; but though for centuries they divided with the Arabs the carrying trade between Eastern and Western Asia, and though a mongrel Malay is the nautical language of nearly all the peoples from New Guinea to the Tenasserim coast, the Malays knew little of the science of navigation.
I am not nineteen yet, and should greatly prefer to make my own way, than to find myself with nothing whatever to do, except to spend money as it dropped into my lap. "Now that everything is settled, and that Aracan has become English, and we have the seaports on the Tenasserim coast, trade will increase tremendously.
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