Imprisoned in Burma.
[the conclusion.]
The life of a courtier, which every man must lead who would get on in Burma, was always hazardous, and the court itself by no means attractive.
The very harem of the king was composed of anything but beauties, and gave Mr. Gouger, at first, a bad idea of the royal taste.
He soon found, however, that the ladies were chosen for political reasons, as their very name of ‘"Governors' Daughters"’ indeed implied.
When any nobleman is made ruler of a province, and especially if it be a distant one, his nearest female relative is taken to the palace, as hostage for his fidelity.
For a considerable time, the indefatigable Mr. Gouger--making the most satisfactory bargains, and inaugurating, as he flattered himself, a most magnificent mercantile system — retained the royal favor, and was hand and glove with the aristocracy generally.
Once only he got into trouble about killing a sheep — for which offence, since the Burmese are forbidden to eat any meat but carrion, a poor peasant was soon afterwards ‘"quartered alive, as he had quartered the animal"’--but even this was got over by judicious bribery, and he subsequently obtained his mutton as in England, Prince Tharawudi, the heir apparent, becoming accessory after the fact, and daily sharer in the forbidden delicacy.
Nay, he was even permitted to make a voyage to Calcutta, whence he brought back with him a greyhound for the king — a good service, which placed him more fully in the royal sunshine than ever.
But the dark days of this too enterprising trader were drawing near! No sooner did the war break out with England, than the feelings of the monarch altered towards him, and those of the court of course participated in the change. Mr. Gouger was seized upon as a British spy, and upon the still graver suspicion of being the brother-in-law of the Honorable East Indian Company. The Burmese statesmen were seriously of the opinion that the H. E. I. C. had married Mr. Gouger's sister. On these charges, he was hurried into captivity, exchanging his sumptuous fare and scarlet finery (for he wore a complete harlequin suit of Stuart tartan silk, by the gracious command of his majesty,) for the unimaginable horrors of the Let-ma yoon, toung, or Death-prison, its name, being literally interpreted, signifying ‘"Hand! shrink not,"’ from the revolting cruelties practised within its walls. ‘"Although it was between four and five o'clock on a bright sunny afternoon, the rays of light only penetrated through the chinks and cracks of the walls sufficiently to disclose the utter wretchedness of all within. Some time elapsed before I could clearly distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded. As my eyes gradually adapted themselves to the dim light, I ascertained it to be a room about forty feet long by thirty feet wide, the floor and sides made of strong teak-wood planks, the former being raised two feet from the earth on posts, which, according to the usual style of Burmese architecture, ran through the body of the building, and supported the tiled roof as well as the rafters for the floor and the planking of the walls. The height of the walls from the floor was five or six feet, but the roof being a sloping one, the centre might be double that height. It had no window or aperture to admit light or air except a closely woven bamboo wicket used as a door, and this was always kept closed. Fortunately, the builders had not expended much labor on the walls, the planks of which here and there were not very closely united, affording through the chinks the only ventilation the apartment possessed, if we except a hole near the roof, where, either by accident or design, nearly a foot in length of decayed plank had been torn off. This formed a safety-valve for the escape of foul air to a certain extent; and, but for this fortuitous circumstance, it is difficult to see how life would have been long sustained. * * * Before me, stretched on the floor, lay forty or fifty hapless wretches, whose crimes or misfortunes had brought them into this place of torment. They were all nearly naked, and the half-famished features and skeleton frames of many of them too plainly told the story of their protracted sufferings. Very few were without chains, and some had one or both feet in the stocks besides. A sight of such squalid wretchedness can hardly be imagined. Silence seemed to be the order of the day; perhaps the poor creatures were so engrossed with their own misery, that they hardly cared to make many remarks on the intrusion of so unusual an inmate as myself. The prison had never been washed, nor even swept, since it was built. So I was told, and have no doubt it was true; for, besides the ocular proof from its present condition, it is certain no attempt was made to cleanse it during my subsequent tenancy of many months. This gave a kind of fixedness or permanency to the fetid odors, until the very floors and walls were saturated with them, and joined in emitting the pest. Putrid remains of castaway animal and vegetable stuff, which needed no broom to make it move on--the stale fumes from thousands of tobacco pipes — the scattered ejections of the pulp and liquid from their everlasting betel, and other nameless abominations, still more disgusting, which strewed the floor — and if to this be added the exudation from the bodies of a crowd of never-washed convicts, encouraged by the thermometer at 100 degrees, in a den almost without ventilation — is it possible to say what it smelt like?"’ The furniture of this den consisted of rows of great wooden stocks, which, like huge alligators, opened and shut their jaws with a loud snap upon the arrival of each victim; and of a long bamboo, suspended from the roof by a rope at each end, and worked by pulleys, to raise or depress it at pleasure. At night, the 'father,' or chief of the jailers — who had all the ringbark branded on each cheek, which distinguishes the Burmese executioners.--caused this bamboo to be passed between the legs of each individual, 'and when it had threaded our number, seven in all, a man at each end hoisted it up by the blocks to a height which allowed our shoulders to rest on the ground, while our feet depended from the iron rings of the fetters. The adjustment of the height was left to the judgment of our kind-hearted parent, who stood by to see that it was not high enough to endanger life, nor low enough to exempt from pain.' The other six who were Mr. Gouger's companions on the bamboo were the following: Mr. Laird, a Scotchman, recently kidnapped at Rangoon; the unhappy Rodgers, whose naturalization and long residence in the country could not shield him from the royal fury; Dr. Judson, and Dr. Price, two American missionaries, who were confounded with the British by ungeographical Burmese; and two Hindu servants of Mr. Gouger. All conversation, even moanings themselves, died away among this wretched community, when 3 o'clock was proclaimed each afternoon by the palace gong. A death like silence prevailed. 'It seemed as though even breathing were suspended under the control of a panic terror, too deep for expression, which pervaded every bosom. We did not long remain in ignorance of the cause. If any of the prisoners were to suffer death that day, the hour of three was that at which they were taken out for execution. The very manner of it was the acme of cold-blooded cruelty. The hour was scarcely told by the gong, when the wicket opened, and the hideous figure of a spotted man appeared, who, without uttering a word, walked straight to his victim, now for the first time probably made acquainted with his doom. As many of these unfortunate people knew no more than ourselves the fate that awaited them, this mystery was terrible and agonising; each one fearing, up to the last moment, that the stride of the Spot might be directed his way. When the culprit disappeared with his conductor, and the prison-door closed behind them, those who remained began again to breathe more freely; for another day, at least, their lives were safe."
Scarcely anything in the whole range of literature is more graphic and interesting than the account of this imprisonment; nothing in fiction approaches it for outlandish barbarity but at the same time for philosophical, almost cheerful resignation. Heavily ironed, witness to the tortures and death of others daily, and expecting them daily for himself; with no chance of rescue; deprived of everything he possessed, and dependent solely upon a certain benevolent Mohammedan baker for his escape from positive starvation — the fate of many of his fellow prisoners, from whom the jailers had filched the royal allowance appointed for them, and who had therefore nothing to look to but the donations of the charitable; filthy, naked, and, on one occasion, actually chained to a leper, did Mr. Gouger contrive for more than a year to retain not only existence, but even hope. He had been permitted, by favor of the jailer's pretty daughter, to occupy for a time — in company with a legion of rats — a separate cell, where dysentery at length completely prostrated him, and brought him to death's door. Death, indeed, was written in his face
when one of the ringed nice men came in and carried him back again to the stiffing inner prison. ‘"What could this mean."’ thought he. "I concluded that at last the government had made the distinction between my guilt and that of my companions, and that I had to die a felon's death. They must be quick, however, or the last Enemy would snatch the prey from their grasp.
"Again I was wrong. I did not owe it to this; nor is it likely that any human being could guess the true reason. I did not myself learn it until some time after. It was this: if a prisoner dies within the walls of the prison, his funeral obsequies are performed at the expense of the Government. His body is rolled up in a mat slung on a bamboo, and deposited in the adjoining grave-yard. If he dies within the cells, his corpse is disposed of in a similar manner, the only difference being that in the one case the cost of the mat is paid by the Government, in the other it falls on the keepers. These men, judging from appearance that I might die that night, had an eye to saving the expense of the mat — a few pence at most — probably none at all, as an old one serves for the purpose.
Neither Mr. Gouger, however, nor any of his European fellow-sufferers, were destined to die within the walls of Let-ma-yoon. 'On the second of May, our party, now eight in number, again found itself assembled around the memorable granite block. What a ghastly group'The matted hair, the hollow eye, the feeble gait, the emaciated frame, the filthy tattered rags — objects such as the sun never shone upon! Around us the Spotted men gathered for the last time! Thank God! I never cast my eye upon one of their detestable ringed cheeks after this day. They were now armed with spears, and each held in his hand a long piece of cord. Our irons were knocked off — for the first time for eleven months I found my limbs free. The sensation was ridiculous. At first, I could hardly stand — the equilibrium of the body seemed destroyed by the removal of the fetters I had so long worn on my ankles, weighing full fourteen pounds--the head was too heavy for the feet. This only lasted a short time, and I enjoyed the first stretch of my legs. We were now tied in couples by the waist, one at each end of the rope; a parquet, with a spear, holding the rein, just as children are seen to drive each other in their sports.--Off we went, we knew not whither bound, but conjectured by the manner of the men and their weapons, we were going to the place of execution.
Instead of this, they were all driven away to another jail in the country, the condition of which would have made a prison inspector weep, but which was an Eden bower compared to their recent place of durance. Here, too, they would all have starved but for the faithful baker, who ran the six miles from Amerapoorah daily, bringing his loaves with him. The reason of their removal was unknown to the poor wretches; they only guessed that it boded them no good, since they had incurred the resentment of Pacahmwoon, the new Burmese Generalissimo against the British, by whose orders the change had been effected. When the sluices were opened to irrigate the rice-fields about their somewhat elevated dwelling, it was inundated by vermin and reptiles of all kinds who wished to escape death by drowning, and each of the prisoners was allowed a stick to defend himself. A tally was kept of the number killed of these unwelcome guests, and of the cobra da capello alone it amounted to thirteen!
One day an enormous cage was wheeled into the enclosure and placed under their apartment. This contained a huge lioness, who was not to have any food given to her for the present. As day after day she grew more ravenous, and they heard her every roar and even her terrible breathing, but too well surmising that they themselves were doomed at last to be her prey, it is no wonder that the mind of one of them nearly lost its balance. But the poor lioness died — starved to death — after all, and one of the prisoners, fever-stricken, gladly removed into her deserted tenement. The Pacahm-woon had decided that the white prisoners, instead of being devoured, should be buried alive at the head of his army, for luck; and this would certainly have come to pass, but that that hero himself fell under the displeasure of his sovereign, and was happily trodden to death by elephants.
Eventually, the success of the British arms compelled the surrender of Mr. Gouger and his companions from the Burmese government; and, as in the conclusion of a nursery-tale, they all lived happy ever afterwards and the good baker got rewarded. Was ever nursery-tale stranger than this true history? Did ever man in a book pass through greater perils and sufferings than this man really did, who is now alive to tell us of them? In his extreme modesty, Mr. Gouger apologises for having published this narrative, never having followed literary pursuits, and of the circumstances described having taken place so long ago. Setting aside, however, the intense interest of the adventures themselves, the book needs no excuse of any kind. Its style is as easy as that of Robinson Crusoe, while its reflections have something of the same simplicity and guilelessness; and as for the staleness of the subject, there is but too present a parallel now offered it in the treatment of our unhappy fellow-countrymen in China. The Chinese, however, cannot urge the plea of brutal ignorance which might be used in the case of the Burmese of forty years ago. ‘"Some of the natives who had fled from the war, and were thrown into the same prison, give us marvellous accounts of the skill and prowess of the English troops, exaggerated by their own superstitious fancies. They firmly believed in our using enchantments. One of these convicts affirmed, that even our missiles were charmed before they were fired off, and knew what they had to do. He was standing, he said, near his Tsek-kai, an officer of rank, when a huge ball of iron came singing ‘"Tsek, tsek,"’ which he distinctly heard in its flight, when, true to its mission, it burst upon the very man it was calling out for, the unfortunate Tsek-kai. Those who have seen shell-practice, know the peculiar hissing noise made by the fuse in its course through the air, and can enter into the mistake of the wonder-stricken soldier. Our surgical operations, too, had come to his knowledge, but, with the ignorance of a savage, he concluded our surgeons amputated injured limbs only to repair and fit them on again. He could not conceive any other motive for cutting them off."’
There is one lesson we may all learn from Mr. Gouger's volume, and of which we have most of us not a little need — not to bewail ourselves about small calamities, when such sufferings as these sometimes befall our fellow-creatures. ‘"When I look back,"’ says he, ‘"on the almost unexampled sufferings of those two months, how light and insignificant do all the ordinary troubles of life appear.--When such arise, I have only to reflect, and be thankful."’
