Chapter XXI., pp. 291, 292), and a desire not to depart from this line

of policy led him to treat Wuntho with forbearance. In the present instance, moreover, the Möng Mit chief was a minor; his ministers might be accused of incapacity but not of dishonesty or hostility.

It was sought by other means to improve the administration of Möng Mit. Saw Möng, who had been ejected by his enemies from his hereditary State of Yawnghè (_vide_ pp. 142-143), at the time of the annexation was selected as a man of some power and of known loyalty and placed as regent in Möng Mit. The experiment did not succeed. Whether from want of sufficient governing power or because, not being their hereditary chief, he met with little support from the people, Saw Möng[53] failed, and in 1892 it was found necessary to place the State temporarily under the Deputy Commissioner of the Ruby Mines, who governed it as part of his district until the year 1906, when the young Sawbwa came of age, and was entrusted with the administration of his State. He is doing well. Saw Yan Naing and Hkam Leng did not appear on the scene again. What has become of them is not known, and it is hardly necessary to inquire. It is hard to see what use they served except to try the endurance of our people and to harass the souls of their compatriots.

The narrative as regards Möng Mit and the territory once called Möng Leng, now known as the Upper Sinkan township of Bhamo, has been brought down to the year 1889-90.

It is now necessary to go back a year or two and deal with the range of hills known as Hpon Kan, lying about thirty miles to the south-east of Bhamo. The Kachins in these hills began to harass us from the first. Early in 1886 they attacked Sawadi on the Irrawaddy and exacted tribute from the Sinkan villages. They raided the open country near Bhamo several times, and on one occasion even made their way within our lines, killed some Indian soldiers and burnt some of the barracks.

They were in reality not of great account. But the first attempts to deal with them were unfortunate, and after a time they began to be regarded with a seriousness quite unmerited. Two military expeditions went from Bhamo in 1886, the objective being Karwan, the village of the most important chief of the tribe. The first expedition failed to reach the village and returned without doing anything. The second in the same year was well managed from a military point of view, and had forced its way against some opposition to a point close to Karwan, when the civil officer with the column, under some misunderstanding of the orders he had received from the Chief Commissioner, Sir Charles Bernard, stopped the advance, and the column retired without effecting the object for which it had been sent. The result was that the Karwan chieftain and his tribe were persuaded that the British were afraid to meet them. The chief would neither submit nor deign to visit the Deputy Commissioner, and his hill became a rendezvous for the restless and evil spirits around. Gatherings of Burmese and Chinese were reported, and it was apprehended at one time that they would join the rising in Upper Sinkan. They confined their action, however, to some small raids on insignificant villages below the hills. In the beginning of March, 1889, they again descended to the plains and stockaded themselves at a place named Kyawgaung, killed the headman and carried off his family. Some troops, sent out to cover a fatigue party building a post for the police at Mansi, about fifteen miles from Bhamo, were fired at from the jungle, and the village of Mansi, consisting of a few houses, was burnt by the Kachins, and two of the military police killed.

The necessity of punishing the Hpon Kan Kachins for all their misdeeds had long been admitted. The country round Bhamo was kept by them in constant alarm, and the failure to deal with them led to excitement and want of confidence in the Bhamo bazaar, peculiarly ready to believe absurd rumours and subject to panic. More urgent matters had hitherto delayed action, and the garrison of Bhamo had been so weakened by the despatch of troops to Mogaung, that it could not afford men for other work. The Chief Commissioner, therefore, was compelled to wait. Towards the end of March the return of troops from the north made it easier to find a force for the Hpon Kan business; and the opportunity was at once taken of destroying this nest of hornets, or, to describe them more accurately, mosquitoes. Sir George White arranged a plan of operations at the Chief Commissioner's request, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, being at the time in Upper Burma, gave his approval at once.

The force was of such a strength as to ensure the complete reduction of the refractory tribes, it was hoped, without fighting. It consisted of two guns of a mountain battery, fifty sappers, two hundred and fifty British, two hundred and fifty Native Infantry, of whom one hundred were Gurkhas, and was commanded by Brigadier-General George Wolseley,[54] C.B. The civil officers with the force were Mr. Shaw, Deputy Commissioner of Bhamo, and Mr. Warry, of the Chinese Consular service, with whose name the reader is acquainted already (_vide_