3-021-225 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Merchant-Street, Rangoon, British Burmah, 1869. Engraving from a photograph by Messrs. Bentley and Jackson. 'When the first British expedition to Burmah...landed at the port of Rangoon in May, 1824, [it] found that place a region of pestiferous and deadly marshes...so unhealthy was the old town that it literally decimated the British troops who were landed there during our first war with the Burmese. The place was called a "Golgotha," so deadly was the effects of its malaria upon our soldiers...To work, therefore, went our indefatigable engineer officers to drain the marshes on which the miserable huts of the natives then stood...After the occupation of Pegu, British trade gave an impulse to all the industrial interests of that fine province...The plan of the town was designed by Lieutenant, now Colonel, A. Fraser, C.B., chief engineer of the province...The streets...have surface drains along their sides emptying into the river...The British merchants at Rangoon are a very energetic, prudent, and intelligent body of men. According to the last Census, the population of the town was 75,000 souls, and this number is steadily increasing. Rangoon is the chief seaport of the province, having a fine navigable river all the way up to the town'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.