The Burmese show no signs of submission. They make no
overtures ; they have attempted to recapture Martaban, and their assault on that outpost was pertinaciously maintained. The fu- ture movements of the British force are uncertain. An immediate advance to the interior was doubtingly talked of; a possible re- turn to Madras and Calcutta, for the rainy season, dimly hinted at; but the prevailing opinion seems to have been, that the troops would be kept where they are during that unhealthy period of the year. Yet cholera was already widely spread among them. By the time they were in possession of Rangoon, every tenth European was an invalid or dead. No returns of the cases of cholera and death are published. No satisfactory reason has yet been assigned for the commencement of operations so close upon the beginning of the rains ; nothing said that can show whether absolute necessity, undue precipitancy, or procrastination, led to the selection of such an undesirable season.
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