The accounts from Burmah are still unsatisfactory. The dacoits face
the Sepoys behind stockades, and are not always defeated. On the 19th inst., for example, Major Hailes, with three officers and 200 Sepoys and Ghoorkas, attacked 1,500 men, strongly stockaded in the Upper Chindwin district, but was forced to retire, wounded and with some loss. Almost every telegram announces a death, and the health of the European troops is reported bad. It must be remembered, however, that the incessant telegraphing, and the new practice of reporting the deaths of private soldiers by name, increase greatly the apparent meaning of every petty skirmish. If every attack on a stockade in New Zealand in the last Maori war had been reported in this fashion, people would have supposed the island distracted with bloodshed. The worst report from Mandelay is one of an attack on some Chinese traders at Bhamo, by Sepoys without an officer. The men appear to have acted in a panic ; but there are stories of plunder, of which the Chinese will make the most. The Chief Commissioner reports his province as settling down, and the revenue comes in steadily ; and it may very well be that 100,000 square miles are quiet, and we hear only of 1,000 still disturbed. Still, they ought not to disturbed. The defect seems to rest with the organisation of the garrison, which is split up in handfuls.
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