Page:The founding of South Australia.djvu/20

"But now a singular difficulty arose. How the British army could have advanced thus far into the country without having a man among them capable of translating a State document into the Burmese language, it is not easy to explain. So it was, however, and this clearly shows how slight the intercourse must have been between the two countries before this time. The General's interpreter was a native youth of Chinese extraction, who, of course, spoke the Burmese language fluently enough, and English indifferently. With this his knowledge ceased; he could neither write nor read the Burmese, and had not Dr. Judson [the famous American missionary] and myself been at the General's disposal, the impediment would have been a serious one, as the Burmese could not be expected to put their hands to a document written in a language they did not understand; nor, on the other hand, could the British Commissioners trust to a native copy alone. The English Treaty was, therefore, placed in our hands for translation, and when we produced a Burmese copy, both were to be acknowledged as original documents of equal validity. It gave me great pleasure to make some return for Sir A. Campbell's kindness, in this and other ways where my knowledge of the language was required—indeed, by an extraordinary accident, I was the means not only of aiding the General, but also of enriching the Exchequer of the East India Company to the amount of nearly £70,000, in a manner that was not less gratifying to me because it came from