AGGRESSIVE POLICY OF THE BURMESE 389

ers upon their actual frontier by taking these chiefships or little border principalities under their protection. The Burmese were now violating this protectorate in a very menacing fashion. They were engaged in sub- duing all the northeast corner of India; they had taken Manipur, were making inroads into Cachar, then under British protection, and they had even claimed the Brit- ish district of Sylhet. In fact they were breaking through all the natural barriers that fence off India by land from Eastern Asia, and were evidently seizing the issues or sally-ports available for sudden descent, whenever and however they might choose, upon the level plains of Bengal. They had seized, not with- out bloodshed, an island on the British side of the estuary which separated English territory from Ara- kan. To be thus openly defied and attacked was a novelty for the English in India, but the Burmese, like the Gurkhas, having never measured themselves hitherto against civilized forces, saw no reason why they should not go on extending their dominion until they had pal- pably tested a neighbour's capacity to resist them. When regular hostilities began, there was some very sharp skirmishing on the Assam border, in which the British troops did not always come off victorious; but the despatch of a small army across the Bay of Bengal to attack Rangoon made an effective diversion, for, to a maritime enemy, this was the vulnerable side of the Burmese kingdom. The expedition sent by Lord Am- herst, then Governor-General, to Pegu represents the