"It seems almost certain," says a great authority, perhaps _the_ greatest authority on Burma--J.

G.Scott (Shway Yoe)--"that in no very long time Burma, or, at any rate, the large trading towns of Burma, will be for all practical purposes absorbed by the Chinese traders, just as Singapore and Penang are virtually Chinese towns.

Unless some marvellous upheaval of energy takes place in the Burmese character, the plodding, unwearying Chinaman is almost certainly destined to overrun the country to the exclusion of the native race." The artisans of Rangoon are largely Chinese, and the carpenters exclusively so.

The Chinese marry Burmese women, and, treating their wives with the consideration which the Chinaman invariably extends to his foreign wife in a foreign country, they are desired as husbands even above the Burmans.

Next to the British, the only indispensable element in the community is now the Chinese.
The best known figure in Burma is the Reverend John Ebenezer Marks, D.D., Principal of the St.John's College of the S.P.G.