The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-07-06
THE DACoITs OF BURHAH.
Civilization Has Compelled These
Outlaws to Alter Their Habits

|
Burmah is one of the countries that
are changing very fast, and one of the
things that has changed in Burmah
is the dacoit. The sportive gentleman
described byRudyard Kipling and 9TH
ers, who crucified villagers wholesale
and filled old ladies with kerosene,
were f1ourishing in full vigor less than
ten years ago, but they already belong
as completely to the past as Dick
Turpin and his colleagues in England.
| No doubt a fresh war, or any great
event seriously shaking the British
power or reputation, might produce
a recrudescence of the old disease, but
in the meantime the dacoits have en-
! tlrely changed their habits. Instead
| OF living in the jungle they are scat
| tered through separate villages in the
guise of peaceful cultivators. During
! the day each man attends to his paddy
| fields just like his neighbors, and it
lis only at night that they meet to-
gether for the dispatch of their more
important and lucrative business. Da-
coity, as described by law is simply
| robbery committed by a band of five
men or more, and it is important only
because of the Burman's strong nat
ural propensity toward it and the great
difficulties which his national char
acIer places in the way of it's detec-
ton.
1t must always be remembered that,
Burmah being in a transition stage,
and much less settled than India, and
the government being extremely short
handed, an immense amount of various
kinds of work falls upon each single
English official. Hence it is wholly i'm
possible for him to exercise any close
or detailed supervision over any par
ticular part of his district. This of
itself renders the detection of crimi-
mails difficult matter. When the da-
colts were in the woods it was simply
a case of turning out occasionally to
hunt them down.
AT present the matter must necessar-
lily be left chiefly to the natives. Now,
the natives are for the most part hon
est and tolerably Gabiding, and
they have no sympathy whatever with
a man who goes dacoiting; but the
dacoit goes armed, and the supineness
and cowardice of the Burman in the
presence of arms, and particularly of
firearms, are something almost incom-
prehenSible to the western mind. 1t is
quite sufficient for a party of half a
dozen men to have "a gun among them
and they may go fearlessly to work
in the midst of a crowd; no one will
interfere with them. In more than one
instance bold robbers have made sue
cessful attacks when armed merely
with their dahs-the dagger which ev-
cry Burman carries-and with a pre-
tended rife made of a stick, with which
they brighten off all opposition But
perhaps the strange workings of the
native character are best exhibited in
the following case, which occurred
quite recently. The facts are vouched
for by an English officer:
There was a band of five men who
were in the habit of practicing dacoity
occasionally. Three of them came
from the same village-not a common
thing, as it makes detection easier; the
fourth from another village; and as
for the fifth, no man knows where he
came from, for many reasons, that will
appear. One night these five men,
armed with nothing beyond their dag
gers and spears, which are used for
fishing in lower Burmah, entered a
house, tied up the owner and began
plundering. Now, this house was in a
large village, containing not only a
population of some 1,4OO, but a police
post, with fifteen native policemen
armed with Sniders.
The alarm was given and the house |
there was pause. |
The robbers continued their work I'M
disturbed within. The villagerS-some |
200 or 300 able-bodied men, all more or |
less armed-sat around on the dam |
which surrounds and protects every
house on the delta, looked down on the
house, and discussed the question; the
police stood rather nearer the house,
and fired shots into it through the /
bamboo walls, hurting no one. One
solitary policeman, after a time, volun- /
teered to advance. He crept up quite |
close to the house and fired through |
an opening in the wall; then he went |
further, and actually put his head and /
part of his body through the hole, ap-
parently to see what execution he had
done.
One of the robbers promptly pinned
him to the ground with a fish spear
and killed him. BY this time they had
their preparations, so they !
sailed forth, each man with his pack
of plumber on his back. Though the
house was surrounded, they appear to
have had no difficulty in making their
way through; only the police fired
after them with buckshot and hit three
of them in the back, not seriously
wounding them. But one of the band
had the misfortune to stumble and
fall. Instantly the crowd rushed upon
him. and before he could rise literally
hacked him to pieces, and so effectively
that not the slightest clew to his iden-
tity remained. He was absolutely de-
stroyed; no one knows even what his
was. The other four got
clear away.
Now comes the sequel, which is, if
possible, still more extraordinary Some
days after, man in neighboring
village informed the thugyi, or head
man, that two of the villagers, whom
he named, had been concerned in the
late dacoity The thugyi had them ar
rested promptly and they were taken
to headquarters for Identification.
When we consider that the intestines
are about five times as long as the
body, we can realize the intense suf
sering experienced when they become
nfiamed. DeWitt's Collie & Cholera
Cure subdues Inflammation at once /
Ind completely removes the difficulty
Nelder'-'i6soaa Drug Co.