Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-02-02
h4eOTTs OF BURMA.
-,,o,tc4 SOMEWHAT CHANGED THEY - STILL EXIST TO THUNDER.

.no and Do Not Often Capture One Of
 - Dacoits-A Sample Case of the Inef.
 ao,eney of the Police Officers.
 pnrma is one of the countries that are changing very fast. and one of the things that have changed ill Burma is .bo dacoit. The sportive gentlemen de-
 soribed by Backyard Kipling and others nbo erueified villagers wholesale and eIled old ladies with kerosene were aonrisbine in full igor less than ten years ago, but they already belong as completely to the past as, Dick Turpin ..nd his colleagues in England. Nodoubt . fresh war or any event seriously shak. ina the British power or reputation mieht produce q recrudescenee of the old disease, but i'll the meantime the daeeits have entirely changed their habits. h. stead of living together in bands in the inngle they are scattered through sepa- rate villages in the guise of peaceful euItivators. During the day each man attends to his paddy fields just like his .neighbors, and 1t is only at night that .ahey meet together for the dispatch of their more important and lucrative busi. ness.
 Dacoity as defined tg law is simply robbery committed by band of five men or more, and it is important only because of the Burman's strong natural propensity toward 1t and the great diff oulties which his national character places in the way of his detection It must always Do remembered that, Bur- ma being in transition stage and s much less settled than India and the government being extremely short hand ed, an immense amount of various kinds of work falls upon each single English official. Hence it is wholly impossible for him to exercise any close or detailed supervision over any particular part of his district. This of itself renders the detection of criminals q difficult mat ter When tho daooits were in the woods, it was simply case of turning out oc- easionaily to hunt them down At pres ent the matter must necessarily be left chiefly l. tho han5s of natives
 Now, the nasiYea are for the most part honest and tolerably law abiding, and they have no sympathy whatever with Q man who goes dacoiting, bud the daeoit goes armed, and the supineness and cowatdiee of the Burman in the presence of arms, moro particularly of firearms, are something almost ineom- prohensible to the western mind. It is quito sufficient for party of half dozen men to have gun among them-effeet- i've or useless, loaded or empty, matters little, the mere show is enough-and ;, they may go fearlessly to work in the midst of crowd. No one will interfere with them. In moro than one instance bold robbers have made successful at taeks when armed merely with their dabs-the dagger which every Burman carries-and with pretended rife made of a stick, with which they frightened off all opposition.
 But perhaps the strange workings of tho native character are best exhibited 7 in the following case, which occurred quite recently. The facts are vouched for by an English officer: There was 0 band of five men who were in the habit of practioing dacoity occasionally Three of them came from the same village not a common thing, as 1t makes deteo- tion easier-the fourth from another village, and, as for the fifth, no man knows whence he came, for reasons that will appear One night these five men, armed with nothing but their knives and spears, which ere used for fishing ln lower Burma, entered Q house, tied up the owner and began plundering. Now, this house was in large village, i0A{ Op some ], 400, but police post with 15 native policemen armed with sniders. The alarm was given and the house surrounded, and then there WAS pause. The robbers continued their work undis- turbed within. The villagers, some 200 or 300 ablebodied men, all more or less armed, sat around on the dam which surrounds and protects every house on tho delta, looked down on the house and discussed tho question. The police stood rather nearer the house and fired shots into it through tho bamboo walls. hurt, ing no one.
 One solitary policeman after time volunteered to advance. He erept up quite olose to tho house and fired in through on opening ill tho wall Then he went farther and actually put his head and part of his body through the hole, apparently to see what execution he had dono. One of the robbers prompt ly pinned him to tho ground with a fish spear and killed him By this time they had completed their preparations; so they sallied forth, each man with his pack of plunder 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 buokshot and hit three of them in the back, not seriously wounding them. But one of the band had tho 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