to execute this exploit about midnight; but upon second thoughts we deferred it to the next night, by reason that the caravan being to go from hence the next morning, we should be out of the governor’s power.  The better to effectuate my design, I procured a Tartar’s sheep-skin robe, a bonnet, with bow and arrows, and every one of us got the like habits, the first night we spent in mixing combustible matter with aqua vitae, gunpowder, &c. having a good quantity of tar in a little pot:  next night we came up to the idol about eleven o’clock, the moon being up.  We found none guarding it; but we perceived a light in the house, where we had seen the priests before.  One of our men was for firing the hut, another for killing the people, and a third for making them prisoners, while the idol was destroyed.  We agreed to the latter; so knocking at the door, we seized the first that opened it, and stopping his mouth and tying his feet, we left him.  We served the other two in the like manner; and then the Scots merchant set fire to the composition, which frightened them so much, that we brought them all away prisoners to their wooden god.  There we fell to work with him, daubing him all over with tar mixed with tallow and brimstone stopping his eyes, ears, and mouth full of gunpowder, with a great piece of wild-fire in his bonnet, and environed it with dry forage.  All this being done, we unloosed and ungagged the prisoners, and set the idol on fire, which the gunpowder blowing up, the shape of it was deformed, rent and split, which the forage utterly consumed; for we staid to see its destruction, lest the ignorant idolatrous people should have thrown themselves into the flames, And thus we came away undiscovered, in the morning appearing as busy among our fellow travellers, as no body could have suspected any other, but that we had been in our beds all night.

Next morning we let out, and had gone but a small distance from the city, when there came a multitude of people of the country to the gates of the city, demanding satisfaction of the Ruffian governor for insulting their priests, and burning their great Cham Cai-Thaungu, who dwelt in the sun, and no mortal would violate this image but some Christian miscreants; and being already no less than thirty thousand strong, they announced war against him and all his Christians.

The governor assured them he was ignorant of the matter, and that none of his garrison had been abroad; that indeed there was a caravan that went away that morning, and that he would send after them to inquire into it; and whoever was the offender, should be delivered into their hands.  This satisfied them for the present, but the governor sent to inform us, that if any of us had done it, we should make all the haste away possible, while he kept them in play as long as he could.  Upon this we marched two days and two nights, stopping but very little, till at last we arrived at a village called Plothus, and hasted to