Pegu is a great strong and fair city, having walls of stone and great ditches all round about.  It consists of two towns, the old and the new.  In the old town dwell all the stranger merchants, and very many native merchants, and all the goods are sold in the old town, which is very large, and hath many extensive suburbs all round about it, all the houses being of bamboo canes and covered with straw.  In your house, however, you have a warehouse, which they call a godown, built of bricks, in which to keep your goods, as often the city takes fire, and four or five hundred houses are burnt down, so that these godowns are very useful to save your goods.  The king with all his nobility and gentry dwell in the new town, which is a great and populous city, entirely square with fair walls, and a great ditch all round about full of water, in which are many crocodiles.  It has twenty gates, five on each side of the square, all built of stone.  There are also many turrets for centinels, made of wood and splendidly gilded.  The streets are the handsomest I ever saw, all as straight as a line from one gate to the other, and so broad that ten or twelve men may ride abreast through them.  On both sides, at every door, there are palmer trees planted, which bear coco-nuts, and which make a fine shew as well as a commodious shade, so that the people may walk all day in the shade.  The houses are of wood, covered with tiles.

The palace of the king stands in the middle of this city, and is walled and ditched all round, all the houses within being of wood very sumptuously gilded, and the fore-front is of very rich workmanship, all gilded in a very costly manner.  The pagoda, or house in which his idols stand, is covered with tiles of silver, and all the walls are gilt over with gold.  Within the first gate of the palace is a very large court, on both sides of which are the houses for the king’s elephants, which are wonderfully large and handsome, and are trained for war and for the king’s service.  Among the rest, he has four white elephants, which are a great rarity, no other king having any but he; and were any other king to have any, he would send for it, and if refused would go to war for it, and would rather lose a great part of his kingdom than not have the elephant.  When any white elephant is brought to the king, all the merchants in the city are commanded to go and visit him, on which occasion each individual makes a present of half a ducat, which amounts to a good round sum, as there are a vast many merchants, after which present you may go and see them at your pleasure, although they stand in the king’s house.  Among his titles, the king takes that of king of the white elephants.  They do great honour and service to these white elephants, every one of them having a house gilded with gold, and getting their food in vessels of gilt silver.  Every day when they go to the river to wash, each goes under a canopy of cloth of gold or silk, carried by six or eight men, and eight or ten men go before each, playing on drums, shawms, and other instruments.  When each has washed and is come out of the river, he has a gentleman to wash his feet in a silver basin, which office is appointed by the king.  There is no such account made of the black elephants, be they never so great, and some of them are wonderfully large and handsome, some being nine cubits high.