The question of the civil police in Lower Burma was taken up systematically in 1888. A committee was appointed by me to diagnose the ailment from which the police were suffering, and to prescribe remedies. On their report in 1889 a scheme was drawn up, the main features of which were the division of the Lower Burma force into military and civil, the former, as in Upper Burma, to be recruited from India and partly, it was then hoped, from the Karen people, the latter to be natives of the country. To the latter was to be entrusted all police work of detection and prevention. They were to be subjected to drill and discipline and accustomed to stand alone, and they were to be schooled and trained to police duties. The military police force was to be organized as one regiment under a military officer. Their headquarters were to be in Rangoon, and they were to furnish such detachments for outdistricts as might be wanted from time to time. This scheme, with little alteration, was carried out in 1891, and I believe is still in force.
[32] This is well brought out by Lieut-Colonel S. C. F. Peile in his "History of the Burma Military Police" (Rangoon, 1906), p. 12.
[33] I have learnt from Sir Herbert White that two Burman officers hold the rank of District Superintendents of Police with credit.
The country inhabited by the Burmans, properly so called, may be described roughly as the valleys of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers, south of 23 N. Latitude. The hills which bound the Irrawaddy Valley on the east, close in the great river in its northern reaches, and as far south as Mandalay. Below that point the river turns westward and leaves a widening plain between its left bank, and the spurs of the Eastern Range, which rise abruptly from the low ground. The passes through this range lead to a hilly plateau, the altitude of which is from two to four thousand feet above sea-level rising occasionally to five and six thousand feet. This plateau is intersected from north to south by the Salween River, which, rising somewhere in the mountains to the north-west of Yunnan, enters the sea at Moulmein. The channel of the Salween is in most places deep. To the east the high land continues, but is rougher and more mountainous, and rises until the watershed between the Salween and the Mekong is crossed. The descent to the Mekong is then made through difficult and rugged country much cut up by watercourses. The Shan States, which were at the time of the annexation tributary to the Burman monarch, are situated, with some insignificant exceptions, on this plateau.