The disorder in the Minbu district was similar to that in Sagaing, but I doubt if it had been of such long standing.
It differed in other respects from Sagaing. In that district the Bos formed a confederation. Each had his own village or district, from which he drew his supplies, and his exclusive rights which the others recognized. They communicated with each other and were ready to join forces when it was necessary. In Minbu the government was more autocratic, and centralized in the hands of Ôktama, who had seven or eight lieutenants under his orders. There was also another point of difference. The leaders in Sagaing and generally elsewhere, were local men, and for the most part professional robbers. Ôktama had been a Pongyi some years before, in a monastery a few miles north-west of Minbu. He professed to have a commission from some obscure prince, but laid no claim to royal blood.
He made his first appearance in Minbu in February, 1886, and induced the headmen of many villages to join him.
The people at this time were like sheep without a shepherd. They had heard of the destruction of the wolf they knew, and to whose ways they had become accustomed. Of the new-comers, the _Kalas_, or barbarians, they had had no experience, and they had as yet no reason to believe in their power to protect them. Naturally, therefore, they looked about for some one to help them to work together in their own defence.
Ôktama no doubt had a capacity for organization and command, and the people recognized him as a leader of men; otherwise it is difficult to conceive how in so short a time he secured their allegiance. His attack on Sagu, a town on the right bank of the Irrawaddy nearly opposite Magwè, has been mentioned before. He burnt the town, which was held by a handful of troops, and then laid siege to Salin with a force said to have numbered five thousand men. The deaths of the two British officers in action against him increased his prestige, and from that time until a few weeks before his capture on the 20th of July, 1889, he was at the head of a large confederacy which had more power in Minbu than the British.
Ôktama assumed the title of Commissioner (Mingyi), and created a regular system of government. He had five lieutenants under him, to whom defined portions of the country were entrusted. His intelligence department was perfect. If the British troops showed a sign of movement, warning was sent from village to village and reached Ôktama in time for him to shift his camp. The organization was very strong. It could not have lived and grown as it did if my officers in Minbu had not been weak, and their rule "placidius quam feroci provincia dignum." They were not of the stuff that can bring a turbulent people to submission.