BURMA (bar'ma). A noisy good-natured struggle for right-of-way begins the moment the big bazaar boat's gangplank settles into the oozy mud of the Irrawaddy River, the " Grand Trunk Road" of Burma. Some want to get on, some to get off, this floating department store that ties up at every village of any size the whole 900 miles of the Irrawaddy's navigable length. It stays until the last customer leaves, his arms piled high with bundles of every shape and size—rice, his principal food; fish, dried and salt; yellow and pink striped silks; " whackin' white cheroots" for the whole family, even the children ; and perhaps baskets, beaten silver boxes, and white sapphires from the bazaar at Mandalay.
All these fascinating wares are displayed in little booths on the boat, each in charge of its owner and total salesforce—a Burmese woman. She is short, stocky, practical—the real backbone of Burmese business—and often very pretty. Her blouse is the upper part of a plain white shift, and her skirt is merely a length of bright silk wound round and round and tucked in at the waist-line. This costume sets off to advantage her round dark-olive face (usually powdered with yellow fuller's earth), her big brown eyes, and her coal-black hair, into which she has pinned a flower or two. Her husband is dressed in War. For some reason never made public, Washing ton reversed his first favorable opinion of him.
As a lawyer in New York City, Burr's fine mind, polished manners, and magnetic personality brought him rapid rise in social and public life. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1791, and to the vice presidency (with Jefferson) in 1800. But the party of Jefferson soon abandoned him, and in 1804 he be came the candidate of the Federalists for the governor ship of New York. Alexander Hamilton, however, and other leading Federalists opposed him because they believed his political conduct was unscrupulous, and he was defeated. Angered by this, Burr chal lenged Hamilton to a duel, and killed him. Although acquitted on the charge of murder, he had destroyed himself socially and politically.
Burr then engaged in an obscure conspiracy for the supposed purpose of forming a new republic on the lower Mississippi, with himself as a Napoleonic con queror of a part of Mexico, and with a gay French capital in New Orleans. An armed expedition was actually launched on the Ohio, when Burr was arrested in 1807. Treason was not proved, but pop ular opinion as before condemned him. Then his idolized daughter, Theodosia, wife of Governor Alston of South Carolina, whom Burr himself had educated into one of the most charming and intellectual women of the day, was lost (in 1812) in some mysterious tragedy of shipwreck or piracy at sea. Burr returned to New York, but was unable to recover his law practice. Ruined, and forsaken by his friends whom he had used and betrayed, he died at the age of 80 in poverty and neglect.