"Although blistered now with the heat of a tropical sun, and now drenched in tropical rain and steam, British Burma is a fair and fruitful land. The most prosperous of the British provinces in India already, the agricultural possibilities of its future are grand indeed. Under the fostering care of a Christian government, the population is increasing at the rate of nearly fifty per cent each decade; while the foreign trade, stimulated by British capital, is increasing in a still more rapid ratio."