The place fixed upon as the seat of government in the newly acquired British territory in Burmah, was Amherst, on the Martaban river, about 75 miles eastward of Rangoon.  This place had been laid out by British engineers under Mr. Judson’s direction, and in an incredibly short time, became a city numbering in thousands of houses.  In southern India, houses are built almost in a day, and the population fluctuates from place to place with a facility surprising to Europeans.  It is only necessary to make a clearing in the jungle, and erect barracks for a few soldiers, and—­as water rushes at once into hollows scooped in the damp sea-sand—­so do the natives of India swarm into the clearing, and create a city.’  To this new city of Amherst Mr. and Mrs. Boardman came in the spring of 1827, and joined Mr. and Mrs. Wade and Mr. Judson.  It was bitterly painful to them to learn that the wife of the latter, that noble and beloved woman whose life had been preserved as if by miracle in a thousand dangers, and from whose society and intercourse they had hoped and expected the greatest pleasure and profit, was the tenant of a lowly grave beneath the hopia-tree; and even more immediately distressing to find that her heart-broken husband was just about to consign to the same dreary bed the only relic remaining to him of his once lovely family, ‘the sweet little Maria.’  One of Mr. Boardman’s first labors in Burmah was to make a coffin for the child with his own hands! and to assist in its burial.  Poor babe! ’so closed its brief, eventful history.’  An innocent sharer in the terrible sufferings of its parents, in the midst of which indeed it came into the world; like its mother, it had survived through countless threatening deaths, and reached what seemed a haven of security, only to wring its father’s heart with an intenser pang, by its unexpected and untimely death.  Truly the ways of God ‘are past finding out,’ and ’his judgments are a great deep!’

From a short poem full of sympathy and pious sentiment which was written by Mrs. Boardman on this occasion, we select some passages.

“Ah this is death, my innocent! ’tis he
Whose chilling hand has touched thy tender frame.

* * * * *

Thou heed’st us not; not e’en the bursting sob
Of thy dear father, now can pierce thine ear.

* * * * *

Thy mother’s tale replete with varied scenes,
Exceeds my powers to tell; but other harps
And other voices, sweeter far than mine,
Shall sing her matchless worth, her deeds of love,
Her zeal, her toil, her sufferings and her death. 
But all is over now.  She sweetly sleeps
In yonder new-made grave; and thou, sweet babe,
Shalt soon be pillowed on her quiet breast. 
Yes, ere to-morrow’s sun shall gild the west,
Thy father shall have said a long adieu
To the last lingering hope of earthly joy;
For thou, Maria, wilt have found thy rest.