Bokelskere.no

It was dusk by the time they reached the river. A small wooden plank connected the bank to the Thooreah steamer. With his attendants holding a tall white umbrella over his head, and a crush of English, Burmese, and Indian onlookers all around, the twenty-eight-year-old Thibaw walked onto the ship, never to see Mandalay or Burma again.

By late November the weather in Upper Burma is nearly always perfect, with cool nights and warm days of cloudless blue skies. Brigadier White, standing on deck as the Kathleen came within sight of Ava, wrote that "the sun was pouring a flood of golden light on the last hours of Burman independence."