PROCEEDINGS. 489 
Yunnan will never flourish ander Chinese rale. Something better 
is necessary. Good roads must be made, habits of industry must 
be encouraged, and the corvée system abolished, before any good 
can be effected. There are ten important roads by which travellers 
and merchandise may reach the provincial capital of Yannan, from 
various parts of China and the surrounding countries, but the best 
of them is not so good as the worst of country roads in England. 
The accommodation for man and beast on the best and most 
frequented is wretched in the extreme. All of them are difficult 
and costly. 
Eleven days’ overland journey is the shortest time in which the 
capital of the province can be reached from the nearest river port. 
The first and most important of these ten routes is the Imperial 
highway from Peking through Chihli, Shantung, Honan, Hupei, 
Hunan, Kueichow, and Yunnan, and as far as the borders of Burma. 
The distance from Peking to Yiinnan Fu by this route is 5,895 li, 
or over 2,000 miles, and it takes ordinary travellers at least one 
hundred days to accomplish the journey, Four months is, however, 
the usual time. Frequent halts and rests are necessary for the 
welfare of man and beast, so it happens that every ten or fifteen 
days the coolies and pack animals are all changed at certain well- 
known and regularly established centres for that purpose. Carts 
engaged at Peking may, however, come as far as Hsiang-yang Fu 
on the Han River in about thirty days withont changing, but it is 
rarely done. The Imperial post couriers bearing important dis- 
patches to or from Peking and Yunnan sometimes do the whole 
journey, 2,000 miles, in thirty days, but they change ponies every 
ten or fifteen miles. 
The advent of steamers in China has brought about considerable 
changes, Thus, travellers leaving Peking for the distant province 
of Yunnan may now take cart to Tientsin in three days, embark 
there on a steamer, and reach Shanghai in four or fivedays. Thence 
they go by river steamer to Hankow in four days. At Hankow 
a junk may be hired to go up the Yangtsze River, through the 
Tungting Lake, and up the Yuan River to Chén-yuan-fu, Kuei- 
chow province, in forty days. Here the land journey commences, 
