174 REPORT — 1871. 



tive without a raiboad; and the construction of a railroad in such a direction 

 certainly seems to me visionary. Coming- to practical questions, who is to pay 

 for such a scheme ? The Government of these islands? The question needs no 

 answer. The gentlemen who are so ready to memorialize Government on the 

 subject ? If they will, it is well ; but I doubt it. If in our own old Ind.ian territory,' 

 after railways have been making for twenty years, it has been found impossible to 

 get a single line of railway undertaken except with a guarantee (that is to say, prac- 

 tically, as the guarantees are, at the cost of the Government), is it likely that men 

 who withhold their money there, will risk it in driving a railway through a 

 scantily peopled and almost unknown region to tap a remote corner of China ? 

 Is it, then, the Indian Government that is to be at this expense ? I remember how 

 a somewhat similar system of agitation induced a former (Secretary of State, in op- 

 position to the views of tlie Indian Government, to sanction the guarantee of a 

 short but costly railway on like speculative grounds — I mean from Calcutta to 

 an uninhabited swamp upon a creek of the Delta, which it was expected would 

 prove a great harbour of commerce ; but that line is now almost a pure dead weight 

 upon the Indian revenue. The Indian Government is already sufficiently bur- 

 dened with railway guarantees, to say nothing of the immense amount of work 

 already laid out, and still to be done, in completing its domestic railway system. 

 When mutterings of discontent on account of increased or changing taxation are 

 beginning to be heard so audibly in India, a wise Government will hold back for a 

 time from measures of almost sure benetit, rather than disregard a warning so omi- 

 nous. And it would be mad, under such circumstances, to engage its revenues in 

 costly and specidative schemes for the extension of British commerce so proble- 

 matical as this. 



What I think we may reasonably hope for is : — first, to see Western China tran- 

 quillized, and the old channel of trade restored and stimulated by the access of 

 British steamers to Bhamo ; secondly, from gradual but inevitable political change 

 in our own relations to the Burmese Government, I should expect to see our 

 own influence brought into more direct operation at Bhamo, so that we shall be 

 able to act either inthe suppression of marauding, or in opening out by engineer- 

 ing the short road to the Chinese frontier cities, unhampered by such paltry ob- 

 stacles as the intrigues of Burmese underlings, or the jealousies of Chinese traders. 

 And I venture to think that our Government, as a general rule, need neither 

 grudge the small cost of surveys and explorations beyond our frontier, nor he- 

 sitate to apply some degree of pressure on native governments to sanction 

 such measures, without which these governments are apt to think us not in 

 earnest in our proposals. If my memory does not deceive me, our Minister at 

 Peking, in 1860, declined even to apply to the Chinese Regency for passports for 

 an expedition which Lord Canning had sanctioned for exploration in Thibet, and 

 in consequence a promising geographical enterprise Avas abandoned. The French 

 Minister, in 18G6, was less punctilious in pressing a similar demand. The expe- 

 dition of the Mekong was in consequence furnished with imperial passports ; and 

 these passports, even in such a time of civil war and confusion, backed by tact and 

 energy, secured them everywhere in China a decent, and sometimes a cordial 

 reception, as well as free passage through those hitherto untraversed provinces. 



On tlie PnncipaVdy of Karatcr/in. By Major-General Abeamop. 



On Minicoy Island. By llajoi- BasevI. 

 The author, who was connected with the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, 

 visited the island (which is situated west of Cape Coraoriu) with the object of 

 comparing the intensity of gravity on an island station with that at inland stations 

 in the same latitude. The result of Major Basevi's observations was the conclu- 

 sion that the force of gravity is gi'eater on the coast than inland, and at an ocean 

 station like Minicoy greater than on the coast. The island is of coral formation, 



