1884.] The Question of British Trade with Western China. 419 



the north-east and south-east,) to just below Bammo, where it again 

 turns northwards, and continues in that direction as far as it has been 

 explored. About ten miles above Bammo commences the Upper or 

 1st defile, of which it is sufficient here to note, that its irregular banks of 

 limestone, flint and serpentine, would alone make steam navigation 

 extremely dangerous ; but the many places where boulders and islands 

 composed of the latter two rocks stand out in the stream, forming a 

 labyrinth of " Scyllas and Charybdises," make it quite impossible. At 

 one spot where the whole Irrawaddy is literally poured through a 

 gorge 50 yards in breadth, the labour and danger of getting a boat 

 up round the jutting rock, even at the time of the slackest current, is 

 very great, and the sensation of peril on being shot through the middle 

 of it, when the river is rising, into the midst of the whirlpools that 

 play below, is one that, once experienced, can certainly never be 

 forgotten." 



Two tributaries of the great river, from their position rather than 

 their size, are also worth noticing here* One, the Shoaylee, which 

 comes down from Yunan, close by Maingrno, and after traversing 

 the Kakhyen hills, meanders through the Momeit plain, to fall into 

 the Irrawaddy below Bammo, at about one-third of the distance 

 between that place and Mandelay. 



Could the passage of that river be taken as a proof that the 

 Kakhyen hills are pierced by a valley, however tortuous, that it would 

 be possible to take advantage of for a great commercial road of any 

 kind, nothing would be more promising than the attempt to make 

 such a road from, say Tagoung by Momeit to the Shoaylee valley, and 

 to follow its course on by Maingmo into Western Yunan* 



Unfortunately, however, I could get no tidings of such a valley. 

 Quoting my journal again : " The accounts I get of the Shoaylee in 

 its passage through the Kakhyen hills represent it as a succession of 

 rapids, falls and rocky torrents, through impassable ravines. Once in the 

 plains, however, it becomes a quiet river with numerous Shan villages 

 on its banks. A few miles up from the mouth of the river, beyond 

 which, time would not allow of my going, I find it at this season, 

 (April) an even current of water, of a depth varying from a few inches 

 to over 12 feet, running between banks two and three hundred yards 

 apart, with marks of rise of water in the flood, of twenty feet or 

 more above the present level. It is said to continue of this character 



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