1864.] The Question of British Trade with Western China. 425 



Kaingma, is an extensive silver mine, known for ages, but recently 

 abandoned from motives only comprehensible to those in the secret 

 of Burman politics. 



As to Yuis T A]sr itself, with its ten millions of population and 21 

 cities of the first order, it is now well known to be, in a commercial 

 point of view, one of the most important provinces of China. In 

 the extreme south are copper and perhaps zinc, and certainly the 

 finest tea in the Chinese Empire. The middle and northern portions 

 are still more rich, the minerals alone including gold, silver, copper, 

 iron, mercury, arsenic, lead and coal. Silk, tea, rhubarb, mush, 

 hams, honey, and many articles suited rather for the Burman than 

 European market are also produced, and were formerly exported from 

 this portion of the Province. The centre of trade in western Yunan 

 is Yungchan, where are the head quarters of the great company that 

 has had for so many years, in its hands, the whole trade with Burmah 

 All the above-mentioned articles are there traded in. Tali and Yuistan 

 are still more considerable places of trade. 



The next province, Sechuest, is, except in its being more dis- 

 tant, of equal importance to our object, with Yunan. It has a popula- 

 tion of some 30 millions, and contains some dozen cities of the first 

 order. It produces silk of better quality and more abundantly, I was 

 informed by the Chinese of Bammo, than any other province. Its tea 

 is also superior and abundant. It furnishes rhubarb, musk and several 

 other drugs, and many of the minerals found in Yunan. 



Queicho is also a province in the neighbourhood of Yunan, and the 

 great artery of trade Yangtsekiang runs up from Yunan, between it and 

 Seehuen. Its products and its market also are well within the reach 

 of British trade via Burmah, if the proper route be adopted. 



QiTAisrasi is, I believe, much infested with wild tribes, but the 

 banks of the Tsiking or Pearl Biver are dotted with Chinese towns 

 connected by roads with the city of Yunan. 



The former trade between Yunan and Burmah consisted almost 

 solely of an exchange of the silk, copper, gold, orpiment, quicksilver, 

 hams, honey, drugs, carpets and paper of Western China, for the 

 raw cotton, ivory, amber, jadestone, peacocks' feathers, birds' nests, 

 &e. of Burmah. Little tea was brought over beyond what the 

 Chinese in Burmah consumed and scarcely any of the foreign articles 

 imported into Burmah were taken to China. 



3 I 



