1864.] The Question of British Trade with Western China. 431 



territory and dependencies, would perhaps be the most difficult part of 

 the line. Part of it, however, is already completed by the Assam lines. 



5. " Such a line would be almost entirely between Lat. 23° and 

 25°, and in the case of the Tsikyang being followed from Canton to 

 Yunan, would very nearly describe an are of a great circle passing 

 through Calcutta and Canton. 



6. " From Katha a line would, of course, branch off and connect 

 Kangoon via Mandelay and the present Pegu line with Bammo. 

 Indeed this portion from Bammo to Thayetmyo or Prome will be ? 

 probably, the first constructed. 



7. " A telegraph may go where a railway cannot ; but the same 

 reasons that forbid me to think of any other route than the above 

 for the former, force me to believe that if Western China is to be 

 tapped at all from the West or South, it will be by the same route. 

 And if a railway or tramway be required, it will be from the neigh- 

 bourhood of Bammo to Yunan city. The possibility of such a railway 

 is for the present, I admit, as chimerical as that of one through any 

 other unsurveyed region. By this route, however, the unknown 

 occupies less of the distance than by any other. 



8. " The railway, however, is not necessary to even a vast com- 

 merce by the Bammo route. Biver steamers and flats can navigate 

 the Irrawaddy up to Bammo. There is the alternative of the Taping 

 river or a perfectly flat road from Bammo to the foot of the Kakhyen 

 hills. Up to this point, the route is through our own and the friendly 

 Burman territory, the latter open to us by right of treaty. 



9. " Three or four days mountain route, frequented from time 

 immemorial by thousands of ponies, mules and asses that have carried 

 westward, silk, tea, copper, gold, «fcc, and eastward, cotton, salt, serpen- 

 tine, &c, reach Sanda or some other Shan frontier city, whence again 

 the route is taken up by the civilization of China, and carried north- 

 east, east and south-east. 



10. " Bammo will be a mart again in a short time, as soon, in fact, 

 as Yunan is quiet enough to make any trade possible ; and seeking 

 for any new mart in the unknown regions of Esmok, seems like looking 

 for a new port to get at the cotton of the Confederate States, somewhere 

 in Chili, because Charleston happens to be for the present, blockaded. 



The modification of this route which, I believe will be found advi- 

 sable is, as mentioned under the 2nd heading, to stop the steam 



