174 C0GG1N BROWN ; MINES & MINERAL RESOURCES OF YUNNAN. 



enter into successful competition with the overland road trans- 

 port ; instead of having to travel 75 miles by mule caravan across 

 the Mekong watershed to Yung-chang Fa, or 122 miles across 

 the high mountains and deep valleys of the Mekong, Salween 

 and Shweli rivers to Teng-yiieh, a journey of some 40 miles would 

 bring the salt into touch with the railway at Yung-ping Hsien. 

 The railway therefore would gain the freight to be made by the 

 distribution of native salt in the Western Circuit of Yunnan and 

 would be the means of a considerable reduction in the price of salt 

 throughout the Yung-ch'ang Fu, Teng-yiieh Ting and adjoining areas. 



The Burma-China Convention of 1891-1897 prohibits the import 

 of salt from Burma into Yunnan. Under these conditions it 

 would be a waste of time to discuss the probable effect a railway 

 would have on the trans-frontier carriage of salt. At the same 

 time there are other features of the Yunnan salt supply which 

 have some bearing on the importation of salt from Burma, which 

 it is within the province of the economic geologist to point out. 

 It is certain that the output of native salt in Yunnan is slowly 

 declining, a state of affairs readily understood when it is remem- 

 bered that there are no workings in the province which touch the 

 deep-seated deposits, and that the shallow wells and drifts have 

 been worked so actively and continuously by the Chinese, as to 

 be now in a condition verging on exhaustion. Everywhere in 

 the province the same story is told, a story of the former prosperity 

 and present decline of the salt-producing centres. 



The output from the Yunnan wells could be greatly increased 

 by the introduction of simple machinery, especially for the opera- 

 tion of pumping and quick transmission of the brine. I also 

 believe that modern drilling and pumping machinery with some 

 improved method of evaporation could be profitably installed in 

 other places at present unknown to the Chinese, where there is 

 reason to suspect the existence of the salt-bearing horizons of the 

 Upper Permian Red Beds, which are lying buried under consider- 

 able thicknesses of later Mesozoic strata. 



Salt in the Wei-yuan Ting district. 



Wei-yuan T'ing is a small and poor city lying at an elevation 



n ,, . n, ■ .. „ of 3,150 feet in the valley of the Wei-viian 



J he city of Wei-yuan > J J 



T'ing (Lat. 23° 30', Chiang. It is under the jurisdiction of the 

 long. 100° 45'). p u . erh Fu pre f ectj but is a place f ^tle 



