Lawrence Dundas

“ The possibility of a railway ever being constructed along the Bhamo-Tali Fu route was ridiculed by a Consular officer thirty years ago. The conclusions then arrived at were accepted as valid by engineers examining the country with a special view to discovering possible railway routes in the years 1898-1900, and a line from the Kung-long Ferry on the Burmese frontier viê the Nam Ting river to Tali Fu and Yün-nan Fu was declared by them to be "the only through line into China from Burma that can ever be constructed." ”

“ I asked them what kind of drill they were taught? "Oh," they replied, "we have no time to learn drill!" The motto emblazoned on their blouses was "fear established"—i.e., in the enemy. The muskets, however, of these Terrorists are rusty, and the Terrorists themselves of little use. ”

“ Referring to the extracts above quoted, he declared at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society that he quite agreed with the truth of these remarks of Baber. "The only thing is," he went on to say, "they do not apply to the railway at all; they refer to the road which goes westward from T'eng Yüeh to Tali Fu, whereas the present proposed railway comes into Yün-nan from quite a different direction. Indeed, only half a page lower down Baber himself recommends as a probable line for a railway the very route which has now been adopted." ”

“ His declaration in a Government paper, China, No. 3, 1878, that "We feel at liberty to say that if British trade ever adopts this track, we shall be delighted and astounded in about equal proportions," has been quoted ad nauseam, and is generally held to have settled for all time the pretensions of the Tali Fu-T'eng Yüeh route as an avenue of ingress for British trade. The quotation given above is supported by others in the same paper. "The trade route from Yün-nan Fu to T'eng Yüeh is the worst possible route with the least conceivable trade," he declares ”

“ The whole question of a railway from Burma has been prejudiced by Colborne Baber, who said that a railway there would have to be a series of bridges and tunnels. Well, if you start from Bhamo, ... you would have to build these bridges and tunnels. But ... there is a way round. Nature has provided us with a geological fault;... in one place, directly in a line with Mandalay, there is a curious fault—the line of rocks run due east and west, and up this from Mandalay a railway has been built.... The railway, so far, stops at Lashio, and if it goes no farther it will never pay ”

“ If once the railway could be got across the Mekong to Ching-tung, then there is no difficulty whatever in going north towards Tali Fu, or better still, to a point halfway between Tali and Yün-nan Fu, whence there is an easy approach to the Yang-tsze. ”

“ The whole question of railways in Western China is dealt with in a later chapter, but it may not be amiss to explain here the origin of existing prejudice against the T'eng Yüeh-Tali Fu line as a possible route for a railway from Burma. ”

“ By this he probably means Yün-nan Hsien. But this place is not in the valley of the Black river, but in that of the Red river, so that yet another high range of hills has to be crossed to reach it." From this point Major Davies admits that a practicable line for a railway could be found to the Yang-tsze at Chin-chiang-kai; but this he points out is 500 miles from Sui Fu, at which point navigation practically ceases. "These 500 miles of extremely difficult construction through an absolutely unprofitable country would render such a line quite impracticable." ”