investigation of the subject will show that the natural and most obvious trade-route connecting British Burmah and South-western China is through the Cheung Mai province.
The only political difficulties in the way of such a route to the boundaries of Yunnan would be met with in the so-called "Independent Shan States" north of Laos. Upper Burmah claims, and fitfully and viciously exercises, a supremacy over these Shan states, but the general condition of these provinces is one of political anarchy. The Burmese policy is to incite one province to make war upon another, and to foment internal disorder by exactions and tyrannies compared to which the most unjust and arbitrary measures in the government of the Siamese provinces are mild. Geographically, these Shan states belong to Siam, and it is to be hoped that the Siamese authority will be extended over all the territory lying between the Ma-Kawng (or Cambodia) River and the Salween up to the Yunnan border. While no one will pretend to claim anything approaching to perfection in the administration of the Siamese provinces, the protection to life and property in them is simply infinitely better than the lawless condition of the provinces claimed by Upper Burmah. Should the Siamese authority be extended to the north (as the indications of the past few years would seem to promise), so as to include all the so-called Independent
