A wandering student in the Far East/T'eng Yüeh to Bhamo
CHAPTER XVI.
T'ENG YÜEH TO BHAMO.
At T'eng Yüeh I found Mr Maze, Commissioner of Customs, and his colleagues, who entertained me hospitably during my two days' stay in the town. This latter resembles other towns in Yün-nan, and requires no particular description. It is the first objective of caravans coming from Burma, but of the foreign goods imported only a comparatively small proportion remain for local consumption. Its foreign trade amounted in 1906 to 1,397,877 Hk. Tls.
On the last day of February I started on the last lap of my long journey. At Nantien, where I halted for the night, the lady in charge of the best inn refused to take me in because, she declared, she wanted no foreign devils in her place, though this piece of news was sedulously kept from me at the time. I found myself in consequence in a small and filthy hostelry, the only room available being a passage room through which the half-dozen inmates of the inner chamber perpetually passed. On the following day I marched twenty miles to Kangai. We were now in the valley of the Ta-ping river, a fine broad expanse hemmed in on either side by high mountain-ranges. The nature of the country, too, began to change as we fell to a level of under 3000 feet, large clumps of big bamboos growing on the lower slopes, and huge shady banyan-trees becoming common. The country is inhabited by Shans, a pleasant and peaceful people. Their women are conspicuous by reason of their enormous headdress, consisting of a turban of dark-blue material widening towards the top, and standing as much as a foot high. Two Shan soldiers were sent with me as a guard of honour, but as neither of them could speak or understand Chinese, and no one of my followers could understand Shan, their presence was more ornamental than useful.
From Kangai we marched sometimes close along the river's edge, sometimes at a distance from it. Here and there picturesque Shan villages were to be seen half hidden among clumps of giant bamboo and wide-spreading banyans. These latter trees were dotted about along the road, and provided pleasant spots at which to halt. At Lung-chang-kai, where we halted for the night, market was in full swing, the women of a variety of tribes, profusely ornamented with silver bracelets round arms and neck, mixing with the stately Shans, and producing a varied and animated scene. Here, as in most of the Shan villages through which I passed, I saw bottles of sweets from Glasgow conspicuous among the small stocks of foreign goods on sale at the stalls and booths. Thirty years earlier Gill had found Bryant & May's matches "sold at Manwyne for 25 cash a-box, though the price seems incredible." Bryant & May have, however, succumbed to Japanese competition, matches from which country may be bought anywhere along the road at a cost not of 25 cash, but of 5 cash a-box!
The New Year was, to my annoyance, still being celebrated, and I was kept awake half the night by a discordant fanfare on horns, gongs, and drums. As usual, these serenaders selected a position immediately outside the hovel in which I was housed, under the mistaken idea that they were contributing to the pleasures of my existence, and with the ever-present hope that cash would be forthcoming by way of return for this service. It is no use trying to explain to a Chinese that you would prefer to go to sleep: he would simply ask you why, if that is the case, you do not do so? If you endeavour to explain to him that the reason why you do not do so is because of the noise he is making, he simply cannot understand you. The reason, of course, is that no combination of clanging and jarring discords has as yet been discovered which is capable of preventing the Chinese from sleeping when he feels disposed to, and his mind is consequently incapable of grasping the idea that any one can be so constituted as to be prevented from falling asleep by any external circumstances. As Dr Smith has said, "It would be easy to raise in China an army of a million men—nay, of ten millions—tested by competitive examination as to their capacity to go to sleep across three wheelbarrows, with head downwards, like a spider, their mouths wide open and a fly inside!"
The last stage in Chinese territory is Manshien, a collection of a score or so of huts of bamboo matting plastered with mud. Across the river to the north the houses of Manwyne are visible among a grove of trees—the scene of the murder of Augustus Margary. The old road passes through Manwyne, and is still largely used by caravans owing to the better accommodation and supplies which it provides. But on the south bank, from Manshien onwards, the new road becomes a wide and well-graded mountain path, recently constructed by British engineers,—at China's expense, as far as it lies in her territory,—and it is borne pleasantly in upon the traveller, surfeited with the vileness of Chinese tracks, that he is at last within reach of a civilising Power.
An officer in charge of a small frontier guard quartered at Manshien accompanied me to the frontier. Beyond the village the level plain down which I had been marching for the past two days comes to an end, and the Ta-ping river forces its way along a deep and narrow valley between mountain walls covered with dense vegetation. After marching for about twelve miles we came upon two or three sheds of bamboo matting on the jungle-covered banks of a mountain torrent, the Kulika. This stream forms the boundary between China and Burma, and a guard of ten Chinese soldiers is posted here. It is characteristic of the part of the world in which one is travelling, that with a scientifically devised and well-constructed road on either side, one finds nothing but a large tree-trunk to carry one safely across the frontier stream. And the reason for this anomaly is even more characteristic—namely, an inability on the part of the two coterminous Powers to come to any agreement as to which of them should 
In the forests of Upper Burma.
have the care of a bridge, should it be constructed.
For three days after crossing the frontier one travels on through magnificent tropical scenery. Huge flowering trees cover the mountain-sides, great creepers trail from branch to branch, lovely tree-ferns, and other vegetation brought into being by a combination of heat and moisture, abound on all sides. The road is excellently built, but passes through a practically uninhabited tract of country until it debouches on the third day on to the Bhamo plain. Rest-houses providing shelter for the night exist, but supplies are not forthcoming, and this was pointed out to me by my Chinese coolies as a grave disadvantage to the road. In the eyes of the Chinese, the state of a road from an engineering point of view is not comparable in importance with the facilities which it holds out for obtaining pork and rice. Caravans of mules and ponies were met with here and there, mostly carrying loads of raw cotton from Burma to T'eng Yüeh; but I noted it as an interesting fact that on the road from Sui Fu on the Yang-tsze to Yün-nan Fu, vile as that track is, I observed considerably more traffic than I did on the Bhamo-T'eng Yüeh route, while the T'eng Yüeh-Tali Fu-Yün-nan Fu road, so far as I could judge, had the least amount of traffic of the three.
On March 7th I marched into the little town of Bhamo, and here, to all intents and purposes, my journey may be said to have had its termination. The long tramp across the heart of China was finished, and I was once more under the protection of the Union Jack and surrounded by the comforts and conveniences of civilisation. I travelled by steamer through the defiles of the Irrawadi, spent a few days in Mandalay and Rangoon, picking up at the former place news from the outside world which had been accumulating in the shape of letters and papers for the past five months, and reached Calcutta at the end of the month. But I am here concerned only with the Far East, and with my arrival in Burma I have reached the western limit of my present field of study. My narrative of travel is at an end; but there lies before me the task of setting before the reader the results of my investigations, and the conclusions that are to be drawn from them. Questions of trade, of the building of railways, of the present temper of the Chinese, of Japan's position in the Far East, await discussion; but the chapters dealing with these subjects may conveniently be reserved for a second volume, and I may not inappropriately close the present volume with a brief historical sketch of the making of the frontier which walls in the Burmese possessions of Great Britain, and marks the limit of Chinese expansion towards the south-west.