ponies that they have encountered on the road; but how many pack-ponies go to one train? And where the pack-ponies take from three weeks to a month, a train would cover the distance in from two to three days; and assuming that the present system of transport meets the demand, what is the train to carry during the remainder of the month? The fact is, that such schemes have been put forward on the assumption that the products of Ssŭch'uan would pour along a railway over the whole length of Yün-nan, instead of following, as they always have done, the natural line of communication provided by the Yang-tsze river,—an assumption which appears to me to be likely to prove singularly incorrect. But with the question of railways as a whole I propose to deal in a separate chapter.
