Tr we thought that the trade of Yunnan was worth now, or likely to be worth within a reasonable time, the efforts that are being made to get control of it, we should have more sympathy with Mr. Holt Hallett's protests against the recent frontier alterations on the Upper Mekong. Poor provinces as Yunnan and Kuangsi are now, the former may again, by reason of its undoubted mineral wealth, become once. more rich and populous, and perhaps. Mr: Hallett is right in looking to the future and not being discouraged by the present poverty of the province. The object of the authorities of French' Indo-China on the one hand and of Mr. Hallett and his friends on the other is to tap South-west Yunnan by means of a railway to Szemao, a large commercial city in the south of the province. The railway proposed by Mr. Hallett' went up the east side of the Mekong River through the province of Kiang-bung. By the Anglo-Chinese. Convention of the Ist of March, 1894, we ceded Kiang-hung.to China, with the proviso that China should not give it. up to avy other Power. This cession very seriously restricted our access to Yunnan. Before. we made it, the western half of the southern frontier of China was bounded by our possessions, and the eastern half of that frontier, (we quote from Mr. Hallett) was bordered by those of France, The Anglo-Chinese frontier extended eastwards from the basin of the Irrawaddy across the basins of the Salween and Mekong to the crest of the chain of mountains which divides the waters of the Mekong from those of the Black River. The crest of this range was the dividing point between the French and British halves of the frontier, the country between the Black River, which formed the former Siamese border, and the crest of the chain having thrown off the yoke of Siam and accepted that of France after the sack of Luang Phrabang in 1887. All the approaches to the southern border of China lying to the west of the crest of these mountains lay in our hands, whereas Franco. possessed only those in the basins of the rivers draining into the Gulf of Tongking, We might have insisted on taking back from China the territory which she ceded to France by the Convention extorted in June last year by M. Gerard; but what we have done by the Convention just concluded with France is to practically make the river Mekong the French boundary, so that if we want to make a railway from Burma through British territory to Szemao, "it must now cross a range of hills lying between the Mo Khok at: Muang Heat and the Mekong above' the entrance of the Nam Huck, and we must reclaim Kiang-hung from China." It will obviously not suit France for us to reclaim this piece of Kiang-hung which is to the east of the Mekong; and Mr, Hallett concludes by saying "There can be little doubt, therefore, that the portion of Kiang-hung still remaining to China to the east of the Mekong has been either intentionally of carelessly lost to us under the Agreement. Anyhow, it is not within the region of probability that our Foreign Office, which has already done so much mischief to our. commercial interests in the Far East by sacrificing the area of our trade-and our trading advantages in order to favour our French rivals, will now fly in the face of France by. reclaiming from China any portion of our late territory that lies to the east of the Mekong.
"We have thus, through the: track-ling of our Foreign Office to France, lost all touch with the Chinese province of Yunnan; have restricted ourselves to:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.