Having found the province of Yunnan and the journey thither very different from my expectations, notwithstanding that I had read almost everything written on the subject, I think others may like to hear more about this unique region and to read the fresh impressions made upon an old traveller in visiting this sequestered corner of the empire. The province of Yunnan is farther of special interest at the moment, since its boundaries have become coterminous with those of the British Indian and of the French Indo-Chinese empires; and that a race has set in between the two Powers for the development of their respective interests in this land of great potentialities—a race in which undoubtedly so far our French friends are a good first.

From the capital of Szechuan to the capital of Yunnan, a distance of 700 miles by the nearest road, but of little more than five degrees of latitude, the time occupied by us in the journey was exactly forty days. The water in the branch of the Min river that washes the walls of the provincial capital being, at the time of our departure, the end of April, very low, in consequence of the irrigation requirements of the great Chêngtu plain; we started out from the city by the land route to Kia-ting, proceeding thence by boat to Sui-fu and thence again for the remainder of the journey by land, there being in Yunnan no alternative choice of water carriage such as we find in so many of, if not all, the other provinces of China, and notably in the well-watered province of Szechuan.