ovinces of Yuen-nan and Kwei-chow,
a man of keen intellectuality and courtly manner, and notorious as being
the only Mongolian in the service of China's Government. I lived in
Yuen-nan-fu for several weeks at a stretch, and since then have made
frequent visits, and knowing the enormous strides being made towards
acquiring Occidental methods, I now find it difficult to write with
absolute accuracy upon things in general. But I have found this to be
the case in all my travels. What is, or seems to be, accurate to-day of
any given thing in a given place is wrong tomorrow under seemingly the
same conditions; and although no theme could be more tempting, and no
subject offer wider scope for ingenious hypothesis and profound
generalization, one has to forego much temptation to "color" if he would
be accurate of anything he writes of the Chinese. Eminent sinologues
agree as to the impossibility of the conception of the Chinese mind and
character as a whole, so glaring are the inconsistencies of the Chinese
nature. And as one sees for himself in this great city, particularly in
official life, the businesslike practicability on the one hand and the
utter absurdity of administration on the other, in all modes and
methods, one is almost inclined to drop his pen in disgust at being
unable to come to any concrete conclusions.

Of no province in China more than of Yuen-nan is this true.

Reform and immovable conservatism go hand in hand. Men of the most
dissimilar ambitions compose the _corps diplomatique_, and are willing
to join hands to propagate their main beliefs; and when one writes of
progress--in railways, in the army, in gaols, in schools, in public
works, in no matter what--one is ever confronted by that dogged
immutability which characterizes the older school.

So that in writing of things Yuen-nanese in this great city it is
imperative for me to state bare facts as they stand now, and make little
comment.

THE RAILWAY

The Tonkin-Yuen-nan Railway, linking the interior with the coast, is one
of the world's most interesting engineering romances. This artery of
steel is probably the most expensive railway of its kind, from the
constructional standpoint. In some districts seven thousand pounds per
mile was the cost, and it is probable that six thousand pounds sterling
per mile would not be a bad estimate of the total amount appropriated
for the construction of the line from a loan of 200,000,000 francs asked
for in