hing it; but for the many in Burma who wish to take a
holiday and have not the time to go to Europe, I see no reason why
Tengyueh should not develop into what Darjeeling is to Calcutta and what
Japan is to the British ports farther East. Expense would not be heavy.
To Bhamo would be easy. As things now stand, with no railway, one would
need to take a few provisions and cooking utensils, and a camp bed and
tent, unless one would be prepared to do as the author did, and
patronize Chinese inns, such as they are. The rest would be easy to get
on the road. For three days from Bhamo dak bungalows are available, and
to a man knowing the country it would be an easy matter to arrange his
comforts. To one who knows the conditions, there is in the trip a good
deal to fascinate; for in the lives and customs of the people, in the
nature of the country, in the free-and-easy life the traveler would
himself develop--having a peep at things as they were back in the
ancient days of the Bible--to the brain-fagged professional or
commercial there is nothing better in the whole of the East.

He would get some excellent shooting, especially in the Salwen Valley,
not exactly a health resort, however; and had he inclinations towards
botanical, ethnological, craniological, or philological studies, he
would be at a loss to find anywhere in the world a more interesting
area.

But a man should never leave the "ta lu" (the main road) in China if he
would experience the minimum of discomfort and annoyance, which under
best conditions is considerable to an irritable man. As I sit down now,
on the very spot where Margary, of the British Consulate Service was
murdered in 1875, I regret that I have sacrificed a great deal to secure
most of the photographs which decorate this section of my book. No one,
not even my military escort, knows the way, and is being sworn at by my
men therefor. How I am to reach Man Hsien, across the river at Taping, I
do not quite know. Manyueen, so interesting in history, is a native
Shan-Kachino-Chinese town untouched by the years--slovenly, dirty,
undisciplined, immoral, where law and order and civilization have gained
at best but a precarious foothold, the most characteristic feature of
the people being the gambler's instinct. But I remember that I am coming
into Burma, into the real East, where the tangle and the topsy-turvydom,
the crooked vision and the distorted travesty of the truth, which result
from judging the Ori