e boat put into
Kwang-chou-wan, two hundred miles southwest of Hong Kong, to visit the
new free port of Fort Bayard, the commercial and military station which
the French are creating in the cession they secured from China in 1898,
and which, if all goes well, is some day to rival Hong Kong. The Bay of
Kwang-chou is very fine, affording a safe harbour to the two or three
ships that were riding at anchor, or to two or three navies if need
came, but Fort Bayard displays as yet few signs of the prophesied
greatness. To while away the hours of waiting I went on shore and
wandered about the empty, grass-grown roads of the tiny settlement. To
the right as one walked up from the beach stretched a long line of
substantial-looking barracks, and many of the houses were of European
appearance, attractively set in large gardens. Above the whole towered a
rather pretentious two-spired church. The one native and business street
running parallel with the beach showed little life; people did not wake
up even at the coming of the fortnightly mail from Hong Kong, and the
native population seemed no more than sufficient to serve the needs of
the foreign element.

[Illustration: A YUNNAN VALLEY]

[Illustration: OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF YUNNAN-FU]

We were joined here by two or three French officials attended by an
escort of Annamese policemen. These latter had a decidedly ladylike,
genteel air with their hair smoothly brushed and twisted in a low knot
at the back of the neck, the whole bound round with a black kerchief
laid in neat folds. Their uniform was of dark blue woollen set off by
putties of a lighter blue, and their appearance was decidedly shipshape.
I talked with one of the Frenchmen returning from an official visit to
Fort Bayard. He seemed to have little faith in the new settlement,
declaring the Government had poured in money like water, and with no
adequate return.

It is more than a century since France began to interest herself in this
part of the world, dreaming dreams of an Eastern empire to offset the
one she had just lost in America. Then came the French Revolution, and
the dream went the way of many more substantial things, and it was not
until the days of the Second Empire that Napoleon III, looking east and
west, again took up the question. Little by little the French
strengthened their hold upon the Indo-China peninsula, and the final
contest came in the eighties, a part of the universal game of grab then
going on i