x hundred miles, and it took three
days and an evening to make the trip. There is no traffic by night, and
this seems to be the rule on these adventurous railways, for I met the
same thing on the Anatolian and Bagdad lines between Constantinople and
Eregli. The corridor trains are equipped with four classes. The first
was inferior to the same class on Continental lines, but that seemed to
matter little, for it was usually empty. As a gay young Englishman in
Yunnan-fu remarked, no one went first-class unless he was travelling at
some one's else expense. The second and third class were very good of
their kind, and the fourth was far and away the most comfortable
arrangement of the sort I had ever seen, with benches along the sides
and large unglazed window openings. Most of the passengers and all the
jollity went in this class. Everywhere there were other than human
travellers; birds, dogs, goats, and pigs were given room, always on
condition of having a ticket. I paid four dollars gold for my dog's
ticket from Haiphong to Yunnan-fu, but having paid, Jack's right in the
carriage was as unquestioned as mine, and I found this true in all my
railway travel in China.

The Tonking-Yunnan railway is a remarkable undertaking, and shows the
seriousness with which the French are attacking the problems of Far
Eastern colonization. The lower half of the line, which here follows up
the Red River valley, presented few serious engineering difficulties,
although calling for at least one hundred and seventy-five bridges on
the section south of Lao-kai, but it was almost impossible to secure
labourers for the construction work. Annamese refused to lend a hand,
and the Chinese died like flies from the malarial conditions. For a time
work was at a standstill, and in the end it had to be suspended during
the summer months. The upper part, on the other hand, especially that
section which runs through the Namti valley, tested to the utmost the
skill of the French engineers. And the cost was correspondingly great.
Even as it is, much of the embanking seems to be of a rather slight
character, and quite unfit to stand the tremendous tropical downpours of
the early summer months. After leaving China I learned that I had passed
over the line just in time, for the rains set in very early in the
summer of 1911, and for weeks traffic was fearfully interrupted by
landslips and broken bridges.

Whether the line will prove a financial success depends on