to resist." The English and French consuls
protested formally, and the proper apologies were made, but no one
believes that the lesson was forgotten.

It is not to be wondered at that the people of Yunnan are alive to the
danger of foreign interference, for they see the British on the west and
much more the French on the south, peering with greedy eyes and
clutching hands over the border. In the last fifteen years commissions
of the one and the other have scoured the province with scarcely so much
as "by your leave," investigating the mineral resources and planning out
practicable railway routes. Within the capital city the French seem
entrenched. A French post-office, a French hospital, French shops,
hotels, missions, and above all the huge consulate, are there like
advance posts of a greater invasion. There is an ominous look to these
pretentious establishments holding strategic points in this or that
debatable territory. Take the French consulates, here in Yunnan-fu and
in Hoi-hou, or the Russian in Urga, the North Mongolian capital, they
have more the aspect of a fortified outpost in a hostile country than
the residence of the peaceful representative of a friendly power.

And Yunnan is beginning to move. For some time past the Government has
been considering seriously the project of a railway across the province
on the east to the Si Kiang and Canton, and just before I arrived in
Yunnan-fu two engineers (significantly enough Americans) started
northwards to make the preliminary surveys for a line connecting the
capital with the Yangtse. If these two schemes can be carried through
under Chinese control, good-by to the hopes of the French. Just at the
time that I was in Yunnan there was much excitement over the Pien-ma
matter, a boundary question between the province and Burma. A boycott
of British goods had been started which would have been more effective
if there had been more goods to boycott, but it indicated the feeling of
the people, and the viceroy, Li Ching Hsi, was winning golden opinions
for the stand he took in the matter, which, however, did not save him
from ignominious deportation by the Revolutionary party only a few
months later.

But whatever the feeling towards foreigners in the mass, the individual
foreigner seemed to meet with no unfriendliness on the part of the
people in Yunnan-fu, and apparently official relations were on a cordial
footing. I found the Bureau of Foreign Affairs ready to do al