greater than was anticipated, and as recently as December, 1901, Lord Curzon, on the occasion of his visit to Rangoon, said that the physical obstacles were so enormous that the extension of the line to Yunnan would be financially unremunerative and politically unjustifiable. On the other hand, in the same year M. Doumer obtained the sanction of his Government to carrying the French line from Tongking into China. But there remains yet another possible means of access available into these provinces over and above the regular Chinese lines of communication from Canton and by the Yangtze, and that is the route through the Laos and Shan states from Bangkok by the Menam and the Meping.

It was hoped indeed originally by the French that the Mekong might afford a great outlet for the trade not only of the Laos and Shan states, but even of Southern China. The first blow to these hopes was given by the results of the expedition of exploration which they sent under de Lagrée in 1866. The members of it finally had to abandon their boats and take to light native ones, in which they struggled northwards as far as latitude 22° N., where the river first becomes serviceable for natives

going down stream. For general purposes of

commerce, however, it seems now admitted that the navigability of the Mekong from the sea ceases far to the south of this. It may be considered a good waterway up to the fourteenth parallel, where

the first great rapids are met, and perhaps a useful one, though to a less extent, for trading purposes, as far as the eighteenth; but beyond that, so obstructed is its course by rapids, its chief value as a channel of communication ceases. The French themselves recognised this at the time, and one of the results of their discovery was their attempt to obtain a new trade route in Tongking to the northern Laos and Yunnan. Indeed, so far from affording facilities for communication with China, the Mekong is of very little value as an outlet for the trade of Indo-China itself, and cannot be compared with the Menam in this respect. The fourteenth parallel, where the first great rapids occur, is but little to the north of Bangkok, and from them there are still more than three hundred miles to the sea. The Menam must form the great

Whether the French ever wholly lost faith in the Mekong route or not, at any rate their belief in it revived after the unnavigable character of the Black and Red Rivers had been proved, and hence their determination to wrest it from the Siamese, which led to the events of 1893. "Ever since de Lagrée started upon his memorable expedition up the Mekong in 1866, in search of a highway to Yunnan, the French have felt for that river and its adjacent territories the affection of a proprietor and a parent; and neither the verdict of M. de Carné, one of the party, that 'steamboats can never plough the Mekong, and Saigon can never be united by this waterway to the west provinces of China,' nor a long series of subsequent failures, have for one moment dispossessed their minds of the idea that the French flag upon the Mekong means a great and immediate local trade, and the ultimate monopoly of the inland Chinese markets."-Lord Curzon in The Nineteenth Century of July, 1893, page 49.

outlet for Indo-Chinese trade, and whether it ever draw to it any considerable amount of the commerce of China itself or not, its superiority to the Mekong is obvious. With its tributary the Meping it affords far more direct access to Northern Siam and the Laos States. It flows into the sea considerably to the north of the point where the Mekong reaches the ocean, and besides these important considerations, it passes through a region which is far more fertile and populous than the valley of the Mekong. It will be easily understood, therefore, with what covetous eyes the French now regard the valley of the great river and those of its tributaries, which constitute all that is most valuable in Siam. The Menam and the Meping are fortunately navigable for small craft almost for their entire length throughout the year, and when the waters are high at the end of the rainy season it is quite a short journey from the Laos States down to Bangkok.

The Menam, indeed, is such an important feature of Siam, that more than one traveller has compared it with the Nile. It is the inundations of the Menam and the rich alluvial soil which it carries with it that combine to make its valley one of the most fertile in the world. It is one of the finest rice-producing regions in Asia, and the export trade in rice from Siam has on the whole been steadily increasing, though it is true that the amount exported in 1893, when the crop was exceptionally large, had not been exceeded as late as the year