A THOUSAND MILES ON AN ELEPHANT IN THE SHAN STATES [Illustration: MAUNG HAUT TO KIANG HSEN ] A THOUSAND MILES ON AN ELEPHANT IN THE SHAN STATES BY HOLT S. HALLETT, M. INST. C.E. F.R.G.S., M.R.A.S. HONORARY MEMBER MANCHESTER AND TYNESIDE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETIES WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXC _All Rights reserved_ TO THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES IN BURMAH, SIAM, AND THE SHAN STATES, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, AS A MARK OF THE HIGH ESTEEM IN WHICH I HOLD THE NOBLE WORK THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION AND THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION ARE ACCOMPLISHING IN CIVILISING AND CHRISTIANISING THE PEOPLE OF INDO-CHINA. PREFACE. The importance of the Eastern markets to European commerce has long been recognised, and since the famous Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the close of the fifteenth century, and the Portuguese occupied Malacca and established factories or trade depots in Burmah at Martaban and Syriam, the trade of Western China and Indo-China has been a prize which has attracted the commercial aspirations of every maritime mercantile community in Europe. In 1613, the Portuguese were ousted from Burmah, and six years later, the English and Dutch established factories in that country. Some years afterwards the Dutch were expelled, and in the middle of the next century the French became our rivals for a short time. In 1756 the chief of their factory was executed, and their factory was destroyed, never to be resuscitated. The first Englishman whose name is recorded in history as travelling in Siam and the Shan States is Thomas Samuel, who happened to be at Zimmé when that place was recaptured by the Burmese in 1615. In Purchas’s ‘Pilgrims’ it is related that he had proceeded from Siam to Zimmé “to discover the trade of that country.” From that time to 1687, when the English were turned out of Siam for killing some of the natives in a scuffle, many English merchants resided there.