During my halt a jungle-fire sprang up in the long grass, and the elephants became restless. My companions, therefore, went on to the place where we were to camp for the night, and my mahout took his elephant out of sight of the fire. I was so bent on sketching and taking angles, that I woke up from my work surprised to find myself alone. Loogalay, with the heedlessness of a Burman, had loafed off with the other servants, when he ought to have been in attendance upon me. Following the track for about half a mile, I found my elephant waiting for me, and continued through the grassy plain, where the trees were still in leaf, and soon afterwards crossed the Meh Chan, or Meh Tsan as it is called by the Burmese Shans. The Meh Chan is a stream 30 feet broad, 7 feet deep, with 2 feet of water in the channel. It flows from the west, but turns north-east at our crossing, and enters the Meh Khum near Kiang Hsen. After passing some distance through the straggling village of Ban Meh Chan, a suburb of Ban Meh Kee, I halted to sketch the hills, which stretch for 25 miles to the west, and enclose the valleys of the Meh Chan and Meh Khum. Mr Archer, of our Siam consular service, who crossed from Muang Fang into the valley of the Meh Chan in 1887, reported that the pass between the source of the Meh Chan and the Meh Khoke (Meh Khok) was some 2650 feet above the sea. As the Meh Khoke, where crossed by him, must have been at least 1500 feet above the sea, the rise in the 18 miles from the Meh Khoke to the top of the pass would have been only about 1150 feet, and the fall in the 32 miles from the pass to Ban Meh Kee (Më Khi) only 1200 feet. There would therefore be very little difficulty in connecting Muang Fang with Kiang Hsen by a railway. The Kiang Hsen plain extends for 12 miles to the west of Ban Meh Chan, the hills forming an irregular amphitheatre, with a diameter of 17 miles. To the south the plain is fringed by low isolated hills and hillocks; to the north-east it stretches for 18 miles to the Meh Kong; and it continues northwards for 43 miles up the valley of the Nam Hu-uk (Më Huok), or for 20 miles beyond the fort that has recently been built by the Siamese at Viang Hpan (Wieng Phan), on the Meh Sai. If we include the Kiang Hsen, Kiang Hai, and Penyow plains, which are conterminous, the total length of this vast plain is over 115 miles. Assuming its average breadth as 10 miles, there is ample room in it for a million people to earn their living by agriculture. Viang Hpan lies 23 miles north of Ban Meh Chan. [Illustration: _View of the Valley of the Meh Chun at 3.57 P.M. 19th March._ ]