At the time of my visit, the Siamo-Burmese frontier passed between Ban Meh Kee, the northernmost Siamese Shan village, and Ban Meh Puen, the southernmost Burmese Shan village, the two villages being distant some 1950 feet. At the time of Mr Archer’s visit the Siamese had encroached 22 miles within our frontier, by building their fort on the Meh Sai. Unless this is rectified, disturbances will certainly occur between the Ngio Shans, our subjects, and the Siamese. Even as it is, our subjects consider that the Meh Khoke to its mouth forms their proper boundary, and that the Siamese had no right to encroach beyond that river. After an hour’s halt, I again started, and passing through the village, crossed the stream, and traversed a teak-forest for the next ten minutes. Most of the small hillocks that are scattered about the plain are covered with teak-trees. Leaving the forest, I again entered the plain, which was covered with thatching-grass, and crossed to where my party was encamped on the banks of the Meh Chan. The camp was situated 376 miles from Hlineboay. Leaving early the next morning, we continued through the plain, which was much cut up by irrigation-channels, and had evidently at one time been under cultivation, and halted for breakfast on the outer fortifications of the centre one of the three ancient cities of Manola, which lay on our left. [Illustration: _View of Loi Chang Ngo at 4.49 P.M. 20th March._ ] The three cities of Manola, “the silver mountains,” are said to have been built by the Tay-wa-boot, or male angels. They are each about half a mile in diameter, and are erected on separate knolls. The ditch of the one visited by me was 100 feet wide, and 40 feet deep from the top of the inner rampart. Great trees, some over 100 feet high, growing on the fortifications, indicated that the city must have been deserted for two or three hundred years. Close to the city, at the eastern suburb of Ban Kyoo Pow, a tiger had seized a cow the previous night, on the banks of the Meh Chun, and both had rolled into the river; the tiger was so surprised that it allowed the cow to escape. The owner, hearing the noise, fired off his gun to scare the tiger. The people of the neighbouring village complained of the ravages committed by wild pigs; thirty of these animals had rooted up part of their crops the previous year. According to the villagers, the enormous plain we were passing through was entirely under cultivation previous to A.D. 1794–97, when Viang Chang and Luang Prabang besieged Kiang Hsen; but now the greater part of it is covered with elephant-grass, and forms the haunt of vast herds of deer, black cattle larger than buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and other wild animals. Wild elephants are at times seen in the unsettled parts of the plain, but none had been captured recently. [Illustration: _Phya In or Indra._ ]