Whilst the coast of Burmah was under native dominion, our traders had to content themselves with travelling along the great rivers; and it was not until 1829, three years after we had annexed the Burmese provinces of Tenasserim and Arakan, that steps were taken by us to establish overland trade with Northern Siam, the Shan States, and China. In that year Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General of India, ordered a mission to proceed, under Dr Richardson, from Maulmain to the Siamese Shan States, to ensure friendly relations and trade in that direction; and in 1837, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General, despatched Captain (late General) MacLeod, _viâ_ Zimmé and Kiang Hung to China, with the view of opening up trade with that country. Notwithstanding the favourable reports of these and subsequent missions, and the frequent petitions of our mercantile community asking for the connection of Burmah with China by railway, no action has been taken by the Indian Government in the sixty years that have elapsed since Dr Richardson’s mission, for improving the overland routes leading from Burmah to the great undeveloped markets which immediately border our possessions on the east. Burmah might as well have remained for these sixty years in native hands, for all the good that its acquisition has been to the furtherance of our trade with the neighbouring regions. When I retired from Government service at the end of 1879, the French were again in the field. They had annexed the south-eastern corner of Indo-China, had seized Cambodia from the Siamese, were determined to wrest Tonquin from China, which they have since succeeded in doing, and had openly avowed their intention to eject British trade from Eastern Indo-China, and to do all they possibly could to attract the trade of South-western, Southern, and Central China to French ports in Tonquin, where prohibitive duties could be, and have since been, placed upon British goods. It was under these circumstances that Mr Colquhoun and I took up the question, placed the necessity of connecting India with Burmah, Siam, and China before the public, and with the aid of the mercantile community determined to carry out a series of exploration-surveys to prove whether or not Burmah could be connected with these countries by railway at a reasonable expense, and to select the best route, financially and commercially, for the undertaking. The present volume deals with my exploration-surveys in Siam and the Shan States. The country through which I passed, besides being of interest from a commercial point of view, was at the time of my visit shrouded with that glamour which invests all little-known regions; and an accurate knowledge of its physical features and political relations promised to be of great importance in view of the action of France in Tonquin, and our threatened embroilment with that nation in Upper Burmah.