Elephants, he said, took 13 days in travelling from Lakon to Raheng; 4 days to Muang Peh; and 5 days from Muang Peh to Muang Nan. In following the White Elephant route from Lakon to Raheng, the road is easy, and no hills are crossed between the two places. This portion of the country which will be traversed by the railway was surveyed by Dr Paul Neis in 1884, and a copy of his survey has been submitted to the Government and Chambers of Commerce with the other maps, included in our “Report on Railway connection of Burmah and China.” The Rev. David Webster, of the American Baptist Mission, whom I had met at the Siamese frontier-post on the Thoungyeen river, and subsequently shared quarters with at Zimmé, has been very successful amongst the Karens in the hills neighbouring Lakon. This field was only opened out in 1881; and in 1885 he had 161 Karen converts in these villages amongst his congregation. I have never met a missionary more in earnest than Mr Webster. He and his wife and their golden-haired little daughter seem utterly regardless of creature-comforts, and make long journeys among the hill-people, bearing all sorts of inconveniences in order to carry out their good work. I cannot speak too highly of all the American missionaries I had the pleasure to meet in the country. Although Dr Cushing was ailing with incipient smallpox, which had not yet declared itself, we could with difficulty persuade him to refrain from visiting the Karen villages occupied by the Christians, although they lay at a considerable distance from our route. Mr Webster has frequently suffered from malarious fever, and in his report, dated Lakon, February 10, 1885, gives some interesting particulars as to his views on the subject. He says: “It is noticeable that different localities have each its own peculiar type of fever. This that I have just experienced is entirely new to me; yet it has not had a very bad effect, except that I am weak, and not as usual inclined to much exertion. As far as fever is concerned, I do not see that we have much to choose between places. In some places some men are healthy and others are sick. Much more depends on the person than on the place, I think; and, again, as much depends upon the exposure to heat, fatigue, cold or wet, and to the lack of really good food, as upon anything else in the locality.” Although all my companions got fever at one time or another, I am thankful to say that I remained free from it; the only effect the malaria seemed to have upon me was to loosen for a time every tooth in my head, which is hard lines enough when one has to munch hard biscuits or even gingerbread nuts.