The city of Kiang Dow, which is barely a quarter of a mile square, is situated 37 miles from Zimmé, and is 1254 feet above the sea. The whole province contains only 250 houses, 75 of which are in the enclosure. The city is said to have been resettled in 1809 by seven householders from Ban Meh Lim, which we passed eight miles from Zimmé, and was destroyed by Chow Phya Kolon, a Burmese Shan chief, in 1869 or 1870. On his retiring, it is said to have been at once reoccupied. According to the governor of Viang Pow, whom I subsequently met at that place, two invasions of the country occurred in recent years: one in 1868–69, when Chow Phya Kolon, the chief of Mokmai, a Burmese Shan State to the west of the Salween, burned six villages in his State; and another in 1872, when the same chief again invaded the district, and burned two villages. Chow Phya Kolon was said to be living in 1884 as an acolyte in a monastery in Moné. About this time, 1868–72, there appears to have been a general downward pressure of the Ngios (Burmese Shans), for, besides the above-mentioned movements, Chow Phya Roy Sam—whose brother A-Chai is at present the chief of Muang Hăng, a State in the upper valley of the Meh Teng—burned Muang Ngai, and drove the Zimmé Shans out of the province in 1869; and as I have previously stated, the upper valleys of the Meh Ping, Meh Teng, and Meh Pai, have been resettled by Burmese Shans, and are under the rule of their chiefs. [Illustration: _Sketch of Loi Kiang Dow and Loi Nan._ ] Whilst the elephants were being unloaded, I crossed the river so as to sketch Loi Kiang Dow, which lies nearly due east and west, and is seen on end from the city. It rises, like the rock of Gibraltar, straight up from the plain, to five times the height of that rock, and can be seen on a clear day from the neighbourhood of Zimmé, 36 miles distant, looming up over the hills, through which the river has cut its way. Its crest towered up apparently to more than a mile above the plain, and we guessed its altitude to be 8000 feet above the sea, or considerably higher than that of the great hill behind Zimmé. The sun was setting over the great precipitous hill as I sketched it, and I had hardly completed its outline and that of Loi Nan (the Lady’s Hill), which lies parallel to it, and due west of Ban Meh Kaun, before the sun went down, forcing me to take the angles the following morning. On the north side, as seen from beyond Muang Ngai, Loi Nan looks like a gigantic fortress frowning over the plain.