It would be too long a story here to detail the tribes and the peculiarities of each family--suffice it to say that every tribe in western China (and their number may be judged from the fact that no less than twenty are found in Yunnan alone), hate the Chinese and the Manchus. In the event of any disturbances arising from the Tibetan border, the Burma border, the Tonking border, the Mongolian border, this involved problem of her tribespeople and how to deal with them would so upset China's calculations that she might lose territory in China Far West, and history might have to record another rebellion as terrible, perhaps, as the Mohammedan rebellion in Yunnan of 1855 and onwards. Yunnan might then go to France, Tibet to Britain, Mongolia to Russia. This would be the zenith of complications, but it is of this that China has always been afraid, and she will always have cause for fear so long as this question is ignored. At the present moment, when most of the outlying dependencies are declaring their independence, these fears have a greater significance. The non-ability of the officials to grip the situation in these outlying corners of the Chinese Empire, and to have that local knowledge of affairs which will come only with local experience, is where China would feel the pinch in a stand-up combat with unconquered races within her own dominions. This feeling of strife has been growing for years, long before {249} China had an adventurous policy in Tibet, but however expert China may have been in duping Europe as to her intentions in Tibet, and maintaining tranquillity in that country, it is certain that Peking did not, or would not, recognise the presence of the evil in China Far West, to say nothing of Tibet for the moment, of many thousands of her nominally governed races being in a state of lawlessness and social savagery. Complications in Tibet are liable, as they have been for many years, to arise at any time, equally as they are in Kansu, Sinking, Szechuen, or Yunnan--we have seen them, of course, in Szechuen. For serious complications in any of these provinces China has always been ill-prepared. It has been extremely doubtful whether her troops would remain loyal, even after she had got them at the seat of action after a tortuous march over incomprehensibly difficult country. There are no railways in Western China to speak of--there are absolutely none in the areas we have under survey in this article--and the only West China railway from Tonking into the heart of the Yunnan province would offer no advantages.