"Negotiations with Yamên may be facilitated if you informed them at once that, unless the very moderate terms already demanded are immediately complied with, we shall, in addition, require the Concession of another line, on same conditions as those granted in case of Peking Hankow line of railway, and that additional demands will be preferred as the result of further delay. If you think it would conduce to the rapid and satisfactory termination of the negotiations, you are authorized to make a communication to them in this sense." Whether this suggestion was acted upon or not does not appear. This transaction, connected with the project of a railway from Peking to Hankow, appears to illustrate, not unfairly, on the whole, the mode in which speculative concessions were being wrung from the Chinese government in the busiest year of oriental speculation, 1898. The outcome of the grand "battle" was communicated by Sir Claude MacDonald to Lord Charles Beresford, on the 23d of November, in a full list of the concessions then granted to British subjects, compared with the grants to other nationalities. "We do not seem," wrote Sir Claude, with pardonable complacency, "to have come out second best. … Not a single bona fide or approximately practical scheme which has been brought to this Legation has failed to be put through." The summarized result in railway concessions was 9 British (2,800 miles); 3 Russian (1,530 miles); 2 German (720 miles); 3 French (420 miles); 1 Belgian (650 miles); 1 American (300 miles). In detail, the railway and mining concessions were described in the list as follows: CHINA: "Railway and other Concessions obtained by British Companies: I. Province of Shansi. The Peking Syndicate have acquired the 'sole right to open and work coal and iron mines throughout the districts of Yu Hsien and Ping Ting-chou, and the Prefectures of Lusan Fu, Tsü-chou Fu, and Ping Yang Fu, and also petroleum, wherever found.' Under their contract, the Syndicate have also the right to 'construct branch railways to connect with main lines or with water navigation, to facilitate transport of Shansi coal.' This has been interpreted officially to include the right of connecting the mines with Siang-yang in Hupeh, the nearest head of navigation giving access to the Yang-tsze. This means a railway of 250 miles. As to the value of this Concession, it is not amiss to quote the testimony of Baron von Richthofen, the great authority on the geology of China. He says that, 'in proportion to its area, Shansi has probably the largest and most easily workable coalfield of any region on the globe, and the manufacture of iron is capable of almost unlimited extension.'