TSITKAW, ON THE TAPENG, LOOKING TOWARDS THE KAKHYEN HILLS 401 _From a photograph by the_ AUTHOR. [Illustration: A MAP OF the ROUTES TRAVERSED BY THE EXPEDITIONS OF 1868 AND 1875 _Stanford’s Geographical Estabᵗ 55 Charing Cross._ London; Macmillan & Cᵒ.] [Illustration: A MAP OF SOUTH-WESTERN CHINA Showing routes TRAVERSED & PROPOSED. _Stanford’s Geographical Estabᵗ. 55 Charing Cross._ London; Macmillan & Cᵒ.] [Illustration: PLAN OF MOMIEN (TENG-YUE-CHOW) _Stanford’s Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. 55 Charing Cross, London._ London; Macmillan & Cᵒ.] MANDALAY TO MOMIEN. CHAPTER I. MANDALAY TO BHAMÔ. Overland trade of Burma and China--Early notices--English travellers--Burmese treaty of 1862--Dr. Williams--Objects of the expedition--Its constitution--Arrival at Mandalay--Second coronation of the king--The suburbs--The bazaars--Mengoon--Burmese navigation--Shienpagah--Coal mines--The third defile--Sacred fish--Tagoung and Old Pagan--Ngapé--Katha--Magnetic battery--The first Kakhyens--The Shuaybaw pagodas--The second defile--View of Bhamô. For some years previous to the date of the expedition of which the progress is narrated in these pages, the attention of British merchants at home and in India had been directed to the prospect of an overland trade with Western China. Most especially did this interest the commercial community of Rangoon, the capital of British Burma, and the port of the great water highway of the Irawady, boasting a trade the annual value of which had increased in fifteen years to £2,500,000. The avoidance of the long and dangerous voyage by the Straits and Indian Archipelago and a direct interchange of our manufactures for the products of the rich provinces of Yunnan and Sz-chuen might well seem to be advantages which would richly repay almost any efforts to accomplish this purpose. One plan, then as now, zealously insisted upon by its promoter, Captain Sprye, was the construction of a railway connecting British Burma and China via Kiang-Hung, on the Cambodia river, and the frontier position or reputed town of Esmok. But as it was, and still is, necessary to send a surveying expedition over an unknown and alien country, as a preliminary, this project, whether chimerical or not, could not compete with the immediate possibility of opening a trade by way of the river Irawady and the royal city of Mandalay. Although before 1867 but four English steamers with freight had ascended the river to the capital, harbingers of the numerous flotilla now plying on the Irawady, it was known that a regular traffic existed between Mandalay and China, especially in the supply of cotton to the interior, which was reserved as a royal monopoly.