Coming down to more recent and certain data, we find that Colonel Symes, H.E.I.C.’s envoy to Ava in 1795 (and who was accompanied by that able geographer, Dr. Buchanan), states that an extensive trade, chiefly in cotton, existed between Ava and Yunnan. “This commodity was transported up the Irawady to Bhamô, where it was sold to the Chinese merchants, and conveyed partly by land and partly by water into the Chinese dominions. Amber, ivory, precious stones, betel-nut, and the edible birds’ nests from the Eastern Archipelago, were also articles of commerce. In return, the Burmans procured raw and wrought silks, velvets, gold-leaf, preserves, paper, and utensils of hardware.” Both the researches of Wilcox and the journal of Crawford’s embassy to Ava in 1826 referred to the trade and routes by Bhamô, and the Bengal government in 1827 published a map containing the best procurable information about the Burmo-Chinese frontier. Colonel Burney, who was Resident at the court of Ava in 1830, published a large number of valuable contributions to the history, geography, and resources of Upper Burma, and accurate itineraries of the Theinnee and Bhamô routes to China. Our experience demonstrated the accuracy of the latter as far as Momien, and it may be inferred that the remainder will be found equally exact. Pemberton[2] seems to have been the first to fully realise that--to use his own words--“the province of Yunnan, to which the north-eastern borders of our Indian empire have now so closely approximated, has become from this circumstance and our existing amicable relations with the court of Ava an object of peculiar interest to us.” In the same year Captain Hannay accompanied a Burmese mission to Mogoung, and for the first time Bhamô was accurately described by an eye-witness, and much valuable information gained respecting the trade then carried on between Ava and China. His description of the importance of the town, however, differed widely from that of Drs. Griffiths and Bayfield, who visited it two years later.[3] Hannay gives the reported number of houses as one thousand five hundred, while the latter travellers estimated town and suburbs as containing five hundred and ninety-eight houses, “neither good nor large,” which latter description is more in keeping with the present condition of the town. In 1848 Baron Otto des Granges published a short survey of the countries between Bengal and China, showing the great commercial and political importance of Bhamô, and the practicability of a direct trade overland between Calcutta and China. In this paper the far-seeing author advocated the equipment of a small expedition to ascertain the mercantile relations of the country about Bhamô, to examine the mineral wealth of Yunnan, and to enter into negotiations with the Chinese merchants.