What was the real value of the commercial concessions granted to France by China, and concerning which her press had made such capital? The reduction of the duties on all products passing by Tongking would have been of great value if the neighbouring Chinese province had been a rich one, but it is, unfortunately, quite the reverse. It is now time to glance over the region that can be provisioned and exploited through Tongking. It includes the greater part of Yunnan and Kwang-si, the southern half of Kwei-chau, and a small part of Kwang-tung, that long and narrow band of territory which this province projects over the Tongking frontier between the sea and Kuang-si. The Yunnan, the Kwang-si, and the Kwei-chau are the three poorest provinces of China, and cover a fifth of her territory, whilst possessing barely the fifteenth of her population, or, in other words, about 24,000,000 out of 380,000,000. They have been unfortunately devastated by the great insurrection of the Taipings and the Mohammedan revolts, especially Yunnan; the country is really only a conglomeration of mountains and plateaux, some of them 6,500 feet in height, and, moreover, the communications are very scanty, and it would cost an enormous sum to improve them. The report of the Lyons Mission, which explored this part of China in 1895–97, frequently mentions the great difficulties of transport and the steepness of the ascents, such, for instance, as the famous Imperial road of Ten Thousand Steps, which you ascend from the bank of the Red River to the Yunnan plateau, between Manhao and Mong-tze, and which in a distance of only 30 miles rises from 485 to more than 6,500 feet. It also mentions the paucity of population, as contrasted with its superabundance, in the basin of the Yang-tsze-Kiang and the coast provinces. In the Far East the mountains are almost invariably barren, even when there is very little cultivable soil in the plain below. It is said that the Yunnan is extremely rich in mineral ore, but, as once remarked an acute observer, who has recently visited nearly the whole of China, when explorers find nothing worth noticing on the surface of a country, they generally arrive at the conclusion that there must be something worth looking for underneath. Undoubtedly both copper and tin have been exploited for years past in Yunnan, but thus far the actual wealth of these mines is unknown, and it would be mere matter of conjecture to affirm whether they are worth working or not, or whether it would pay to construct a railway 300 miles in length to transport the ore, as these Chinese provinces on the frontier neighbouring Tongking produce neither silk, tea, nor any other valuable Chinese export product, and do not offer a particularly brilliant prospect at present. As to Article 5, relating to mines, if taken in the literal sense, it is simply a truism, but if one wishes to discover in it a disguised engagement, and read ‘ought’ instead of ‘may,’ it is a