"They make very good show-figures in a Sawbwa's processions, with their tattooing from ankle to throat and their chest and arms bossed all over with armlets and charms let in below the skin. They are also admirable letter-carriers to distant States. They know all roads, they are afraid of nobody, and they seem to be able to trudge from dawn to sunset for an indefinite number of days.... It is certain, however, that the States are infinitely quieter than they have been at any time since the death of King Mindon, and probably quieter than they have been at all." (_Ibid._) The year 1889 therefore offered a good opportunity for attending to Trans-Salween affairs. Early in this year the question of the frontier line which was to limit our responsibilities eastward was anxiously considered. Some of the States west of the Salween which had already come under our protection held or claimed ground east of the river. There were others lying wholly east of the Salween which had been subject to the dominion of Burma although they had been loosely held. Of these the most important, Kengtung and Kang Hung, held, or claimed to hold, territory east of the Mekong. It will be easily understood that the Government was not eager to lay hold of more territory than it was bound in honour to accept as the successor of the Burmese dynasty. We had already taken as much as we could administer or garrison with efficiency. Our authority was now definitely established up to the Salween. The country lying between that river and the Mekong was known to be mountainous, unhealthy, and unprofitable, destitute of roads, a succession of steep mountain ranges which made travelling most laborious. To maintain even a handful of troops in that region would be costly. Revenue, there would be none. It was asked where were our responsibilities to end? It was not easily answered. The problem had several sides--the military, the political, and the administrative. From the soldiers' point of view the arguments in favour of making the Salween our eastern boundary had considerable force. The river gave a clear and definite frontier drawn from north to south. The advance of a possible enemy through the country between the Mekong and the Salween could not, from the nature of the ground, be made without much difficulty; whereas the defence would have, in the wide plateau with its rolling prairies on the west of the Salween, an admirable position, with easy communications open to the Irrawaddy Valley.