Through Burmah to western China, notes of a journey in 1863

sary. Not feeling inclined to do this, Dr Williams, shortly after, and while in England for a few months, resigned his army appointment, preferring to return to Burmah in a private capacity. During these changes, and more especially during the political complications which subsequently arose at Mandalay, the suggestion of a trade-route by Bamò was in a great measure lost sight of, or at all events mingled up with railway and other impracticable projects. More recently, however, the subject has been forced upon the attention of the British authorities by the efforts of the French in the same direction (by the Cambodia river), and a large sum has been voted for an expedition (under Captain Sladen) to test still further the Bamò route, but ignoring to a great extent what had been accomplished by the sole and unaided efforts of our author. willing that his suggestions should be altogether overlooked, and anxious, moreover, to bring the matter more fully before the public, Dr Williams has consented to the publication of as much of his Journal and Papers as bear more directly on the question, and the result is the present volume.

The volume consists of three main parts:

I. Dr Williams's advocacy of a trade-route from India to Western China vid Burmah, which appeared in his Memorandum to the Indian Government, and subsequently in the 'Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society' for 1864, and which is here reproduced, with

such remarks and additions as events have rendered

necessary;

II. The journal of his voyage up the Irawaddi and residence at Bamò during January, February, March, and April 1863, and which contains the main body of the information upon which the advocacy of the Upper Burmah route is founded; and,

III. A vindication of his suggestion of a simple "trade-route" (the best way, in fact, to open trade into Western China), against the misrepresentations of those who confounded it with railway routes and other schemes of transit through Burmah to China, and then pronounced against its practicability!

The subject is of immense importance to the mercantile community in general, and to our Indian possessions in particular; and as attention is now officially directed to the matter, the public may take interest in Dr Williams's early and unaided endeavours, and all the more that his long and intimate acquaintance with Burmah and the Burmese entitles him to speak with something like authority. Beyond his own friends and the officials of our Indian Government, the efforts of the author to prove the practicability of the Bamò route are little known-so little, that in recent and able articles in the reviews (Edinburgh' and 'Saturday') making a general advocacy of "A Road into Western. China," there is even no mention of his name.* Partly * See Appendix A.

to render Dr Williams's efforts better known, and partly also to establish his claims to the first practical suggestion of the route in question, this volume has been published; and it will be a source of satisfaction to the author's friends should it in any degree fulfil the end for which it is intended.

It will be seen, on perusal, that these pages have been restricted as much as possible to the subject of a trade-route through Burmah to Western China, the compiler being unwilling to trench on the general subject of Burmah-a theme on which, in all its aspects, social, political, and industrial, no one can be better qualified to enter than Dr Williams. His long residence in the country, his position as Political Agent, and, above all, that family intimacy which none but a medical man can secure, have given him opportunities for observation which have fallen perhaps to the lot of no other Englishman. It is to be earnestly hoped, therefore, that he may soon find leisure to give the public the results of his experience in a field so novel and interesting as that of Burmah Proper and its conterminous dependencies—a region whose aspects and relationships, physical, political, sócial, and industrial, are as yet little known to us, notwithstanding the important interests we hold, and the power we are gradually acquiring, in Further India.

BRISTOL, May 1868.