Inclosure 5 in No. 1.
Acting Consul Litton to Government of Burwah.
Tengyueh, May 20, 1905.
I HAVE the honour to forward, through Mr. Leveson, copy of my Report on the undelimited northern frontier.
The original is going to Sir Ernest Satow, while the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Consul-General at Yünnan-fu will shortly receive copies.
A list of inclosures is attached,
I shall again address you when I am able to state exactly what the Taotai proposes to report to his Government.
Inclosure 6 in No. 1.
Report on a Joint Survey of the Burmah-Yünnan Boundary, north of latitude 25° 35′ north, by British and Chinese Officials, March to May, 1905. (Confidential.)
1. Composition and Duties of the Party.
IN February 1905, I received instructions from the British Minister at Peking to proceed as British Representative on an expedition for the joint examination by British and Chinese officers of the Burmah-Yunnan border, north of latitude 25° 35′ north, the farthest point of previous demarcation. The party, which it was agreed should start from Kuyung, in Chinese territory, 27 miles north of Tengyuch, about the 3rd March, was composed as follows:-
1. Burmah party, in charge of Mr. Leveson, LC.S., Deputy Commissioner of Bhamo, consisting of a survey party of three subordinate surveyors under Munshi Abdul Kahim, who was detailed by the Survey of India for this service; an escort of forty military police, of whom thirly were Gurkhas and the rest Kachin or Lisu sepoys from the Phamo bills; and of several native followers of Mr. Leveson,
Lieutenant Lakin, 92nd Punjabis, who was on leave, accompanied Mr. Leveson, and very kindly placed at my disposal his knowledge of Hindustani and Kachin,
2. The Chinese party, under Shih Hung Chao, Taotai of West Yünnan. This consisted of a personal guard of twelve men and an escort of forty "braves," but half of these gallant fellows ran away from Kuyung when they beard that the Taotai had forbidden looting, and intended to be obeyed, and then there were only twenty; of several deputies, of whom the senior was the expectant District Magistrate, Tai Wei Hsiang; of three "surveyors' from Yunnan-fu, so-called on the lucus a non lucendo principle, for, with perhaps one exception, none of them had the least notion of surveying; and an "interpreter" so dubbed on the same principle, but he was ejected from the camp at an early stage of the proceedings for attempting to "
"the squeeze villagers.
"J
3. Mr. Litton, Acting Consul at Tengyuch, was on duty as British Representative. The Consulate writer, Han Wei Tsu, accompanied the party.
The instructions issued to me by Sir Ernest Satow, and to Mr. Leveson by the Government of Burmah. were to the effect that the party was to examine, but not to delimit, the frontier. We were to explain to the Chinese, on the spot, precisely what His Majesty's Government meant by the N'Maikha watershed, to discover if the Chinese had any authority beyond that watershed, and, if not, to impress the fact upon the Taotai. The Government of Burmah's instructions also contemplated arrangements. being made for the extinction, by payments on a liberal scale, of any rights to petty ducs or otherwise which Chinese Headmen might be found to possess on the west. side of the watershed. The instructions plainly stated that the Government of India had no intention of abandoning the position; that the water-divide was the only acceptable division of the spheres of influence of the two Governments.
We were also to collect as much geographical information as we could about an. almost unknown country.
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The instructions which the Taotai received from Yünnan-fu were to the effect that he was to examine the country in co-operation with us, and to report what territories were governed by the various Chinese Headmen. The term used (and this is important) was "chih-li," which, I submit, implies more than vague claims of suzerainty, and signifies rather actual administrative control,
Article V of the Burmab-China Convention of 1897 contemplates the demarcation of this northern section of the frontier, when both parties had acquired further information. Since the date of the Treaty various inquiries by British officers, notably by Mr. Hertz, C.LE., had greatly added to our knowledge of the country. We made it a chief object of the present expedition so to supplement the information already acquired, especially by mapping, that His Majesty's Government should be in a position to clearly demon- strate to the Chinese the reasonableness of the position which has been taken up as to this section of the frontier, and to refuse to consent to the expense and trouble of further Boundary Commission in respect of it. I hope that this Report, and the map which accompanies it, will enable a Boundary Treaty to be concluded at London or Peking without any further joint inquiries on the spot, which, indeed, we would strongly deprecate.
It is hardly necessary to add that, until the date of the Taotal's departure for Kuyung, when I explained to him the general geography of the country, the Chinese officials had remained in a state of Cimmerian darkness as to the physical conditions of the country which they claimed. They had not advanced beyond the statements of the Yunnan Government, addressed to His Majesty's Minister through the Peking Foreign Office in 1904, to the effect that-
1. There was no such river as the N'Maikha;
2. That the divide in the locality in question was at the foot of the mountains (in spite of the suggestive Chinese saying that water does not flow up);
3. That the small river, i.e., the Ngaw Chang, does not flow into the Lu Chiang or Salween.
As regards geographical information, I regret that we were not able to do as much as we had hoped. The fact is that the orders were issued much too late in the scason. The experience of Captain Pottinger in 1897, of Mr. Hertz in 1900, and of myself in 1904 all go to prove that heavy snow and rain may be expected during the spring in these hills, which seem to be the abode of all the thunder and wild demons in the country. As no supplies are to be got near or beyond the watershed, even a small party such as Mr. Leveson's must have a train of some 150 mules. Towards the end of the open season, and at such short notice, good transport in a condition for hill work is not to be obtained. We began operations with a downpour of snow, hail, rain, and sleet, which continued for thirteen days and practically closed all passes over 9,800 feet for mule traffic, while tracks which were practicable were none the less turned into quagmires. Mr. Leveson lost thirty mules dead crossing the first pass on the frontier, and all of us, including the Taotai, incurred heavy extra expense for the hire of porters to enable us to get along. I calculate that we were delayed quite three weeks by weather alone.
After inquiries at Kuyung, we proceeded north one day's march, 13 miles, and entered the Tan Tsa Valley, the heart of which is a paddy plain, about 2 miles by 1 miles, at an elevation of 6,500 feet. It contains six villages with some 200 families in all, half of which are Lisu (in Burmese Yaw Yin) and balf Chinese, the whole subject to a petty Headman of Lisu extraction, who is under the jurisdiction of Tengyueh. To the north of the main valley of Tan Tsa a number of spurs run up northwards towards the watershed range which stretches round Tan Tsa in the shape of a huge bow, drawn towards the north; from this range spring the numerous sources of the Ta-ping River, of which the three most important are the Ta Cha, the Tan Tsa, and the Lun Ma Streams, which join at San Chao Ho (Tripod River), 4 miles west of Tan Tsu, to form the Upper Taping, which finally joins the Irrawaddy near Bhamo.
The whole of the hilly country north of the Tan Tsa Valley up to the bow of mountains which forms the watershed is entirely uninhabited, widle there is also a wide uninhabited strip beyond the watershed on the N'Maikha side. The west end of the bow is Manung Pum, 10,000 feet, the "high conical peak" of the Convention, and the most northerly point of the demarcateu frontier. Under this peak there is a track, impassable for mules, leading from Jan Tsa to Maiku, a Kachin village on the Upper Shi-Ngaw River in British territory, in two days some 20 miles. The east end of the bow, bearing north-east from Tan Tsa, is a conspicuous jagged peak (12,000 feet) known as Laug Ya, or Wolf's Tooth Mountain. The Lang Ya peak is astride of the
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