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Upper Ming Kwang Valley and to fix the spot where the N'Maikha-Shweli divide joins the main Salween-Irrawaddy divide, Mr. Leveson and myself, accompanied by a surveyor, and encumbered by two Chinese deputies, proceeded to Hparè. Marching up the valley of the Chan Shan Brook, we passed the last Lisu hamlet, some 3 miles from camp, and, ascending a double pass through dense forest, camped on the N'Maikha side, 4 miles from the divide, and near the scene of Mr. Hertz's encounter in February 1900 with the army of Ming Kwang. I found the remains of some of the log stockades from which the Chinese had been expelled. Soon after passing this spot we were met by the Hparè people, who had come to clear the pass for us. At 9 miles from the pass we reached the main or upper village of Hparè, delightfully situated above the Hparè Stream, and overshadowed behind and in front by lofty mountains. We camped below the upper and above the lower or smaller village, the two comprising some forty families, living in unusually clean and neat houses; to avoid the trouble which might have arisen from the insolence of the Chinese in the village, we persuaded them to camp close to us. The villagers soon crowded round our tents in a perfectly friendly manner, but they left the Chinese severely alone. In the afternoon the two Headmen came to camp to see Mr. Leveson. They were brothers, both very old men, and the elder was blind. As they approached the camp the Chinese deputy commenced behaving in the usual bullying fashion of Mandarins dealing with what they consider to be inferior races. He bawled at the Headmen, ordering them not to go to our tents and to do this and not to do that in a style which, if we had not been present, would very soon have brought out the Kachins' swords, as the Headmen were attended by their sons and the villagers. Then, no doubt, if the worthy deputy had escaped with a whole skin, he would have run away back to China and reported that the barbarians had made a humble submission, offering tribute.
Having suppressed the insolence of the deputy, we made him sit down at Mr. Leveson's tent to hear the Hparè Headman's statements; it was to the same effect as that which bis people had already made to Mr. Leveson. They denied in toto that they were, or ever had been, in any sense tributary to the Ming Kwang Chiefs, or that any Chinese officials ever exercised any sort of control over them. Their boundary, they stated, was the watershed over which we had come, and beyond that they never went to cultivate; down country their villages extended along the Kan Sheng River (Kun Ma in Chinese) to its junction with the Ngaw Chang, but not farther. Their people went to Ming Kwang for the five-day bazaar, and Chinese pedlars passed through Hpare. They were as a rule on good terms with the Chinese, except that after Mr. Hertz's affair some Chinese, whose names they gave, and who are believed to be Headman Tso's people from Ming Kwang, had come in the night and burnt twelve houses in Hparè and carried off thirty head of cattle, of which eight had never been returned. They dwelt on the fact that this case had not been settled, and it appears to constitute what the Kachins call a "ka," or feud, with the Ming Kwang Fu Yi. The Hpare Headmen further stated that formerly the Fu Yi of Lower Ming Kwang used to pay them 25 rupees a-year and some gunpowder, in return for which they guaranteed to traders the safety of the road along the Kun Ma River, but that these payments had ceased for the last thirty years. On festive occasions, such as the building of a new house or a marriage, the Hpare people had been wont to make presents to the Lower Ming Kwang Sawbwa, and he had made return presents to Hparè on similar occasions, but no such exchange of gifts had taken place for five years past. The Ming Kwang Fu Yi, some weeks before our arrival, had sent to "order" them to come out to meet the Taotai and mend the road; they had refused to leave their village, and as regards the road had, in fact, told Ming Kwang to mind his own business.
These statements were confirmed by the bystanders, and made both in the Lashi and Chinese languages. The Chinese deputy refused to cross-examine or even to listen to them, and got up and went away; so much for joint examination. The Headman's son had already suggested to Mr. Leveson that if the Chinese frontier was to be defined it should not include Hpare. It is perfectly clear that Chinese suzerainty, much more control, over Hparè aud Kun Ma Valley is an entire myth. Nor, though I pressed him, could the Taotai induce his two Ming Kwang Headmen to point out any single fact which would go to prove that they were exercising, or ever, in the memory of man, had exercised, any sort of overlordship or control in the Kan Sheng Valley.
Since the incursion of the Chinese who were expelled by Mr. Hertz, no Chinese officials or soldiers appear to have visited Hparè, except on the occasion of the above- mentioned raid.
If this is their country, why did neither of the Ming Kwang Chiefs come with us personally or send representatives to Hparè ? To me the reason is easy; it was a
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prudent regard for their own skins and a natural aversion to inconvenient conversations about the twelve houses and eight head of cattle. I believe that any attempt on the part of the Ming Kwang Chiefs to assert their imaginary authority would be forcibly resisted by the Ipare people.
On the 7th April Mr. Leveson and the surveyor left Hparè to proceed to Tzu Chu, a small upland valley to the north-east of Hpare, and divided from it by a steep razor-like spur. The Tzu Chu River is known to the Lashis as the Mang Sheng Kha. It joins the Hparè River a few miles below Lower Hparè, and their junction forms the Kun Ma or Kan Sheng River, which flows straight into the Ngaw Chang, or, in Chinese, Hsiao Chiang (Little River), the junction being 16 miles from Upper Hparè.
The Ngaw Chang is an important tributary of the N'Maikha, which takes a peculiar semi-circular course through very mountainous country. Rising from the west of the great Salween-Irrawaddy divide in north latitude 26° 18', it flows swiftly over a rocky bed in a southerly direction for about 20 miles; then it turns west and flows at the south foot of a conspicuous range covered with snow in April, for about 20 miles to a point near the junction of the Kan Sheng, where is situated the con- siderable Lashi village of Taw Gaw (forty houses); then the Ngaw Chang turns north, and, after flowing roughly parallel to the N'Maikha for some distance, finally joins it in north latitude 26° 30′.
Mr. Leveson reached the Tzu Chu Valley from Hparè in one day after a stiff climb over a spur. He found only one village, Lagwi, and the remains of the deserted hamlet of Mang Sheng. The Lagwi people were found to be Lashi Kachins related to the Hparè people. Two of the Hparè Headmen's sons accompanied Mr. Leveson to Tzu Chu; thence one of them returned home, but the other attached himself to Mr. Leveson and remained, making himself generally useful for all the rest of Both these the time during which we were exploring the valley of the Ngaw Chang. youths seemed to be peaceable, decent fellows enough, though they apparently fail to appreciate the benefits of Celestial government. I feel sure that neither of them would have any difficulty in answering the question, "Under which King, Bezonian ? Speak or die !"
Mr. Leveson examined the Lagwi villagers. It appears that Tzu Chu is only the Chinese name of the place, derived, it is said, from the dwarf bamboos with which the sides of the valley are clad. The Tzu Chu people's statement, made in the presence of the Chinese deputy, was the same as that of the Hparè Headman, except that they on good terms with the had no case or feud with Ming Kwang, They are Chinese, and go over the watershed to do their marketing, but there is not, and never has been, in the memory of man, any payment of tribute or taxes to the Chinese, nor has any Chinese official ever visited Tzu Chu or sent orders to the Tzu Chu people, or attempted to exercise any authority or control over them, nor do they consider them- selves at all subject to China,
There is no Chinese resident either in Hparè or Tzu Chu.
We are of opinion that nothing can be clearer than that there is no Chinese control either in Hparè or Tzu Chu.
While Mr. Leveson was at Tzu Chu I had returned from Hpare to our former camp near Ming Kwang in order to confer with the Taotai, who had meanwhile delivered to me (1) a map setting forth the claims of Ming Kwang Headmen to various territories beyond the watershed, from which it will be seen that these claims are much as I reported last year; (2) two documents, dated in the 21st year of Tao Kwang (1842), purporting to be certificates issued by the Ping Pu or Board of War in Peking on the application of the Yunnan Government, recognizing the succession of the Chief or Fu Yi Yang of "Hparè in Ming Kwang," and of the Chief or Fu Yi Tso of “Tzu Chu in Ming Kwang," though, in point of fact, neither Hparè nor Tzu Chu are situated in Ming Both these Kwang, but are divided from it by a broad uninhabited mountain range. Chiefs are referred to in the certificates as "hereditary sergeants in the army." When I reported last year that the Hparè and Tzu Chu Headmen bad bereditary Chinese titles, I was misled. These titles belong not to the real Lasui Headmen of those places, but to the Chinese Chiefs of Ming Kwang in virtue of au imaginary suzerainty, much as down to George III the Kings of England used to call themselves Kings of France, or as the Popes create bishops in partibus, say, of Emmaus or Cæsarea, though the divines who enjoy these titles have never been, and never intend to go, nearer to Emmaus or Cæsarea than the city of Rome,
1 think it is not hard to suggest how these claims arose. The Chinese in imes past certainly made incursions over into the NMaikha side and from time to time exchanged
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