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the Governor-General would answer in this sense. You will observe that his Excellency contents himself with passing on to me, without comment, the report of the Directors.
I replied the following day, the 11th October, reminding Ting chiltai that he had )
agreed, at our interview of the 16th May last, to the reconnaissance, on, it is true, the understanding that if it was thereby proved that a railway can be built, the construction of snch railway will have to be further considered. In consequence of this agreement arrangements had been made in India which it would be difficult to alter. My note of the 8th October was solely intended to inform his Excellency of the date of Mr. Lilley's departure, and to request protection; I had not asked that it should be handed to the Directors of the Yüunan-Szechuan (of set purpose I omitted the words "and Tengyuch") Railway for discussion.
The Governor-General sent, as on many previous occasions, Kuei-fu, Assistant Superintendent of the Foreign Affairs Department, and Chiang Li-ch'eng, English Secretary, to see me. They told me, what I knew already, that the Governor-General was being pressed by Messrs. Li K'un, Ch'en Tu, and others of the literati, to insist that the Tengyueh Railway must be built by the Yunnanese themselves. It was accordingly, they hinted, awkward for his Excellency to be asked to officially countenance further surveys by foreign engineers, particularly over new ground. Then, again, the strength of the proposed party seemed very great, and might well cause alarm to the inhabitants. Moreover, the party appeared to include a large number of natives of India, whose black faces and brusque manners would give still wider cause for apprehension.
I replied much as I had done in my note of the 11th, adding that it should not be difficult to get the number of menials and servants reduced, or to substitute Burmese for Indians. They asked whether Mr. Lilley could not come alone, or with only one or two servants-say, a boy and a cook-employing local coolies of Tengyueh as porters. I explained that in country so difficult it would probably be necessary to have three pairs of engineers at work, one pair along the main road, a second some miles north of it, and a third some miles south. They gave me to understand, informally, that if Mr. Lilley and his companions had made no official intimation of their purpose, but had appeared at Tengyuch as ordinary travellers, there would have been no difficulty; even if intima- tion had been made, but for the Kulikha-Tengyueh line only, the situation would have been simpler. When I observed that consent had been given by his Excellency six months ago, I learnt for the first time that Governor-General Ting was contemplating a denial of his promise.
I said that I was shocked to hear that such advice had been tendered to his Excel- lency; they themselves knew perfectly well that consent had been given. Kuei-fu suggested that consent was given to a reconnaissance "beyond Teugyueh," which meant, here at Yunnan-fa, west of Tengyueh. That, I retorted, was absurd; Mr. Lilley was completing at the time (last May) his survey up to Tengyueh, and what was then asked for was, as now, protection while continuing it from Tengyueh to Tali.
It was not necessary for my Government to give any intimation, since Mr. Lilley has a Treaty right to travel under passport. The intimation was given as a matter of courtesy, and, as they knew perfectly well, had been acquiesced in by his Excellency. I suggested that the Governor-General might reply either that the numbers and composition of the party were such as to alarm the inhabitants-since that appeared to be his view--or that it would be better to a rait the settlement, at Peking or in London, of the main question -the construction of the Tengyueh Railway-before resuming the survey. I could not, and would not, accept any denial on the part of his Excellency of his assent to the Tenygueh-Tali reconnaissance.
Some days passed, and I was encouraged to believe, from private inquiries made by my writer, that the Governor-General was proposing to adopt some such course as I had suggested. To my astonishment, however, I received, on the evening of the 20th, the note of which I inclose translation. The Governor-General is herein made to say-I have reason to think that the note was drafted by the Directors-that he finds it impossible to admit" that it was settled at our interview of the 10th May that engineers from Burmah should make a reconnaissance of the route between Tengyueh and Tali.
The passage that follows is curious. It amounts, as you will see, to a declaration that if we insist on the survey a riot will be instigated and our party attacked. The five characters "crh chung ch'ing pu hsieh" ("and popular feeling not put up with it") had been submitted for six other characters. My belief is, as I have said, that the note was drafted by Li K'un or one of his fellows, and that in this passage some one less intemperate bad substituted a milder phrase. The threat, however, is sufficiently explicit.
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I could not accept such a note, and I sent my writer the first thing the next morning (the 21st October) to return it personally to the Governor-General. My writer assures me that at the ensuing conversation his Excellency freely confessed that he had given ais consent on the 16th May, but said that it was now difficult for him to admit it, owing to the pressure brought to hear by the Directors. The whole correspondence might, his Excellency suggested, be considered as non avenue, but we might wait for a few days to see what is being done at Peking about the Tengyuch Railway.
Chiang Li-ch'eng called the next morning and suggested that time should be given to the Directors to cool down, when my writer might point out to them that no sort of harm would accrue to Chinese interests by Mr. Lilley's continuing his surveys. If Mr. Lilley found that no railway is feasible the whole question will lapse; if he discovered a possible route, and the two Governments of Great Britain and China decided that Yünran alone is to build the line, then, no doubt, arrangements could be made with the Government of India for the communication of Mr. Lilley's maps. I replied that I could not answer for your Government without instructions, but that I thought he was taking a very reasonable view, and 1 hoped that the opposition would come to see it in the same light.
That same evening I received a letter from the Foreign Affairs Department stating that, in consequence of the visit of my writer, the Governor-General had instructed them to return "the note." I too hastily assumed that "the note " was his Excellency's of the 20th October, and, without examining further, sent back both it and the covering letter. As a matter of fact, it was my own note of the 11th October. I do not want to receive back this last, but, having rejected the Chinese reply to it, I could not well have refused to do so. I therefore do not regret the mistake that has, as things have turned out, enabled me to leave it with the Yunnan Government.
Meanwhile, on the 24th October, I telegraphed to you and to Sir John Jordan as follows:-
"A small but noisy opposition are pressing the weak Governor-General to revoke his consent, and to forbid the party to cross the frontier.
In
That consent was given verbally as a matter of course, since two similar surveys had already taken place, and there was then (the 16th May) no question of a Chinese Tengyueh Railway. I have sent to the Governor-General a signed translation of my telegram of the 17th May to the Legation, so that opposition is purely factious. any case British subjects have a Treaty right to travel, and Chinese authorization was not needed. If we insist on equal treatment to that of the French, the right to survey anywhere follows."
I added a request, in my telegram to Sir John Jordan, to be informed of the course of negotiations with the Wai-wu Pu, and to receive instructions about the reconnaissance. My return of the Foreign Department note gave rise to further pourparlers with Messrs. Kuei-fu and Chiang Li-ch'eng. I reiterated my firm refusal to entertain any suggestion that the Governor-General had not agreed on the 16th May to the proposed reconnaissance, but I finally said that if his Excellency would write to me that circumstances had since changed, and that pending the settlement at Peking of the main question it would be inadvisable that the engineers should again cross the border, I would not insist on a positive affirmation of the agreement. Drafts of the note were brought me from time to time, and I ultimately accepted that which forms Inclosure 5 to my present despatch. I made it clear at the same time that I was not to be understood either as indorsing everything there set down, or as guaranteeing the concurrence of your Government.
The intermediaries pressed me to quote, when answering it, the note in its entirety; but I said plainly that I could not see my way to acknowledging the existence of an independent Chinese Tengyuch Railway Company. The note of the 20th October, which I had rejected, had endeavoured to make out that I recognized the self-styled Directors, and that I had called upon and consulted them. I reminded Kuei ta-jen of my objections at the time to meeting the Governor-General's deputies at Wang Taotai's residence; and I repeated that though I was quite ready to admit that Wang Hung-t'u, Li K'un, and the rest are Directors of the Yunnan-Szechuan Railway, I could not, and would not, do anything that might lend colour to the idea that my Government allows their claims to the Tengyuch line.
After a final attempt to get me to say in my reply that the arguments of the Governor-General are just and right, they at last accepted the draft which became my definitive note of the 31st October (Inclosure 6).
Meanwhile I had received from His Majesty's Minister an answer to my telegram of the 24th October, telling me that the Wai-wu Pu had not consulted him, nor had he yet
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