CO129-344 - Public Offices & Foreign Office - 1907 — Page 582

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government}

C.O

28491

[June 24,]

580

CHINA RAILWAYS.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[20907]

No. 1.

SECTIE 210 AUG 07

Mr. Ottewill to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received June 24.)

(No. 2. Confidential.) Sir,

Tengyueh, May 18, 1907. WITH reference to my despatch No. 1 of yesterday's date, I have the honour to inclose herewith copy of a further despatch which I have addressed to His Majesty's Minister at Peking on the subject of the Tali reconnaissance.

I bave, &c. (Signed)

H. A. OTTEWILL.

(No. 16. Confidential.) Sir,

C

Inclosure 1 in No. 1.

Mr. Ottewill to Sir J. Jordan.

Tengyueh, May 18, 1907. WITH reference to my despatch No. 15 of yesterday's date, I have the honour to submit information with regard to the proposed railway from here to Tali, which Mr. Lilley has been good enough to place at my disposal.

The trade route has been so frequently described that it is not necessary for me to do so in detail. The best accounts are by Mr. Baber (1876), Report on the route followed by Mr. Grosvenor's Mission ("China, No. 3," 1878); Captain Gill, in "The River of Golden Sand," 1877; Captain Davies (now Major, and Head of the Intelligence Branch at Tien-tsin), in a Confidential Report, 1895-1896; Mr. A. Colquhoun, "Across Chryse"; Dr G. E. Morrison, "An Australian in China," 1893; Dr. Logan Jack, The Backblocks of China," 1900. I venture to think that Mr. Baber's Report has generally been taken too seriously, but it is not out of place to remark that his descriptions of the villages were made immediately after a serious rebellion, and during after virtuous," and the period of possibly greater disorder which the Chinese call we translate reorganization." The only relics of the struggle are some grass-grown defences, seen here and there from the road, and the ruins in the city and outside Tali.

The distance by the road from Tengyueh to Tali is about 170 miles, crossing seven rivers, namely, the Schweli, Salween, Yungchang, Mekong, Yungping, Shunpi, and Yangpi, and the seven intervening mountain ranges, and concluding with the ascent of the Hsia-kuan River valley to the town of the same name, and the level stretch of 10 miles in the plain, with the famous Tali Lake (Erh-Hai) on the east. Mr. Lilley worked out the total rise and fall, vertically, of these main ranges to be over 48,000 feet, or over 9 miles, of which the difference in level between the Kao-li-kung summit. and the Salween accounted for 1 mile.

The road is an ordinary male-track, as such good in places and bad in others, but always to be condemned where paved with stones. The stone roads are, however, necessary for the rainy season, but they could be probably dispensed with if proper gutters and water channels were made.

There is one good point to which attention has always been drawn-the suspension bridges over the rivers. The Yungchang River is only a stream, but the other six above mentioned are crossed by this kind of bridge, the oue over the Hsia-kuan River having been completed within the last year or two. Why the roadway is laid on the chains and not suspended from them, has, I suppose, to be explained by the theory that no Chinaman ever thought of the latter plan. I have been told that the cost of a bridge of the kind is about 3,000l. or 4,000l., a sun that is very reasonable, but at the same time, I know that the three big bridges over the Shweli, Salween, and Mekong have had to be nearly entirely rebuilt during the last half-dozen years. It is against the nature of the Chinese to take any steps in a matter until it has become desperate.

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