Suppose a rich Chinese traveller in England, who spoke no English, were to offer Tommy Atkins twopence halfpenny for travelling on foot thirty-eight miles to bring him a telegram, having then to walk back thirty-eight miles and find himself on the way, would the English soldier bow as gratefully as did his perishing Chinese brother when I thus rewarded him?
We descended by beautiful open country into the Valley of the Shadow of Death--the valley of the River Salween.

No other part of Western China has the evil repute of this valley; its unhealthiness is a by-word.

"It is impossible to pass," says Marco Polo; "the air in summer is so impure and bad and any foreigner attempting it would die for certain." The Salween was formerly the boundary between Burma and China, and it is to be regretted that at the annexation of Upper Burma England did not push her frontier back to its former position.

But the delimitation of the frontier of Burma is not yet complete.

No time could be more opportune for its completion than the present, when China is distracted by her difficulties with Japan.