bridged, and often the narrow causeway lies along the side of a precipice or the ascent may be some hundred feet up the face of a mountain. Merchandise crossing the Laos frontier must be carried long distances at an enormous cost. Thus the celebrated so-called Puekr tea of North-eastern Laos, just a little south of the Yunnan border, while freely used by the peasantry of that province, is too expensive by the time it reaches the nearest Chinese port to export to Russia or Europe. Yet the amount of goods and produce that move to and fro viâ Szmao, the last Chinese administration town, to Laos, and viâ Cheung Mai to Burmah, is surprising,—thus affording the best possible guarantee for an increased amount to follow were only communication facilitated. Railroad communication for an overland route is warmly advocated. "From Yunnan," as Baron Richthoren puts it, "the elongated ridges of the Indo-Chinese peninsula (the land of the Burmese, Malays, Siamese, Laos and Cochin-Chinese) stretch southward as fingers from the palms of a hand."
The configuration of the peninsula is easily remembered as separated by longitudinal belts of hills, spurs from the northern ranges, into principal basins, or funnels, for the rich drainage of the surrounding highlands, viâ Burmah, or the basin of the Irawaddy; the valley of the Menam and that of the Cambodia or Mekong
