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252 then by one who was, after all, possessed of no expert engineering knowledge, have been generally accepted as conclusive ever since. His declaration in a Government paper, China, No. 3, 1878, that "We feel at liberty to say that if British trade ever adopts this track, we shall be delighted and astounded in about equal proportions," has been quoted ad nauseam, and is generally held to have settled for all time the pretensions of the Tali Fu-T'eng Yüeh route as an avenue of ingress for British trade. The quotation given above is supported by others in the same paper. "The trade route from Yün-nan Fu to T'eng Yüeh is the worst possible route with the least conceivable trade," he declares; and further on, "I do not mean that it would be absolutely impossible to construct a railway.... By piercing half a dozen Mont Cenis tunnels and erecting a few Menai bridges, the road from Burma to Yün-nan Fu could, doubtless, be much improved."

Twenty years later engineers in the employ of the Yün-nan Company, accepting the conclusions above quoted, were in search of a railway