Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/327

Rh route to the south, the Kung-long Ferry, on the Burmese frontier, being selected as the starting-point. Major Davies, whose splendid geographical work in Yün-nan cannot be too highly spoken of, finds in Baber's utterances support for the Kung-long Ferry scheme. Referring to the extracts above quoted, he declared at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society that he quite agreed with the truth of these remarks of Baber. "The only thing is," he went on to say, "they do not apply to the railway at all; they refer to the road which goes westward from T'eng Yüeh to Tali Fu, whereas the present proposed railway comes into Yün-nan from quite a different direction. Indeed, only half a page lower down Baber himself recommends as a probable line for a railway the very route which has now been adopted." The recommendation by Baber here referred to is that "the object should be to attain some town of importance south of Yung-ch'ang and Tali Fu, such as Shun-ning, from which both these