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280 Afghan borderland suggested by the well-worn phrase "the North-West Frontier." But there is another frontier, which may be termed "the North-East Frontier," which has received but a modest share of public attention, but which nevertheless can boast its tale of tragedies and comedies, and which has been responsible from time to time for no small amount of perturbation among diplomatists and even European Cabinets. It is of this frontier, stretching from the little-known highlands of eastern Tibet in the north to Siam and French Indo-China in the south, that I propose to speak; and since tragedies play so fine a part in the making of an empire's frontiers, let me begin with one of the pathetic tragedies of the North-East Frontier.

At a point where the magnificent riverside esplanade of Shanghai sweeps past the substantial and affluent-looking buildings of the British Consulate on the one side, and skirts a stretch of land known as the public gardens on the other, to pass on over the Su-chow creek to that part of the