Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/372

292 bribe for the temporary disposal of the frontier difficulty being the withdrawal of the requisition for permits for the expedition to Tibet, and the acceptance of China's demand for a decennial mission from Burma, to which, as has been pointed out, she had no valid claim. We may venture to hope that it came to the notice of his lordship that when passing through Yün-nan in 1894 (the year in which Lord Rosebery became First Minister of the Crown) Dr Morrison found the Chinese "daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai (Bhamo), as a present to the Emperor, and were the official recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle Kingdom."

Upon the fatuity of the policy which led up to this situation I have descanted elsewhere. The net results have been a tiresome and long-protracted series of negotiations which only found solution in the convention