Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/549

Rh us far beyond its limits, for at once the double line began to form; and our real eastward frontier has been thrown forward up to the Mekong River, enclosing a line of semi-independent chieftainships, which serve as buffers between Burma proper and China. At this moment we are engaged in framing our relations with these chieftainships, and in extending our influence over the border tribes; we are, in fact, planning out and consolidating the intermediate zone, which, as has been said, is invariably left between the two lines, the inner limit of actual jurisdiction and the outer political line of protection and defence.

THE TILO-MILO PAGODA AT PAGAN, BURMA.

And thus, on the east as on the west, England is slowly drawing into contact with rival powers of equal political magnitude; her extreme boundary-line reaches up to China and Siam; and at one point the political