Page:Notes of a journey across the Isthmus of Krà.pdf/50

 coast enjoys, is Madras. But the steamers via Akyab should not have to go up the Rangoon and Maulmein rivers, by which means another twelve hours would be saved, making a total saving, even after touching at all the four ports (for Mergui would probably be moved to the Pakchan), of (19+3+12) 34 hours over the Singapore line. Elephant point and Amherst point should be the respective points of call for Rangoon and Maulmein, with telegraphic communication between those places and the capitals of Pegu, and the Martaban and Tenasserim provinces.

9th.—All the trade between Maulmein and the Straits, for which there is no better mode of carriage than junks and Kattoos, and all the tin found on both sides of the Pakchan, in the Linga river, and indeed all along the coast up to Yeb, and which only requires capital and labour to develop to any extent, would be picked up at Kraw; while the labour for the tin mines of the Pakchan, and possibly for the coal mines of Mergui, could be imported direct from China. All the one and a quarter millions of the Bangkok trade, and that of the Malayan Peninsula, on the eastern and western side, would be intercepted at Tayoung and Kraw, also all adjuncts, which none of the present lines of steamers obtain, but which would go far to make them pay.

Between Maulmein and Kraw, where the coast is profusely wooded, wood fuel might be used to increase profits, or decrease expenses, should it take any time to develop the trade carried on between Maulmein and Singapore. The cost of burning wood on this coast, as compared with that of coal, is as one to ten, taking the wood at ten rupees per 1,000 billets, and coal at twenty-five rupees four annas per ton, and assuming that 250 billets, four feet long by four inches diameter, equal one hour's steam or one ton of coal.

18.—It would answer no useful purpose, to go into all the figures necessary to establish even an approximate idea of the greater profit that would be assured to commerce and to Steam Companies, by adopting the new lines herein proposed instead of the present times. It was only necessary to take three items, fuel, establishment, and time of actual running steamers, to