PREFACE.
The importance of the Eastern markets to European commerce has long been recognised, and since the famous Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the close of the fifteenth century, and the Portuguese occupied Malacca and established factories or trade depots in Burmah at Martaban and Syriam, the trade of Western China and Indo-China has been a prize which has attracted the commercial aspirations of every maritime mercantile community in Europe.
In 1613, the Portuguese were ousted from Burmah, and six years later, the English and Dutch established factories in that country. Some years afterwards the Dutch were expelled, and in the middle of the next century the French became our rivals for a short time. In 1756 the chief of their factory was executed, and their factory was destroyed, never to be resuscitated.
The first Englishman whose name is recorded in history as travelling in Siam and the Shan States is Thomas Samuel, who happened to be at Zimmé when that place was recaptured by the Burmese in 1615. In Purchas’s ‘Pilgrims’ it is related that he had proceeded from Siam to Zimmé “to discover the trade of that country.” From that time to 1687, when the English were turned out of Siam for killing some of the natives in a scuffle, many English merchants resided there.
Whilst the coast of Burmah was under native dominion, our traders had to content themselves with travelling along the great rivers; and it was not until 1829, three years after we had annexed the Burmese provinces of Tenasserim and Arakan, that steps were taken by us to establish overland trade with Northern Siam, the Shan States, and China. In that year Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General of India, ordered a mission to proceed, under Dr Richardson, from Maulmain to the Siamese Shan States, to ensure friendly relations and trade in that direction; and in 1837, Lord Auckland, then Governor-General, despatched Captain (late General) MacLeod, viâ Zimmé and Kiang Hung to China, with the view of opening up trade with that country. Notwithstanding the favourable reports of these and subsequent missions, and the frequent petitions of our mercantile community asking for the connection of Burmah with China by railway, no action has been taken by the Indian Government in the sixty years that have elapsed since Dr Richardson’s mission, for improving the overland routes leading from Burmah to the great undeveloped markets which immediately border our possessions on the east. Burmah might as well have remained for these sixty years in native hands, for all the good that its acquisition has been to the furtherance of our trade with the neighbouring regions.
When I retired from Government service at the end of 1879, the French were again in the field. They had annexed the south-eastern corner of Indo-China, had seized Cambodia from the Siamese, were determined to wrest Tonquin from China, which they have since succeeded in doing, and had openly avowed their intention to eject British trade from Eastern Indo-China, and to do all they possibly could to attract the trade of South-western, Southern, and Central China to French ports in Tonquin, where prohibitive duties could be, and have since been, placed upon British goods. It was under these circumstances that Mr Colquhoun and I took up the question, placed the necessity of connecting India with Burmah, Siam, and China before the public, and with the aid of the mercantile community determined to carry out a series of exploration-surveys to prove whether or not Burmah could be connected with these countries by railway at a reasonable expense, and to select the best route, financially and commercially, for the undertaking. The present volume deals with my exploration-surveys in Siam and the Shan States.
The country through which I passed, besides being of interest from a commercial point of view, was at the time of my visit shrouded with that glamour which invests all little-known regions; and an accurate knowledge of its physical features and political relations promised to be of great importance in view of the action of France in Tonquin, and our threatened embroilment with that nation in Upper Burmah.
Before commencing the narrative of my journey, in which the manners, customs, and habits of the people will be portrayed, I will, from information recently acquired by myself and other travellers, and from other sources, give a slight sketch of the ethnology and history of the interesting races met with by me on my journey.
The first mention in history of Lower Indo-China is in the ‘Annamese Chronicles,’ where it is stated that Founan—the early Chinese name for Cambodia—in B.C. 1109 was under the rule of a native queen. The next we hear of it is in A.D. 69, at the time when a Brahman from India, named Prea Thong, who is said to have been the fugitive son of the sovereign of Delhi, married the then ruling queen. This Brahman is believed to have introduced Brahmanism, architecture, sculpture, and astronomy into Cambodia. At that time Cambodia consisted of an agglomeration of seven States, which were constantly at war with each other. On the death of the Brahman’s son, the commander-in-chief of the army made an end of the principalities, and was elected to the joint throne.
From B.C. 125 there are many accounts of embassies passing between China and Cambodia, and the country seems rapidly to have reached a height of prosperity and Eastern splendour. In the third century Chinese ambassadors mention palaces, towers, and theatres having been erected for the reception and amusement of the guests, and meeting merchants in the ports from countries as far west as the Roman Empire. The people were described by the Chinese as an active and robust small black race, with long hair knotted on the top of the head; the rich wearing only a silk loin-cloth, and the poor one of cotton. The women had head-coverings, and decked themselves with beautifully wrought silver jewellery set with precious stones. The men excelled in making jewellery, gold and silver vases, furniture, and domestic utensils—and were honest, and hated theft above all things. They worshipped Hindoo gods, and offered up human sacrifices.
This small black race, the Cham or Siam, was of the Malay stock, doubtless darkened by interbreeding with the Negrito aborigines, and perhaps with Dravidian colonists from the Madras coast. Remnants of the Negrito aborigines, evidently akin to the Australioids, are still found in the hilly districts of the Malay Peninsula, as well as in some of the adjacent islands: and the Kha, or Ka, in the neighbourhood of Luang Prabang; the Trao, to the east of Bienhoa in Cochin China; the Hotha Shans, in the Chinese Shan States; and one of the native races in Formosa,—are, according to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, representatives of the same stock, and akin to the Tiao, a race of pigmies, with whom the Chinese (Peh Sing tribes) became acquainted when they entered North-eastern China more than 4000 years ago.
To the north of the Chams, the country from an early period was occupied by the Lawa, a race with Mon affinities and probably of the Mon stock, who, according to their own traditions, and the beliefs and traditions of their neighbours, are the aborigines of the region stretching southwards from Yunnan, and eastwards from the Salween to the Meh Kong, and perhaps even to the China Sea. Many of the names of principalities and deserted cities are said to have been derived from the Lawa; and fierce battles were fought between them and the Shans before the former were conquered or driven into the hills. In a few years the language of this interesting race will be extinct, as the race have gradually been absorbed into the Shan and Peguan population, and Shan as well as Lawa is now being spoken in their few remaining distinct villages.
To the west of the Lawa were the Mon or Mun, a Mongoloid race of Malaysian affinities, whose scattered tribes spread from Indo-China into Western Bengal and Central India, where they are now known as Kolarian. Their first kingdom in Lower Burmah was founded at Thatone, an ancient seaport on the east of the Gulf of Martaban, by an Indian dynasty from the Madras coast, in the sixth century B.C. About the end of the first century of our era, Mon tribes drove the Burmese from Prome, which had been their capital from B.C. 483. These tribes were probably descendants of the Ngu race, including the Pang, Kuei, and Miao tribes, who, with the Shan, Yang or Karen, and King or Chin tribes, formed the chief part of the population of Central and Southern China during the struggle for empire—604–220 B.C.—between the Dukes of Tsi, Dsin, Ts’in, and Tsoo, which ended in the ruler of Ts’in becoming the first Supreme Emperor of China. Some of the wars waged by Ts’in during this period seem to have been wars of extermination; and many tribes must have sought safety by moving southward and south-westward out of the area of turbulence. In one campaign 240,000 heads are said to have been cut off; in another, 140,000; and in others, 60,000, 80,000, and 82,000 heads.
In A.D. 573, the Mon founded a separate kingdom at Pegu, which, with the Thatone kingdom, was destroyed by the Burmese King of Pugan in the middle of the eleventh century; from that time to 1287, when Pegu was conquered by the Shan King of Martaban, Lower Burmah remained under the Burmese. In 1540 it was reconquered by the latter, and formed part of their empire for 200 years. In 1740 the Mon, aided by the Karen and Gwe Shan, rebelled against Burmah, and, electing a Gwe Shan as their king, commenced the great fight for supremacy, which lasted till 1757, and left the Burmese supreme in the country until we annexed it.
The language of the Mon is now nearly extinct in Lower Burmah. The Mon or Peguans, who sided with us during the first Burmese war, were mercilessly ill-treated by the Burmese when we evacuated Martaban and Pegu: those who did not escape into Tenasserim, Zimmé, and Siam, were either murdered or forced to learn and speak the language of their oppressors.
To the north of the Mon race, in the district of the Middle Irawadi, the country was occupied from an early date by Burmese tribes of Tibetan origin, who were gradually welded together by warlike Kshatriya princes, who invaded the country from Northern India. According to the Tagaung Raza Weng, their first capital in Burmah was founded at Tagaung by Abhi Raja, one of the Sakya Rajas. This prince came from Kapilavastu with an army, and, B.C. 923, built the city. One of his sons founded a dynasty in Arakan, and a grandson established another at Kalê in the Kubo valley. The destruction of the first monarchy at Tagaung was due to the irruption of tribes, probably Shans, from the East. This is said to have happened in the sixth century B.C.
About this time a second band of Kshatriyas arrived from Gangetic India, whose chief, Daza Raja, married the widow of the queen of the last dynasty, and some years later, B.C. 523, built old Pugan, near the site of the ancient capital. His successor was expelled and driven south by the Shans, and founded a new capital, B.C. 483, at Prome, in the north of Lower Burmah. Upper Burmah was thus left in the possession of the Shans, many of whose cities in the Shan States lying to the west of the Salween were founded about this time. Moné is said to have been built as early as B.C. 519.
Thirteen years after the Burmese were turned out of Prome by the Mon, they created a new capital, A.D. 108, at Pugan, where the Burmese monarchy continued until 1291, when it was expelled by the Shans, who governed Burmah from that time until 1554. From thence until we annexed the country, Upper Burmah was under Burmese rulers.
The Karen tribes who are found scattered amongst the hills in Burmah and Siam from the latitude of Mandalay southwards, are called by the Burmese Karen or Kayen; by their other neighbours they are known as Yang, pronounced sometimes nasally as Nyang. These people are believed to have been a branch of the Chau or Djow, which entered the north-west of China about B.C. 1276. The Djow displaced the Shang dynasty in China B.C. 1122, and remained supreme over the agglomeration of principalities forming the Chinese Empire until B.C. 336, when some of the States acknowledged Ts’in as their lord. Djow was ultimately overthrown, in B.C. 255, by the Prince of Ts’in, who took possession of Djow’s sacrificial vessels and the nine tripods, the symbols of empire. During their rule the Djow preserved their ancient faith in divination, and the augurs in the courts of the principalities occupied a distinguished position. No expedition or any business of importance was entered into without first consulting the fates.
The Yang or Karen—who gave their name to the Yangtsze Kiang, and settled on its banks—at the time of the destruction of Tsoo, the great principality which covered Southern China, by the Shensi State of Ts’in, B.C. 221, occupied the country to the south of the river in the provinces of Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Kiangsi. They were driven away by the Shan and Mon population of the eastern provinces, 210–206 B.C., and were finally expelled from China by the Shan King of Nanchao, viâ Yungchang, a city on the Bhamo route, A.D. 778. They have since spread southwards into Lower Burmah and Siam. At the time they left China, they are said to have numbered 200,000 families.
The traditions which are repeated from father to son in metrical verse by the Yang, have evoked great interest among the American missionaries, who have done such good work in converting them to Christianity. From the creation until after the flood these traditions are intrinsically the same as the Mosaic accounts. Some people firmly believe the Karen to be the ten lost tribes of Israel; but as their ancestors are known to have been in China some 550 years before the ten tribes were lost, it is much more reasonable to believe that they received their traditions from the Mohammedans of Yunnan, or that before their entrance into China they followed the tracks of the Peh Sing tribes, and had their earlier home in the neighbourhood of the Semite tribes, and there acquired their knowledge. The two other races which have extended southwards from China into Indo-China are the Jung and the Shan. The former was already on the borders of China, and some of its tribes had settled about the southern bend of the Hoang Ho at the time when the Peh Sing Chinese tribes arrived from their long journey from the neighbourhood of Chaldea. The Jung, according to Professor Terrien de Lacouperie, were originally of the same white stock as ourselves, and have become hybrid by intermixture with the neighbouring races. They were so warlike in their disposition that their name became amongst the Chinese equivalent to that of warriors. In the seventh century B.C. they were spread across the north of China from the extreme west of Kansu to the neighbourhood of Pekin. Many of their tribes were absorbed by the Ts’in—the Seres of the Greeks and Romans—of the province of Shensi, whose State name Ts’in has been by Europeans corrupted into China.
The people of Ts’in claimed kinship with the Niao-suk (Nila-Cakas or black Sakœ), and with the Fei or Bod, the people of Tibet. About B.C. 770, Ts’in was incorporated in the agglomeration of dukedoms or States forming the Djow dominion, and rapidly increased in strength by conquest, and partly by the absorption of the neighbouring Jung tribes. It then grew in power at the expense of the eastern States, and brought them into subjection. It further carried its sway across the Yangtsze B.C. 279, and conquered Tsoo. Its duke became Supreme Emperor of Ts’in B.C. 220.
The Jung tribes which were not absorbed by Ts’in, gradually pressed southwards amongst the Shan tribes in Szechuen, and are now found, under the tribal names of Mo-so, Lissu, Lolo, La-hu, La-wa (Lahs and Wahs to the north of Kiang Tung), &c., in the west of that province, and in Yunnan, Kweichau, and the Shan States as far south as the latitude of Zimmé, and as far west as the Salween river. These tribes speak a Tibeto-Burmese language.
The Shan race, known by the self-names of Tai, Pai, Lao, &c., occupies an area of country six times as large as the United Kingdom; yet, owing to the trading propensities of the race, the dialects spoken by the Shans differ so slightly that travellers from the Tonquin hills, Kwangsi, Yunnan, and Bhamo can converse with people at Zimmé and at Bangkok.
In the earliest times we hear of the Shans under their tribal names stretching across China from east to west, and occupying the country between the Yangtsze and the Hoang Ho. From 1766 to 1122 B.C. they are supposed to have been the dominant power in China, since the Shang, or traders, the ruling dynasty during that period, were presumably of their race. Later on they spread over Southern China, forming a large ingredient in the kingdoms of Tsoo, Tsen or Tien, and Nan-Yueh, and extended into the valleys of the Irawadi, Salween, Meh Nam, and Meh Kong.
The last of their tribes to leave Central China for Indo-China appear to have been the Chau Tai or Siamese, who were expelled from their seat in Kiangsi and Anhwei in the tenth century of our era. They were driven to the south-west into Kwangsi and Kweichau, where some of their tribes are still found, and a large body ultimately migrated into the Shan States to the south of Kiang Hsen.
In the latter half of the thirteenth century the country occupied by the Shans was in a state of turmoil and unrest. The ancient principalities in Yunnan had been conquered by Kublai Khan 1253–54; the Shan States to the south and west of Yunnan had been attacked, and a consequent great displacement of the population occurred. At that time the agglomeration of States formed by the Ngai Lao or Lao Shans stretched southwards from the latitude of Kiang Hsen to the northern confines of Cambodia or La-Wek, which then included a number of principalities in the valley of the Meh Nam, as well as in that of the Meh Kong. About 1281, according to the Shan records at Zimmé, the Prince of Kiang Hsen advanced southwards and conquered Lapoon, and in 1294 founded the present city of Zimmé. The Lapoon Shans fled into Martaban, and, headed by one of themselves, attacked the Burmese governor, slew him, and made their leader Wa-re-ru King of Martaban, A.D. 1281. Six years later, this Shan king conquered Pegu, and Shan kings reigned over the joint kingdom from that time until they were conquered by the Burmese in 1540. Upper Burmah was likewise under Shan kings from A.D. 1290 to 1554.
It was about the time of the conquest of Lapoon, according to Siamese history, that the Siamese were expelled from Kiang Hai by the Prince of Sittang. The Siamese fled southwards, and founded a new capital at Muang Pehp or Pet, opposite the present city of Kamphang Pet on the Meh Ping. In 1320 they deserted that city and founded another in the neighbourhood, and thirty-one years later migrated to the south, built their new capital at Ayuthia, on the site of a deserted Cambodian city called Viang Lek, founded dukedoms or Muangs at Soo-pan-Boo-ree and Lop-Boo-ree, and joined the confederation formed by the Ngai Lao States, over which the King of Sukkhothai was then suzerain. This king had attacked Cambodia in 1296, pillaged its cities in the valley of the Meh Nam, driven the Cambodians to the eastward, and thus rendered the country available for the Siamese settlements.
As time went on the Siamese became the predominant State in the kingdom, and entered on frequent wars of aggression with Cambodia, Annam, Vieng Chang, and Zimmé. In 1546, six years after the Burmese King of Toungoo had conquered Pegu, the Siamese commenced the series of wars with Burmah which ended in nearly exterminating the population of both countries.
Every able-bodied man who did not take refuge in flight was forced into the ranks, either to defend his country, or to attack that of his neighbours, or the neighbours of the power to which his own State was tributary. Armies, from forty thousand to two hundred thousand men strong, ravaged the land, and swept away, as in a great net, those of the inhabitants who were not killed in battle. In vast tracts not a man, woman, or child remained; and elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, deer, wild cattle, and other wild animals took possession of the devastated country. At length the Mon armies of Burmah, who hated forced service, mutinied, and, taking their wives and children with them, fled into Siam; and Zimmé, which had been under Burmah, except in times of rebellion, from 1558 to 1774, threw off the yoke and asked for the protection of Siam. To such an extent was the population thinned out by the incessant warfare, that when we annexed the Burmese province of Tenasserim, which borders Siam and Zimmé, we found in it barely seventy thousand souls.
Burmah is blessed with a fruitful soil and a bounteous rainfall. It only requires increased population to make it the garden of the East; and every chief commissioner, from Sir Arthur Phayre downwards, has advocated its connection with China by railway, as the means for supplying that want from the most industrious and enterprising people in Asia, the Chinese.
I take this opportunity to record my deep sense of gratitude to the Rev. J. N. Cushing, D.D., and the Rev. D. M‘Gilvary, D.D., who accompanied me as comrades and interpreters during part of my explorations, for their friendly endeavour to secure the success of my undertaking; and I have much pleasure in expressing my heartfelt appreciation of the frank cordiality and unwearying kindness accorded me by all the American Missionaries and Missionary Ladies during my stay in the country.