Early in December the Commission met at Fort Stedman, and marching down through Loikaw and Sawlôn, the Karenni capital, encamped near Ywathit, at the ferry on the Salween called Ta Sanglè. Here they had expected to meet the Commissioners who, it was understood, had been appointed by the Bangkok Government to represent it. No one appeared, however, with credentials from Siam. Whether this was a deliberate act of discourtesy, or only a failure caused by the general debility of the Siamese administration, may be questioned. Most probably it was an instance of the common policy of Orientals and others with a weak case, who prefer to plead before a distant and necessarily more ignorant tribunal, rather than to submit their statements and evidence to a well-informed officer on the spot. Perhaps, also, the advisers of the Siamese Government avoided taking part in the inquiry in order that they might refuse to be bound by an unwelcome finding.
Under these circumstances, Mr. Elias was forced to proceed in the absence of the other side. The working season in these latitudes is short, and to have delayed action would have played the Siamese game and given them more time to harass the Karennis and appropriate their property. Although no final decision could be arrived at, the Commission could ascertain the facts, survey the country, and place the matter in a clear light before the Government of India. At least we should acquire an exact knowledge of the case, and be able to say what we were fighting about. The business, therefore, was allowed to proceed.
A standing camp was formed at Ta Sanglè, and three parties, led by Mr. Ney Elias, Mr. Archer, and Mr. J. G. Scott, respectively, started to examine and survey the Karenni country. Ten months had passed since the Siamese had appeared in these parts. The time occupied unavoidably in a triangular correspondence between the Chief Commissioner in Burma, the Government of India in Simla, and the Foreign Office at Whitehall, had not been altogether wasted by the Siamese, who had endeavoured to get the proverbial nine points of the law on their side. They had established a series of posts along the Salween, all of them stockaded and flying the white elephant flag of Siam. In each of these posts were fairly large garrisons of from fifty to one hundred men, some of them well armed Siamese troops, others Laos and Shans—men, these latter, from the west of the Salween, who had sought refuge in Siamese territory from the troublous times of the past years.
It was found that the frontier of Trans-Salween Karenni was clearly defined by a range running from north to south, from fifteen to five-and-twenty miles from the Salween. The inhabitants, almost all Karens, had built their villages on this frontier range. As they live by the rude method of cultivation known as Taungya, they frequently move from one site to another to get fresh ground. The forests are rich in teak, but the timber was worked not by the Karens, but by Shans, or by Burmese traders from Moulmein. Everything went to show that the country had been settled and opened up by the Red Karens, and that the Siamese neither had nor pretended to have any rights over it until the time of our expedition against Sawlapaw. From inquiries made and from the number of their villages the Karen population was estimated at between three and four thousand. The Siamese had taken a very practical method of marking them for their own. All adult males without exception had been tattooed on the forearm with the emblem of an elephant, with a running number added below. At first it was thought that this might help us to compute the number of people in the country. But the tattooing had not been done systematically at the villages where the people lived, but at markets and ferries as they chanced to come from the villages around, to sell their produce or make purchases. Thus while one man in a village might be branded with the number one hundred, his neighbour in the same village might be numbered four hundred. Without visiting every village, therefore, it was not possible to learn the highest number reached, and for this there was not time.
Going north to the districts of Möngmau and Mehsakun, claimed by Mawkmai, Mr. Elias was met by a major in the Siamese army, who claimed to be a member of the Commission representing Siam. This gentleman begged the question in dispute by welcoming Mr. Elias to Siamese territory, but made no further contribution to its settlement. The inquiry having convinced the Commission that the Mawkmai Sawbwa's right to these districts was beyond doubt, he was permitted to resume possession. He brought in his officials with an escort of his own Shans, and the Siamese officers thereupon retired. Mawkmai's possession was not disturbed again.
In the four States claimed by Möngpan events took a similar course. An official representing Siam was found encamped close to Möng Tung, with about one hundred and fifty men. He was requested to leave, as these States were undoubtedly British territory and had been formally so declared. He left without delay or reluctance, and the Möngpan Sawbwa was put in possession, his nephew being appointed governor of the four States, and entrusted with the task of restoring them to order and prosperity. So far the Commission had completed their task. As the Siamese had failed to co-operate, the decisions could not be regarded as final. They were left, as the Bangkok Government may have intended, to be reopened and disputed in London. Much information, however, had been gathered about a country hitherto unknown, and a solid foundation laid for a lasting settlement of our frontier with Siam. Captain Jackson's party had worked with the energy for which he had already won a reputation in three preceding seasons in the Cis-Salween States.
"In this his fourth season," wrote the Superintendent of the Southern Shan States to the Chief Commissioner, "he had an exceedingly difficult region to survey, and he has fixed on our charts an area which would probably have exceeded the powers of any one whose physique was not in equal proportion to his zeal."
Before the Commission had finished the settlement of this strip of country from the south border of Eastern Karenni to the northern frontier of Möng Tung, it had become evident that if they were to complete their task the whole body could not visit Kengtung. Mr. Scott, therefore, was deputed for this purpose, and left early in February. He decided to start from Möngnai, where he proceeded in order to procure transport. The lateness of the season made it above all things necessary to march quickly, impossible with pack bullocks, the ordinary transport of the Shans, which make thirty-four stages from Möngnai to Kengtung. The Panthays (Chinese Mohammedans) with their mules, do the same journey in twelve days. They march from daylight to midday, and after a couple of hours' halt go on till sunset. Mules have the advantage of bullocks in the matter of gear as well as in speed and endurance. The loads are fastened not to the saddle, but to a light wooden frame which fits into grooves on the saddle, and can be lifted off in a minute and as easily replaced. The process of loading and unloading is therefore greatly simplified, and much labour and time saved. Moreover, baggage of all sorts and shapes can be loaded on mules, whereas bullocks cannot carry any that will not fit into their baskets. Then a mule will walk almost as fast as a man in heavy marching-order, and will cover twelve or fifteen miles while a bullock is doing his five; so that instead of waiting for their food after a twelve-mile march until the bullocks hobble in when the sun is low, the men will get their food half an hour after they reach camp. But Mr. Scott has led us away from the business in hand in his enthusiasm for mules.
Panthay mules are not to be found waiting on a stand like taxi-cabs. It is not easy to get them for casual work. Mr. Scott, therefore, was kept some time at Möngnai waiting for mules, and then could not get enough and had to fill the gap with elephants. From Möngnai he went up north by the Nam Teng Valley, crossing the Nam Teng at Ko-up, where a bamboo bridge had been built over the river. The villages on both sides of the river had been raided by the brigand Twet Nga Lu, whose story has been told elsewhere (vide Chapters XV and XVI).
East of the Nam Teng River in the State of Keng Tawng, "the country for nearly twenty miles at a stretch," Mr. Scott reported, "is practically a desert. Yet all along the road old wells and ruinous monasteries and the grass-grown skeletons of former paddy-fields, to say nothing of hill-clearings, showed that formerly there must have been a large population here.... The handful of people who have so far returned to Keng Tawng have settled twenty miles farther south, round the site of the old capital. There is a magnificent banyan-tree, known far and wide as Mai Hung Kan, at Maklang.... The adjoining monastery was burnt by Twet Nga Lu's brigands, and not even the sanctity of the tree which twenty men could not span, under whose branches a fair-sized village might be built, has yet been able to persuade the monks to return. There are not, in fact, enough of the pious in the neighbourhood to support them."