COLONEL GRAYsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for India, If any, and, if any, what steps are being taken by Her Majesty's Government to promote the communication between Rangoon and Western China through a portion of the Shan States; and if the survey of that route is being proceeded with?
MR. GRANT DUFF, in reply, said, that nothing further had been done to promote communication between Rangoon and Western China through the Shan States since the survey was stopped near the boundary of our own territory in 1867, after 245 miles had been traversed. A considerable distance remained to be surveyed, and he hoped the Government of India might see its way to completing the unfinished work. If it did they should be glad; but at the same time the Secretary of State for India would not dream of pressing the continuation of the survey, if the Government of India was deliberately of opinion that, by continuing that survey, it might run the risk of being involved in alarming political complications or of incurring any very great expense. He considered the whole question of communication between India and Western China—of which this project of a road through the Shan States was merely a fragment, and not a very large fragment—to be one of the very greatest interest, though it would be of greater prac- 1357 tical importance to the next generation than to ours; but interesting as it was, and important as it might become, we should not forget that in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, as in Abyssinia, we might buy gold too dear. Some Papers which would shortly be laid on the table would more fully explain the present position of this question.