Mandalay to Momien: A Narrative of the Two Expeditions to Western China of 1868 and 1875 under Colonel Edward B. Sladen and Colonel Horace Browne

For some years previous to the date of the expedition of which the progress is narrated in these pages, the attention of British merchants at home and in India had been directed to the prospect of an overland trade with Western China. Most especially did this interest the commercial community of Rangoon, the capital of British Burma, and the port of the great water highway of the Irawady, boasting a trade the annual value of which had increased in fifteen years to £2,500,000. The avoidance of the long and dangerous voyage by the Straits and Indian Archipelago and a direct interchange of our manufactures for the products of the rich provinces of Yunnan and Sz-chuen might well seem to be advantages which would richly repay almost any efforts to accomplish this purpose.

One plan, then as now, zealously insisted upon by its promoter, Captain Sprye, was the construction of a railway connecting British Burma and China via Kiang-Hung, on the Cambodia river, and the frontier position or reputed town of Esmok.

But as it was, and still is, necessary to send a surveying expedition over an unknown and alien country, as a preliminary, this project, whether chimerical or not, could not compete with the immediate possibility of opening a trade by way of the river Irawady and the royal city of Mandalay.

Although before 1867 but four English steamers with freight had ascended the river to the capital, harbingers of the numerous flotilla now plying on the Irawady, it was known that a regular traffic existed between Mandalay and China, especially in the supply of cotton to the interior, which was reserved as a royal monopoly.

This trade was reported to be mainly carried on by caravans traversing the overland route via Theinnee to Yunnan. According to the itineraries of the Burmese embassy in 1787, the distance is six hundred and twenty miles, and forty-six hills and mountains, five large rivers and twenty-four smaller ones, had to be traversed in the tedious journey of two months. But an unbroken chain of tradition and history indicated the natural entrepot of the commerce between Burma and China to be at or near Bhamô, on the left bank of the upper Irawady, and close to the frontier of Yunnan.

The Burmese annals testified that during several centuries this had been the passage from China to Burma either for invading armies or for peaceful caravans. The most recent Burmo-Chinese war had arisen out of the grievances of Bhamô Chinese merchants, and the treaty of peace that was signed at Bhamô in 1769 stipulated that the “gold and silver road” between the two countries should be reopened. Mutual embassies had consequently journeyed between Pekin and Ava, and almost all had proceeded by way of the Irawady and Bhamô.