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INDIA

so great has been attempted ; and it belongs to the nineteenth
 century!” King Mentara Gyé, who commenced
it, died in 1819. The architectural interests of Burma
require a volume to themselves.
Our national interest in Burma, however, lies chiefly
in the possibility of future commercial developments, and
for that we must look chiefly to the newly acquired Shan
states and their geographical position relative to the great
productive centres of the vast empire of China. It is
indeed in this direction that England has more to hope
for, more indeed to expect, than she has in any other
part of the world. The wealth of the highly developed
provinces of Western China bears about the same proportion
 to the prospective value of the yet undeveloped
Sudan, for instance, as does the wealth of the city of
London to that of any ordinary market town in England.
The Shan states themselves are not as yet fully developed,
but it is the opinion of competent authorities that the
temperate climate, ample rainfall, and excellent soil which
they possess, renders them fit for the production of almost
any form of vegetable product—nor are they destitute of
mineral wealth. That unrivalled authority on the subject,
Mr. J. G. Scott, writes as follows of the country bordering
the line which is now happily in course of construction
between Mandalay and Western China: “Such a line
would traverse a country which produces everything, from
indigo to tea and opium, from potatoes and cabbages to
forests of teak, and is moreover rich in ores of all kinds,
so rich that an Indian mineralogist grows eloquent over a
spot so singularly wealthy in metal that he calls it a solid
mountain of iron, and records the absolute paralysis of his
compass. Lead and silver have long been found in
abundance, and the paltry holes dug by our new Shan
subjects yield an amount which promises to skilled labour
a return that will probably eclipse in interest the much
vaunted ruby mines. Hot springs and mineral waters
await the arrival of the speculator in table drinks, and the
mines of sulphur may probably be as valuable as the
seams of coal which have yet to be scientifically examined.”