Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
While it was being built through the fever-stricken jungles of Tonking the coolies died like flies, and it was necessary to suspend all work during the summer months. The scenery along the railroad is marvelous and the traveling is by no means uncomfortable, but the hotels in which one stops at night are wretched.
Even in the winter it is never very cold and its delightful summer should make Northern Yün-nan a wonderful health resort for the residents of fever-stricken Burma and Tonking. We rode toward Ta-li with the beautiful lake on our right hand and on the other the Ts'ang Shan mountains which rise to a height of fourteen thousand feet.
As for the children, they go to swell the class that is neither here nor there, and their lot is probably happier than that of the unfortunate Eurasians of India, since race prejudice is far less strong among the French than with the Anglo-Saxon. At Lao-kai on the Tonking frontier I stopped over for a day's rest, having learned that it boasted a comfortable European inn.
Burma, Siam, Annam, and Tonking, one by one, ceased to be dependent on China and independent towards all other nations. In Korea's case, however, the fiction proved more tenacious, since the peninsula furnished easy access to Manchuria, the cradle of the Manchu dynasty. But while seeking to maintain the old-time relations with Korea, Chinese statesmen clung uniformly to traditional methods.
Their request that no examination of their baggage be made by the French during their passage through Tonking was granted, and a similar favor was procured for them at Shanghai. Thus the sixty cases were safely landed, but a few hours later, through the opium combine, foreign detectives learned of the smuggling and the boxes were seized.
Wu proved to be the most efficient and trustworthy servant whom we have ever employed, and the success of our work was due in no small degree to his efforts. We left for Tonking on the S.S. Sung-kiang, commanded by Harry Trowbridge, a congenial and well-read gentleman whose delightful personality contributed much toward making our week's stay on his ship most pleasant.
The following noon, after we left Kwang-chou, we were approaching Haiphong through muddy red channels between the low-lying meadow lands which here border the river Cua-Cam, on the right bank of which lies the chief commercial centre of Tonking. But its days as a shipping port are said to be numbered, because of the difficult approach.
The first of the powers to take advantage of this situation was France, who already possessed a footing in Cochin-China, and was tempted during the colonial enthusiasm of the 'eighties to transform it into a general supremacy over Annam and Tonking. As early as 1874 she had obtained from the King of Annam a treaty which she interpreted as giving her suzerain powers.
Gibbons are essentially Oriental being found in India, Burma, Siam, Tonking, Borneo, and the Islands of Hainan, Sulu, Sumatra, and Java. For the remainder of our stay at the Nam-ting River camp we devoted ourselves to hunting monkeys and soon discovered that the three species we had first seen were totally different.
It is true the forward policy did not originate with M. Doumer, for the value of Tonking as the key to China had been recognized by French statesmen before ever he put foot in the colony, but it was his task to make that policy something more than a pious aspiration.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking