occasion.

Mr. James Hart, the I.G.'s brother, lately returned from delimitating
the Tonkin frontier, was sent posthaste to assist the Amban, the
Chinese Resident in Thibet. As a result of this wise choice, the
preliminary Treaty was put through by 1890, and the Chinese Customs
opened stations in Thibet. Three questions relative to trade, however,
remained to be settled, and for three long years negotiations over
these dragged on at Darjeeling.

Needless to say it was a slow and often wearisome business, with the
interest, to my mind, unfairly divided. On one side, the Thibetan
side, there was picturesqueness enough, though not without discomfort
too, for many a time the envoys must needs cross mountain-passes so
deep in snow that a hundred Thibetans marched ahead treading it down,
and not less often they must sleep in the rudest camps and eat the
unsavoury cuisine of the country. But on the other, the Peking side,
there was nothing but hard and dreary work, since every word that the
Chinese Commissioners said was telegraphed back to the I.G., and then
carefully discussed with the Yamên.

No sooner was quiet restored in Thibet than anxiety about war with
Japan began to agitate the Chinese capital. The air was as full of
rumours as a woman of whims. One day, happening to find himself beside
Baron Komura, the Japanese Chargé d'Affaires in Peking, the I.G. half
laughingly remarked, "So you are going to fight China after all?
I suppose you will win." "Oh, one never knows," was the Minister's
diplomatic reply. Strange to say the general opinion among men less
practical and less well-informed than the Inspector-General, was that
China would easily win a war against Japan--if it came to war--just as