the concession, paying the company as indemnity $6,750,000.
A line from Kowloon to Canton has been planned for some
time and it is likely to be hastened by the announcement in the
South China Morning Post, May 12, 1904, that an American-
Chinese syndicate had obtained a concession, granted to the
authorities of Macao by China through a special Portuguese
Minister, to construct a railway from Macao to Canton. The
syndicate hopes to secure American capital and the British
merchants of Hongkong are a little nervous as they think of the
possibility of an independent outlet for the Canton-Hankow
Railway at Macao.

It will thus be seen that if these vast schemes can be realized
there will not only be numerous lines running from the
coast into the interior, but a great trunk line from Canton
through the very heart of the Empire to Peking, where other
roads can be taken not only to Manchuria and Korea but to
any part of Europe.

In the farther south, the French are equally busy. By the
Franco-Chinese Convention of June 20, 1895, a French
company secured the right to construct a railroad from Lao-
kai to Yun-nan-fu. The French had a road from Hai-fong in
Tong-king to Sang-chou at the Chinese frontier, and in 1896
they obtained from China a concession to extend it to Nanning-
fu, on the West River. This privilege has since been enlarged
so that the line will be continued to the treaty port of Pak-hoi
on the Gulf of Tong-king. The French fondly dream of the
time when they can extend their Yun-nan Railway northward
till it taps and makes tributary to French Indo-China the vast