majority return to India with their savings. Gurkhas especially find the country congenial to them. Many Chinamen, too, have made their homes in Burma, and the Chinese have formed a very flourishing colony in that country. The Chinese, however, are principally engaged in commerce and in market-gardening.
Sixty-seven per cent of the total population of the province are dependent upon pasture and agriculture, and cultivable land is so plentiful, and the rules under which waste land can be taken up for cultivation are so easy, that the floating population, willing to work as daily labourers, is very limited. Consequently, when labour is required in large numbers, it has mostly to be imported, and imported labour is expensive. It is also difficult to keep imported labourers, whose tendency is to acquire land of their own and to abandon daily labour for the more independent and, to their ideas, sufficiently remunerative employment of agriculture.
Now that communications with China are being opened out, trade with China promises to develop considerably, and it is probable that more and more Chinamen will find their way to Burma. Chinamen are akin to the Burmans, and readily assimilate with them.
Burmans do not make good soldiers; they are too much averse to discipline. Karens and Kachins have been tried in the military police. The Karens have not done so well as was expected, but the Kachins promise to be excellent soldiers, and a company of Kachins in the Military Police did excellent service when forming part of the escort of the Burma-China Boundary Commission. They distinguished themselves in an encounter with the Was, who made an attack upon the Commission. Many Shans, who formerly were inhabitants of Burma, and occupied lands in the Katha and Bhamo districts, were driven out by the depredations of the Kachins; and now that the Kachins have been reduced to order, they show a tendency to return to their former habitations.
