2nd. Edition-5000 Copies.
THE
Price 36 cents.
·\VAR IN TONG-KING. WHY THE
FRENCH ARE IN TONG-KING, AND WHAT THEY ARE DOING THERE.
BY LIEUT. SIDNEY A. STAUNTON. U.S.N.
BOSTON:
CUPPLES, UPHAM, AND
COMPA NY.
CAMBRIDGE: N. D. C. HODGES. 1884.
COPYRIGHT, 1884,
Bv N. D. C. HODGES .
.franklin lllrtH: RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, BOSTON.
TONG'-KING. TONG-KING has received daily mention in rivers. The names of the two principal ones, the public, press for months, but it is perhaps the Irrawaddy and the Cambodia, fall upon the a rather hazy subject in the minds of people ear with a familiar sound : they rank among whose knowledge of Eastern geography and the great streams of Asia. The others, the politics is not freshened by frequent study. Menam, the Saluen, and the Song-Coi, are less It has something to do with Annam and China pretentious, but not less important to the dis and France. The Chinese claim a suzerainty, tricts which they water. and France asserts a protectorate ; there is a lndo-China contains Burmah, Siam, and Red River and a delta ; there are Black Flags Cambodia, and that country, called indiffer and Yellow Flags and pirates ; Capt.. Rh;iere ently Annam or Cochin-China, which includes the Marquis Tseng, Li-Hung-Chang, Dr. Har all the eastern strip of coast bordering on the mand, Gen. Bouet, and Admiral Co)irbet, all China Sea, from the delta of the Mekong to have something to do with it ; the Canton the frontiers of the Chinese Empire. riots were traceable to it, and various ru Tong-King is the upper or northern end of mors have made the United States and Eng this strip : and it is divided from Annam proper land mediators in the quarrel: but how it by the Gianh-Giang, a stream of no importance began, and what was the cause of it all, are except as it serves to mark the boundary ; it not so clear. enters the sea at about the latitude of 18° We shall certainly, then, not owe to every north. At this point the coast-range bends reader an apology if we begin by telling what to the westward, and the delta of the Song and where, from the geographical point of Coi has · added to the land its reclamation view, Tong-King is. from the sea. By virtue of both additions, the Forming an integral part of the Kingdom eastern slope has here a width of something of Annam, Tong-King is a district of that vast like two hundred and fifty miles. An equal South-Asian peninsula called in our maps length gives a symmetrical outline, and an area. and geographies both Farther lnqia and Indo- · of about sixty thousand square miles. The China. The latter name is significant of the country was an independent kingdom till the origin and classification of its races of people, end of the eighteenth century, and has played and is approved by the usage of Orientalists its part in the history of Indo-China. It is and students. bounded, north, by the Chinese provinces of This peninsula is watered by several noble Yunnan and Kouang-Si; east, by the Gulf of 1