THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES IN MEMORY OF CARROLL ALCOTT PRESENTED BY CARROLL ALCOTT MEMORIAL LIBRARY FUND COMMITTEE MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE BY B. L. PUTNAM WEALE Being Letters from Manchuria Written during the Autumn of 1903 WITH AN HISTORICAL SKETCH ENTITLED "PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS" Giving a Complete Account of the Mancburian Frontiers from the Earliest Days and the Growth and Final Meeting of the Russian and Chinese Empires in the Amur Regions iLontJon MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 All rights reserved RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.G., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. DS DEDICATED TO THE GALLANT JAPANESE NATION PREFACE THAT there is a serious need for a book on things Manchurian brought down to the very last moment of the great Far Eastern crisis, no one will doubt. The extraordinary ignorance in Europe about the actual conditions existing in the disputed territory, the very childishness of the statements made far and wide, have prompted me to suppose that a candid and unvarnished account by one who has at least known his Far East since his first days will do something to dispel this curious mystery surround- ing the Muscovite in the Manchu's home. So far as I have been able to learn there have been but two books published since 1900 dealing with the Russians in Manchuria. They are : Mr. Wirt Gerrare's " Greater Russia," and Mr. Alexander Ular's " Un Empire Russo-Chinois." In both publications the authors, after dealing exhaustively with questions foreign to the three eastern provinces, stray apparently, as an after- thought, into the Manchurian impasse, and become hopelessly bogged. Of course Mr. Ular wrote his viii PREFACE book for the French public a public that has little knowledge of the Far East. I have been forced to take Mr. Ular seriously to task for some of his statements, since it is largely the circulation of such matter which has shaken people's judgment on a not too difficult question. Mr. Wirt Gerrare's work is of course not to be compared with the " Russo-Chinese Empire," for his book was written with the object rather of making a sketch of modern Siberia than anything else. The greatest fault I have to find is that a subject so vast as the Manchurian one is so casually treated, and tacked on, as it were, to the question of Siberia. Unfortunately, nearly all Mr. Gerrare's Manchurian data are likewise wrong, and Man- churia seems to be completely misunderstood by him. I need but give a few instances : Mr. Gerrare states that the population of Manchuria is 75- millions, whereas the most conservative estimates place it at least 10 millions higher, and the Japanese Staff at 20 millions. Again he says that Fengtien province resembles China proper in all respects, whilst Kirin and Hei-lung-chiang are more like Siberia. This is quite wrong. The entire colonised area in Manchuria that is, the country from the Liaotung to a point about one hundred miles north of Harbin is all the same in outward aspect, although this cultivated belt runs through all three provinces. The eastern half of Fengtien is much like the eastern half of Kirin, with mountains and forests ; but the colonisation PREFACE ix by Northern Chinese is rapidly changing the aspect of the country. Tsitsihar in Hei-lung-chiang province is just like any other Northern Chinese town, although it lies hundreds of miles away from Fengtien province. Petuna and Ninguta are also ordinary Chinese towns, although they lie in the extreme opposite corners of Kirin province. Mr. Gerrare speaks of " Mantzi " labourers, and gives a photograph showing a "Mantzi" village. I do not know what " Mantzi " means, but I recognise in the photograph ordinary Northern Chinese and Northern Chinese houses. Perhaps the explana- tion is to be found in the fact that illiterate Russian soldiery have a way of calling Chinese " Mantzi " ; possibly imagining that they are dealing with Manchus, although the Manchus have long ceased to exist as a separate race. Again Mr. Gerrare gives some interesting details about Russian colonisation in Manchuria, but what he says is in no agreement with the facts in 1903. There are no Russians in Manchuria or Kuantung, except the eighty-nine thousand troops scattered along the railway, twenty thousand women in the three towns of Harbin, Port Arthur, and Dalny, and a constantly diminishing number of male civilians in the same places. Manchuria is as purely Chinese as the Yangtsze valley, and there is nothing mysterious about it. I could go on multiplying the instances of inaccuracies and misconceptions in Mr. Gerrare's book, but it would serve no useful purpose to do so. It is a pity that an interesting x PREFACE book should have attempted a casual discussion of Manchuria. As a matter of fact, there is but one book on Manchuria, and it is Mr. Consul-General Hosie's excellent work. But Mr. Hosie is in the Govern- ment service, and must therefore speak with cau- tion. In addition to this, his book only brings us down to 1900. It was impossible to deal with the question of the Russians in Manchuria then, since they had only begun to pour into the country whilst his book was going to press. The most important things are therefore necessarily omitted, and though his "Manchuria" will long remain the standard work of reference, some of the most interesting pages in the history of the country will have to be sought for elsewhere. I have used Mr. Hosie's data in several places, and I acknowledge fully my indebtedness to him. Another interesting work on Manchurian travel is Mr. James's " Long White Mountain " ; but this was written some years ago, and Mr. James knew nothing of the Chinese when he started on his lengthy travels. A third work, sometimes consulted by students of Manchuria, is " The Manchus," by Dr. Ross. This is, however, at best a very obscure work, and is far too dry for the modern reader. The scope of my own pages is very easily ex- plained. I was commissioned to write a series of letters from Manchuria for some Far Eastern pub- lications, and so during the months of September, October, and November of 1903 I travelled the PREFACE xi country and gave my impressions. Although I wrote as a new-comer, I will not disguise the fact that Manchuria was perfectly familiar to me, and that I had been there often before. But I wished the country as it actually is since the Russians have come, to grow up before the eyes of the reader : to allow all to see with my own eyes, and to under- stand the weakness of the Russian position. As I travelled farther afield, it seemed to me advisable that special points should be separately treated in detail, and that subjects like the rouble, the railway, and the Russo-Chinese Bank should be dissected. This I duly did, and I have been assured that my inconsiderable efforts have thrown some light on somewhat obscure points. These letters, therefore, thirty-two in number, constitute the bulk of my book, and I have left them practically as they were originally written. To these letters, which I have arranged so that they may not overweary the reader, I have added a " Prologue to the Crisis," which is in the nature of an historical sketch giving some detail of the Manchu and Muscovite in their earlier days ; and showing how the fates have slowly pushed them together. The data concerning the Russian side of the question I have taken from Ravenstein's book, " The Russians on the Amur." Finally, at the end will be found a general statistical note, embodying all the necessary information. Having paid some attention to the Manchurian question, I am fully aware that my writings are very xii PREFACE faulty ; for many things which should be included have been necessarily omitted. But to write a complete history treating every phase comprehen- sively would mean a volume of a thousand pages ; and fat volumes are undesirable with the scant time the world now has for study. If, however, I have succeeded in giving a good general idea of the complete failure which Russia has made in Man- churia, of the extraordinary conditions which to-day exist, the corruption, the licentiousness, the " life apart" of the railway empire, and certain other things, my object will have been accomplished, and I shall be quite content. Of late years, too, many have taken upon them- selves the pleasant task of flashing through a country and then writing an exhaustive account, and the day is not far distant when a history of China and its many-sided people may be expected from the hands of people who have touched for a few hours at Hong Kong and Shanghai in the mail- boats. But as a matter of fact, it is the merest foolishness for people to write books about anything Chinese when they do not know the language, the history, mode of thought, and most important of all, the " atmosphere " of the country. In China " atmosphere " is of the utmost importance, and unless you understand that thoroughly, as well as the language, you must necessarily be quite at sea. Some few men, however, who do not know Chinese have been able, by being thoroughly saturated by the "atmosphere," by holding converse with men PREFACE xii who are practical sinologues, and also from the fact that they have exceptionally keen intelligences, to see things in their proper proportion. Such a man is Dr. Morrison, the distinguished Peking corre- spondent of the Times. He alone of all correspondents in China is worthy of being listened to ; he alone has seen things in their true light. In Ghina the great Far Eastern war will perhaps be called the " Times War." But although the crisis has been acute for more than half a year, the general ignorance is fitly portrayed by the remark made scarcely three months ago by one of the best informed periodicals in London. " We do not know what it is all about, but we suppose that it is the question of Korea," it calmly said, and then let the question drop. Yet it is not the question of Korea which is about to be decided. It is the fate of the Far East. B. L. PUTNAM WEALE. CHINA, February, 1904. Publishers Note Readers should understand that Mr. Weale's very timely and instructive book was written before the outbreak of war between Russia and Japan, although several of his forecasts, as, e.g., the taking of Dalny, have already been fulfilled. June, 1904. CONTENTS PAGE PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS .... I CHAPTER I THE VOYAGE 66 CHAPTER II DALNY THE DOOMED 73 CHAPTER III PORT ARTHUR 8l CHAPTER IV SUNDAY IN PORT ARTHUR - 89 CHAPTER V BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY 98 CHAPTER VI ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN Ho CHAPTER VII ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 123 CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII PAGE HARBIN, THE RAILWAY CITY 137 CHAPTER IX MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 150 CHAPTER X HARBIN BY NIGHT 162 CHAPTER XI THE HINDOO WATCHDOG A WORD TO INDIA 172 CHAPTER XII WEST TO TSITSIHAR 179 CHAPTER XIII SIDE LIGHTS 186 CHAPTER XIV TSITSIHAR I9 6 CHAPTER XV THE DEFEAT OF THE TRAVELLING ROUBLE 2IO CHAPTER XVI DOWN THE GOLDEN NONNI 22$ CHAPTER XVII SLAV AND CHINAMAN 240 CHAPTER XVIII PETUNA A SO-CALLED BRIGAND CITY 250 CONTENTS CHAPTER XIX PAGE CHINESE ADMINISTRATION AND RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE . 26 1 CHAPTER XX FROM PETUNA TO NINGUTA BY RIVER AND RAIL 30! CHAPTER XXI THE HUNGHUTZU, OR THE RED-BEARD BRIGAND OF THE NORTH 321 CHAPTER XXII NINGUTA AND THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY 339 CHAPTER XXIII RUSSIA'S GREAT MANCHURIAN GENERAL, alias THE CHINESE EASTERN RAILWAY 3$O CHAPTER XXIV ADVENTURES ON THE ROAD TO KIRIN 4O2 CHAPTER XXV THE MANLY MISSIONARY OF MANCHURIA 417 CHAPTER XXVI KIRIN THE INLAND DOCKYARD 425 CHAPTER XXVII FROM KIRIN TO MOUKDEN VIA K'UAN-CH J ENG-TZU 437 CHAPTER XXVIII MORALS, MANNERS, AND MEN 450 CHAPTER XXIX MOUKDEN THE OLD MANCHU CAPITAL 456 b CONTENTS CHAPTER XXX PAGE THE RUSSIAN ARMY IN MANCHURIA, AND ITS TASK .... 469 CHAPTER XXXI OUTRAGED NEWCHWANG 502 CHAPTER XXXII CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 517 APPENDIX A GENERAL AND STATISTICAL NOTE ON MANCHURIA .... 533 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VICEROY AND ALL HIS GENERALS IN FRONT OF THE PORT ARTHUR HEADQUARTERS .... Frontispiece DALNY IN WINTER To face page 76 ARTILLERY INSPECTION, KUANTUNG TERRITORY . 80 THE AMERICAN VOICE IN THE MANCHURIAN QUESTION. U.S.S. "HELENA" MADE SNUG IN A MUD DOCK FOR THE WINTER AT NEW- CHWANG 84 THE FAMOUS NARROW ENTRANCE TO PORT ARTHUR 84 PORT ARTHUR'S ONLY DRY DOCK 88 ANCIENT PAGODA AT LIAOYANG, A MONUMENT OF EARLIER CONQUERORS IN MANCHURIA ... 88 REVIEW OF THE TROOPS BY VICEROY ON THE RACECOURSE 96 ON THE ARID PLAINS BEYOND NEWCHWANG . . 112 THE SUNGARI AND HARBIN IN WINTER .... 144 ON THE SUNGARI 144 A MANCHU MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT 184 ON THE ADJOINING MONGOLIAN FRONTIER . . 256 A NORTHERN CROWD WITHIN THE GROUNDS OF A TEMPLE 256 A MANCHU COUNTRY SQUIRE, HIS FAMILY AND RETAINERS 264 CHINESE ADMINISTRATION AND RUSSIAN INTER- FERENCE. THE SLAV POLICY OF THE BOOT AND SWORD 272 RUSSIAN BARRACKS BEHIND NEWCHWANG .... 280 THE NEWCHWANG CUSTOMS HOUSE, FROM WHICH RUSSIA HAS TAKEN MILLIONS 288 SOME AVENGERS OF IQOO 296 A MANCHURIAN FARM 304 xx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AN HISTORIC PICTURE. THE GREAT REVIEW OF DEFIANCE HELD AT PORT ARTHUR BY VICEROY ALEXEIEFF AFTER EVACUATION DAY, OCTOBER STH, 1903 To face page 304 DOWN A PEACEFUL CREEK 304 CHINESE CART. NEAR THE BANKS OF THE LIAO RIVER 312 RUSSIAN TROOPS QUARTERED IN A CHINESE HOUSE ON THE ROAD TO THE YALU 340 THE PEKING CART THE CAB OF THE NORTH . 344 CHINESE TROOPS 344 TRAIN ON THE ROLLING PLAINS OF CENTRAL MANCHURIA 352 A TYPICAL STATION ON THE MANCHURIAN RAILWAY 352 THE OTHER MANCHURIAN RAILWAY. TERMINUS OF THE TIENTSIN-NEWCHWANG ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE LIAO 400 OUTSIDE A KIRIN LUMBER YARD 400 OUTSIDE A TEMPLE 420 SIBERIAN TROOPS AT A MANCHURIAN COUNTRY HOUSE , 452 SOLDIERS IN SUMMER KIT ON THE ROAD TO KIRIN 454 A CHARMING MANCHU GIRL 464 MOUKDEN SLUMS, BEYOND THE WALLS 480 A STREET IN MOUKDEN 5 I2 SOLDIERS OF THE CZAR VICEROY ALEXEIEFF COMING DOWN THE SALUTING LINE ....... 512 THE FOREST OF JUNK MASTS ON THE LIAO AT NEWCHWANG jf 520 NEW RESIDENCE OF THE USURPING RUSSIAN CIVIL ADMINISTRATOR OF NEWCHWANG 524 HARBIN n 524 THE NEWCHWANG LIKIN-STATION UNDER RUSSIAN OCCUPATION }) 528 H.M.S. "RINALDO" WINTERING AT NEWCHWANG . 528 THE NOMINAL EVACUATION OF NEWCHWANG, APRIL 8TH > '903 532 MAP . At end. MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS IN the beginning, Manchuria must be merely pictured as part of that vast expanse labelled by mediaeval geographers as Tartary, which, stretching from the oases of what is to-day Eastern Turkestan, spread across the rolling plains and dismal deserts of Mongolia, jumped where now is the great wall of China, wound over river, mountain, and dale, and ended only with ice-cold waters of the furthest north-east. Two thousand years before Christ, Chinese tradi- tion has it that the whole of Manchuria of to-day was peopled by savages, clothed in the conventional rag and smeared with the conventional grease of prehistoric times. Whether the descendants of these men are to be found in the hairy and non- hairy tribes still inhabiting parts of the island of Saghalien, the shores of the sea of Okhotsk and the B MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE mouth and lower reaches of the great Amur, it is impossible to say, but native story-books contain curious fables about hairy men in the far north, pointing towards this supposition. If Chinese histories are right, concerning thirty centuries ago, the conditions of to-day are, to some extent, a reproduction of what was then to be noticed. In those days the north and east were peopled by hunter clans of indigenous tribes, and the south, or what is to-day Fengtien Province, was the settled and affluent portion of the country, with hosts of Chinese and Koreans constantly pushing the aborigines away. According to tradition, the influx of these civilised settlers led to the foundation of a kingdom in the south of Liaotung as early as 1122 B.C., or over three thousand years ago. It would appear that this little kingdom represented a species of civilisa- tion, and remained independent for upwards of a thousand years, in strong contrast to central and northern Manchuria, still only inhabited by nomadic Tunguzian tribes. The great Chinese dynasty of the Hans finally upset this kingdom in the second century before Christ, and thus for the first time a portion of Manchuria came under direct control of the Chinese throne. In due course, the power of the Hans waned and collapsed, and the dependency of the Liaotung underwent a number of changes. First it became a feudal kingdom. Then a dynasty, called the Northern Wei, seized it, only to be ejected by PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS another dynasty in the third century of the Christian era. A Korean dynasty ruling northern Korea, and called Kao-li (the present Chinese name for Korea), sent armies across the Yalu and captured the Liaotung, which they ruled for several centuries. Evidences of the Korean rule are to be met with in many places in Fengtien Province even to-day ; and there are some old mines with galleries extend- ing for miles underneath the earth which have been recently discovered by the Chinese and attributed to the early Korean conquest. In the seventh century another powerful Chinese dynasty again annexed this much-disputed soil of the Liaotung, and once more it passed under Chinese rule. It was about this time that the Tunguzian tribes of Central and Northern Manchuria began to give signs of future greatness. These ancestors of the Manchus, originally called Su-chen, began by or- ganising themselves into petty States. The different stages through which they passed are not highly interesting, and need not be considered. Probably in the seventh century, the southern branch of the organised tribes began to make great progress, and finally developed into a powerful Tunguzian State called Bohai. Early in the eighth century this State had so extended its dominions that it had absorbed the greater part of modern Manchuria, including the much-desired Liaotung, and was directly recognised by the Emperor of China. It is believed that the neighbourhood of Ninguta was B 2 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE the centre of this mediaeval kingdom, and vast ruins discovered in its vicinity point to this supposition. This, according to the native chroniclers, was the golden age of Manchuria, with every plain tilled and thickly populated. Learning and literature flourished and were assiduously cultivated ; but the march of ages has destroyed all vestiges of this ancient civilisation, and tradition is now our only authority. The State of Bohai was short-lived in spite of its magnificence ; for, in the tenth century, another powerful Tunguzian tribe, the Khetans, whose habitat was in Central Manchuria, began to make themselves felt and respected. After many decades of raids, these barbarians succeeded in effecting a lodgment in Peking itself, and in ejecting the Chinese dynasty called Sung. This tribe's rulers dubbed themselves the Liao or Iron Dynasty, and ruled North China as far south as the Yellow River and the greater portion of Manchuria. A second Tunguzian tribe, from between the Sungari and the Hurka, finally overthrew the Liao Dynasty, and also placed themselves on the Peking throne as the Chin or Golden Dynasty. This tribe of men, called the Nu-Chens, were undoubtedly the ancestors of the modern Manchus. The power of these early kingdoms never extended south of the Yellow River ; and, although they nominally ruled Manchuria, it is plain that their control must have been of the very feeblest character and confined entirely to the cities. PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS At length, in the twelfth century, we meet Jenghis Khan, the great Mongol. This illustrious leader of men is reputed to have been born in the Hsing-an Mountains of Heilungchiang Province, and to have swept south with that irresistible force which so many tribes had already shown before him. Decades of warfare broke down the Chinese resistance and swept the Chin Dynasty of the Nu-Chens back into Manchuria. Kublai Khan, a grandson of the great Jenghis, founded the Mongol Dynasty under the title of the Yuan Dynasty in the thirteenth century, and succeeded in welding China together again into one vast country after many cen- turies cf division. History does not tell us whether the Mongols extended their ruleover Manchuria orno. These centuries of warfare, and the drafting away of all the able-bodied fighting men from Manchuria, had told on the country, and there can be no doubt that about the time of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Manchuria was quite depopulated. But Manchuria was rapidly being prepared for events of no little importance. In the fourteenth century, the Chinese dynasty of the Ming unseated the Mongols, and extended the authority of Peking directly over the whole of the Liaotung, although the independent tribes of Central and Upper Manchuria were not interfered with. During the Ming Dynasty, the Liao-chou-Wei, or the districts adjoining the Liao, which enjoyed Chinese rule, became more and more settled, and trade and industry flourished. MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE At last, in the sixteenth century, we come to the Manchus. In a secluded valley, called Hotuala, ninety miles east of Moukden, and sixty miles from the frontiers of the Ming-governed province, a child of a Nu-Chen tribe was born, called Nurhachu. Nurhachu is said to have given early indications of his future greatness. The native chroniclers naively say that he was a thirteen months child, had the dragon face and the phcenix eye, an enormous chest, big ears and a voice like the tone of the largest bell. Not content with this, his descendants claim a miraculous ancestry for him, as is the manner for all Eastern great men. They say that a maiden of unsullied purity gave birth to the original progenitor of the race from which Nurhachu sprang, and the site indicated as the one in which the immaculate conception took place, is a spot called Odoli, in the middle of the Ever- White- Mountains. But the fact that a lusty Shantung serving-man is men- tioned in other chronicles in connection with the maid tends to throw some doubt on the veracity of the whole story, and points to a somewhat mixed origin for the doughty warrior. The hills and dales surrounding Nurhachu's birthplace were divided at the time amongst numerous little clans of his own countrymen, con- stantly at war with one another, and so barbarous that the Chinese of the settled districts of the Liaotung would have no dealings with them. Nur- hachu was the grandson of a petty chief, who owned a few villages with probably only two or three score PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS of inhabitants. In consequence of some trouble with a neighbouring Manchu town, Nurhachu's father and grandfather were treacherously slain by a countryman of their own, named Nikan, who was in league with the Chinese authorities on the Liaotung frontiers. Nurhachu promptly swore vengeance, and vowed that he would sacrifice 200,000 Chinese in honour of his father's funeral. The Chinese seem not to have doubted the sincerity of this threat, for they sought to calm Nurhachu by hanging up the bodies of the slain, and making a gift of horses. But so as to protect their own frontier, they made Nikan lord of the whole region, and responsible for the main- tenance of order amongst all his countrymen. Nurhachu replied by declaring war to the knife against everybody, and, beginning with a paltry army of 130 men, in three years he became so formidable, that the Chinese handed up Nikan to appease his wrath, and Nurhachu tore out his heart. When Nurhachu was but twenty-eight years old, he built his first small capital, a tiny town surrounded by a small mud wall, whose outline may be traced even to-day. At forty-four years of age, a second and larger town Hsing Ching was constructed, and the subjugation of surrounding tribes under- taken on a far more extensive scale. Successes everywhere crowned Nurhachu's efforts, and by 1625, when he was sixty-six years old, he was practically overlord of all Manchuria. In 1617, Nurhachu had declared war against the Ming Emperor of China. In 1618, he captured MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE Fu-shun, then a frontier town of Liaotung. But such was the prestige of the Dragon Throne and Nurhachu's own insignificance in those days, that he appears to have been appalled by his own audacity, and to have sued for peace and pardon. His overtures, however, were treated with disdain. The Chinese Viceroy of the Liaotung was ordered to chastise the insolent rebel, and soon advanced on Nurhachu's kingdom with four armies, said to have numbered fifty thousand men each. Confronted with a prospect of absolute annihilation, Nurhachu rose to the occasion and showed consummate generalship. Allowing the Chinese troops to ad- vance into his own hills, he ambuscaded and de- stroyed the first two armies, and by stealth and strategy forced the other two into flight. In 1620, the Ming Emperor, Wan-li, died, and the sceptre fell into nerveless hands. As soon as Nurhachu realised that the time had come to strike decisive blows, he acted with commendable prompt- ness. Advancing with every man he could muster, he attacked and captured Moukden in 1621. A few weeks later Liaoyang fell, and it is recorded that Nurhachu made all the inhabitants shave their heads and adopt the Manchu queue. Con- tinuing his triumphant march, the conqueror headed west, and crossing the river Liao, almost reached the Great Wall of China at Shanhaikwan, when he was stopped at the fortified town of N ing-yuan. Unable to capture it, in spite of the most vigorous assaults, he then retired, and in 1625 moved his PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS capital for the third and last time to Moukden. In 1627 he died, and was succeeded by his fourth son, Tai-tsung, who had greatly distinguished himself in the previous campaigns. The Manchu Empire, controlling a great portion of Manchuria, was now firmly established, and the Manchus considered themselves the equals of the Mings. Tai-tsung continued the warfare with the Chinese generals with varying success, but in spite of numerous attempts he was unable to get through the Great Wall and enter the metropolitan province of Chihli. The city of Ning-yuan stood firm, and until it was reduced his armies were hopelessly blocked. Finally, seeing the uselessness of attempting the passage of the Great Wall near the sea, Tai-tsung adopted another plan of campaign. He formed an alliance with the Korchin Mongols, whose territory adjoins the west frontier of Manchuria, and march- ing through their country, succeeded in entering Chihli through a western pass, and at last attacked Peking. But Peking was too vast a city for the Manchus to be able to capture at that time, and after a number of vain assaults, Tai-tsung had to retire by the same road as he had come. For fourteen years this warfare continued, Tai-tsung constantly invading Shansi and Chihli by the old road through Mongol territory, but always unable to beat down the defence of Ning-yuan and reach the Great Wall on its eastern extremity. Finally, Tai-tsung died, worn out by exertions, and was succeeded by his ninth son, the great Shun io MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE Chin, destined to become the first Manchu emperor of China. Shun Chin being but a child of five when he succeeded his father, his uncle, Prince Dorgun, or the Ama-wang, became regent. The Peking throne, however, in spite of Manchu's aspirations, seemed as far off as ever, when at last an event occurred which gave the Manchus their opportunity. For many years previous, China had been at the mercy of robbers and rebels, who infested every province and who were one of the direct results of the Ming degeneracy. So low had the Mings sunk that the government of the country was carried on almost entirely by eunuchs, who were numbered by the thousand, and were to be found not only in the capital, but also in many of the most distant provinces. These parasites cared for money, and for money alone, and so long as they were not disturbed in their pleasant business, they were indifferent as to whether China was torn to pieces or not. One of the rebel bandits exceeded all others in daring and cruelty. Through plundering and murdering on a colossal scale, and showing the most fiendish cruelty to all who refused to join him, he was able to gather a vast army, and marched on Peking. So weak had the Mings become, that the Ministers counselled compromising with the rebel, Li-tzu-Cheng, and not risking an open con- flict. The last of the Mings, remembering his dignity at the eleventh hour, dramatically cut his throat to save himself from disgrace, an example PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS u tearfully followed by his entire harem. Li-tzu- Cheng, pleasantly surprised at the rapidity with which success had crowned his plans, destroyed the Ming temples and ancestral tablets to show his contempt, and proclaimed himself Emperor of China. In spite of this affront, there was only one man left in the eighteen provinces who was willing to challenge the usurper, and this man was Wu-san- kuei, the Chinese general in charge of the defences of the Shanhaikwan roads. No sooner had he heard of his Emperor's fate than he addressed a letter to the Manchu Prince Regent, proposing that the Manchu and Chinese Imperial troops should bury their old hates for the time being and march in company to the relief of Peking, and for the purpose of killing the usurper. Prince Dorgun promptly agreed to this amiable plan, and such were the Manchu powers of persuasion that Wu-san- kuei's troops were induced to shave their heads and adopt the Manchu badge of servitude, so that (in the words of the Regent) "there should be no danger of the Manchu troops mistaking them for enemies and slaying them later on." After a few short weeks' fighting Peking fell into the hands of the avengers, and then the redoubtable Wu-san- kuei politely thanked the Manchus for their assist- ance and assured them that he did not desire to exact any further service from them. But Prince Dorgun calmly answered that they had no intention of evacuating Peking, and once more exemplified that pregnant saying : "fy suis, fy rested 12 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE Meanwhile, Tartar reinforcements began to arrive, and Manchuria emptied itself into the Dragon capital. Martini, a Jesuit priest, says that a vast concourse of people and nations assembled at Peking as soon as the news had spread that the Chinese capital had fallen. Fish-skin Tartars, Mon- gols, Kalmucks, Siberians, Poles, Turks, all heard of the crash of the Chinese Empire, and hastened to the capital to share in the plunder. The looting of Peking has been the first act of every conqueror since the oldest times, and the people are accus- tomed to it. In 1644 Prince Dorgun proclaimed the Manchu Dynasty as the Ta Ch'ing or great pure dynasty, and removed the capital from Moukden to Peking. Four armies were detached to conquer the pro- vinces of Northern China, but although the Manchu regime dates from 1644, it was many years before the whole of the eighteen provinces were success- fully occupied. In the south the Ming adherents proclaimed a grandson of Wan-li Emperor at Nan- king, and risings took place everywhere. Rebel kings formed little kingdoms of their own, and for years the whole of China seethed in a hideous and prolonged agony, and only fourteen years of in- cessant warfare expelled the last rivals to the new power. Some writers have expressed surprise at the rapidity of the Manchu success, and have said that it was nothing short of a miracle which allowed a petty Manchu State to seize and hold China's eighteen PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 13 vast provinces. But history has shown us that China has always been an easy prey for semi- barbarous conquerors from the north, and that, since the bulk of the Chinese population has always con- sisted of peaceful traders and farmers, so long as a new regime affords them adequate protection and does not arouse their enmity by oppressive taxation, they are indifferent as to who their rulers really are. The Manchus possessed active and well-disciplined armies, whose ranks were filled with all the fiercest renegades from China and Mongolia. A half- century of incessant warfare had developed soldierly habits to the highest degree. Sleeping on the bare ground in summer's rain or winter's snow was habitual to them ; and to such an extent did this hardy soldiery love the open air, that in towns they pulled down the walls of the houses so that they might sleep fanned by fresh breezes. If cooked meat was not to be had, raw was taken and devoured just as heartily. The Manchus were capital horsemen, although in the first instance they had been mountaineers. The great raids which they had made on China through Mongol territory for thirty years had brought them in contact with a race of born horsemen, where buckjumpers are ridden bareback. The arms of the Manchu soldiery were the long bow, the short stabbing sword, and the lance. Firearms were practically unknown until they had entered China, and were somewhat dis- dained by them. In their conquests they showed themselves humane when submission was quickly I 4 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE made, and head-shaving and the Manchu queue were the only things strictly insisted on. The civil officials they appointed in the conquered provinces were Chinese, as had been the case before, and the Manchu authority was only represented by garrisons of Manchus under their own officers at the great centres. The so-called Tartar generals to be found to-day at a number of points scattered all over China are the last vestiges of the Manchu military system. Great importance was attached by the Manchus to literary proficiency. In 1599 they had no Manchu alphabet, and the people were unutterably coarse. In 1636 it is recorded that a number of Manchu youths passed examinations at Moukden in Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese. Civilising and good as was the influence exerted on the coarse Manchu by the Chinese ethical system and culture, it was this which destroyed the Manchu simplicity and assimilated the whole race in very few years. But while these far-reaching events were taking place during the seventeenth century in Southern Manchuria and China itself, others hardly less im- portant in their influence on history are to be noticed elsewhere. It is time to speak of the Mus- covite, and see how the fates were gradually but surely laying the foundations of the present crisis two and a-half centuries ago. The Russians crossed the Urals towards the end of the fifteenth century. In 1587 they founded PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS Tobolsk; in 1604 Tomsk; in 1619 Yeniseisk; in 1632 Yakutsk; and finally, in 1638, Okhotsk. It will be noticed that the first line of Russia's irre- sistible pressure towards the Pacific followed very northerly latitudes, and left the Baikal and Amur regions far to the south. All the towns of Eastern Siberia named above lie between latitude 55 and 65, and have the Tablonoi and Stanovoi mountains inter- posed between them and the more desirable lands of the Amur. It was a party of Cossacks engaged in making tributary the Tunguzians of the Aldan river, north of the Stanovoi mountains, who first heard of the exist- ence of the Amur ; and it is a curious fact that the river was no sooner learnt of than it seems to have exerted a mysterious attraction for all and to have given rise to the most extravagant tales. As this Tomsk party of Cossacks progressed farther and farther east, until they finally stood on the shores of the sea of Okhotsk, they heard fresh stories of tribes dwelling far to the south, who cultivated the soil and had corn for sale a priceless treasure in these desolate northern climes ; and when they reached a point near the mouth of the Amur a tribe called by them the Natkani showed them glass beads, copper vessels, silver ornaments, silk and cotton stuffs, which they alleged they had obtained from China and Japan. In the same year another party of Cossacks from Yeniseisk heard confirmatory reports regarding the Shilka or upper Amur. They were told of a Prince 16 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE of the Daurians another Tunguzian tribe who had strongholds, and whose people kept cattle and tilled the soil, who worked silver and copper and carried on an active bartering trade with Chinese merchants in silk and cottons. These various reports brought back and painfully spread over Siberia would appear to have made an immense impression. The Siberian settlements lying so far to the north and separated by immense distances, as distances went in those days, lacked many things, owing to the extreme climatic con- ditions from which they suffered, and it was therefore with some reason that these southern latitudes were constantly pictured as lands flowing with milk and honey. It was the rising town of Yakutsk, becoming famous through the fur trade, that was destined to be the starting-point for a number of expeditions, and to have the honour of opening up an unknown country. The first expedition sent failed igno- miniously. The second ascended the Aldan river in 1643, made sledges, and after suffering great hardships, succeeded in reaching the Dzeya, a river which falls into the Amur near Blagoveschensk of to-day. Here the first reindeer Tunguzians were met. As they proceeded down the Dzeya, other Tunguzians with horned cattle were seen, and finally a Daurian village was reached, the inhabitants of which tilled the soil. These Daurians gave information about the country beyond them the country contained in the Manchurian provinces of Kirin and Heilung- PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 17 chiang. A khan, they said, named Borboi, dwelt in a fortified town six weeks' journey from them. He had not yet succeeded in making tribu- tary all the tribes of the Amur, and occasionally sent out two or three thousand men armed with spears, bows, and firearms to collect tribute from all who offered resistance. It is interesting here to remember that Shun Chih, the first Manchu Emperor proclaimed Emperor of China, ascended the Dragon Throne in 1644, and that the province of Heilungchiang was not incorporated with Manchuria until 1671. It seems probable that the khan named by the Daurians as dwelling in a forti- fied town was a Manchu military governor at Kirin, for it was from Kirin Province that Heilungchiang was subdued. The presence of this first Cossack expedition, numbering nearly one hundred men, in a small Daurian village, caused provisions to run short, and from this moment the first friendly intercourse between the natives and the Russians ceased. From thence on, the story of Cossack adventure on the Amur is full of murder and outrage, and is unpleasant reading. The pangs of hunger forced the leader of this expedition to despatch a lieuten- ant with some men to forage, and orders were fool- ishly issued that they were to entice the native chiefs out of their villages and hold them hostage until provisions were forthcoming. This fitly illus- trates the Russian lack of intelligence in dealing with new problems. No such stratagem was c i8 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE required, for in every case the simple native chiefs went of their own accord and greeted the Russians as friends, offering them their services. But the lieutenant, instead of at once realising that the first instructions could be disregarded, followed them to the letter. He brutally seized the chiefs, and as a result of his overbearing conduct provoked the inhabitants to an attack. The Daurians resolutely sallied forth from their village, and after a short fight drove the Russians into the woods, where they were surrounded. Matters then seem to have arrived at a deadlock, for we read that in four days the adventurers were able to escape and that they arrived back in a state of utter collapse. The failure of this foraging expedition entailed great suffering on all the Cossacks, and half of them suc- cumbed before relief came. The leader, Poyarkof, then continued his journey south without loss of time, and finally reached the mouth of the Dzeya and stood on the banks of the Amur. From here he pushed his way south-east and discovered the Sungari on the opposite bank of the Amur. Another month and a half was spent in voyaging down to the mouth of the Amur, where the whole force that had survived went into winter quarters. Tribute was collected, explorations made in various directions, and finally in 1646, after an absence of three years, Yakutsk was reached again. This voyage was a most noteworthy proceeding, and if it had not been for the low order of intelligence exhibited in situations demanding the exercise of PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 19 common sense, the Russian, by his manly energy in the face of terrible sufferings, could have fitly claimed the Amur province as his by right. Poyarkof reported that in his opinion three hun- dred men were ample to subjugate the whole of the territories visited by him. Three forts, each with a garrison of fifty men, should be erected in the coun- try of the Daurians which practically comprises most of the Russian province of the Amur of to-day and the remaining one hundred and fifty should be kept in hand, in order to enforce Russian authority in case of need. Thus ended the first Russian ex- pedition into the mysterious regions. In the record there stands out that false policy of brutal domina- tion which has been handed down until to-day, and which has slowly but surely alienated sympathy, where sympathy could have easily been won. In 1648 news was received of a shorter way to the Amur farther to the west and nearer to the trans- Baikal regions. After some preliminary sur- veys, Kharabof, a wealthy Siberian, proposed to the Voivod or Governor of Yakutsk that he should undertake the subjugation of the newly-discovered territories. As he promised to send all the tribute he could collect to Yakutsk, the Voivod consented and placed some Cossacks at his disposal. In 1650 Khabarof reached the Amur, but the bad conduct of Poyarkof and his Cossacks had been so noised abroad, even in these thinly-inhabited lands, that the approach of the Russians was the signal for all dwellings to be deserted. These upper Amur C 2 20 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE regions were then under the control of a Tunguzian chief, Prince Lavkai, and the inhabitants were far more advanced in civilisation than those on the lower Amur. Khabarof found five forts consisting of wooden walls with turrets for archers, separated a day and a halfs journey from one another. The first two were deserted, but as they approached the third, four horsemen commanded by Lavkai himself met them and desired to know their business. When told that they merely came for the sake of trade, he pertinently answered that a Cossack had reported that the Russians were coming to enslave the country. Khabarof replied to this, in the calm Russian fashion, that a small tribute might possibly be required, but that in return the Czar would take all under his powerful protection, and that the debt would be on Lavkai's side. The Daurians discreetly rode away, and Khabarof, after burning the forts as unnecessary, since the Czar had now become the protector, wan- dered about the country seeing what there was to see. He discovered some pits filled with corn, and then after collecting tribute returned to Yakutsk. It is to be noted that some wheat discovered in the Daurian country was sent to Moscow as a sample of the richness of the Amur regions. A year later we find Khabarof starting again for the Amur with a largely increased force. In June, 1651, he voyaged down the Amur in a number of large and small barges. Deserted villages were constantly passed, the Daurians having fled on the approach of the Russians. Finally, after some days, PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 21 Khabarof came in sight of a triple line of fortifica- tions built by some Daurian princes with a view of checking the Russian progress. The Daurian garrison had been reinforced by fifty Manchu horse- men sent by the Emperor Shun Chih to collect tribute. It was hoped that these would prove for- midable champions in the coming conflict. How- ever, after a first discharge of fire-arms which laid low twenty Daurians, the Manchu warriors fled pre- cipitately inland. It is hard to explain this retreat at a time when the Manchu prowess was at its height, unless the use of firearms disconcerted men who were armed with swords and lances. The Daurians then retreated within their fortress, and after some days' fierce fighting the Russians forced their way in and slew without offering quarter. Six hundred and sixty Daurians were killed and nearly four hundred women and children made prisoners. The booty included three hundred and fifty horses and cattle and rich stores of grain. The Russians' loss was but fifty killed and wounded. It is again noteworthy that the historians stigmatise Khabarof's conduct as unwarrantably cruel and short-sighted. After this battle Khabarof attempted to force the chiefs of the surrounding country to tender their submission, but as his efforts proved unavailing he was induced to continue his journey down the river without diplomatic results. Lower down he surprised another fort and compelled the chiefs and principal inhabitants to swear allegiance to the Czar. Leaving these villages, Khabarof continued his voyage down MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE stream, and after a further two weeks reached the mouth of the Sungari. Fresh tortures and brutalities were practised by him, and caused the population to flee. Passing the mouth of the Sungari, Khabarof at last came to a large village of Achani men belonging to the same tribe as those met by Poyarkof who sub- sisted largely on fish, and are probably to be identi- fied with the Goldi or Fish-skin Tartars. Here Khabarof built a large fort and wintered a fort which he named Achanskoi Gorod, and the remains of which were discovered some time ago by the dis- tinguished traveller, Maack. Again the presence of two hundred Russians seems to have proved intoler- able to the inhabitants, and accordingly a thousand of them got together and attacked Khabarof, but, of course, without success. The Amur natives, being convinced of their im- potence against the foreign invaders, now directly invoked the assistance of the Manchus by sending word to Uchurva, the Governor of Nadinni (? Kirin) and asking him for help. The latter despatched prompt orders to the Governor of Ninguta to as- semble an army, march against the Russians and take them all if possible, alive. This is the first recorded instance of the Manchu and Muscovite being brought face to face. But as yet the Manchus were too weak to cope with the new danger, for the flower of their armies were at this very moment engaged in subduing China itself, and had no time to turn their attention to the northern frontiers. The Manchu General at Ninguta, however, gathered PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 23 about him two thousand horsemen, armed with bows and matchlocks, and at daybreak on the 24th of March, 1652, the Manchu and the Russian met in armed conflict for the first time. The Manchus placed their guns in position near the fort, battered a breach, and rushed forward to the assault. The Russians hurried one of their cannon to the threatened point and opened a heavy fire, which completely re- pulsed the attack. One hundred and fifty Cossacks then sprang up and delivered a fierce sortie, which left them masters of the field. The extent of their victory may be measured by the fact that they killed nearly seven hundred Manchus, captured eight hundred horses and a number of cannon, matchlocks, and standards, at a cost of but ninety killed and wounded on their own side. Khabarof seems to have been satisfied with this victory, and tired of the country, for we see him re-ascending the Amur. At the mouth of the Sungari another force of six thousand Manchus and native levies were waiting for him, but he managed to avoid them and hurried on. Higher up the Amur he met Cossack reinforcements from Yakutsk, which brought his force up to 350 men. Consider- ing himself now strong enough to maintain himself on the Amur in the face of any odds, Khabarof was about to build another fort opposite the mouth of the Dzeya when the outbreak of a formidable mutiny among his men put an end to all his plans. A third of his force disappeared, and he urgently sent to Yakutsk for reinforcements. Khabarof con- 24 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE sidered that six thousand men would be sufficient to resist forty thousand Manchus, and he embodied his ideas in a strongly-worded communication to the Siberian Governors. There were, however, no such numbers available at the time in Siberia, and the Voivod of Yakutsk therefore sent messengers to Moscow requesting reinforcements, as the question of the conquest of the Amur was already being dis- cussed. During the nine years of Russian adventure on the Amur nothing had been accomplished, and outrages and extortions of every kind marked the progress of the Cossacks wherever they went. It is on record that ten years after the arrival of the first Russians on the Amur all the cultivated fields had become deserts, all the cattle had disappeared, and the natives were decimated. Ravenstein, in his admir- able book, fitly sums up the history of the nine years of private exploration on the Amur with the figures of the killed and lost. Five hundred and thirty-two Russians in all left Siberia for the Amur ; of these, 2 39 were either lost or killed ; 230 remained in gar- rison on the river, 69 returned home ; and this insignificant force accounted for 1600 natives and Manchus killed in battle or massacred, the looting of all the cattle and grain to be found in the whole country, and the complete alienation of any sym- pathy the natives may have had in the first instance. But the reports of the excesses committed by these Cossack adventurers had finally reached Moscow, and it was resolved to occupy the newly- PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 25 discovered territory with an army of 3,000 men. Whilst these forces were slowly on their way to Eastern Siberia, and their chiefs engaged in con- sulting with the local Governors as to the ways and means to be employed, the Cossack messengers whom Khabarof had sent for succour passed on their way to Moscow, everywhere spreading the most exaggerated and fabulous reports concerning the riches to be found on the Amur. They spoke of the abundance of gold, silver, cattle and sables, and the wonderful future which awaited Russian enterprise. An immense sensation was created among the adventure-loving Siberian population by these accounts, and hundreds hastened to seek their fortunes on the Amur. It is very remarkable that the military occupation of Manchuria two and a half centuries later should have provoked the same stories and filled men's minds with the same desires. Cossacks sent to fetch back these fugitives met with resistance in 1652, and all along the Lena lawless bands plundered villages and devastated fields. For years these disorders continued, and it is recorded that in 1655 two brothers called Zorokin, heading a band of 300 adventurers, plundered all along the road and finally reached the magic Amur only to meet with a miserable death. At last measures were taken to check these lawless proceed- ings, and, by the building of forts and the institution of a passport system, the Amur was cut off. The Khabarof settlements on the mighty river were now taken over by Stepanov, another doughty 26 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE adventurer, and Khabarof returned to Moscow, where he was presented to the Czar and rewarded. He took with him some representative Daurians and other natives, who were likewise introduced to the Czar's presence, loaded with presents, and sent home. Meanwhile, Stepanov could not long remain quiet, so he descended the Amur to the mouth of the Sungari. In the spring of 1654 we find him engaged with a hostile flotilla manned by 3,000 Manchus and a number of Daurians and Ducheri. After fierce fighting, in which the Chinese flotilla took to flight, an insufficiency of powder and shot caused Stepanov to retire. But the Manchus, who were now firmly seated on the Dragon Throne, were evidently becom- ing more and more alarmed at the increasing Russian activity on the Amur, and each year saw them more determined to eject the intruders. Stepanov doubt- less realised this, for in the winter we see him building a fort of great strength at the mouth of the river Kamara, which empties itself into the Upper Amur. The Russian garrison of 500 men waited quietly for an attack, and they were not mistaken, for in the spring a Chinese army of 10,000 men with fifteen cannon, numerous matchlocks, and storming apparatus, appeared before the place. Some Russians were surprised beyond the fortifications and made prisoners, and then the Chinese pro- ceeded with the erection of batteries. After a lengthy bombardment the Chinese at last resolved to take the place by assault. Storming parties PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 27 advanced from four sides simultaneously, but after some fierce hand-to-hand fighting, the Russians made a sortie and compelled the enemy to retreat. The Chinese, disgusted with their ill-success, finally retired. For a couple of years Stepanov voyaged up and down the Amur, collecting tribute and some- times losing men by desertion. In 1658 he met his doom. Descending the Amur, he encountered a fleet of forty-five Manchu boats below the Sungari, well-armed with large and small guns. Stepanov had 500 men with him, but nearly 200 deserted before the battle. Surrounded by the Chinese, he found a heroic resistance of no avail. Out of his entire force all were slain or made prisoners, and he himself was stabbed to death and flung in the river. The deserters drifted about the Amur for some years, and finally either disappeared completely or returned home. Meanwhile, in the trans-Baikal province of to- day, independent adventure was discovering hitherto unknown land. Yeneseisk Cossacks, in the early fifties of the same century, had discovered the Shilka and collected tribute in furs the first sign of in- tended dominion. Bekeolf was the first leader, but, as had been the case on the Amur, he was soon succeeded by another man, Pashkof. Pashkof, after two years of preliminary surveys, set out in 1656 with nearly six hundred Cossacks from Yene- seisk, and after varying fortunes he founded the town of Nerchinsk, destined to become famous through treaty-making. Although Nerchinsk lay 28 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE on the banks of the Shilka, Pashkof was made Commander-in-Chief of all the forces on the Amur. Pashkof sent to Stepanov to acquaint him with the fact, and to order reinforcing Cossacks to be sent to Nerchinsk. Stepanov was, however, dead, as we have already seen, and the Middle Amur practi- cally abandoned. Ten years passed by quietly with the Amur unmolested by Russian adventurers, and with Nerchinsk growing in importance. In 1669 a new era was inaugurated by an exiled Pole named Chernigovsky, who established himself at Albazin, the site of one of the old forts of Lavkai. Cherni- govsky, who was a fugitive from justice, had with him eighty-four equally desperate men, and Albazin was destined to have a unique history. The first thing the fugitives did was to build a fort with towers and dig a big ditch round the whole. Beyond the walls, fields were laid out, ploughed, sown, and everything made ready for a permanent stay. The reappearance of the Russians on the Middle Amur immediately attracted the attention of the Chinese, and in 1670 a letter arrived at Nerchinsk, the nominal seat of government for all these regions, complaining of the encroachments of the Cossacks at Albazin. As a reply to this a Russian envoy was sent to Peking, where he was well received by the Emperor Kang-Hsi, who had succeeded Shun Chih, whilst the question of Albazin was apparently left in abeyance. In 1671, the curious fact is recorded that the Governor of Nerchinsk sent a PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 29 man called Okolkof to assume chief command at Albazin, thereby implying that the Siberian authori- ties were indifferent as to who opened the door to the Amur, so long as that result was accomplished. This semi-recognition of Albazin's status caused more fugitives to arrive, and the piety of the Russian was evinced by the building of a monastery and a church at the convict settlement, whilst a cathedral and another chapel were projected but never constructed. Albazin was now growing rapidly, and half-a-dozen thriving peasant villages surrounded the fort Chernigovsky, the original founder of Albazin, and his companions in arms were now graciously pardoned ; Tunguzians in the neighbour- hood of Albazin were made subject to the authority of the Cossack settlement, and parties of other Cossacks ascended the Amur and built permanent settlements in a number of places. By the year 1683, the northern tributaries of the Amur had all been reoccupied, and Albazin had nearly three thousand acres of land under cultivation. Near Aigun, then a native Tunguzian town, the Russians founded a settlement to carry on trade with the Chinese. This is near Blagoveschensk of to-day. The Chinese were now seriously alarmed with these developments, and as the northernmost pro- vince of Manchuria, Heilungchiang, had, by 1671, been completely brought under the Manchu rule, they threw a large force into Aigun and fortified an island of the Amur preparatory to undertaking mili- tary operations on a large scale. The first success 30 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE was with a party of Cossacks on their way down river from Albazin. These were enticed into the Chinese camps and made prisoners. The Chinese then ascended the Dzeya, burnt all the settlements and made prisoners of all those who were unable to escape. Acting in this fashion, by the end of 1683 they destroyed the whole of the Russian settlements on the lower Amur and its tributaries, and Albazin alone remained. In 1684 two Russian prisoners arrived from Peking with a letter to the Governor of Albazin in which promises and threats were freely used in an endeavour to force the garrison to surrender. The town stood firm, however, and ignored the Chinese overtures ; a new Governor arrived, and Albazin, at the height of its prosperity and on the eve of its fall, received a coat of arms from the Czar, representing a spread-eagle holding a bow and arrow in its claws a suggestive device in the light of recent history. Early in 1685 the Manchus advanced on Albazin. The Russians on their approach evacuated all the neighbouring villages and burnt down all dwellings standing outside the fort. The garrison, including all able-bodied men, numbered only three hundred and fifty, but large reinforcements were very shortly expected. The Chinese army arrived in one hun- dred large boats and totalled over eighteen thousand, including other forces which came by land. Their arms consisted of bows and sabres, fifteen cannon, and numerous matchlocks. After some seizure of PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 31 cattle and preliminary skirmishing, the Chinese general sent in a demand for surrender written in Manchu, Polish, and Russian, and promising great leniency should his request be acceded to. No attention was paid to this summons, however, and the Chinese bombardment commenced forthwith. In a few days the Russians had lost over a hundred men, and their priests, crucifix in hand, were reduced to encouraging the Cossacks by word and deed. As the wooden walls and towers of the fort had almost been battered down and ammunition was beginning to fail, the leading inhabitants petitioned the Governor to make terms with the Chinese for a free retreat to Nerchinsk. The Governor was forced to accede to their wishes, and as a result the garrison was per- mitted to leave with their baggage and arms. Hardly a day's journey above Albazin the long expected reinforcements were met ; had they arrived but twenty-four hours sooner Albazin might never have fallen, and the history of the Amur might have been completely changed. The Chinese did not molest the retreating Russians, but followed them closely as far as the river Argun to see that they strictly carried out their contract. Being satisfied that this was done, the Manchu commanders ordered their forces to retire down the Amur ; Old Aigun, which was then on the left bank of the river, was abandoned by the Chinese and New Aigun on the right bank (the Chinese bank of to-day) constructed. Leaving a garrison here of two thousand men, the bulk of the Chinese withdrew up the Sungari. 32 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE It is interesting to see how quickly the Russians were back in Albazin. Five days after the arrival of the Albazin garrison at Nerchinsk, seventy men returned to reconnoitre. Finding that the Chinese had retired they joyfully brought back the news to Nerchinsk, and within a few weeks detachment after detachment of Cossacks poured into the deserted settlements, finally raising the numbers to close on a thousand men. The crops which were still stand- ing, having been left unharmed by the Chinese, were gathered in, a new and stronger fort was built, -and by the spring of the next year a twenty foot mud wall, nearly thirty feet thick at the base, protected the adventurers against all attacks. Hostile parties of Chinese now began to arrive and lurk around the settlers. Being desirous of knowing what were the proposed Chinese movements, an expedition of three hundred mounted Cossacks was despatched from Albazin, and rode into the heart of Heilungchiang province. After a week's journey a troop of forty Manchu horsemen were seen in the direction of Tsitsihar and a hot chase and skirmish resulted in thirty Manchus being killed and one taken prisoner. From the prisoner it was learnt that the Chinese had been apprised of the rebuilding of Albazin and that at that very moment a Manchu army was marching on the place. The reconnaissance at once returned to Albazin and the garrison prepared for battle. The Chinese forces advanced by land and water and three hun- dred Manchu horsemen coming along the left bank PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 33 of the Amur surprised and killed a number of Albazinians on the fields. The fort was soon sur- rounded, the fields laid waste, and the crops destroyed. After a prolonged bombardment the Chinese rushed to the assault but were beaten back with great slaughter. Five fierce Russian sorties accounted for a good many Chinese killed and wounded, and the Manchu commanders could get no nearer to their goal in spite of every effort. Scurvy, was, however, at work, and so after a three months siege the garrison was reduced to one hundred and fifteen men. In spite of this all Chinese offers were rejected, and urgent messages were sent to Nerchinsk. At the end diplomacy made itself felt. The Chinese received orders from Peking to retire three miles from the fort and cease their attacks. This gave the Albazinians breathing time. Four months later the Chinese withdrew another mile, and during this truce the besieged were at liberty to leave the fort, buy provisions, and even admit reinforcements. Such is the droll manner in which Chinese warfare is conducted. On the 3Oth August, 1687, the Chinese left Albazin altogether and returned to Aigun and Tsitsihar. The Russians promptly rebuilt their villages and cultivated their fields anew. The reason for this strange conduct is found by turning to the march of events elsewhere. The ever- increasing complications with the Chinese had made it appear desirable at Moscow before the events which have been chronicled above took place to arrange definitely the frontiers of the two Empires. D 34 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE It cannot be doubted that, as both the Czar of Mus- covy and the Manchu Emperor of China were still consolidating their Empires, the disputed land did not belong to either, nor could either Emperor lay claim, except by nominal right of conquest, to vast tracts of barren lands, inhabited only by semi-nomad Tunguzians. The great value of these regions at that time was the sable hunt for the tribute collected by the suzerain power was mainly payable in valu- able sables. The negotiations resulting in the Treaty of Nerchinsk are of great interest to-day, for they show that over two centuries ago a state of affairs had arisen almost exactly similar to that of to-day in Manchuria. The first step towards a settlement was taken by the Muscovite Government by despatching the Chancellor Venukof from Moscow to Peking. o Venukof arrived in Peking whilst the siege of Albazin was proceeding, and through his efforts the Manchu Emperor was induced to send a few Mandarins to stay the siege. This, as has already been stated, took place in November, 1686. The letter written by the Emperor Kang Hsi almost the greatest Manchu Emperor in history to the Czar of Muscovy is so important as showing the Chinese manner of thinking at the time in regard to the Russian encroachments on the Amur provinces that it is well worth reproducing. Dated November 1686, it runs as follows: " The officials to whom I have intrusted the supervision of the sable hunt, have frequently complained of the injury PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 35 which the people of Siberia do to our hunters on the Amur and particularly to the Ducheri. My subjects have never provoked yours nor done them any injury ; yet the people of Albazin, armed with cannons, guns and other firearms, have frequently attacked my people who have no firearms and were peaceably hunting. Moreover, they have given shelter to our deserters, and when my Superintendent of the Chase followed some deserters of Kandagan to Albazin and demanded their surrender, Alexei, Ivan, and others responded that they could not do this but must first apply to the Changa Khan for instructions. As yet no answer has been vouchsafed to our inquiries nor have the deserters been given up. " In the meantime my officers on the frontier have informed me of your Russians having carried off some peaceful hunters as prisoners. They also roved about the Lower Amur and injured the small town of Genquen and other places. As soon as I heard of this, I ordered my officers to take up arms and act as occasion might require. They accordingly made prisoners of the Russians roving about the Lower Amur. No one was put to death but all were provided with food. When our people arrived before Albazin and called upon it to surrender, Alexei and others, without deigning reply, treated us in a hostile fashion and fired off cannon and muskets. We therefore took possession of Albazin by force, but even then we did not put anyone to death. We liberated our prisoners ; but more than forty Russians of their own free choice preferred remaining amongst our own people. The others we exhorted earnestly to return to their own side of their frontier where they might hunt at pleasure. My officers had scarcely left when four hundred and sixty Russians returned, rebuilt Albazin, killed our hunters and laid waste their fields, thus compelling my officers to have recourse to arms again. " Albazin was consequently beleaguered a second time, but orders were nevertheless given to spare the prisoners and restore them to their own country. Since then Venukof and others have arrived in Peking to announce the approach of an ambassador and to propose a friendly D 2 36 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE conference to settle the boundary question and induce the Chinese to raise the siege of Albazin. On this a courier was at once sent to Albazin to put a stop to further hostilities." This letter throws considerable light on the Manchu pretensions of that time. For, be it noted that the first Manchu seated on the throne of China was Shun Chih in 1644, and when the famous Jesuit, Martini, left Peking in 1651, that is, seven years after the occupation of the northern capital, only twelve out of the eighteen provinces of China had been conquered by the Manchus, and the last of the Mings who established a kingdom in the south-west of China was not finally expelled until 1658. It was Khabarof who first saw any trace of Manchus in the Amur regions, for we read that in 1651, fifty Manchu horsemen, sent by the Emperor Shun Chih to collect tribute in furs, attempted to prevent the landing of Cossacks on the right bank of the Amur in concert with the native Daurians, but on the first discharge of firearms fled. Had the first Russian expeditions been armed with proper Government sanction, there is no doubt that they could have with justice laid claim to the north bank of the Amur. As it was, being mere adventurers and marauders, their brutal acts speedily inclined the native Tunguzians towards the newly-established Manchu rule, and destroyed any chances they may have possessed at the beginning. Immediately on the receipt of Kang Hsi's letter the Czar despatched an Envoy Extraordinary, one PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 37 Golovin, to arrange matters. Golovin, accompanied by a number of troops, took two years to reach the trans- Baikal regions, and seems to have been in every way a fit ancestor to the long line of pro- crastinators that Russia has always employed in the Far East. Whilst Golovin's secretaries were absent arranging a meeting-place for the proposed conference, Golovin was attacked by an army of fifteen thousand Mongols, apparently acting inde- pendently, and not under instructions from Peking. But with a few hundred men he was able to beat back this attack, and as a result fifty thousand Buriat Mongol families acknowledged themselves Russian subjects. Selenginsk, in the middle of the Buriat country, appears to have been first chosen as the seat for the conference. But the Chinese embassy on its way from Peking had its progress endangered by Mongol tribal warfare, and conse- quently returned to the frontiers. After more parleying, Nerchinsk was finally settled on, and in June, 1689, an enormous Chinese embassy left Peking. A month later they arrived at Nerchinsk, and the momentous character of their mission may be gauged from the fact that there were nine thou- sand Chinese in the embassy, including officials, servants, soldiers, camp-followers, and others. To transport this vast force, four thousand camels and fifteen thousand horses were used, whilst many of the soldiers sailed up the Amur in large barges, and only met the Chinese ambassadors on the banks of the Shilka opposite Nerchinsk. The Chinese 38 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE camps were gay with many-coloured banners and striped tents, and such was the Manchu prestige at this time that the Governor of Nerchinsk trembled at the sight of so many yellow men. Meanwhile Golovin, the Czar's plenipotentiary, had not arrived, and, in spite of the manifest Chinese irritation and their urgent messages, it was nearly a month and a half before he put in an appearance. Ravenstein ingenuously remarks: " The nonchalance of this gentleman, on embarrassing questions being put to him, surprised even the Chinese and their Jesuit interpreters ! " This Russian attitude has been singularly well preserved with the march of centuries. The proceedings were opened with great cere- mony, and with that scrupulous regard for the protocol which the Chinese so love. A great tent was pitched exactly midway between the fortress and the river, and exactly one-half appropriated to the Russians, and the other to the Chinese. The Russians, having due regard for the fact that a good appearance counts for much, had their half of the tent covered with a handsome Turkey carpet, and on their desks and writing-tables were costly clocks and other articles of vertu. The Chinese side was devoid of all ornaments, and the chiefs of the embassy, seven in number, sat upon a cushioned bench. Behind them stood military mandarins, and in front of them the Jesuit priests, Fathers Gerbillon and Pereyra, who had accompanied the mission in the capacity of interpreters. Seven hundred and PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 39 sixty Chinese soldiers crossed the river, five hun- dred being halted on the banks, and two hundred and sixty advanced exactly half-way to the tent. Similarly, five hundred Russians were drawn up close to the fort, and two hundred and sixty halted half-way to the all-important tent. The conference opened with some questions of etiquette. These settled, Golovin in his most non- chalant manner proposed the Amur as the future boundary between the two Empires. The Chinese objected to this on account of the fine sables paid as tribute by the tribes north of the river, and they suggested that the Russians should surrender Albazin, Nerchinsk, and Seleginsk. Golovin re- fused, and the conference broke up angrily. In the second meeting the Chinese proposed that Nerchinsk should be retained as a trading post by the Russians. This proposal was promptly rejected, and the Chinese left the tent in high dudgeon. The Jesuits now did all in their power to bring about a reconciliation, but, as the Russians still refused to cede Albazin, matters began to look threatening. The Chinese called a grand secret council, and resolved to sur- round Nerchinsk, to incite the neighbouring Tartars to revolt, and send men down the river to seize Albazin. The Russians likewise prepared for battle, but at the last moment their uncompromising atti- tude broke down, and they sent an interpreter to ask for a renewal of negotiations, a request to which the Chinese gladly assented. It was now Father Gerbillon a French Jesuit 40 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE who was invested with plenary powers and des- patched to Golovin. In a few days he had drawn up a draft Treaty, and on the 2Qth of August the ratifications were exchanged in a tent specially pitched for that purpose. The Chinese plenipoten- tiaries appeared in state the Treaty was signed, sealed, and oaths taken for its maintenance. The philosophic Chinese even declared their willingness to swear on the crucifix as the Russians had done, but even easy-mannered Golovin was surprised at this and remarked that such a course could be dispensed with. Copies in Manchu and Russian were exchanged, the plenipotentiaries embraced one another, a splendid feast was served, and the curtain thus rung down on Russo-Chinese strife for a century and a half. The preamble to the Treaty sets forth the Chinese case in clear language. It runs as follows : "In order to suppress the insolence of certain rascals who cross the frontier to hunt, plunder, and kill, and who give rise to much trouble and disturbance ; to determine clearly and distinctly the boundaries between the two Empires of China and Muscovy : and, lastly, to establish peace and good understanding in the future ; the following articles are mutually agreed upon : " Then follow six articles too uninteresting to be inserted in full. The whole of the first article, which fixes the boundary in very lengthy form, may be conveniently compressed into a few words. The western boundary to be the river Argun ; the northern frontier to begin at the river Gorbitza and PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 41 to run irregularly to the sea of Okhotsk, so that all the southern slopes of the Stanovoi Mountains with the rivers flowing from them towards the Amur should belong to China, and all the northern slopes with the rivers flowing north should belong to Russia ; and, finally, all Russian towns to the south of Argun to be removed to the northern bank of the river. The second article decrees the destruc- tion of Albazin, the prohibition of hunting across the frontiers, and the immediate reporting to the competent authorities of the crossing of frontiers by armed bands. Article three buries everything that has gone before in the eternal oblivion of diplomatists. Article four decrees that fugitives crossing the frontier shall be arrested and handed over to the nearest authority. And, finally, articles five and six make free intercourse between the two Empires permissible, subject to certain passport regulations. The Chinese had thus won all along the line and were jubilant. Boundary stones were erected at the frontier points. Albazin was abandoned and the Russians excluded from navigating the Amur. Excepting that they certainly looked with envious eyes on the sable hunt, there is no doubt that the Chinese were really indifferent about the trans- Amur and the fate of the Tunguzian tribes inhabit- ing these dreary wastes. But they fully realised that to make the Amur the boundary would be to leave the whole vexed question open and merely to pave the way to future complications. 42 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE The Chinese indifference is proved by the fact that the boundary stones were placed far south of the supposed limits and that they willingly surren- dered a territory twenty three thousand miles square. Even on the north-west frontier the same indiffer- ence was to be observed, for it was discovered later on that there were two Gorbitzas and that the Chinese did not know to which one the Treaty referred. The periodical visiting of boundary stones was carried out methodically when it could be done by boat, that is, on the Argun and the Gorbitza, but the northern land frontier seems to have been largely neglected. So long as the Chinese barges which ascended the Amur met with no Cossack free-lances, the Manchu officials did not trouble to journey several hundred miles inland to the northern boundaries. For a long time there is nothing to note in the Manchurian territories. Although a few Russian scientists and some escaped convicts found their way to the Amur, the Siberian Government on the whole may be said to have carried out the frontier regulations with great rigour and to have discouraged all attempts at breaking through the barrier of exclusion which the Chinese Government had insisted on erecting. But before leaving the interesting subject of the wars between the two Empires which resulted in the Nerchinsk instru- ment, there is a curious piece of little-known history to be told. The Chinese in their several decades of warfare PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 43 with the Russians had taken many Russian prisoners, and these numbers had been swelled by numerous Cossack deserters who were not enchanted with the rigours of life on the Amur. These were gradually all sent to Peking and formed into a company attached to the Imperial Bodyguard of the Manchu monarch. When peace was signed, a church was built for them in Peking, and as they expressed themselves well satisfied with their treatment, Russia was quite willing that they should remain where they were. Later on, when Russian caravans began to arrive in Peking over the Mongolian land route, several priests were sent from Moscow, and at the so-called Russia House a beginning was made of the politico-religious Russian Mission which exists to this day in the Manchu capital. Religious ministrations were provided to the exiles when they wanted it, from Russia House, but the majority of the ancient Albazinians for most of them were prisoners from Albazin soon succumbed to their surroundings and degenerated into ordinary Manchus with Manchu wives. By 1824 the descendants of these prisoners had become merged in the Manchu soldiery, and there were only twenty-three who had even been baptised. As a separate organisation they have ceased to exist. Turning now to the northern provinces of Man- churia, Heilungchiang and Kirin, there is not much to note for many years. Up to the twenties of the nineteenth century, these two vast provinces, probably five hundred thousand miles square in 44 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE extent, had soldiery alone for settled population. The nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes were on the decline, and seem to have been very insignificant in numbers. Many of the able-bodied natives were enlisted in the Manchurian militia and given free grants of land. The north bank of the Amur and the country right up to the Stanovoi Mountains were rarely visited by the Manchu officials, and only officials in charge of the sable hunt dared to wander about in this desolate country. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the island of Saghalien appears to have become tributary to China, but the indigenous tribes were not disturbed. Until the nineteenth century this policy of ex- clusion and the restriction regarding immigration into the two northern provinces were maintained unbroken, but a change was soon to come. The Manchus, after having eaten for a century and a half from the flesh-pots of China, had changed from a race of hardy horsemen and resolute warriors into a ceremonious and privileged caste to all intents and purposes exactly similar to the Chinese. When they had descended on the eighteen provinces at the head of ever-victorious armies they had laughed at the indolent Chinese mandarins riding about in chairs, and had called them women, had scorned ceremonies and etiquette and the whole Chinese system. But, scoffers though they were in the beginning, they soon ended by being enslaved, just as all conquerors from the north had been before PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 45 them. Already at the beginning of the eighteenth century they had become effete ; by the nineteenth, tradition and early prestige were their only claims for superiority, and China had assimilated them completely. During the twenties of the nineteenth century the empty condition of the Imperial Treasury caused the Emperor Tao Kuang to inaugurate a new policy in Manchuria. The public lands of the northern provinces were put up to sale, the Chinese emigrated en masse, especially to Kirin province, and in a few decades the Manchuria of olden days had ceased to exist. Many of the immigrants were Mahommedans from the back provinces of China, and mosques are to-day to be found in far-off places in Manchuria, such as Sansing. The presence of these Chinese in such large numbers soon caused the few remaining tribes in all excepting the most remote corners to yield to the newcomers in dress, language, and customs, so that to-day Manchuria is to all intents and purposes exactly similar to the other northern provinces of China proper. And now we come to the second Russian attempt, after a lapse of nearly two centuries, to reach the Amur an attempt made successful through the genius of Muravief. The Russian settlements on the extreme northern shores of the Pacific, founded and gradually developed with great difficulties, had to be pro- visioned by pack-animal transport from Eastern Siberia a very slow and costly method. All 46 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE through the eighteenth century, the desirability of securing the right to navigate the Amur had been again and again mooted by successive Siberian Governors, but each time their proposals had fallen through, owing to the lack of support from the home Government. It was not until Count Nikolas Muravief became Governor of Eastern Siberia in 1847 that any real progress was made. One of Muravief's first acts was to send an officer, accompanied by four Cossacks, down the Amur to explore the country and to report on the general conditions. Then Muravief gave orders to explore the coasts of the sea of Okhotsk to the mouth of the Amur. As a result of this order, a number of winter stations and posts, destined to develop into places of some importance, were established on Saghalien and other convenient points. It was not until 1854 that anything really remark- able occurred. In that year, General Muravief himself descended the Amur from the trans- Baikal province with a large force, and inaugurated a policy that has had the most far-reaching results. It was due to the Crimean war that Muravief finally obtained the consent of his Government to the taking of this momentous step, for the outbreak of hostilities in Europe left the Russian Pacific fleet (which had been gradually collected on the coast after Muravief's surveys began) without supplies, owing to the vigilance of English cruisers. With- out waiting for Chinese permission, Muravief sailed down the Amur in a small steamer accompanied by PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 47 fifty barges and rafts loaded with a thousand infantrymen and Cossacks and armed with several guns. On reaching Aigun, Muravief landed and interviewed the Chinese Governor. A tent had been pitched and the entire Chinese garrison of this once important Manchu post drawn up to impress the trespassers. The miserable appearance of this so-called Manchu soldiery, and the absurdity of their arms, showed that the Chinese on the Amur had retrograded rather than advanced during the two centuries which had elapsed since the days of the early Cossack marauders. After a brief interview, Muravief continued his journey down the river, and at the end of June, hardly a month's journey from the starting-place, the expedition arrived without incident at Mariinsk, a newly-founded settlement on the lower Amur. The provisioning of the fleet, and sundry other details, call for no remark. With the outbreak of the Crimean war, the entire strength of Russia was concentrated at Petropavlovsk, in Kamschatka, and the Anglo-French attack anxiously awaited. The French and English fleets mustered their forces on the American coast, and on the 28th of August, 1854, an allied squadron of six vessels arrived off Petropavlovsk. After a bombardment an assault was ordered. A mixed force of seven hundred English and French sailors rushed to the attack, but were beaten back in great confusion by the land batteries. After this repulse the Allies retreated, and although a second attempt was imperatively 48 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE ordered to be made, the abandonment of this strong place by the Russians made it unnecessary. Meanwhile, completely ignoring the Chinese, the Russians continued to display the greatest activity on the Amur. In 1855 three more expeditions sailed down the coveted river from the trans- Baikal province, with three thousand soldiers, five hundred colonists, and herds of cattle and horses. In that year the operations of the Allies on the Pacific were on a much more extended scale, but the results were equally unimportant. Although seventeen vessels were employed by the combined forces, and were further reinforced by an indepen- dent squadron from Hong Kong, no successes took place, except for a few insignificant captures of Russian sailing vessels, and the destruction of stores at some of the settlements on the coast. It is said with some plausibility, that the failure of the Anglo-French allies to harm Russian expan- sion on the Pacific convinced St. Petersburg's statesmen that Russia's destiny as a sea-power could only be fulfilled off the coasts of the Asiatic Continent. The affair at Petropavlovsk was looked upon as proof certain that Russia was really fated to succeed in the Far East, and that the very distance of these coasts from the beaten track made them secure. General Muravief now proceeded in person to St. Petersburg to advocate the inauguration of a great forward movement, which would not only secure the right to navigate the Amur, but also to colonise the extensive regions PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 49 which were practically open to the first comers. Whilst he was absent, the able lieutenants whom he had left in charge sailed ever-increasing numbers of barges and rafts down the river with supplies and men for the settlements which were springing up on the lower Amur and on the coast. In this fashion did Russia push forward. In 1857 Muravief returned, armed with the fullest authority to act as he might wish. Accordingly, during the month of June of that year, three thou- sand infantrymen and cavalry were sent down the Amur, and for the first time posts were openly established along the left bank of the middle and upper Amur. During 1857 a fruitless effort was made by Admiral Putiatin, who sailed from the Pacific settlements through the Sea of Japan to the Gulf of Pechili, to force the Chinese to recognise the Rus- sians on the Amur. It was reported at the time that Russia was, in addition, demanding the cession of the whole of Manchuria, including the provinces down to the Gulf of Liao-tung, although both sides, for different motives, took steps to deny promptly that such was the case. As a result of this failure of Putiatin's to induce the Chinese to recognise in any way the Russian right to the territories which they were opening up, and because the Chinese officials along the Amur were rapidly assuming a hostile attitude, Muravief once more hastened to St. Petersburg, explained all, and asked for heavy reinforcements and money. Admiral Putiatin was ordered to co-operate with E So MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE the British and French in China (then engaged in the war which was to break down Manchu conser- vatism and open the gates of Peking to the Foreign Legations), and large bodies of Siberian troops were moved towards the Amur. In 1858 the operations of the Anglo-French expeditions against the Chinese forces made them- selves felt on the Amur. The attitude of the Chinese authorities underwent a sudden change, and Muravief found them perfectly willing to con- clude a treaty. In May, 1858, he was thus able to sign the Treaty of Aigun, in which China ceded to Russia the left bank of the Amur to the Ussuri, and both banks below the Ussuri. Hardly a month afterwards Putiatin signed the Russian Treaty of Tientsin, the conditions of which were similar to those contained in the Instruments signed by the other powers, and are mainly of a commercial nature. But, although the door to the Amur was now ajar, it was not really open for all time, since the acts of the Chinese frontier authorities, who signed the Aigun Treaty, could be repudiated by the Central Government. Foreseeing this, Muravief proceeded promptly to work and founded towns along the newly-acquired river bank. Blagoves- chensk, or the town of "good tidings," was the first to be planned by him ; and Khabarovsk was founded soon afterwards on the mouth of the Ussuri. In August, 1858, Muravief was fitly rewarded for his great services to Russia by being created Count of PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 51 the Amur, and henceforth he was known as Mura- vief Amurski. In December of the same year a Ukase was published by which the new territories received a special organisation, and the maritime province and the Amur province were organised as separate governments. At the beginning of 1859 Russia had nearly eight thousand troops in these two provinces, a wonderful advance considering the difficulties which nature has imposed on all develop- ment in these cold latitudes. In spite of this, how- ever, Russia was in some danger of losing all she had won, for the Allies had meanwhile suffered the famous repulse at the Taku Forts, and been forced temporarily to retreat. China promptly gave it to be understood that the Aigun Treaty would not be carried out, and matters looked very critical for Russia. Muravief, who was absent on leave of absence, once more came back post haste to the Amur, and prepared against a Chinese attack. In 1860, however, other events made this unnecessary. The Anglo-French expedition had entered Peking, and General Ignatief, who was lucky enough to be the first plenipotentiary to enter into close com- munication with Prince Kung, whom the Court had left in sole charge of Imperial affairs, succeeded in concluding the great Treaty of November, 1860, which demarcated the Manchurian frontiers anew to Russia's lasting advantage. Seeing that these fron- tiers nominally remain the same to this day, it is not out of place to give them in detail. It was decided that the western frontier of E 2 52 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE Manchuria should be formed by the river Argun to its junction with the Shilka. From thence the boundary followed the course of the Amur in an imaginary line drawn down the centre of the river, so that the right bank remained Chinese territory and the left bank was ceded to Russia. Where the Ussuri enters the Amur, Russia also acquired the right to all the territory lying to the east of it, and the frontier line running down the bed of the river ascends the river Singachi and enters Lake Hinka. From Hinka it is continued in an irregular fashion down to the Pacific coast, meeting the northern Korean coast near the mouth of the Tiumen river. In this fashion China completely lost access to the Sea of Japan, and surrendered what is to-day the important province of the Primorsk to the northern power. The nearest point on Chinese territory to the coast in this extreme east is Chinese Hun-ch'un, which stands some thirty miles inland from Passiet Bay. The importance of this Treaty can hardly be over- estimated. Russia had acquired an open and legal right to territory on the Amur which she had long coveted, and in addition she had the whole of Eastern or maritime Manchuria, giving her access to seas far more temperate and sheltered than those of Okhotsk and the neighbouring waters. Ravenstein, forty years ago, pointed out that the whole of Manchuria, surrounded on more than half its land frontiers by Russia, was in a highly precarious position ; and predicted that when China tumbled to pieces Russia PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 53 would without a word march down to the Gulf of Liao-tung. Possibly it is because English statesmen have considered this inevitable, that they have so consistently ignored the whole vast and important Manchurian question and watched the Russian ad- vance with indifference. From the sixties onwards, everything possible was done by the Siberian Governors to promote colonis- ation and commerce in the newly-acquired terri- tories. The Amur speedily assumed great importance as a great highway. Companies were formed to place steamers on the river at a time when steam was but slowly driving the sails from their supre- macy, and from the days of Muravief something of that modern and forward spirit was to be observed which characterises the Amur and Pacific provinces to-day, and differentiates them so much from those of European Russia. But from the first the same unfortunate results in commercial enterprise greeted the efforts of men who appear, either from training or natural lack of ability, quite incapable of conduct- ing sound business operations. Cossack settlements were established from the Shilka to the Ussuri at regular intervals along the left bank of the Amur, and the Ussuri districts, which had been early pro- nounced most suitable for Cossack colonisation, with their cattle and horse-breeding propensities, were rapidly settled. Great efforts were also made to make the new territories self-supporting in corn the one priceless treasure of the Amur but this object was never attained. Although the Amur was 54 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE frozen during at least five months of the year, com- munication in winter was almost quicker than in summer. The Cossacks of the riverine settlements were charged with making and keeping clear a moderately smooth road over the frozen Amur, and with staking out the way with stout posts at regular intervals. In this way it was possible for three- horsed sledges to travel from two hundred and forty to three hundred miles every twenty-four hours, and to maintain rapid communication between all points. In the lower Amur regions the reindeer Tunguzians and their fleet animals required no assistance. Meanwhile, Manchuria itself had been undergoing great changes. The great influx of settlers during the reign of the Emperor Tao Kuang has already been noted ; but although this was the only time that the Chinese authorities openly invited immigra- tion, the first great wave of settlers entering the country in the twenties of the nineteenth century was soon to be eclipsed. The great famine in Shansi drove hundreds of thousands to lands where men were badly needed, and the opening of Newchwang in the sixties made rapid communication with other parts of China possible and attracted adventurous spirits. In 1844 the wave of Chinese civilisation in Kirin province had only reached Sansing on the lower Sungari ; in 1859, or only fifteen years afterwards, populous villages extended another fifty miles higher up, and every year saw countless new arrivals. The province of Heilungchiang, a vast country in itself capable of supporting tens of millions of people, was PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 55 still practically uninhabited, except for a few thousands of Bannermen and roving Mongols. Chinese agriculturists, attracted by the richness of the virgin soil, began to encroach on the rich plains adjoining Kirin province, and year by year saw more soil broken. As soon as the Taipings had been crushed in Central China, the military reor- ganisation of the Manchurian province was com- menced. And this brings us to a very important and little noticed point. In spite of their successes whenever the clash of arms brought them into open conflict in anything like equal numbers with the Chinese, the Russians have always feared the Yellow Race. The huge numbers of men that China has at her disposal, and the vastness of her territories, have always impressed the Russian imagination an imagination that is more easily impressed than any other in the world and the origin of the idea of the Yellow Peril is to be found in Russian writings. Although the decay into which the Manchu military organisation had fallen, since the days of the early conquerors, was perfectly understood in Russia, the fear that some great irritation would galvanise into life the dormant possibilities of yellow hordes always remained. The preparations to place their forces on a better footing, which the Chinese began during the seventies in Manchuria, were viewed with the greatest concern from Irkutsk to the mouth of the Amur. For, although the Sungari, running through the heart of Manchuria, was nominally opened to 56 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE Russian merchants and travellers by the Aigun Treaty of 1858, practically no one dared to avail him- self of this privilege and venture into the midst of the Chinaman's country. It was the Chinese com- mercial spirit, unconquerable and willing to brave all difficulties to secure a profit, which opened up inti- mate relations in trade with the Russians on the Amur, and put an end to century-old exclusion. The Sansing-Sungari line of villages, finding a ready market for their wheat, vegetables, and other food-stuffs, began sending down junks laden with farm produce to Khabarovsk and elsewhere. The demand ever exceeding the supply, this commerce went on increasing from year to year, until the Rus- sian provinces of the Amur and the Primorsk, with populations largely confined to the towns, have become to a large extent dependent on Manchuria for their food. But, in spite of this commerce, Manchuria con- tinued to remain much of a terra incognita to the Russians, even after they had acquired a frontier along which were posted hosts of military villages at regular intervals, separated only by the waters of the Argun, the Amur, and the Ussuri from their Chinese neighbours. In the main the Russian set- tlements, with their soldier populations, had nothing in common with the Chinese, who, prompted by their officials and the ancient animosity, resented with the utmost cruelty and rigour any trespassing across the boundary line. The drilling and re-arm- ing of Manchurian troops proceeded apace during PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 57 the eighties, and when Port Arthur became a formidable Chinese strong-place by the building of modern forts and the mounting of heavy Krupp guns, when arsenals were established at Kirin and Moukden, and the frontier garrisons at Sansing, Hungchun, and Aigun were reinforced, Manchuria became, from the Russian point of view, a most formidable neighbour. The Cossacks, straining their eyes across the frontiers of slowly-flowing rivers, wondered what was in the vast and fertile country which they knew to be behind, eagerly questioned all travellers, and showed that child-like Russian timidity in the face of the unknown. Broadly speaking, however, there is not much to be chron- icled in Manchuria between the sixties and the Japanese war of 1894 5 but two points of some small interest can be referred to without great digression. The stories of the fabulous wealth in gold and silver to be found in Manchuria, which Russian credulity constantly circulated in the Amur province, and which were apparently substantiated by the secret traffic in gold carried on across the river by illicit Chinese gold-diggers, led to a curious enter- prise the founding of the so-called Republic of Sholtoga. A few dozen miles higher up the Amur than the ancient settlements of Albazin, but on the Chinese side of the river, gold was discovered in a secluded river valley. Adventurers, of whom there is never any lack in Siberia, were soon attracted to this spot, and there, safe from all interference, gold- washing was commenced on a very extensive scale. 58 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE In time, these gold- washers grew in numbers to such an extent that they organised themselves into a " republic " and elected a president. The Chinese soon heard of this encroachment, but appear to have paid but little attention to it in the first instance. Meanwhile, Chinese convicts and others made their way to this new El Dorado and engaged themselves at fabulous prices as labourers and miners. The republic grew, the citizens became rich, and it seemed as if a miniature commonwealth was to be allowed to spring up in the deserts of northern Heilungchiang. But, in consequence of difficulties with the Russian authorities, the Chinese mandari- nate was invited to exterminate the unauthorised colony, which numbered, in its halcyon days, three thousand white men and twice as many Chinese. The extermination seems to have been partial in the first instance, and it was not until the Chinese directors of the semi-official mining camp at Moho adjacent to the republic found their own men deserting in large numbers that they really set seri- ously to work. The Russians at Sholtoga were dis- creetly given time to escape so that no questions should be raised afterwards, but the Chinese were mercilessly butchered to the last man. An interest- ing photograph is extant, showing the frozen bodies of the victims lying on the ground literally in hun- dreds. In this manner Sholtoga disappeared for the last time in 1889. In the same year another little-known event occurred, which, it is believed, threw many of the PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 59 most influential Manchu and Chinese officials in Peking together for the first time. At that period there was no telegraph communication between China and Europe ; for the Siberian system, pass- ing along the left bank of the Amur, did not connect with the Manchurian lines across the river. The cable companies, having a complete monopoly of China business, were able to charge the most ex- orbitant rates for the transmission of messages O between Europe and the Far East, and this led to the formation of an English syndicate in Shanghai which proposed to perform a droll office. The Man- churian land-system was being extended from Tsi- tsihar to Aigun so that the Chinese frontier-Com- mandant might be in direct communication with Peking. On the opposite banks of the Amur the Siberian land-line passed west on its way to Europe, and therefore, if this trifling gap could be bridged over, an all-overland route would be available, and messages transmissible at a rate amounting to the Chinese and Russian domestic rates combined. The Desmond Telegraph Company, whose system was to be but a few hundred yards of wire rope and a dozen wooden message-boxes, was duly organised. An arrangement was soon arrived at with the Chinese Telegraph authorities, who undertook to transmit messages for the usual rates from Shanghai to Aigun (Helampo) : the European firms in the Far East all agreed to transfer their business to the new line, and therefore the third step only remained that of obtaining the consent of the Siberian Telegraph 60 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE authorities to the retransmission of code messages in vast quantities from their station at Blagoves- chensk. This was done, and for a brief period the system worked satisfactorily, the wire-rope and the wooden cages threatening the cable companies with gradual extinction. But powerful influences were at work, and the life of the venturesome English com- pany was fated to be a very short one. The Danish concern, the Great Northern Telegraph Company, was the one most harmed, and as the Danish Royal Family (including the then Czarina) were large shareholders, diplomacy made itself soon felt. The Russian Minister at Peking was instructed to stop the new enterprise by fair means or foul, and he proceeded to work without a moment's delay. Li Hung Chang was then Viceroy at Tientsin and also the Director-General of the Chinese Telegraph Ad- ministration, and to him the Russian Minister turned with friendly presents. After some blandishments, Li Hung Chang succumbed to the attractions of gold bars snugly nestled in silk-lined boxes, and the Chinese telegraphs began a policy of obstruction which, aided by the Siberian authorities across the Amur, delayed messages for an indefinite period and disgusted all. Finally, the death-blow was given by the Berne International Telegraph Convention, which decided that the uniting of frontiers in such a fashion was not permissible. The chief point of interest in the history of this curious concern is the drawing together of Li Hung Chang and his entourage with the Russian Legation PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 61 in Peking over a question intimately concerning Manchuria. Li was given all sorts of assurances over what was merely an affair of small importance, and from that day onward China's greatest man played a diplomatic game the secret history and explanation of which have yet to be disclosed. The Far Eastern tour of the Czarewitch in 1891 made the highest personages in Russia fully cognisant of things the rising importance of Japan and her future position in the Far East, and the desirability of consolidating the Russian power in the Far East before it was too late. A glance at the map explains all this at once. As a maritime power Japan is most favourably placed. Just as England stands out like the sentinel of Europe, so does Japan command the Pacific seas which wash the coasts of the mainland. The three islands of Yezo, Hondo, and Kiushiu are spread-eagled along the Asiatic mainland in such a fashion from Saghalien to the Straits of Korea as to make the Land of the Rising Sun the absolute master of the o shallow seas adjoining the coast. For six months of the year it may be said that Russian ships can only escape from the ice-bound trap of the Sea of Japan by steaming through the Straits of Korea, which are commanded by the island of Tsushima ; for both the northern and southern extremities of Saghalien are practically impassable, the first owing to the ice, the second because the Perouse Straits are commanded from Hokhaido. The two facts which so impressed Russian statesmen became in 62 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE the natural course of events but one, which is best expressed in a new fashion : a race with Japan for the mastership of the mainland the mainland of Manchuria, Korea, and North China. If Russia could seize fresh vantage points which would minimise, if not largely destroy, Japan's undoubted superiority in natural positions, Russia might yet be the maritime master of the Far East. The cutting of the first sod of the great Siberian railway by the Czarewitch in 1891, near Vladi- vostock, was really the official opening of a question which may yet make Russia bleed to death. It was perfectly understood in Japan that the linking up of the Russian Far East with the far-away portions of the great northern power must eventually bring Russia face to face with a problem which would mean war to the knife. For from the very beginning the Mikado's ministers, and more especi- ally the elder statesmen, have been working with maps in front of them, and have realised that the march to the south of Russian battalions would be ordered one fine day, and the great peril confront them. But if Russia was quietly preparing, so was Japan. The Japanese army and navy, although small, were yearly becoming more and more efficient and well-organised, and when circumstances arose in Korea which the Mikado's Government consi- dered to justify armed intervention, that intervention was ordered and took place with a calmness and rapidity which astonished the entire world. Japan PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 63 was determined that Korea should be dominated by no one but herself, foreseeing that Chinese statesmen might one day transfer the feeble claim to suzerainty which the Dragon Throne possessed over the Hermit Kingdom to another power, if that power could not be bought off in any other way. When, therefore, China despatched troops to Korea, Japan resented it, and the result was that war was formally declared on the 3rd of August, 1894. Events marched very rapidly, and once more the world was amazed. The successes of the Japanese military and naval forces at Phonyang and Hai-yang on the 1 6th and i7th of September opened the way for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria by land and sea ; so the Yalu was crossed and sur- prise landings made on the Liao-tung coast. The Yalu columns pushed rapidly across south-eastern Fengtien and captured Feng-huang-ch'eng, Hsiu- yen, and Hai-ch'eng without great difficulties. The Liao-tung expeditions, landing at P'i-tzu-wo and Hua-yuan-k'ou, north of Talienwan, in November, marched down to Port Arthur and successfully occupied it. During the winter there were several desperate struggles in Manchuria. The Chinese made four separate attempts to retake Hai-ch'eng, fearing for the safety of Moukden, the ancient Manchu capital ; and it was not until the month of March, 1895, tnat t^ 6 inland town of Newchwang fell into Japanese hands and that their combined armies drove the last Chinese forces across the Liao. 64 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE But Japan, in gaining her own end and humbling her huge adversary for all time, had helped Russia at least for the time being. The Manchurian spectre, looming so vast on the Amur horizon, ceased to frighten the Russians, for they saw all the many years of drilling and re-arming which had been going on in the three eastern provinces destroyed in a few blows. But if China had become for the time being a negligible quantity, it was not so with Japan. Almost before the Russians could realise it, Japan had declared her intention of holding the Liao-tung peninsula, was actively preparing documents and treaties to that effect, and had become the dominant power in Korea. The question of the Asiatic main- land appeared solved to Russia's eternal ruin. But Russia, although sorely alarmed, was not yet de- feated, for in masterly diplomacy she has not her equal in the world. Li Hung Chang, whom China had nominated her Plenipotentiary to conclude the Treaty of Peace at Shimonoseki, crossed the seas with secret chuckling, for five years' intimacy with Russian diplomatists made him certain that they would not fail him in the hour of need. It was even so, and "the Liao-tung ceded" soon read "the Liao-tung retroceded," owing to the " friendly representations " of a triplicate of powers. Japan, though she had demonstrated her position in Korea with great clear- ness, had undoubtedly been checkmated in Man- churia ; and so, gritting her teeth, she redoubled her preparations which would be called to a supreme test at some not too distant date. PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS 65 The diplomatic year of 1896 in the Far East is of great interest. Did Count Cassini, the Russian Minister at Peking, conclude the famous secret con- vention or did he not? Is the whole story another one of those inventions which have been so copious of late years in the Far East, or does it rest on a substratum of truth ? It is hard to say, but although memoranda of great importance may have been exchanged, to anyone who knows the ability of Chinese statesmen and the manner in which they inevitably manage to introduce saving clauses, there can not be a shadow of doubt about one thing that no matter what promises China may have been in- duced to make, she left herself a loophole through which she could slip. The statement that she virtually signed away Manchurian provinces in 1896 may be classed as a pure fabrication ; she may have consented to some things, but only with the know- ledge that other things were in course of preparation which would sooner or later annul her private arrangements. I have discussed elsewhere various aspects of these recent years, the beginning of the "active" history of those baneful things, the railway, the rouble, and the Russo- Chinese Bank, and so need not further dwell on them. In 1900 we have the Boxers and the Manchurian Question complete, throbbing, insistent How it happened, how Russia has used her oppor- tunities, and the present dismal state of affairs, are all treated with some detail in the pages that follow. CHAPTER I THE VOYAGE RUSSIA in Asia begins, nominally, when you step on board one of the Chinese Eastern Railway's " Express Steamers," as they are curiously called, at Nagasaki or Shanghai. Three years ago there was hardly a vessel of this growing Russian fleet on the China seas. To-day the Chinese Eastern Rail- way's sea-going service, as it is grandiloquently styled, numbers nearly two dozen vessels, each new one finer than the last, and more calculated to impress the traveller with Russia's growing might in the Far East. The very nomenclature of these ships is in itself a confession of Muscovite ambitions. First come the Manchuria, the Mon- golia, and the Korea, fine vessels of four thousand tons, each named after countries destined to become mere Russian provinces, unless some one calls a halt. Then come the Amur, the Argun, the Shilka, the Sungari, and the Nonni, rivers to which Russia alone, of all the European powers, has access, and which she resolutely intends to keep closed to the rest of the world. Manchuria's provincial CHAP. I THE VOYAGE 67 capitals follow with the Moukden, the Kirin, and the Tsitsihar. And finally come Manchuria's fron- tier and lesser towns such as Nagadan, Khailar, Ninguta, Petuna, and others, until the score and more have all been named. From Nagasaki and Shanghai, the finest vessels voyage to and fro, making connection with the world-famed express trains that steam from the end of Asia to the end of Europe without a break. The lesser ones nibble at the Korean ports, are scheduled to steam in and out of your Gensans, your Chemulpos, and your Fusans, so that Japan may clearly know that she is not the only claimant to the Hermit Kingdom. So the China seas from Shanghai to the Gulf of Pechili, from the Korean coast right up to Vladivostock, are covered with vessels flying the hybrid flag of the Russian Railway Company the half Russian half Chinese monster and Russia's object is near accomplished. I have said that Russia in Asia nominally begins with the Express Steamers ; it is, however, only nominally, for, the moment you step on board your floating express, you realise that Russia has tackled what is beyond her power. For it is not really Russia that you meet with on your ship, and, as all the Czar's ministers would have us know, what is not purely Russian is not Russian at all, and must be counted a source of weakness rather than of strength. My steamer, the Manchuria, was built in Austrian Trieste, fitted with English fittings and Yankee F 2 68 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. notions, with occasional relapses into rococo French ; was officered by men from the Baltic of unmistak- able Teutonic origin ; decorated with Bohemian panels and burnt-wood picture work from southern Germany ; had her engine-room and stokeholds filled with Chinese firemen and artificers ; was crowded with Ningpo deck-hands jabbering pidgin English, and understanding nothing else ; was try- ing to beat up Japanese, Chinese, and British cargo for ports in the leased territory that are not loved ; and, finally, we were fed by a China Treaty Port cook, suddenly switched off under stern compulsion with the most terrible results to Russian Far Eastern Extension table requirements. Is the confusion sufficiently confounded ? But although I have enumerated some of the cosmopolitan curiosities on what was originally in- tended to be a purely Russian steamer to the great glory of God and the Czar, it was in the saloon that came the crowning blow of all. There a Chinese was compradore, chief steward, and supreme major-domo, and apart from a staff of his own countrymen he employed and paid also half-a-dozen Russian stewards, clad in clean white jackets and neat blue trousers, whom he is under contract to provide. Think of it, all you who study foreign policies and politics a Chinaman an employer of foreign labour on a Russian ship, and that labour Russian. The Slav had best beware before he is hopelessly engulfed in the bottomless abyss of Chinese in- genuity and silent diplomacy. I thought it all very THE VOYAGE 69 amusing until I saw one of the Russian stewards aforesaid approach his Chinese chief and meekly ask for something. Then I winced, for it is some- how not good for the white man to be the servant of the yellow. The passenger-list of this good ship was the Far Eastern question in a more or less concrete and instructive form. Russian militarism was repre- sented by half-a-dozen young officers of that de- lightfully unknown quantity, the Manchurian Railway or Frontier Guards, who smoked endless cigarettes and played endless cards in a semi-mufti attire. The usual number of Danes, Germans, and other Continentals were to be noticed, with a heavy con- tingent of doubtful Japanese in the steerage. A strong force of Englishmen from all parts of the world completed the list, for, in spite of the American, the Englishman is still the premier globes-trotter in the East, and the new trans-continental route must be tested. But, although we were the political situation in the flesh, we were careful not to talk politics ; for even in September the betting was heavily in favour of war, and here, so near the disputed territories, argument soon degenerates into pitched battles, espe- cially when the passions are as fierce as they have been of late in the Far East. So, when the land disappeared below the horizon line, the Manchurian question was likewise lost sight of, and armed neutrality became the order of the day. The con- versation turned on ships and men that go down to 70 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. the sea, and the prospects of these fine steamers from the purely business point of view. Half the men at the table knew ships and shipping from the practical side, and each promptly pointed out defects which disqualified vessels of the Russian fleet from being dividend-earners. One man had just been down into our engine-room and discovered that we were only working our starboard engine. The port engine was chronically out of order, and had been so since the ship had been on the Nagasaki run ; but the engineers shrugged their shoulders when docking was suggested, and said that one engine was enough for their purpose. Another man proved to us conclusively with a pencil and a piece of paper that the ship could never clear her running expenses with the big margin that would have to be allowed for depreciation and her small cargo capacity. " Too light and too pretty," was the general con- sensus of opinion ; too much show and too little business. It is always the same story. However, Russia's object has been temporarily attained, and her flag flies everywhere on the China seas. But can bad business methods and criminal carelessness spell anything but disaster in the long run ? Time alone will show. We left Nagasaki with the typhoon signals flying, although we had delayed our departure hour after hour, and were willing to risk anything so long as we only got off. The whole manner in which the postponing was carried out was most significant. First, we were going to leave at ten in the morning ; THE VOYAGE 71 then, at the last minute, the agent, the sub-agent, and the deputy-sub-agent for the Russian must always work in numbers since he is not trusted alone came hurriedly on board and argued the point with the captain, the chief officer, and the chief engineer. It did not transpire whether it was a wretched port- engine which was causing the trouble, but after an hour's wrangle, during which our hopes rose and fell as the balance swayed this way or that, 1.30 was made the corrected sailing time. Two minutes before that fatal hour the company's launch with the various agents and sub-agents, all waving frantically, came off to us again and stopped us dead just as we were casting off. There was another conference, another postponement, and more talk. Finally, late in the afternoon, we did actually get off, but the frequently postponed departure and the hopeless indecision afforded us plenty of conversa- tion, and was an object lesson in the division of counsels and the lack of authority so noticeable among Russians. At the harbour entrance we passed the Glory and the Leviathan which had just arrived with Admiral Bridge. These two splendid ships, decked in their new grey-black war paint, looked veritable dogs of war and created an immense impression among the Russian travellers, an effect which was still further enhanced by our passing a Russian cruiser of anti- quated appearance a few chains further down. The Russians shook their heads, looked again and again, and confessed aloud that they were after all soldiers 72 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CH. I and not sailors. Not a nice outlook this, when supremacy is passing more and more from the land to the sea. Soon night came on, and with it the typhoon. The slaughter among the passengers was terrible, for the typhoon is not a pleasant thing even when you are sheltered by the islands of the Land of Morning Calm, and we rocked until we could rock no more. With tossing bow we headed through the Korean archipelago, our starboard engine pushing us along with groaning agony. In the morning there was one very pale and anxious man, but his pallor and anxiety were not the result of sea-sickness. He was a Russian naval officer travelling back to Port Arthur after a short furlough, and he groaned his explanation in perfect English : "All through the archipelago during the night at full speed ! I have just charted the coast myself, and I would not do such a thing for millions. The captain is crazy. Every minute I thought we would strike." It was but another instance of Slav un- concern, another exemplification of the careless " Nichevo." CHAPTER II DALNY THE DOOMED THE tail-end of the typhoon had left everybody longing for land, for the typhoon is a bitter fiend ; and when at eleven in the morning a yellow blur heaved up against the horizon, there was a general sigh of relief and the cabins gave forth their quota of seeming dead. There was not much to see, how- ever, for some time to come, and it was not until we were already several hours overdue that the coast line became clear. Once one got a fair look, there was no mistaking of what it reminded one. It was the cold, barren hill-land of Shantung over again, with deep, very deep, blue water right up to the shores. Bays and inlets cut the coast into a hundred quaint designs ; ragged cliffs of granite frowned down on the water, and a lurching junk or two beat in battle against the wind to gain the open. We rounded a corner, and then Dalny burst into view. I cannot say that the first view was impressive or calculated to thrill one with the coming greatness of the place. In the foreground you saw half-a-dozen giant dredgers, sparsely distributed over several miles 74 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. of water and looking very dirty, very forlorn, and very tired. Farther on there were two or three steamers moored alongside the railway wharf, all flying the Russian flag. Behind this you vaguely saw a confused mass of buildings, but what they were like it was impossible to imagine. Even a long way off, a clear impression of the loneliness of the place was somehow conveyed ; the distances were superb, but you felt something was missing. In truth something was missing, and that something is called success. Briefly put, Dalny is a failure. Eighteen millions of roubles have been pitched into the bay in Utopian dreams, or squandered on buildings, officially-built (save the mark !), that are already crumbling in the super-dry air. Eighteen millions have been lost, and irretrievably lost, as far as the Russian Government is concerned. But I am going too fast and am shouting before it is time. Our overdue ship slowly floated alongside the railway wharf, and a horde of dirty Shantung coolies pushed up massive gangways. We were not yet allowed to land, however, as our passports had to be vised by His Imperial Majesty's police ; for Dalny is in the leased territory of Kuantung, and is therefore subject to the full rigours of the Russian system. This visaing was a lengthy process, but it gave us an opportunity to view our surroundings. Alongside of us a triple line of track ran down to the end of the pier. The pier itself was a magnificent structure of solid granite, symbolical of the Russian indifference to the spending of money even when that spending II DALNY THE DOOMED 75 is sheer foolishness. On the further side of the pier were stretched immense godowns, roofed with cor- rugated iron and partly piled with chests of Yangtsze tea. Lying round in the utmost confusion were other rotting masses of miscellaneous cargo, and half a dozen red-shirted isvostchicks with their two- horsed droskies completed the picture. It was not gay, of that you may be certain, although the sun was shining brightly in an azure sky, and the hills stood out in the distance as clear as cameos. There was too much emptiness and too few men ; too much planning and too feeble results ; something wrong, although you could not precisely say what. Presently we got our passports and tumbled into droskies, which travelled rapidly over the bumps and ruts that the Russian calls roads, towards the town, distant a mile or two away from the wharves. The first inhabited street we passed was in its way surely unique. Briefly, there were rows of barrack-like houses about fifteen feet high, made of crumbling grey brick, with woodwork painted green or muddy-white, and unutterably dirty. Most of them were small shops run by Chinese or Japanese, and apparently eking out none too cheerful an existence. Further on we came to a large open space, called a square in the town-plans. Then we passed a bridge leading over an immense railway open-cut, which runs right through the heart of the town towards the sea. This open-cut is a thing to which I shall again refer later on. Finally we came to Dalny, the officially-built. I say 76 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. "officially-built" advisedly, for the Russian Govern- ment is responsible for the building of the only substantial part of the town. I puzzled for some time, trying to think where I had seen a collection of buildings resembling that before my eyes. At last I remembered. It was Tsingtau again, minus German thoroughness and attention to detail. But although the town engineer had followed German ideas and models, he was obviously not entirely tied to them. Every species of architecture abounded, from the Swiss cottage to quaint buildings faced with Italian loggias, from Elizabethan houses to strange fluted hybrids. The Government architect must have allowed his fancy to run riot with a vengeance, for never has such a heterogeneous collection been seen. Each house is different from its neighbour ; each strives after ideals that fight with those across the street. We had meanwhile arrived at the " Hotel Dalny," the premier hostelry of the town. A rather pretty if dusty verandah-restaurant in front of the hotel, decked with creepers and honeysuckle, led us foolishly to suppose that we had reached tolerable civilisation, but alas ! and alack ! when we inspected the one remaining bedroom, our brief hopes were dashed to the ground. Oh, that bedroom, if I but had the pen to describe it ! Musty, evil-smelling, and dirty, it was not a fit abode for a white man. The bed was the worst of all, and uneasy must be the head and uneasier the body that lay upon it. However, I was luckily the last arrival, and il DALNY THE DOOMED 77 so I made up my mind to seek a resting-place elsewhere. I proceeded to the " Hotel Russe," an establishment of the secondary class, and there I was shown a room that was more promising. Night, however, soon showed me that I had again been guilty of foolish if innocent thoughts, for I knew but little sleep owing to causes which it is unnecessary to specify to this much-travelled world. When morning came, I remonstrated with mine host told him solemnly that the insects were too awful. Mine host was, however, not apologetic ; he was irate and even more than irate ; indignantly waving his office pen above his head, he offered me one rouble per head for captured trophies ! I answered that capture was impossible, at least as far as I was concerned. "Ah, then," he said, "do not complain ; we are clean here, and we do not understand you Englishmen who are always fight- ing!" Late in the afternoon I hired a drosky and went to make further investigation. As in Europe all paths lead to Rome, so in Dalny are you inevitably drawn towards the great railway open-cut. It is indeed a wonderful sight, and one truly illustrative of the Russian Empire-builder. Four thousand coolies were at work digging, digging away and appa- rently trying to cut the Liao-tung peninsula in two. Already there is room for a dozen double tracks, but this not enough. Entire hills are being cut away, put into baskets, dumped into endless trains of open trucks and carted away rapidly towards the 78 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. sea. There the earth is used to fill up great piers and wharves built in shell with blocks of massive masonry which are still only half complete and require vast sums more to finish them. In the harbour itself, which could accommodate the fleets of half the world and the commerce of the entire East, gigantic dredgers are still dredging, and the great cargo-boats go out with other massive blocks of solid concrete to drop into the sea and build up the titanic systems of breakwaters planned by the man who wished to create a London of the Far East by sheer expenditure of treasure. Everywhere are the same strong armies of coolies, clumsily working under the lazy superintendence of lethargic Russian overseers, with no trade and no white population except Government servants. The Government-built houses have their bricks already crumbling, cracked by the fierce rays of the northern sun. The unofficial land bought up by eager speculators a year or two ago, on which houses had to be erected in consideration for the nominal price paid, is either covered with miserable shanties which have doubt- less managed to satisfy official requirements by a liberal use of the purse, or is littered with bricks of building operations suddenly stopped. The Russian Bear still goes on doggedly with his absurd official scheme, for it is too late to stop, and every extra disbursement means something in the pockets of officials to whom squeeze is as the breath of life. In the official plan of the town the "aspect" of the place when it will have been completed is glowingly II DALNY THE DOOMED 79 portrayed. Here is official Dalny with the Govern- ment offices and Government houses all grouped conveniently together ; there commercial Dalny with the merchants' and shopkeepers' streets standing in ordered ranks ; farther on the Chinese quarters ; then the harbour breakwaters, granite docks, electric power-houses, waterworks and such-like. Each has its place, every detail has been thought out, but of all these vast undertakings little is really ready. The speculator is disgusted, and so are all private Russians. The bi-weekly European express and the railway steamers remain the only raisons d'etre of the place. The streets are deserted except for a few dozen rickshas and half as many droskies. The very dogs look weary and seem to long for the days gone by. Occasionally, a company of infantry goes by or a sotnia of Cossacks canters wildly through the streets. At night the electric light sputters on desolation and deserted roads, and mocks the genius whose brain gave birth to them. On the hills which rise gently up from all sides of the town you see blotches of up- turned earth suggesting masked batteries, or the occasional gleam of a bayonet in the sun's rays. Of a Custom House there is no sign. I made inquiries, and vainly tried to see two officials who are said to be in town charged with the opening, but all without success. The story of the proposed Custom House is worth recounting. Every leased territory in China has its Chinese Custom House manned by Sir Robert Hart's men as a convenience to mer- 8o MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CH. n chants and trade ; so, since the Kuantung peninsula was leased, it was proposed that a Custom House should likewise be opened at Dalny, the commercial centre of Kuantung. Russia, hearing of this, promptly took steps. One morning in Peking, M. Pokotilow, the deus ex machind of the Russo- Chinese Bank, called on Sir Robert Hart, leading by the hand Russia's nominee. " This," he said, " is to be the Commissioner of Customs at Dalny ; he must enter your service." Sir Robert Hart, whose diplomacy excels even that of the Russian, though he be but an Englishman, bowed his ac- knowledgment and prepared to wait. Time in the Far East is the greatest diplomatist ; procrastina- tion defeats the weaving of a Machiavelli and outwits all. The Dalny Custom House will never be known. So everything in the town is dead or dying except for the Russian Government, its soldiers, and coolies. Three years' unaudited accounts, it is whispered, are frightening the officials with dread fears now that their protector is gone. Briefly, Minister de Witte's star has set, and with it that of Dalny, if it ever boasted of such a tangible thing as a star. No longer is it a sun of happy augury which shines above Dalny. Dalny is doomed, for the town is a failure, and Viceroy Alexeieff has stamped that failure further by declaring that Port Arthur shall alone be heard of in the Kuantung territory in five years' time. Who knows if even Port Arthur will be heard of then ? CHAPTER III PORT ARTHUR A BELL clanged lazily as we drove up to the Dalny station and warned us that we had but little time to lose. My companion, however, who was a Russian, smiled at my nervous haste and hinted that there was no cause for alarm, as Manchurian trains are nothing if not complaisant. It was true that we were too late to buy tickets ; instead of tickets we were given permits to mount the train and buy tickets at the next station ; but in spite of all this absurdly complicated procedure, this red- tapeism raised to the twentieth power, it was a good many minutes before the train actually started. The first- class carriage in which we duly installed ourselves was brand new, and smelt of it very much. The carriage was of the usual corridor type, and had half-a-dozen separate compartments beautifully upholstered and finished off in stained wood. Each compartment accommodated two people, and the pulling of a few levers and bolts converted the couch and the back of the couch into a couple of comfortable beds, placed one above the other. The Q 84 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. a local express and takes three hours to cover forty miles is surely typical of Slav slow-footedness. As we neared Port Arthur, the outward and visible signs of a first-class fortress became more apparent. It is true that military engineering has considerably altered since the days of Vauban, and that massive structures rising above the ground level are no longer much seen ; but still it was possible to realise how impregnable Port Arthur is even from the land side. Everywhere signs are seen which indicate the presence of masked batteries, and sometimes one was able to enfilade optically a vast trench. I have since learnt that there are four successive lines of entrenched works, stretching from two miles outside Port Arthur to far beyond the range of the heaviest siege ordnance, and that numberless de- tached forts cap these and render all attacks, in no matter what force, enterprises of the most terrible character. Common report has it that the Japanese Headquarter Staff has long made up its mind that only an immense sacrifice of life could crown a land attack with success, and that such an attack would entail a loss of from twenty to thirty thousand men. It is likewise said that the Russians expect and desire such an attack, and that a gap has been pur- posely left through which the assault would have to be made. This is, of course, copied from the original on the northern Franco- Prussian frontier, planned by the celebrated French general who was responsible for the refortifying of France after the disastrous war of 1870, which entailed the great THE AMERICAN VOICE IN THE MANCHURIAN QUESTION U.S.S. "HELENA" MADE SNUG IN A MUD DOCK FOR THE WINTER AT NE\V< II\V \\< ;. THE FAMOUS NARROW ENTRANCE TO PORT ARTHUR. Ill PORT ARTHUR 85 frontier rectification. Once troops, flushed with victory, have poured through the gap, after the sham retreat has been made, they would be caught in a vice by the enemy, and relentlessly hammered to pieces. So far as this deals with Port Arthur, it is of course but the gossip of the man in the street ; but it is hard to see, after having gone hurriedly over the ground, and noted the natural strength of the place, what other alternative remains. If Dalny is a dead city, Port Arthur is the exact reverse. It is bustling and teeming with life, and everywhere there are signs that much money is being spent and much profitably earned. The streets are thronged with droskies and rickshas, coolies and carts, soldiers and sailors, and finally with the much- despised and variegated civilian of the north. All are busy and have something to do. Three years ago there were but thirty droskies and a few score of rickshas ; to-day the number of carriages runs into hundreds, and the rickshas have multiplied in like fashion. Three years ago there were no hotels dreamed of, except wretched inns outdoing the doss-houses of Europe in stench and squalor. To- day a vast hotel built on a palatial scale is almost completed, and in three months' time the "Grand" of Yokohama will no longer occupy the premier place among the hostelries of the Far East. Port Arthur was without a creditable church, so the authorities decided that there must be a cathedral worthy of God and the Czar. A site has been chosen on the top of a hill, commanding a view for 86 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. many miles on all sides ; the hill has been pared off flat, and eighty thousand roubles expended on the foundations alone. In a year's time the Greek cross will crown a building costing millions, and symbolical of Russia's hugeness, but where the money comes from no one knows or cares. Old Port Arthur was cramped and shanty-like and the commercial popu- lation growing and waxing fat on Government con- tracts, so the construction of a new Port Arthur was no sooner thought of than ordered. Two miles away from the old town the new civilian and commercial quarter is now being rapidly built up. Broad streets and avenues are already there ; the hotel is almost completed ; banks and hongs are rising as if by magic ; scaffolding and beams choke each vacant lot, and in a year or so old Port Arthur, mostly composed of Chinese buildings, crudely adapted to Russian use, will be torn down and given over exclusively to the military and naval authorities. On the other side of the town is the Chinese and Japanese quarter. There you find your humble Chinese trader in his thousands and tens of thousands, not so humble, however, since he has learnt to kick and cuff like any Russian, cheapening his wares to crowds of coolies, carters, and who-not. Seven hundred Japanese are also there, engaging in every manner of traffic, and earning roubles where they could scarcely earn sen in their own country. The harbour is full of steamers, junks, and warships. Godown-room cannot be had for a fortune, and bearded Sikh watchmen guard countless stacks of in PORT ARTHUR 87 food-stuffs and drinkables sufficient for years. On the side of a hill, the viceregal residence of Admiral Alexeieff surveys the harbour, the forts, and the fleets. Right in front of the Viceroy's windows are the famous narrows of Port Arthur harbour, so shallow and so hemmed in by the neighbouring hills that a single battleship sunk with care would block the entrance for an indefinite period. To the right, Golden Hill stands up proudly with forts and batteries, armed with mammoth Creusot guns, defy- ing attack. Behind are other hills all crowned and capped with other forts. Bugle-calls and the gay music of marching bands break the silence, and give one the key-note of the place strutting militarism. Below in the old town, sheltered as best they can, are the vast warehouses of the commissariat, thrown open so that every eye may see the countless sacks of flour and grain, and all ready to provide the ten million meals that must be in store should Port Arthur be besieged and cut off. On the foreshore are huge stacks of coal and lumber ; nearer the Viceroy's palace, a single granite dry-dock with machine-shops busily whirring in the air. Isvostchicks flog their two-horsed carriages rapidly round corners, darting to and fro with unerring skill in and out of the traffic. Ships are discharging their cargoes with groaning choruses from the Chinese coolie-gangs. Every- body is in a hurry; everything is being rushed through rapidly, for who knows what the future contains in this inscrutable Far East who knows what is going to happen ? 88 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CH. ill Such is the Port Arthur of to-day, with the eventful 8th of October, 1903, drawing near very near. It is alive, armed to the teeth, provisioned for three years, defiant, sanguine. Port Arthur is symbolical of the Russian Bear, with paw raised ready to strike or be struck. The Bear has climbed down from the ice and snow of the bitter north, and will not move. PORT ARTHUR'S ONLY DRV DOCK. ANCIENT PAGODA AT LIAOVANG, A MOMMKM 01 KAKI.IKR CONMI-KRORS IN MANCHURIA. CHAPTER IV. SUNDAY IN PORT ARTHUR I WAS awakened in the morning by the booming of big guns and a noise of excitement in the town. I got up hastily and found that there was a regular battle in progress. The Russian fleet, which had come down from Vladivostock, was attempting to force an entrance into the harbour and the forts were replying to the enemy's fire with terrible salvoes of fortress artillery which shook the whole town. After lasting half-an-hour or so, all ended as sud- denly as it had begun and I heard afterwards that both the naval and military authorities of Port Arthur were thoroughly satisfied with the condition of the sea-defences and the consequent impregnability of the harbour. In any case, to guard against the un- expected, during the past couple of weeks thirty more heavy guns of about 1 5 centimetres calibre have been placed in position on the sea-forts, and one artillery officer was recently heard to declare that they had no more room for any more guns, and that, as it was, there was a heavy shortage in garrison artillery-men. Even if it is a different story in 90 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. Manchuria proper, there can be no doubt about Port Arthur's readiness for war, although that readiness may differ considerably from, let me say, a German standard of efficiency. To give an example. I witnessed the unloading of some of the new fortress guns I have just referred to, and it was certainly an eye-opener in many ways. Instead of hoisting these guns from the railway trucks in which they lay, they were carelessly flung off anyhow by fatigue parties, with the result that all their wooden-casings were smashed like so much match-wood, tubes dented, screws lost, etc., etc. This can hardly be good even for fortress guns, and how the Russians ever keep anything in working order must be a mystery to most people. Sunday in Port Arthur is not a day of misery such as one is condemned to in most places over which the Union Jack floats. On the contrary, it is a day of eating, drinking (very much drinking), and cele- brating the beginning of another week of more or less loaf for no true Russian really works, so long as there is the foreigner and the Jew. It is all very wicked, it may be, but it is infinitely more amusing and more human to pass the Sunday as the Russians do than in that most terrible Exeter Hall gloom and godliness of which all Englishmen wot. In Port Arthur you begin the day at mid-day or a little later, with a tiffin of imposing title but disappointing size. Saratoffs on the local Bund used to be the place to go to, but it has been lately eclipsed by the Nicob- adza in the New Town. IV SUNDAY IN PORT ARTHUR 9 t After eating a few Russian dinners and tiffins you begin to understand the true innate reason of the zakouska. 1 1 is not only not an appetiser, but it is even a de-appetiser, if I may be allowed to coin and explain a pretty word. To those who are ignorant and allow themselves to be imposed on, the zakouska is represented as the solid equivalent of and com- plement to that liquid aperitif, the glass of vodka, which precedes a meal so that you may the better enjoy that meal. You may possibly be induced to think this with the lapse of time, but so long as he preserves his independence of mind and stomach the intelligent man will recognise very rapidly the insuf- ficiency of the Russian meal if he attacks it from a purely European standpoint, and will understand the true significance of the zakouska. To begin with an imposing and really excellent soup and end sud- denly with the next course or the one after is a little jarring, and makes you remember bitterly that you have transgressed the unwritten law for you should have gorged yourself with zakouska and bread, and eaten the meat in your soup with defiant knife and fork to have satisfied the devouring appetite you suffer from in this splendid climate of the north. At least, this I learnt on my Sunday, and on Monday I ate like those around me. After your Sunday tiffin there are many ways of amusing yourself in Port Arthur, but you should go to the races if you are correct. Some blessed man conceived the happy idea of these Sunday races, during six weeks in spring and six in autumn, so 92 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. that Chefoo and Tientsin may send their jockeys to ride, and that all Port Arthur, military, naval, and civilian, may be free to watch them. From half- past one onwards all roads leading to the race-course are thronged with carriages and rickshas. Drunken isvostchicks perform miracles of driving, and seem to have but one object in view that of passing all other conveyances at the most impossible rate of speed. You reach your destination, however, always in safety, for if there is one thing your Rus- sian understands it is horses and their management. The race-course is charmingly situated a mile or two outside the town, on the parade-ground. It is, in fact, the outer rim of the parade-ground, duly staked out and roped off, with a funny, box-shaped grand stand, stuck in the wrong place owing to mili- tary exigencies, and with everything very impromptu and very countrified. A good-natured and jolly- looking general the Commissariat General is chairman of the race-club, and shakes hands affec- tionately with all Englishmen he meets on the course, doubtless with the idea of doing homage to the sport of kings. A military band was playing when we arrived, as only a super-music-loving people can play, and there was an air of gaiety about the place. In the middle distance two strangely-attired stewards were wrest- ling with the scales, and a little further on, in a ring perilously close to the band, was the horse-flesh of the meeting five China ponies and four walers. Add a few hundred people of all sorts and conditions iv SUNDAY IN PORT ARTHUR 93 in and around the grand stand, the quantities of soldiers perched on every eminence away from the course, and you will see the picture as I saw it. There was even a five-rouble pari-mutuel, where, after the usual manner of pari-mutuels, you either lost your five roubles or won back thirty or forty kopecks and your punt. In Port Arthur everybody backs the favourite, and the favourite always wins. Soon the racing began. It was not very exciting or very amusing, and there were only four races, with from two to three entries in each, but still it was jolly and rather like a picnic. There were women galore of several sorts and varieties, but in Kuantung and Manchuria the lady with a past is, with few exceptions, the lady who is always present. A singular code of etiquette is observed ; for instance, I saw a lieutenant just off his ship salute with great courtesy and give his arm to a lady of indifferent virtue. No one paid any attention to him, and he passed his superior officers and their wives with the utmost unconcern. Everyone does it in Port Arthur, so why be surprised ? Port Arthur winners meet with the applause they deserve, and everybody somewhat artlessly seizes the opportunity to offer everybody else within range drinks to celebrate each event. In Manchuria you do not say after the manner of Englishmen, " Have a drink," you simply drink, and then wait for the next bottle to be opened. Consequently, by the time the last race was over on the eventful Sunday I am speaking of, nobody wanted to do such a dull 94 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. thing as go home, and there was a general adjourn- ment to a bicycle track which, some genius had discovered, was about to commence operations. Another military band was playing here, and as we entered a race was just finishing. It was coldly received by the crowd, however, which was feeling supremely cheerful and wanted something funny to laugh at. As luck had it, we had not long to wait, for the twenty verst record of Manchuria was about to be attempted by a curious-looking young man. Most lowly Russians are born with their top-boots on, and forget to take them off the rest of their natural lives ; but the record-breaker was an excep- tion. He was mostly hair hair hanging down his back, his face, his arms, legs, everywhere, in fact straw-coloured, albino-looking, horrid hair, and he had no boots. He was also clad in diminutive pink tights, and he looked hungry at the start. The race began with the stroke of a bell, and the record- breaker, unpaced and solitary in his glory, started to sprint. Everybody somehow guessed from the beginning that it was going to be funny, and it was with a vengeance. After a few rounds the rider thought things were monotonous, so shouted to the time-keeper to give him his time. The time-keeper was diplomatic, and waited till he came round again, and then attempted to whisper it in his ear, so that the secret of his speed should not be lightly divulged. The results were dis- astrous. The record-breaker thought somehow that the time-keeper wished to Kishineff him (this SUNDAY IN PORT ARTHUR 95 was a happy delusion), swerved violently, nearly came off, and was for a time apparently quite hope- lessly tied up in his long hair. The crowd howled with delight and waited for more. Then the cyclist got thirsty, and called for a glass of water. It was handed to him as he flew past at fifteen miles an hour, and he proceeded to drink it with amorous glances at the ladies. Fancy a champion engaged in the heart-breaking process of lowering a short distance record drinking whilst he rode ! It would be impossible anywhere else ; it is quite natural amongst Russians, where the unnatural is the most commonly met with. On his returning the glass, the man who tried to catch it missed it, and it struck someone else on the head ; the house rose in its enthusiasm everybody wanted to give him some- thing, and he was invited to endless zakouskas, drinks anything, everything. The man who was hit accepted all the drinks, and could only be calmed by being made speechless. Such is life on the Port Arthur bicycle track. When we left we had only half an hour to our- selves, for dinner was soon due with more bands, more music, more everything. Every regiment has its band here, and as there are more regiments than men know of, you have music wherever you go. And such music ! They may not have the precision of German bands, that absolute excellence which only human automatons possess, but at least Russian musicians play with a swing and a dash that is de- lightful and soul-inspiring. Most of the bandsmen 96 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. are Jews, and are drafted into the bands partly owing to their national musical ability. After eleven in the evening the military bands stop, and the cafes chantants open their doors. Opening at eleven means an all-night performance, and indeed all the figurantes of a show are under stern contract not to evacuate their posts before four in the morning. And then what drinking, what spending of money ! Just as you must drive a drosky and not patronise the humble ricksha in the day-time, so at night must you only drink the sweet sickly cham- pagne of Messrs. Roederer & Co. at ten roubles a bottle, and nothing else. The man receiving a hundred roubles or so a month will be seen drink- ing it just as freely as the Government contractor with millions to his credit, and no one is in the least surprised. How does the poor man do it ? you will ask, and you may well ask. He merely squeezes like the Chinaman, only more coarsely, less artisti- cally, and with a cynicism and a disregard for the immorality of the whole thing that is almost discon- certing. If he is an officer and is hard up, his friends pull the wires and he gets the job of build- ing a fort or something else where he can get his fingers into the contracts. Or if he is a clerk, book- keeper or what-not, he hangs in with the other people and splits the extra profit he earns from his master by spending it freely with his friends. So the Sundays are gay, very gay, in Port Arthur and in the Russian Far East which boasts of a Viceroy. But if you go below the surface there iv SUNDAY IN PORT ARTHUR 97 is a rottenness and a hollowness which is not reas- suring for those who hope great things of Russia. Everything is on a false basis, on a false scale. There is reckless squandering of money by Govern- ment and people, barbaric profusion and ostentation side by side with almost primitive squalor. Men who occupy good positions, Government engineers, general officers, and merchants have houses of which a British mechanic would be ashamed. The outside is all right it is the inside which damns. An utter lack of comfort, privacy, or cleanliness is the distinguishing mark of all, and if ever man confessed himself unworthy of the heritage of the Far East, it is the Russian of to-day, who is reaching out, with cries (charged with bluff alone) that his Oriental destiny is fulfilling itself. H CHAPTER V BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY THE Chinaman has made a great name for him- self in business, and China is a place where men may deal for years and never know a pang. It is not so with the Russian, for he has never been looked upon in business except with suspicion ; but it has been left for the new embryo empire on Chinese territory to show how impossible it is for either European or Chinaman to put trust in his dealings, political, commercial, or any other kind. When the blight of 1900 settled on Manchuria, some beginnings in the new world trade I am about to speak of had already been made. Port Arthur and Harbin were towns of a sort troops were there ; and where there are troops, commerce, as it is understood here, commences. The position of the Russian when he pushes a step forward towards the southern goal is curious and without parallel among the other nations of the world. For the Russian comes like the model war correspon- dent, without a thing except the clothes in which he stands ; and instead of bringing things himself from CH. v BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY 99 his own home, he entrusts to others the task of procuring everything that may be necessary, making no stipulation as to where it shall come from. To buy from the outside world is absolutely necessary for him, since he has but little of modern make within his own borders. Now, when you begin empire-building extraordinary, you apparently need things without end. One want supplied merely shows the pressing need for something else. Years pass by, millions are carelessly and foolishly paid out, and still it does not seem to end. It is a splendid business while it lasts and if you manage to be paid before the crash comes. In Manchuria there were, and indeed still are, in a somewhat lesser degree, four great sources of business existing quite independently and apart from the real trade of Manchuria, and carried on either at the seaports or along the iron track. These are the railway, the navy and naval works, the army and the army commissariat, and what might be called the general provisioning. The railway means sleepers, iron, steel, iron roofing, locomotives, tools, timber, and a thousand other things which could be largely obtained locally if the Russian had the Englishman's resourcefulness in a new country. The navy and the naval works comprise such things as dock-making, machine shops, machine sheds, machine tools, steam launches, dredgers, pontoons, &c., &c. The army always needs absolutely everything, for it comes out practically unequipped for the H 2 ioo MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. new conditions of the service. As for general provisioning, there are fortunes to be made so long as you can supply the right brand of cham- pagne (extra sweet) and do not put too much saw- dust in the flour. These are, however, simply a statement of the main categories ; it is the methods to which I would direct particular attention ; so let us proceed to work and do business fortunately on paper. The first thing you must be armed with in Man- churia is a big pocket-book full of rouble notes. Unless you have this, you might as well take the first steamer and go home, for in the Russian Far East the axiom that money makes money is propounded in an odd way, and you must be prepared to accept the ingenious local reading or none at all. Assuming you have the pocket-book, what do you do ? You proceed to spend its contents apparently carelessly and without thought, but really on an admirable principle. You admit by deed that the pay of Russian employes, officials and high officers, in fact, of the whole official world, is on a ridiculously inade- quate scale ; that life is expensive and that contract- making is a legitimate source of revenue. For it is bona fide Government contracts, quasi-Government contracts, semi-Government contracts, and even demi-semi-Government contracts, which practically constitute all Russian trading in interesting Man- churia. As for the real trade of the country, neither the Russian, nor the merchant who has followed him, knows or cares anything about it. BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY Having duly ingratiated yourself with the official world both large and small, and engaged a poor, pale-looking person clothed in a uniform to act as your private intelligence officer, you calmly wait to see what the zephyrs, duly propitiated, will blow your way in this best of worlds. You may wait for weeks, and then suddenly one morning, as you are pondering over the curiousness of life and sharpen- ing your pencils for want of something better to do, your poor pale youth aforesaid will dash in on you with face aflame and eyes sparkling, and exclaim, " Contracts, contracts, much contracts ! 100,000 bags of flour for the army, ten locomotives for the rail- way, and 1,000,000 square feet of wood. Private tenders only." Ah, kind words, " private tenders only." For you have not to face the scrutiny of a righteous committee, each member of which is deter- mined that the others shall not make more than he does. The glare of publicity will not shed its fierce light on your shortcomings, on your private ar- rangements. You may work quietly and quickly alone, and provided that you are blessed with average brains you need have no fear. So to work ; count your notes and go forth. If you are well armed, the battle to be fought is already won. So, mounting your carriage, you begin your work for those contracts. It may last a day, two days, five days, a week, two weeks, who knows? The Russian is sometimes slow to act, even when his percentage is duly fixed, for he will always want more. Suddenly one night, it might even be 102 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. three in the morning, he makes up his mind ; con- tracts are brought to be signed, you sign them, and one-half is completed. In the old days, when both Port Arthur and Harbin were a good deal smaller that is, before the great invasion your chase after the contract was a matter of local interest. In Port Arthur, for in- stance, there was only one small circle of streets to drive round after the contract-givers. You began on the local Bund, stopped for a moment at the small restaurant where so many millions have changed hands, and took a hasty look round. No, your man was not there, so, saying " Go on " to the isvostchick, you went round and round that small circle. If you had not caught up the man you were looking for on the third or fourth round, you knew you were going the wrong way. So you stopped your carriage and started the other way round. Sooner or later you certainly came across the mighty one going in this direction. This gave a local interest in the affair, and was the daily play. Rivals would ask frantically "What is it?" and without waiting for an answer, would start the chase after the rouble too, even with the heavy time- handicap against them. Now, however, the growth of towns has stopped all that, and on the modern telephone you may accomplish in a few seconds what once took you hours of excited and frantic driving round a half-mile course. Those were the good old days of two or three years ago, already bemoaned by all. BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY 103 The contract duly secured means certain impor- tant things agreed to. It is sufficient to say that it has become an understood thing in Manchuria that number one of the department with which you are dealing gets seven and a half per cent, of the gross contract price ; that number two has his two and a half per cent., and that numbers three, four, five, and six, down to the very palest and poorest young man in the shabby uniform on four or five pounds a month, split another five per cent, among themselves. This fifteen per cent, is in itself no small amount to have to add on to a huge invoice ; but even this does not finish all. Nearly every- thing comes into the country by sea, for the railway is after all rather a make-believe, and only loves rich passengers and quick freights of the vodka type. Ships have to come into ports, and ports have port officers who are miserably poor, but withal have expensive tastes. So, unless you have a few thousand roubles handy for the port, these port officers may be your ruin, for they can very easily stop your unloading indefinitely until demur- rage kills you. So you must have your few thousands ever ready for eventualities, no matter how complete your arrangements may be. Prices, it is true, are not as exorbitant as they used to be. Money, so tight in other parts of the world, is even harder to find among the Russians of the Far East since the crisis. But, in spite of the dangers which immedi- ately menace them unless they obey the unwritten 104 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. law, sometimes men are found who absolutely refuse to be parties to Russian deceit, corruption, and fraud. A noticeable instance, though it oc- curred some time ago, is still the talk of Port Arthur, and men take sides and argue fiercely, not about the right or wrong of the whole matter, but merely whether it was good business or not. The thing occurred in this way. A big American house secured a giant contract for hay. Everything was settled ; the hay arrived, the transaction was practically finished when the trouble only began. That is the worst of it where the Russian is con- cerned you never know when you are safely out of the wood. The inspectors inspected the hay, fixed their commission among themselves, and sent a duly-authorised deputy to the offices of the big American house to receive the roubles. Imagine his surprise when he was told that the entire transaction was ended, the books closed, and that there was therefore no more money for anybody, not excepting the Czar himself. The duly-author- ised deputy stormed ; the agent of the big American house remained firm. "All right," said the Russian at last, "we shall see who wins." So he went back and nothing was heard for a day or two. Then a big departmental despatch came saying that as the hay was not up to standard and contained a heavy percentage of dirt, the entire consignment was rejected and delivery could not be taken. What could be done ? Nothing at all, for there is no appeal against the Russian Government, since v BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY 105 it can do no wrong ; and a loss of ,20,000 sterling had to be faced by the contracting firm a ruinous price even for righteousness. This sort of thing has been disgusting decent people more and more until the big American house has received orders to close up all its agencies as soon as it can collect its money, and others are rapidly following suit. But a more interesting and flagrant case, in which the Russian won, has gone down in local history and is worth repeating. Several thousand tons of Cardiff steam-coal had been bought by the Russian authorities and were being delivered when the senior engineer of the squadron in harbour descended on the managers of the contracting firm : " This coal you are selling the Russian fleet is good, very good, but it has one drawback, it is too cheap," he said. " Too cheap!" replied the astounded agent, " what do you mean ? " " You are selling for fourteen roubles a ton what is worth eighteen roubles a ton to me. Make out the contracts at the higher price ; I will pay you at that rate. Two days after the money is paid over to you, I will call at your office and you will pay me the difference between the original price and the one I have just named. It is my share." The agent, who was very young, refused point- blank. " All right," said the fleet engineer, " then your good coal is bad now, it will not burn. The Russian fleet does not like it." 106 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. The Czar's officer left irately,and the young agent cabled in despair to an older agent for instructions. The older agent finally came himself, and, as his firm could not face the loss of a broken contract, he had to order the younger man to give in. And do you know the supreme argument used by the fleet engineer, and one to which he recurred with parrot- like insistence, probably believing to this day that it won for him ? Hauling out a huge gold watch on which was a magnificent Imperial monogram, he cried bitterly in broken English : "I am the friend of the Czar ; when he was a young man and Czarewitch, and came out here, he like me and gave me the watch. He is my friend, please pay the money ! I am very good, the Czar he like me ; please pay me the money ! " Have you ever heard of such an argument ? On the principle that the King can do no wrong, it was undoubtedly a fixed idea with this officer of the Czar that erstwhile Imperial friends are above ordinary codes that an Imperial watch is a passport of respectability to all, and that it was miraculous, impossible, absurd that ordinary mer- chants should not recognise this excellent logic and bow to a well-reasoned decision. The unsophisticated will have realised what an extraordinary state of affairs prevails in this new-world trade. Americans are apt to talk of the wear and tear of life in American cities. It is nothing to the nervous strain of having busi- ness dealings with either Government or private Russians on or along the railway empire in 107 Manchuria. The prospective profits are, however, so great that the temptation to remain is nearly always too strong. Everyone is always going in for one final coup and then finish and home. Like all unwholesome speculations, the fever finally gains you until it becomes a mania and your departure is postponed from day to day, from month to month, and then from year to year. Everybody is anxious to make a pile rapidly and then to leave the sinking ship before the waves engulf it. Everything is for- gotten in the frantic chase after the travelling rouble. Morals are cast to the winds. Each night you are forced to go and drink champagne amidst sordid surroundings with the smell of top-boots offending your nostrils. You dare not halt a minute, for if you do you will drop out of the running and be known no more. Credit, extended to unlooked-for and dangerous propor- tions, supports the whole vain fabric and may collapse at any moment. To be seen is to be trusted. When you are not there, who knows what may not happen and what stories will not be circulated ? Only fierce wrangles succeed in extort- ing sums long overdue. The Government will not pay until the very last minute. Private contractors are worse and simply have no hearts at all. As for small merchants, shops, restaurants, and the minor fry, only blows will bring them to reason. All is honeycombed with bribery, corruption, venality, false accounts, and every deceitful thing. Every man is squeezing his neighbour for all he is worth. io8 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. Nobody will move until his palm has been greased. Chinese are aghast and ask how it is that their own officials have acquired such a name for squeeze, when in Europe squeezers and renderers-of-false- accounts exist to such an undreamt-of extent. From very top to very bottom, without exception and without one blush, this state of affairs is to be found in the boasted Russian Far East. Com- mercial travellers who arrived joyously by rail from Austria, France, and Germany a year or two ago mostly commercial travellers with hooked noses and who made contracts right and left with twelve and fifteen months' credit, are dismayed to find that there is little chance of their ever being paid, and trail the streets with downcast looks. Day after day men are " missing " mysterious disappearances, to find the clue of which you must look for the overdue rouble. Everybody is hoping that it will come out all right in the long run, and is meanwhile piling on the percentages higher and higher, so that if the crash really does come they will at least have something to the good with which to make their escape. This, therefore, is a rough sketch of Russia almost down to the warm waters. Since everything is seen in the bright rays of a sun that is scarcely ever clouded over, a moral disorder unparalleled in the history of the Far East is the direct result. The railway, the' army, the navy, the commissariat, merchants, traders, shopkeepers, all of them are v BUSINESS IN A NEW WORLD WAY 109 mere speculators, speculating with Government funds ; inflating credit until it is credit no longer but mere make-believe ; each determined that this golden East is going to make his fortune or that he will rot in the attempt. Sell up Government stores, take Government money, do anything so long as the roubles roll in ! All are hungry, and a few thousands won merely whet the appetite for count- less roubles more. Smooth Hebrews, basking in the sunshine of official favour, have won the most, but there are others. Young men who have little moral stamina are whisked in a few months from the pleasant dream times of youth into pale, over- strained men, their manhood sapped before it has grown mature by excesses thrust on them through force of example, and because they are determined to love Mammon alone. A hundred or even five hundred roubles spent in a night is nothing extra- ordinary for men whose legitimate incomes scarce exceed three figures in sterling per annum. Do not stop, for he who stops is trampled to death by the eager crowds which surge after. Meanwhile, the cunning ones are rapidly settling up at any figure. Square-jawed men are losing their determination under the strain, and feign a false gaiety to conceal the fear which gnaws at their hearts. After all, let war come, they think ; it is best for you and best for me. Perhaps after the deluge life will be worth living. It certainly is not so at present. CHAPTER VI ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN IF you stan for Harbin from Port Arthur, you are soon rudely reminded by the railway that you are slighting Dalny Dalny, the all-ready-built and not-yet occupied ; Dalny, the would-be terminus for the trade of a continent. To catch your eleven o'clock European express at Dalny you are forced to leave Port Arthur at half-past seven in the evening, without your dinner, and full of bile and bitterness against the world at large and the Chinese Eastern Railway Company in particular. Hardly have you left your station before your train stops stops dead, apparently with the idea of remaining there for ever. You wonder whether it is the mythical Hunghutzu at work, or the Japanese war at last. Just as you are getting desperate and contemplate returning to Port Arthur on foot or by trolley, you move on again, slowly, grudgingly, and with much squeaking protest from the wheels and couplings, but still you move on. After an hour or so you stop again in the middle of a valley closed in on all sides by hills that look like giants in the dark. CH. vi ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN in It is a station of no importance, and you learn you are only stopping to keep up your wonderful average of slowness. Then on again ; another step, a short agony of suspense, and finally you reach a junction where the branch line not the main line, mind you runs down to Dalny. At last you reach that haven of rest and steam right alongside the home-going express, which looks cheery, well-lighted, and com- fortable after your gloomy run in the dark. Above all, it has a dining car, a "wagon-restaurateur" to give it its official name, where you may get all manner of things, somewhat high-priced it is true, but infinitely good to eat after your furtive gnawing of wayside station delicacies. As all the world now knows, the European express trains leave Dalny twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and dump you in Paris or London, if you have any reasonable luck, well inside of eighteen or nineteen days. For fifteen hundred versts you run through Manchuria, see the country through your doubled-glassed windows, and, if you are of that respectable type of manhood, the globe-trotter, you return home with the trite tale that Russia has absorbed Manchuria. Nobody questions your right. Nobody is in the least surprised at what you say, for it is what they have been taught to expect and your statements merely confirm what every man has somehow vaguely thought for himself. But if any man, after having walked the streets of Canton or Peking and gaped at the sign-boards ii2 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. and spirit-screens, imagines he has absorbed the classical learning of China, he is speedily taught the error of his ways and is cruelly sat on by one and all. In Manchuria it is different. You see nothing except a railway track and a few dozen stations ; talk with nobody except a felfow-traveller from the other end of the world ; know nothing about a thousand things of which you should know a great deal to be of any value, and you are acclaimed a heaven-sent news-giver when you reach home. Such is the glamour of the Russian Far East. My tale, however, is different, but that will come in due time. Sharp on time our train steamed out of the station a monster Baldwin engine, one first-class car, two second, a dining car, one miscellaneous, ending up with the famous postal car, stuffed full with correspondence in a hurry to get home. There was no difficulty about room or over- crowding, for there were only seven passengers distributed over eighty berths. I thought this exceptional until I struck an American to whom the Chinese Eastern Railway is apparently a perpetual joke as a business undertaking. He assured me that the most he had ever seen on an express train was five and the least three ; that he was " in wheat " at Harbin and knew the railway ropes, and that things were evidently booming this trip. But then he was something of a professional joker. The home traveller is correct in at least one thing. The second-class car F'S 1 ^ ' .'. 4 1 ;' - VI ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN 113 provided by the Manchurian Railway is quite equal to the first, and if you can only avoid the pitying stare of the first-class attendants and find a place for yourself alone in the second, it is obviously a waste of money to buy first-class tickets. All night long we were steaming up the Kuantung peninsula, which is highly uninteresting from a scenic point of view, and is mainly a replica of Shantung province. You find the same sad- looking, treeless hills, the same stony clay soil, and wretched, hungry-looking people ; it is deadly dull, so I will not describe it. True Manchuria only begins far north of the leased territory, and is incomparable with the rest. At seven in the morning we reached Ta-shih- ch'iao, from whence a branch line runs down to Newchwang, twenty versts distant by the railway map. Ta-shih-ch'iao is a junction of the utmost importance, both strategically and commercially, and the Russians have shown their appreciation of the fact in many ways. There you will find railway repair shops, machine shops, an iron foundry, huge locomotive sheds (in which I counted on this occasion thirteen engines), godowns, barracks for a couple of thousand men, and, finally, a hetero- geneous collection of houses. Far behind all this you will see the walls of the native city which lives its own life completely separate and far away from the turmoil of the railway. A year ago, when I stopped at this station, a few miserable Siberian peasant women attempted i ii 4 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. unsuccessfully to sell us milk and eggs. To-day they have vanished never to return again, and the Russian has learnt that you cannot colonise where the Chinese thrive. Every inhabitant of the Russian settlements along the railway, both here and elsewhere, owes his existence and his daily bread to the railway and to the soldier, and to them alone. Destroy the railway, or stop its working, and automatically you starve every Slav south of the Amur. For, although the self-same Slav may not be actually a railway servant indeed, he may be very much the reverse in point of fact, he is living as a result of Government subsidy and war-scale wages. Think only of the Mesdames Sans-Gene in Manchuria, and the room they occupy. There must be thousands of them if there is a single one, and everywhere they crowd the streets and towns, jingling their soldier earnings, and represent Russian colonising. Then building is still going on everywhere along the railway, and when you build you require contractors and overseers, and other people to feed and board them, and yet others to provide them with drink and music, for your average Russian is not amused without much noise, and unless he can be both amused and get drunk, he will not work. In Ta-shih-ch'iao it was very evident that there was much military and other activity. In the event of war, the place will become a point of paramount importance, and although it is useless to hazard an opinion as to what extent it has been fortified, there vi ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN 115 can be no doubt that it would only be abandoned after the most desperate fighting. Once past Ta-shih-ch'iao, you enter the agricul- tural and strategically important districts containing Hai-ch'eng and Liaoyang. Here begin those vast grain-growing fields which stretch almost unbroken for two thousand li due north, and can provide food and fodder for countless millions of men and ani- mals. Here also run caravan roads north, south, east, and west, in fact, to every point of the com- pass ; but, most important of all, to the promised land of Korea. Invading or defending armies must use this vantage ground whether they will or not, and if the clash of arms is soon to be heard, it is upon this soil that will be fought most desperate engagements. Hai-ch'eng is but a few dozen miles from Ta- shih-ch'iao. It is a hsien or district city, and is admirably adapted for defence. Low hills surround the four walls of the town, and it was in this neigh- bourhood that great slaughter was seen in the Chino- Japanese war of 1894-95. Until quite recently the Russians do not appear to have given the place the strategic importance it de- serves ; but as we steamed into the Hai-ch'eng station, it was evident that they were hastily at- tempting to make up for lost time. Apart from the permanent brick barracks and buildings, lines of muddy white tents flanked the railway on either side, and regiments of Shantung coolies were engaged in throwing up shacks and makeshifts I 2 n6 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. sufficiently strong to withstand the rigours of the winter. It was impossible to make any reliable estimate of the number of men in camp, for figures fluctuate almost daily and accurate calculations become impos- sible. It is sufficient to say, however, that there are approximately two or three thousand men in and around Hai-ch'eng, and that these numbers can be doubled or trebled in a few hours by drawing on neighbouring forces. It should be noted, however, that every man is well within the thirty-verst rail- way strip, over which China has by treaty irre- vocably conceded to Russia the right of policing without any stipulation. From Hai-ch'eng there is cheap water communi- cation with the outside world through an affluent of the river Liao. North of Hai-ch'eng you sweep on mile after mile through country which in late autumn is wonderful to the eye. Everywhere is the same cultivation of each foot of fertile soil, and everywhere, as we steamed along, stood giant crops of kaoliang, or the tall millet of the north. To the east were range upon range of hills and mountains, sometimes advancing a little nearer to the railway as if angrily challenging its right to monopolise the soil over which they have watched so long, some- times receding so far that one's vision confounded the dull grey of mountain peaks with the dazzling blue of the horizon. A bright, clear sunshine flooded the land, and occasionally the sight of great country carts, with teams unyoked and joyously VI ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN 117 scampering in the fields, added to the general impression of peace and plenty. What a land flowing with milk and honey is Manchuria, even if there is a winter of terrible cold and blizzards ! Some four hours after leaving Ta-shih-ch'iao we reached Liaoyang. Liaoyang is a walled city famous for its fruits, its samshu, and its industries. It has a population variously estimated at from fifty to a hundred thousand inhabitants, and in Fengtien province it is only second in importance to Mouk- den, the capital of the province. A lofty pagoda stands like some sentinel outside the city, which is seen indistinctly from the railway through screens of elms, willows, and pine trees. Liaoyang has an ancient and interesting history, to which I have referred elsewhere. Liaoyang station showed even more military ac- tivity than Hai-ch'eng. There were soldiers in tents and soldiers in railway trucks in fact, soldiers every- where ; and an enthusiastic Russian assured me that there were 15,000 men in all. This was, of course, absurd, and only an example of the monumental and childlike ignorance you find among a people with whom a critical discussion of Governmental or poli- tical affairs is generally taboo. The best-informed Chinese state that the Liaoyang figures vary from two to four thousand men and that latterly many have been drawn away to Hai-ch'eng. A few miles north of Liaoyang you pass a branch line which leads to the Yentai coal mines. These coal mines, which, under good management, ii8 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. could supply fuel for almost every engine on the Chinese Eastern Railway, have been reduced to a more or less hopeless condition. A few weeks ago all non- Russian engineers, after being for months hampered in their work, were summarily dismissed, and the Russian engineers lost but little time in celebrating this auspicious event by having a first- class fire-damp explosion in which fifty or sixty men were killed or wounded. And yet the Russians are demanding exclusive mining privileges in Manchuria ! Some sixty miles from Liaoyang lies Moukden, the capital of the province. Formerly the railway, after the manner of most Russian railways, made a broad sweep away to the west so as to avoid the city, and it could only be reached after a most tire- some and bumpy journey by cart over fifty or sixty li of assuredly the worst roads in the world. Now, however, they have corrected this, and the new Moukden station is but two miles beyond the city walls. With Moukden itself I shall deal separately later on. At the station there was nothing to see and no garrison beyond a few files of Manchurian railway guards. Somewhat extensive barracks are being erected, however, behind the station, into which perhaps a battalion of men could be squeezed. There was little animation beyond the usual Chinese crowd gazing curiously at the train or shouting wares in pidgin Russian. From Moukden onwards we jogged at our un- varying express rate of fifteen miles an hour, always vi ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN 119 through the same rich and pleasant country. As we got farther north it was not only the usual village or small town that we saw. Sometimes nestled at the foot of a hill and embowered in clumps of willow and elm was to be seen the residence of a vanishing breed, the Manchu country squire or magnate. In the old days even his womenfolk used to go forth mounted on stout ponies and hunt with the hawk or bow and arrow. The iron horse, with its hideous screech, has frightened almost all that away now, and the unromantic but frugal Shantung coolie is completing the destruction of Nurhachu's descen- dants and their old-world ways. Every couple of miles or so long stretches of broad Chinese cart roads winding through the country and crossing the railway over level tracks were to be seen. Each approach was carefully staked with stout posts painted grey, and at nearly every crossing stood teams of fettlesome and healthy-looking ponies, har- nessed to great country carts stacked mountain-high with kaoliang and wheat. Harvest was beginning. As the day wore on we passed T'iehling, a town, as the name shows, in the middle of the iron- producing districts. Tall hills were to be seen beyond the city to the far east and still farther on, dim looking mountains stood right up to the horizon line. T'iehling station, as far as my investiga- tions showed me, was but feebly garrisoned and that only by railway guards in the workmanlike green and black uniforms. As we swept farther north it became more and 120 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. more apparent that the great concentration is all south of Moukden, and that for several hundred versts, in fact, say, to Harbin, the railway is prac- tically unprotected. A couple of hours after T'iehling we drew up at K'ai-yiian, another town of some importance, and again, except for some building at the station, there was no animation. After a protracted breathing space for our ponderous and infinitely tired engine, we moved on once more with the dignity and slowness which so becomes the Manchurian express. During the eighty miles to K'uan-ch'eng-tzu I saw only two things of interest ; one a Tientsin juggler somehow stranded far from home, performing at a little wayside station, and the other a Chinese soldier in full war paint belonging to the vanguard of the K'ai-yuan horse contingent, as his red coat plainly informed one. The latter became justly indignant when I asked him if there were any more like him left in Manchuria, and he assured me that he was one of a faithful band of two hundred " who all had their horses," and that he was travelling back free gratis on the railway after a short furlough. When I further asked him whether his Kopitan (phonetic for Russian captain) was Russian, he refused to speak and marched off indignantly to my great grief, as I wished to have his opinion on the evacuation and sundry other things. The stars were already shining when we reached the station at K'uan-ch'eng-tzu. If you are bound vi ON THE ROAD TO HARBIN 121 for Kirin city it is here that you must shoot off your traps and ride or cart it over pretty bad roads. There were large Chinese crowds at the station, all waiting for the trains, for K'uan-ch'eng-tzu is a bustling and important city of a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants, and is, in fact, the greatest Mongolian and Manchurian mart in the north. Strictly speaking, we were no longer in Manchuria but in Mongolia ; for although the district in which K'uan-ch'eng-tzu lies is administered by the Kirin provincial Government, it is really Mongol terri- tory. A few long-coated, bare-pated Mongols strolling about the station emphasised the fact that only a few miles to the west were the rolling grass lands from whence the China pony of virtuous memory is exported in crude condition to the eighteen provinces and beyond. If you are apt to be irritable over Manchurian railway speed during the day-time, it is not so at night. The gentle rocking of the heavy train and its slow, deliberate manner of stopping and starting is eminently conducive to sound sleep, and so much so in my case that I woke up in the morning to find that we had already crossed the upper bend of the river Sungari and were only three hours from Harbin. At the first opportunity I got out to stretch my legs, and our engine immediately attracted my attention. Stacks of roughly-chopped logs were piled on the bogie and showed that we were so far north that we had crossed the coal-using line and 122 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CH. v were burning wood. Where this line exactly is, it is hard to say, as railway officials are not communi- cative gentry ; but, roughly speaking, it may be said that out of Fengtien province the Chinese Eastern Railway has to burn wood, and plenty of it. This cannot go on indefinitely, for Chinese dealers have told me since that wood is becoming dearer and dearer and that they have always to go farther and farther afield to draw their supplies. If the Manchurian railway authorities would but hire half-a-dozen Scotch or English engineers, in two years they would have coal to throw at the birds, for there is an abundance of coal to be found everywhere in Manchuria. But instead of this they think only of building super-solid stations at primitive out-of-the-way places, and thus squander- ing every paper rouble (with a commission bitten out of the edge) that comes into their hands. Suddenly, as the clock struck a quarter to eleven, and before we knew it, we were entering Harbin, and puffing and panting we drew up proudly, as befits an express that has accomplished over 800 versts, or some 500 miles, in 36 hours. CHAPTER VII ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT To the average man, and certainly to anyone who does not know his Far East from the inside, the name of the Russo-Chinese Bank suggests nothing much in itself, and is indeed quite innocu- ous. Even in places where it actually functions, it is ostensibly a bank established with the philan- thropic object of facilitating commercial intercourse between Chinese and Russians a financial institu- tion concerning itself with the squeezing of big exchange profits out of dealers in roubles and dollars, and nothing else. But, know all you who are not already informed, that this prince of modern and up-to-date banks is divided into two great departments the financial and the political and the first somewhat coarsely masks the second, which is the reason-of-being, the leading motive of the whole ingenious creation, and that it is this bank which, more than anything else, is responsible for China's troubles during the past eight years. Indirectly, the bank may be said to be a manifes- tation of the Russian's very real admiration for 124 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP English success in the Far East, that astonishing success which has attended the spread of Anglo- Saxon trade and ideas under the aegis of England's undisputed naval might. When Prince Uktomsky toured the East with the then Czarewitch, almost exactly ten years ago, nothing impressed him so much as the results accomplished by Anglo-Saxon energy at those great marts, Hong Kong and Singapore, and in a lesser degree at the China and Japan Treaty ports. All the observations of this great empire-builder were carefully noted down, and after he returned to Russia, time only was needed to see his ideas take practicable shape. Uktomsky fully realised that unless Russia took early steps to combat the rapidly-growing influence of Englishmen and English ideas, propagated, not by Government help, but indeed rather against the Downing Street wishes, the Far East in a few short decades would be so saturated with Anglo-Saxon methods, ideas, and standards that no other culture or power could hope for success. Speedy action was therefore necessary, and speedy action soon came. The Chino-Japanese war interrupted the im- mediate prosecution of Uktomsky's schemes, but no sooner was that far-reaching little war ended than the Russian bugles rang out clearly for such as had ears to hear. The message of those bugles is told in the eventful years of 1895 and 1896. I have already elsewhere discussed in detail some features of these years, but others have yet to be vii ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 125 told. What diplomacy can effect has never been more brilliantly demonstrated than in those times. 1895 should have been a glorious year for one Power alone in the Far East Japan ; instead of this, Russian diplomacy converted Japan's victory, which was such a terrible menace to all St. Petersburg's expansionist schemes, into a Russian paper success, and left the Island Empire, though its martial spirit was still throbbing with exultation, at heart solely alarmed by the unexpected turn of affairs. Two names must be writ large on the Chinese canvas of '95 those of Cassini and Uktomsky. These two men did more than any others to set the snowball rolling down from bitter Siberia on to China a snowball that at this very moment terrifies all, onlookers and the men who launched it alike, with the hidden possibilities of the future. Cassini, the Russian Minister at Peking, began in that year those plottings and coquettings with sorely-offended Chinese and Manchu officials which are responsible for the apocryphal Cassini Convention ; and, in December of the same year, Uktomsky organised the great politico-financial Russo-Chinese Bank and secured his Imperial master's consent to the prosecution of numberless schemes, which embraced the ultimate destruction of China, and the reduction of Japan to the rank of a secondary Power. And so successfully were Uktomsky's ideas carried out that the Russo- Chinese Bank, nominally with a capital of but 126 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP fifteen million roubles, or roughly a million and a half sterling, has in eight years done more in the Far East than the British Government in half a century ; has secured vast concessions ; and has opened fifty branches in widely different places which stand like the points of cavalry patrols from Central Asia to the sea of Japan, showing observers the vastness of Russian aspirations ; for where those points are, one day will the Russian tricolour be hoisted. Brutally put, the Russo-Chinese Bank is merely the weapon forged by Uktomsky to assimilate China, which, by elevating Russia to the proud position of the arbiter of Eastern and Central Asia, is to reduce automatically all the other Powers, but more especially England and Japan, to positions of secondary importance. The task which confronted the promoters of this political concern when it was launched on the world was no mean one, for there were enormous odds to be fought against ; and it is only fair to acknow- ledge that the greatest diplomacy and generalship of the intriguing sort were shown from the very moment of its official birth. At first it was made to appear that Petersburg capitalists were dis- inclined to find the necessary money to insure a successful flotation of the Bank (although no flota- tion was really necessary) ; and consequently that continental Europe had to come to the rescue. This was a most clever move, for as soon as Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and other great centres were vii ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 127 financially interested in the success of the business part of the venture, the sympathies of Europe could be counted on ; and Russia relies greatly on continental sympathy. The fifteen millions were very easily found were indeed many times over- subscribed when they were called for ; and on the eventful loth of December, 1895, an Imperial Ukase, launched from St. Petersburg, announced the organisation of the Bank. The words ''organised under Imperial Decree " which are used by the Bank, are practically the only true and open ones it has ever spoken, for theyrnost aptly describe what was actually done, and hint at the secret arrange- ments between Government and financiers which were undoubtedly made. The promoters of the Russo-Chinese Bank borrowed the idea of their institution directly from the well-known Chinese model : for in China big undertakings of modern date are nearly always semi-official and are directly supervised by the Central Government. In China, as soon as a brilliant idea germinates in the brain of a yellow genius and is approved of by the powers that be, officials are appointed to organise the undertaking planned, while contributions are invited from the mercantile classes ; then, when the capital needed is fully subscribed, the shareholders or bondholders appoint representatives to look after their own interests and to secure that a fair share of the profits accrue to them, whilst the actual management remains in the hands of Government officials. The profits earned are largely possible 128 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. because the Government is directly interested in the welfare of the undertaking and therefore gives it something in the character of a monopoly. In the case of the Russo-Chinese Bank, a similar procedure was adopted. The Petersburg Govern- ment had vast plans in its portfolios, and needed a convenient covering both to mask them and to make them feasible. That covering was provided by the genius of an Uktomsky and his brilliant lieutenants, and other men were not found wanting to work out the minor details. Once the Russo- Chinese Bank was floated if such a term can be applied to a Government concern it was necessary to have an efficient working plan, and no time was wasted in finding that plan. It was decided that in each branch of the Bank, beginning with the head office in St. Petersburg, and ending with the most insignificant outpost-bank, there were to be two departments one concerned with actual banking and the guarding of the interests of the bona fide shareholders, the second with the winning of political influence by the obtaining of so-called concessions in mining, railways, lumbering, and any other field which suggested itself to the fertile brains of the directors. The whole undertaking was soon crowned with success, for the Russian Government can, and does, find brilliant agents to carry into execution its projects of world-empire. The very first thing the bank had to do was to turn its attention to Manchuria. The results of the vii ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 129 Chino- Japanese war had given a terrible shock to the astute gentlemen who dwell on the banks of the Neva. Relying on their agents in the Far East, they had supposed that China would inevitably defeat Japan ; and when the reverse occurred, and it seemed as if the Island Empire was about to close the roads down to the Yellow Sea by the seizure of the Liaotung, Russian bureaucrats were aghast, and lost no time in organising the triplicate of powers which forced the retrocession of the peninsula on Japan. The rapidity with which this was effected is astonishing when one remembers with what slowness diplomatic pourparlers generally proceed. The Shimonoseki Treaty of Peace was signed on the i7th April, 1895 ; the ratifications were exchanged on the 8th May, and only two days after this ratification a Japanese proclamation was issued stating that Japan was prepared to return the ceded Liaotung territory to China owing to the friendly representations of neighbouring powers. Russia's terror is plainly shown by this haste to restore the status quo ante, and it is interesting to recall that when Li Hung Chang, the Chinese Plenipotentiary, was demurring about signing away Chinese territory, Colonel Wogack, the Russian confidential agent, arrived at Shimonoseki and told him to put his signature without fear to any instrument he liked, as Russia was coming to the rescue. These things hastened the work of the Russo- Chinese Bank, and by September, 1896, nine K i 3 o MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. months after its official birth, this political weapon secured the concession for building the trans- Manchurian railway, and the Manchurian question had been opened, although English statesmen remained incredulous. The Russian Government was fortunate in having a most redoubtable agent in the Bank in Peking, the great Monsieur Pokotilow, through whose untir- ing efforts so much has been done, and the bulk of the far-reaching railway concessions arranged. When he arrived in Peking in the early days of 1896, he was a young man in the thirties. When he left the scene of his activity in 1903, seven years' work had given him a bent and broken appearance, and strangers supposed him to be a man of sixty. In this manner do Russian agents work. The first concession obtained by the Bank was but the prelude to a second, to a third, and then to many others ; for the chief idea of the planned Russian conquest was to envelop China and her outlying territories with a strategic network of rail- ways, which would choke the officials and people to death as soon as it was deemed prudent to throw off the thin disguise. The second concession, tied up in a single clause of the Port Arthur leasing agree- ment, was even more important than the first. To arrange the final details, Prince Uktomsky himself visited Peking in 1897, an d brought verbal instruc- tions to the Russian Charg d'Affaires, M. Pavlow, and the Bank manager, Pokotilow. Prince Uktom- sky's diplomacy had already succeeded in persuading vii ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 131 Mr. Victor von Grot to join the Bank and proceed to Mongolia, where he was to become the com- mander of the line of advanced posts which were being established. Mr. von Grot was a splendid acquisition. But thirty-three years of age, trained for ten years under Sir Robert Hart, he had given unmistakable signs of extraordinary ability, and was therefore a marked man to the Russians. He was accounted in Peking facile princeps in the difficult art of Chinese despatch writing, and was one of those curious men to whom work is the reason of existence, and recreation an unknown thing. But he had an even more important accomplishment. He possessed a complete knowledge of the myste- rious Peking world, and had been so closely con- cerned with the preparation of documents of great value, for several years previous to his enlistment in the service of the Russo-Chinese Bank, that he thoroughly understood the local atmosphere and the working of all the many political levers. And it is significant that, only a few months before his resig- nation from Sir Robert Hart's service, he had trans- lated an exhaustive memorandum for the Chinese Government, containing remedial suggestions under every head, calculated to prevent a recurrence of disasters similar to those of the years '94 '95. Five months after Prince Uktomsky's visit to Peking the Russian cruisers steamed into Port Arthur, and a few weeks after this the famous leas- ing agreement was openly signed. In article 8, the Chinese Eastern Railway was soberly given the K 2 i 3 2 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. right to build the Central Manchurian Railway, and connect the leased territory with the trans- Man- churian section. No sooner was the agreement signed than another crop of agencies sprang up in Manchuria ; after a brief spell, others were opened in Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan, and by 1900 the Bank had reached the high-water mark of prosperity. Meanwhile, the shareholders who had supplied the initial capital, and through whose efforts further funds were obtained in the shape of loans to carry into execution the various concessions obtained by the Bank, were not disappointed with their investment. The Bank profits of the purely business side of this hybrid institution, in spite of bad and unscrupulous methods, were large, and big dividends therefore possible. Bonuses and private " chances " were likewise given to the big share- holders, mainly continental banks, and everything done to satisfy the worshippers of Mammon. All seemed rose-coloured, and still further profits possible, when 1900 interrupted the triumphant march. But 1900 only meant a temporary set-back, and as soon as things began to settle down again the greatest efforts were made to extend the field of the Bank's operations in Manchuria. By 1901 there were ten branches in the three eastern provinces, and the leased territory and many others were planned. There can be no doubt that at the beginning of 1900 there was a great deal of talk concerning the advisability of directly taking over VII ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 133 the Manchurian finances and ousting the Chinese officials. But the lack of trained men, the opposi- tion of all classes of the native population, and the vastness of the undertaking, made the directors hesitate. Fortunately for them, the signature of the Evacuation Protocol of April, 1902, demanded an indefinite postponement. Had the Russian Govern- ment decided to embark on this doubtful policy, a fresh rebellion in Manchuria would have been a foregone conclusion, and the country devastated far and wide. But although the political department of the Bank was constantly urging the establishment of more branches and a general opening out in Manchuria on a far more extensive scale, the business managers were not sufficiently convinced of the financial stability of a concern which was something of a banking abortion, and on their refusing to agree to this, an internecine war began. The heavy interest and discount rates charged by the Bank where it held a monopoly allowed profits to be made, but those profits were "ragged " were always too big or too small and did not read well in the half-yearly returns. Some branches in Manchuria steadily lost money and only showed a credit in their balance-sheets by an inadmissible juggling of figures ; one branch even had to be closed ; and other offices, for instance, the Port Arthur and Harbin branches, made too much money to suit the Government. At Newchwang the im- pounding of Customs revenues allowed a juggling in 134 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. silver, which was vastly profitable, but this was only a temporary profit. As time went on, the consider- able internal friction I have spoken of became more and more evident, and it seems useful to explain the curious recruiting which takes place of the Bank's personnel and the rivalry which must result from such a system. Two separate and distinct bodies are empowered to appoint representatives and employes. The first is, of course, the Ministry of Finance in St. Petersburg. In all the Bank's important branches this Ministry is represented by carefully selected men who are in direct communication with the Russian Government. The exact extent of their powers it is, of course, impossible to gauge, but there seems some reason to believe that they practically control the Bank's general line of action and policy at the posts at which they are stationed, and rank above the purely business managers. They do not interfere with the routine work of banking, but the general funds are controlled by them, and they keep a jealous eye over everybody. It would also seem that in places that are looked upon as already " captured," for instance, in Manchuria and Mongolia (although this capture is a mere myth), the St. Petersburg Ministry of Finance takes over charge from the business representatives and attempts to have only its own nominees in such offices. The second body which appoints the men to carry on the ordinary banking work is the special vil ON THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT 135 committee of shareholding banks sitting at Paris. Continentals of all nationalities are selected by this committee, having apparently due regard to two things ignorance of banking methods and a parti- ality to Hebrews. It is commonly reported that numbers of clerks employed have quite ele- mentary ideas on the subject of accounting, and that books are kept in a manner which would be deemed highly suspicious in a common-place English bank. But in spite of all that has been done in every department of the Bank's business, the French aphorism is amply demonstrated, that, whilst genius creates ideas, hard work alone brings them to a successful conclusion. Genius there has been in plenty from the very beginning of the Bank's short history, but hard work, except by your Pokotilows and von Grots, has been conspicuous by its absence. And one of the unfortunate results of too much genius is the almost certain absence of routine and system the jumping straight from an idea to its conclusion without a substantial structure being built beneath to support it and the leaving to a few men what should be understood by many dozens. In Manchuria it would seem at first sight that a portion of Uktomsky's idea in creating the Bank has been realised that Manchuria is lost to the world and gained for Russia. But probing beneath the surface shows one at once that empire- builders should employ capable architects to see that foundations are not sunk in sand, and that although what has been created by the Bank the Chinese 136 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CH. vn Eastern Railway with its hundred solid stations, im- pregnable Port Arthur, bustling Harbin is very striking to the eye, there is something unnatural in the whole thing, some curious setting aside of inex- orable laws which must lead to trouble and an eventual toppling over. CHAPTER VIII HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY ALL the world knows of the mushroom growth of Harbin. Hardly six years ago, two railway engineers, mounted on Siberian ponies, ambled down to the solitary Chinese distillery on the banks of the Sungarr and pitched their tents. To the west of them the Hsincr-an Mountains offered o such formidable engineering difficulties that railway construction and movement of materials were im- possible without a base nearer than the far-away Siberian frontier. To the East, with the exception of a few rolling plains, it was the same story. So the site near the broad Sungari was chosen from whence to begin operations, for the Sungari flows calmly into the Amur a few hundred miles away to the north. Stern-wheelers could thus tug barges laden with materials from the Siberian sea- board right into the heart of Manchuria, and so lighten the construction work enormously. Unfortunately for the Russians the Sungari hap- pened to be in flood at the time of the founding of Harbin, and no less unfortunately the railway 138 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. engineers did not happen to notice it. Old Harbin was therefore built with lavish expenditure, the rail- way was pushed forward with ferocious rapidity, and it was not until some time had passed that the engineers discovered that the Sungari was a good many miles away from their budding city. This at least was the semi-official explanation which I was given on the day of my arrival, accounting for the existence of two distinct and separate towns, known as Old and New Harbin respectively, in a place, as I have already said, hardly six years old. Then there is a settle- ment which I promptly labelled Rational Harbin, of which I shall speak later on. The station of Harbin presented the most astonish- ing and bewildering activity the day we arrived. Dense crowds jostled one another, and shouted and cursed and laughed. Shantung and Chihli workmen coming and going formed the vast majority of this motley and odoriferous human concourse, but there was no lack of other varieties. Mongolian horse- dealers with long coats, rough top-boots, and queue- less heads gazed dog-like at the puffing engines. Yellow-clad lama priests rolled strings of beads in their hands and muttered, possibly prayers, but most probably curses, on the heads of the lusty Chinese railway police, who, clad in semi- Chinese soldier attire, wielded unmercifully heavy sticks on all who did not keep moving. Buriat cavalrymen, with high Mongol cheek-bones and a purely Chinese aspect, swaggered about in their Russian uniforms. Red-turbaned Sikhs from down-town stores and vin HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY 139 godowns chanted Hindustani at one another; and Russian officers of every grade and size ran about looking for their wives or belongings, saluting and clicking their spurs endlessly at one another. Inside the station rooms and restaurants it was even worse. The crush was so great that at times one became hopelessly tied up in men, women, and children, and could not move for minutes. It was a Thursday, and expresses had arrived from three directions, south, east and west, and a number of ordinary trains were about to start. Harbin was trying hard to keep up its reputation of a railway centre, and was succeeding admirably as far as I was personally concerned. I looked hard to see some of the true, genuine Siberian emigrants, with whom the papers say Manchuria is shortly to be peopled, but not an emigrant was there anywhere. All were of the middle or lower classes, city birds unmistakably, such as they are here, and my friends who met me at the station were mildly amused when I asked to be enlightened. " They are all store-keepers, workmen or mechanics," they explained ; " no peasants come here." So, sans what I was looking for, I was forced to stow my vile body amidst my luggage in a more or less dangerous drosky. Before I could speak we were galloping towards Rational Harbin at break-neck speed. I asked not a question, for I am somewhat tongue-tied in Russian, and it is wisest not to speak when your words are few. I was able to observe that the 140 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. horses were worse than the horses of Port Arthur, that my trap was number 500 and something, proving that droskies are more numerous here than in the naval port, and finally, that my istvo- schick was clad in cast-off civilian clothes, and not elegant, as he is at vice-regal headquarters, in long blue coat, red sash, and white cap. To the right of the station, as you drove towards the Sungari, the new town was rising or had risen. Conspicuous amongst all the new buildings were two as yet hardly completed one the railway administration headquarters, and the other the new railway hotel. Both are enormous masses of red- brick and stone, and tower above the hosts of smaller buildings stretching in every direction. Everywhere building is going on ; every place is crowded with Chinese workmen. Meanwhile we were driving rapidly over roads that compare un- favourably with those of Peking. What carriage springs are made of by Russian and Siberian builders, I would dearly love to know, for a drop of a foot or two mto a rut while you are going at some twelve miles an hour, which violently slams the body of the drosky down on to the axle-bars, is simply nothing, and merely leaves your istvo- schick delighted and calling for more. Clouds of black dust are raised by yourself and everything that passes you, for the roads are simply broad tracks of original Manchurian soil, uncorrupted by metalling or doctoring of any sort. Half a mile from the station you cross the viii HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY 141 railway over a rough wooden bridge a couple of hundred feet along. Underneath runs the railway track, or rather many railway tracks, through the usual enormous open-cut. This insensate love for open-cuts seems to be common to all Russian engineers. They will never tunnel if they can possibly help it, but always open-cut, even when they are dealing with hills or mountains. It must be some two or three miles from the railway station (which, by the way, is a purely temporary structure) to riverine or Rational Harbin. After you have passed the railway bridge you cross a desolate waste, mostly decorated with empty tin cans and inartistic rubbish. Then you come to the streets, such as they are. First, very dirty small houses and shops which had two-foot broad wooden pavements covering up a prehistoric system of surface drainage. Then better streets with bigger houses, cleaner people and less Chinese. Finally, you reach the most civilised part, with good shops, much building going on, and the Sungari a few hundred yards off. This, however, is not a portion of New Harbin, although it is only half- built. It is a purely unautho- rised version of the town, for the Government has decreed just where New Harbin shall be, and nowhere else. However, commercial and other interests are more powerful than any government, and the man who has any sense will continue to buy land near the river, where, as in China, will always be the scene of activity. 142 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. The name of my hotel (save the mark !) I will not divulge, for my hosts were passing good people, and I am about to damn their beds and rooms more unutterably than anything has ever been damned before. That bed I slept on, what tender memories it left, both mentally and corporally ! It had the outward aspect of the latter-day mattress, but the inward and actual virtues of the stone-age couch. It was harmless to the eye, but not so to the touch. Innocently snuffing my candle too soon at night, I stretched out my hand and struck the bed. Result, one broken finger nail and many severely wounded. So do not trifle lightly with the Harbin mattress ; it is capable not only of assuming a defensive attitude, but one of absolute offence. It will be a potent factor in the coming Japanese war if it comes. Others have often described the horrors of Russian beds, but those in Manchuria have to be seen to be believed. There is, I feel certain, nothing like them in the whole world. And then the rooms ! One jerry-built box, twelve feet by ten ; very soiled furniture, an unspeakable strip of carpet, a tin basin, one chair, and an atmosphere resulting from the windows remaining shut ever since the house was built. Also, mentally add a stream of unclean per- sons who have peopled that room incessantly with- out its having been swept for four years ! After this you will do well not to stop in Harbin until the rail- way hotel is built. The midday dinner ended, I chatted with mine host. He was communicative and gloomy. Dull vni HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY 143 times and many bad debts were, he alleged, his present portion in life. In the old days in Harbin this means two or three years ago the profits were great and rapid, but now everyone was hard up and money very tight. Government officials were getting timorous about their accounts ; people were building their own houses ; and altogether he was indignant with kind Providence. " The Chi- nese," he said, " have got all the money. We have been spending millions, hundreds of millions, and what have we got for it in return ? " What, indeed ? But it is at least a hopeful sign when people, and Russian people at that, start asking such a pregnant question at such a time as this. Presently I drove out to see the flour-mills. The greatest of these is the Sungari mill, which has a capacity of 2,500 poods a day, or say roughly, 100,000 pounds of flour turned out every twenty- four hours. There are four mills working at the present moment, and they work without stopping from one end of the month to the other. Nearly all of them are practically on the river banks, and are fitted with the latest American or European machi- nery. Several others are going up, and by 1904 Harbin will be turning out nearly a million pounds of flour a day. What interested me most was the little pioneer mill of the place now closed down, weary from nearly five years' incessant work. This mill was put up in fear and trembling by cautious and not over-rich speculators soon after the first sods of the railway had been cut. It cost but 144 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. 12,000 roubles, or .1,200. It was worked night and day until it could work no more, and it had such a dazzling success that from its profits many acres of priceless riverine land have been bought and paid for, a new mill with a capacity of half a million bags yearly erected, warehouses, staff buildings and quarters built, and finally several hundred per cent, in dividends distributed. Of course, after this a host of imitators have sprung up, but these must be content with sound business profits and nothing else. Manchurian grain five years ago cost twenty-five kopecks a pood, to-day it costs sixty-five, a rise of over 150 per cent., and it is still rising. At any rate, I can vouch for the purity of Harbin flour. The miller makes four grades, two for exacting Europeans and two for less discerning Chinese. I ate my dinner at the back of a mill, and I can almost truthfully say I dined off bread. What bread ! It is so sweet and pure and light that you can eat on for ever, blessing the generous soil which can grow such crops. If the railway would only learn sense and forget that it is a strategic line, all the Far East might eat of this finest of flour, and suffer less from dyspepsia. An American in Harbin assured me that the Harbin mills were producing stuff superior to American winter wheat flour and he added that he held no Manchurian mill shares. He was, for the time being, "travel- ling in champagne " the best of all things to travel in along the railway empire. THE SUNGAKI AND HAKKIN IN WINTER. ()N THE SUNCARI. vin HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY 145 As I was so close to the river-bank, I proceeded to explore the Sungari in a mild sense. When I said that the mill properties abut on the river, I was guilty of an inaccuracy. I perceived that there was a narrow strip running all along the Harbin bank reserved for the railway. A huge earthen embankment had been raised here which serves a double purpose that of penning in the river during flood time, and of providing track-room for a double line of rails. From the top of this rampart the view was splendid. To the north, distant half a mile or so, the great Sungari railway bridge rears itself com- mandingly above the level of the surrounding country, a monument to the good work the Russian can do when he for once forgets the paper rouble. Massive piers of granite masonry, looking snow white against the muddy waters of the river, sup- port span after span of huge iron girders painted a clean chasseur grey, and a train rumbling over this engineering triumph with a distant screech looked by comparison like some puny worm wriggling rapidly away, ashamed of its diminutive size. On the river itself crowds of shallow-draft stern - wheelers, flying the railway or the Russian flag, lay moored side by side with still more numerous junks. The junks were choked with grain or firewood, and the steamers with cargoes of sawn timber and Russian stores. Crowds of coolies ran down the embankment and returned groaning and panting, L 146 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. laden with staggering weights. Below the embank- ment, on the town side, mountain upon mountain of firewood and lumber was being stacked, for winter was approaching rapidly, and in three weeks the river would be frozen to a depth of several feet, and all water communication interrupted for nearly half a year. In the flour-mill yards, carts could be seen discharging cargo after cargo of Manchurian grain, two or three tons at a time, and galloping off for more. Scores of men and boys were breaking open the hempen bags as fast as they could and pouring the contents into those enormous mat-made recep- tacles built up gradually from the bottom, such as the Chinese store grain in all over China. The mills are greedy monsters, and such is the local demand for flour that buyers literally fight with one another at the very gates, contesting for the privi- lege of purchasing with all the vigour of American wheat pit operators. From the embankment Harbin stretches out before you like some lumber- ing, careless monster in patch-work clothes, and you wonder what would happen to the world were the men who bred this giant to acquire the capacity for orderly organisation which is now so conspicuous by its absence. Turning to have one last look at the river, I counted the steamers ; twenty-seven were lying moored to the banks and ever so many more were puffing up and down stream. The junks were an impossible task, so I returned to my carriage. We whipped on towards old Harbin and once more I vin HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY 147 marvelled at the springs. Tell, oh, tell, the secret of the steel process which gives birth to such toughness ! Soon we left the streets of Rational Harbin, where grammaphones and diamond necklaces are sold next door to pauper volka-booths, and passing through unfinished miles of the new town, we reached the open plains. Away in the distance I descried the abandoned city. An hour's jolting and we were there. It was not an inspiriting sight, for the similarity between dead men and dead houses is too marked for it to be pleasant. Old Harbin is, however, not quite dead, for there are apparently still a few luckless inhabitants left, but in a year or two it will have rotted away and will be known no more. As I returned, we passed a regiment of Siberian infantry-men marching steadily with their long, slow stride and singing lustily some song of their plains, company after company taking up the refrain and chanting it back with admirable voice and rhythm. No man in the world can sing like the Russian soldier, and his choruses have a curious sad note in them all, even when they are of victory and the confounding of all the enemies of the Czar ; a sadness which makes everyone pause for a moment and think old memories and of days gone by. Even the Chinaman stops his foolish talk when he hears the singing, and looks with big open eyes. Has it perhaps struck some chord, the exist- ence of which he has never suspected ? or is he L 2 148 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. merely calculating how much rice it takes to make men sing so lustily ? So I returned to Harbin, thoughtful and a little sad. Who is to conquer in the climax of national anger, hatred, and greed, which must come some day and tear this fair country ? Harbin is in the very centre of Manchuria, and, being the key of many hundred versts of railway, and the brain which orders the coming and going of every truck and waggon, it, even more than Port Arthur, is a place which will be reached for at all costs by the enemy. Its downfall would be the Sedan of Russian Far Eastern dreams, and even the Russian officer allows that the open plains which surround it can never be adequately fortified. To-day it has a Russian civilian population of nearly thirty thousand, inhabiting a vast scattered mass of houses rather than any organic city. In five years' time, over two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese have congregated here, and although many are migratory birds who go south to Shantung with the cold weather, they were all there for the summer census, and must be taken into account. Harbin has flour-mills, and saw-mills, and brick kilns. It is Russia's distributing centre for her troops, her provisions, her ambitions, and her canards. Inside of Harbin you feel that Russia has captured Manchuria ; once outside you know that this is but an idle dream. Twenty millions of Chinese surround it on all sides. Twenty millions vin HARBIN THE RAILWAY CITY 149 are waiting with Oriental indifference, and are meanwhile garnering in all Russia's gold. This is Harbin of to-day, Harbin while there is still peace in the land. Let war be but declared, and all will be changed. Your Chinese will disappear, conjured away as if by magic ; Russian men, women, and children will float down the Sungari once more on giant rafts and lighters as they did in 1900, fleeing the Boxer wrath. Harbin will be deserted, its houses abandoned just as they stand. Harbin knows this, and thinks this anxiously and daily in its secret heart. Russian Manchuria is something of a myth made possible by gigantic bluff. It is a remnant of 1900 and China under foreign occupation. Even if there is no force used, Chinese ingenuity alone may push the Russian back to the Amur. CHAPTER IX MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA STARTLING stories have from time to time found their way into print describing the results which Russian enterprise has already succeeded in accom- plishing in mining and lumbering in Manchuria, stories sometimes even supported by so-called circum- stantial evidence ; but in spite of all this, careful investigation reveals a very different state of affairs. Briefly, very little of value has been actually done by any Russian company in Manchuria, and for the major part things are as nebulous and as vague as everything else about which I have written, or am about to write. An exception must be made in the case of gold-mining in the Kuantung territory, to which I shall refer in due course ; and so delighted are the Russians with the feeble results accomplished in the leased territory, that they already speak of the advisability of establishing a Mining Board to control this great industry. Before the Russians came to Manchuria, the Chinese Government was itself the biggest mining corporation in the Three Eastern Provinces. The CH. ix MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 151 plan on which the Peking Government worked was as follows. A territorial or other official would report that a certain district was reputed rich in mineral deposits. On his petition being handed in, the Governor of the province sent it on under a covering despatch to Peking, praying for Imperial sanction to ts ou ku, or invite share subscription from the trading classes, so that exploitation might take place. Immediately an Imperial rescript was received, sanctioning the undertaking ; by a system of active canvassing, shares were taken up by wealthy merchants, and capital, which might range anywhere from ,10,000 to "100,000, was collected. The company organised on this basis was one of those curious concerns which had no counterpart in Europe until the creation of the Russo-Chinese Bank. Although the capital subscribed was private money, the management was distinctly official, and specially detached officers were employed, protected by strong guards of soldiers, to carry on the actual working of mines opened. Each year a regular sum was set aside for the interest account, and the balance, after the soldiers had been paid and the numberless local officials' demands satisfied, was handed over to the Central Government. From the fact that the interest usually paid remained the same, no matter what the mine profits might be, it appears correct to describe the certificates issued to the subscribing gentry, in exchange for capital supplied, as bonds rather than share-warrants. The most important gold-mine in Manchuria is 152 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. the Moho mine, on the upper Amur. This mine is situated in the same regions as those once exploited by the so-called Republic of Sholtoga, and is not far from Albazin. The last time the " republic " was wiped out was in 1889, and the reason was not so much Chinese official indignation at this invasion of Chinese territory, as the fact that the Moho mines could not be satisfactorily worked with a community of freebooters in their vicinity. The Sholtoga Brotherhood paid very high wages to the Chinese workmen whom they so badly needed to help in their mining work, and protected them by a regular system of fortifications. Consequently, the Moho mine management had great difficulties in retaining the labourers they recruited in Southern Manchuria ; and Li Hung Chang, who was as- sociated with the Moho mines, and actually over- saw their working for a time, determined to exter- minate the unauthorised promoters of rival enter- prises ; and a little effort on his part succeeded in accomplishing that result. The actual amount of gold annually extracted at Moho is quite impossible to ascertain ; but, until quite recently, there were several thousand workmen em- ployed there, guarded by a thousand infantry and cavalry, all of which points to a very large produc- tion. Chinese shareholders or bondholders have told me that since 1900 there have been no divi- dends, and that it was believed that, previous to that date, the average annual output was valued at two million taels, or a quarter of a million sterling. ix MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 153 North of Tsitsihar, along the valleys of the upper Nonni, there were also a number of semi-official mining camps, and in Kirin province, near Sansing, two more semi-official mines. The deposits worked were all dry alluvial, and the methods employed very primitive. In Fengtien there were likewise a number of semi-official ventures in the districts of T'ung-hua and Huai-jen, near the Yalu, but these were abandoned some years ago, and the rights acquired by a British firm at Newchwang. Again, north of Moukden, there were at various times many thousands of men employed in gold-washing on a ticket system, and previous to the Japanese war there was also a good deal of digging in the Kuantung territory. But, apart from all these semi- official enterprises started in the manner I have de- scribed, there have always been numbers of private mines in Manchuria ; and these, again, have been exceeded by the many groups of illicit gold-washing communities to be found in many of the gold-bear- ing valleys. The export of gold through the New- chwang Customs has sometimes reached several million taels in a single year, and the precious metal which finds its way out of the country in this man- ner only represents a very small part of the actual amount won. China is reputed to produce two millions sterling a year of gold, and practically all comes from Manchuria. Since 1900, how- ever, most of the official gold mining has stopped, but the extracting of iron ores near Tiehling has continued uninterrupted, and recommence- 154 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. ment on the Government gold mines is daily expected. The Russians, when they entered the country in force in 1900, were fully aware of the mineral wealth of Manchuria ; in fact, they were so much aware of it that they grossly exaggerated all reports received from prospecting parties, and painted the country in their letters to their friends and relatives as a verit- able Golconda, where all might become rich with but little work. The first result of this was the influx of numbers of Siberians from the Russian Government mines on the other side of the Amur men who expected to pick up nuggets in every river-bed. Parties ex- plored some of the country adjoining the Amur and a portion of Kirin province, but although they brought in many samples of gold-bearing rock with beads of free gold to show the sceptical, not one of them became rich, or could even survive a few months' expenses. The next people to take up the search, when the first were exhausted, were richer individuals, who sought to locate deposits, and then obtain Chinese official sanction in the shape of permits, granting sole mining rights over extensive areas before sink- ing any capital or beginning work. The best known " concession " of this class has been derisively nick- named the "Grand Dukes' Concession," and covers about twenty thousand square miles of Kirin pro- vince, and is held in the name of the two Grand Dukes who are interested financially in the Chinese ix MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 155 Eastern Railway. It is an undoubted fact that the Kirin military Governor granted a provisional per- mit a couple of years ago, allowing prospecting to be undertaken within this area ; but he did so with the full knowledge that his permit was useless with- out the Imperial seal. In spite of this, however, the Grand Ducal agents have not made much use of their opportunities, and nothing has been done except perhaps a little timber-felling. The Rus- sians in Manchuria allege that a mining concession also confers the right to fell timber, and so timber is felled to a moderate extent. But although timber-felling should be controlled in Manchuria by the Chinese territorial officials, as a matter of fact, any one who undertakes it on a small scale, and pays the recognised squeeze, is allowed to do so without interference, for the eastern forests of Man- churia have enough wood to last for centuries, and the Russian action is therefore without significance. Apart from this one concession, there appears to be no one else in Manchuria who has even nominal gold-mining rights. I am told that notwithstanding this, some small works have been started near San- sing, but they are quite without importance. In the extreme north, owing to the abnormal winter, a considerable outlay is necessary before any results can be obtained, and there are no Russians who are foolish enough to do this until the political horizon is vastly different. In the Kuantung territory a little progress has been made, and there are actually two gold mines 156 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. where crushing has commenced. These are the " Austra " mine, which has a twenty stamp mill with ores running two ounces to the ton, and the " Marco Polo " near Port Arthur. In neither case, however, is sufficient capital available to allow of proper development, and the results so far obtained are very poor. Turning from gold to coal, it is much the same story. Along the thirty verst railway strip within which coal mining is permissible, there are extensive coal basins in Southern Manchuria. The Yentai coal mines, north of Liaoyang, should by this time be raising quantities of coal, but bad management is responsible for a complete failure. These mines were worked by Chinese previous to the coming of the Russians, and have been acquired by purchase by the Chinese Eastern Railway. They lie in the centre of an enormous coal-basin, probably covering- several thousand square miles of country, and suffi- cient to supply the country with fuel for centuries. North of Moukden there is another coal mine in the Fushun district, and in Southern Liaotung, a third one at Wa-fang-tien. All these mines should be raising quantities of coal, for they were opened up years ago by Chinese, and a great deal of tunnelling done. As a matter of fact, the coal raised is insuffi- cient to supply even the southern section of the Central Manchurian Railway. The Yentai output some- times reaches the fine total of 100 tons a day ; Wa- fang-tien fifty tons, and Fushun practically nothing. Apart from these three mines, other seams have ix MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 157 been worked in an aimless and shiftless fashion by the same owners, the Chinese Eastern Railway, and then abandoned for want of competent people to direct the opening-up. The Russians seem in- capable of coping with such difficulties as water and subterranean fires, and hopelessly give things up as impossible immediately they encounter anything but the very plainest sailing. The two Kuantung gold mines and the three Fengtien coal mines are therefore the only mines which are being even nominally exploited in the whole of Manchuria, for the Sansing venture is too insignificant to be seriously spoken of. The Russo- Chinese Bank has had such bitter experiences in Mongolia that it is unwilling to finance even semi- Government ventures in Manchuria except under direct orders from headquarters ; and apart from the Russo-Chinese Bank, a few foreign commercial houses in Port Arthur, and the Harbin mill-owners, there is no one with any capital worth talking about along the railway empire. It is interesting at this point to remember that Mr. Alexander Ular has supplied a leading London review with details concerning the conquest of Mongolia by gold-mining concessions obtained through the agency of Mr. Victor von Grot and the Russo-Chinese Bank. There happen to be in Port Arthur and Harbin several men who were em- ployed on these Mongolian concessions, and in spite of Mr. Ular's rose-coloured accounts, they all con- fess that they had to evacuate the country and crawl 158 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. into Manchuria in a starving condition, without having unearthed the riches reported to be lying at their feet. The bank lost three million roubles in the venture. Mr. Victor von Grot was ruined, and the politico-financial institution has therefore had a bellyful of mining experiences which should last it for many a long day. Glowing stories of the Ular character should be received with caution in London, where the actual conditions in Mongolia and Manchuria are not completely understood. As the bank will not be tempted to invest further in this field, the foreign commercial houses and the Harbin millers have been approached, hat in hand, and a few thousands obtained, which have been sunk in the preliminary development work. Nobody is very sanguine, however, nor is any real success ex- pected so long as the present uncertain conditions prevail. The Grand Duke's agents have tried to enlist capital in European Russia, but none is forth- coming. Well-informed men say that so many fortunes have been lost in Urals during recent years that Russian capitalists understand the word " wild- cat " as well as the sharpest operators in the Jungle Markets. Turning to lumbering, it is much the same story, although a certain amount of timber has been actually felled and carted away. The big company is, of course, the Yalu Lumber Co., which is just as much a Manchurian as a Korean venture. The com- pany has an imposing head office on the Port Arthur ix MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 159 bund, so it is permissible to treat it under the present heading. The company's chief agent is Baron Gunsberg, so well known to everyone in the Far East ; and he and Monsieur Pavlow are engaged in unremitting wire-pulling to get things put on a more solid footing on the Korean side of the Yalu. Everyone is fond of saying that it is merely a political undertaking, that the company never ex- pected to make any money, and that figures should not be quoted. This is, however, incorrect, for the Russian Government is highly anxious to acquire the entire Yalu lumber income, now in the hands of the native dealers, which is said to amount to about a million sterling per annum. The Yalu Company, although it is, according to Russian accounts, so purely political, is already in difficulties, for it is reported that there is a trifle of four million roubles to the Company's debit, and that there are directorial troubles over the ques- tion of the divisions of spoils which threaten to upset the whole concern. Not being able to hit upon a working plan which produced a reasonable amount of lumber, let alone income, and with the Port Arthur head-office clamouring to know where all the millions had gone, the Yalu agents had a brilliant thought. They decreed that all Chinese rafts floated down the Yalu should be brought to them, so that they might be taken over at a fixed valuation. This has worked after a fashion, and several million feet of wood have been successfully corralled during the past half-year. A great part of i6o MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. this is now lying on the Port Arthur foreshore. A big saw-mill is also said to be in process of erection ; but this should not needlessly alarm Far Eastern dealers. It is likewise interesting to learn that the Yalu Company is also engaged in mining that is to say, it has a mining engineer an Italian in its employ ; and that constitutes mining in Manchuria according to the Russian ideas. Mines, according to this Italian gentleman, are not a very rising market in the Yalu valleys. One evening, after his arrival from the Korean frontier, he became very entertaining in his description of Russian ideas concerning the earth's hidden wealth. "They are so funny," he said, with his fervid Italian accent and his broken English. " They ask me where is gold ; I said I do not know. Then they become very angry, and do what English- man call ' Goddam.' I answer we must look pros- pect ; they say no ; they have said there is gold, I am engineer, I must work it ; if not, I must go home ; so I go home. Ah, they are very funny, the Russians ! " So even the most optimistic man cannot really say that much progress has been made in either industry in Manchuria, and the whole thing is but another dream a very extravagant and ex- pensive dream. But some day, when the Russian is beaten out of Manchuria, vast fortunes are going to be made in Manchurian gold ; so, oh, London Stock Exchange ! ix MINING AND LUMBERING IN MANCHURIA 161 when the South African markets have become pos- sible again, and the crisis in the far East is ended, remember this corner of the world, and be quick to act. There are plenty of Englishmen who can give you the necessary information, and are praying that Manchuria will not be forgotten. CHAPTER X HARBIN BY NIGHT THE sun had scarcely set in the far-away West, more distant here to the eye on account of the vast plains which surround the city, before the tempera- ture dropped with a suddenness that made one shiver. The day had been warm, almost too warm, in the sun, and even summer clothes did not strike one as being incongruous, although in three weeks there would be ice on the Sungari. Once King Sol had disappeared, however, the thermometer shot down remorselessly twenty-five .degrees, and as the night wore on it got colder and colder, until freezing point could not be very far off in the small hours of the morning. Your early supper finished, you do not go wisely to bed in Harbin (as doubtless you ought to), for the real life of the place, such as it is, only begins with the lighting of the lamps, and the aphorism concerning Rome applies with special force to Harbin, since the beds are too miserable to be invit- ing. The stranger in Port Arthur is apt to be sur- prised at the rate of going which he finds in the CH. x HARBIN BY NIGHT 163 fortress city ; but if he has friends there they will tell him, with meaning looks, " Ah ! but you should see Harbin." Since I was now in that delectable place, I was determined to earn merit by beginning at the beginning and finishing at the bitter end, cost what it might. Nine o'clock found me, therefore, with others, at the theatre, for Harbin boasts of a theatre, where not only are comedies and tragedies performed, but also divine operas. To-night, how- ever, they were burning incense at the shrine of Thalia, goddess of comedy, and so I looked forward to some hours of sleep. It is difficult to laugh when you do not understand, and the thick air of a Russian interior always induces slumber, if not asphyxiation. At the door we met with a serious difficulty ; the ticket-office man was overwhelmed, bitterly put out, he assured us, but there were no more seats, and he could do nothing for us. It is curious how often this happens in Russian Manchuria, how often cruel fate condemns you to disappointment unless your pocket-book happens to be there. The leader of our party sighed bitterly and deeply, opened with no undue haste the private door leading into the box-office, and disappeared for a brief space. Whilst I was still looking on wonderingly, and meditating deeply on the curiousness of things, he reappeared holding a stage-box coupon in his hand. Yes, he said, we had been singularly lucky ; one box, almost the best box, too, in the theatre, had been overlooked ; the ticket-clerk was sure, M 2 164 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. quite sure, that it had been reserved that he would get into trouble through reselling it to us ; but that for the time being we might occupy it, provided we left after the play was finished, and did not cart it away with us. This much I gathered, but it is best not to investigate too closely when the golden key has accomplished its task. Meanwhile, we made our way into the gardens, for the theatre is but one of the manifold attractions in this Harbin establishment, and outside, amongst dusty trees and glaring lamps, you have broad promenades, cafes, juggler shows and other things. The Russian must be amused or he will die of ennui, and so he amuses himself as best he can even in the centre of Manchuria. Polite Harbin was all there, either seated at little tables, with overcoats on and looking mighty cold, or circling round and round the walks waiting for a bell to ring or something to begin. The distinguishing characteristic of a Harbin crowd, as opposed to a Port Arthur crowd, is that it is almost entirely civilian, with but few bright uniforms to enliven it. A Caucasian, clothed in his handsome, mauve- brown national costume, and with tall Astrakhan cap, arrogated to himself the entire attention of my unworthy eyes. I mistook him for at least a general of wild irregular cavalry, and was bitterly disappointed when I was assured that he was a most commonplace Harbin merchant, interested in carpets. Fancy a carpet merchant with the air of a conqueror and the clothes of a Genghis Khan ! x HARBIN BY NIGHT 165 Presently a bell rang to inform us that the local Coquelins and Tooles were ready to amuse us. I was more than glad, for the pleasures of drinking Roederer, extra-sweet and treble-sugared, in the open air with an overcoat on, were beginning to pall on me. Drink we had to, however, for money earned during the day must be spent at night in Russian Manchuria, or else you will fall under suspicion. Harbin's playhouse is an evil reproduction of the one you will find in Saigon, if fortune wills that you should ever turn to French Indo-China. It is not unlike an oblong box, and apart from the seating on the floor, there is only accommodation in a broad gallery which runs round the whole auditorium some fifteen feet above one's head. The boxes are like little cattle pens, and are only separated from one another by partitions three feet high, consisting merely of rough wood unadorned in any way. It will be seen that things are somewhat primi- tive. You likewise keep your hat and coat on in your Harbin theatre, and if you feel so in- clined, although it is strictly prohibited, you puff at a cigarette behind your hand. The boxes are always select, very select in fact, and du cott des dames are very high-priced. The front rows of the stalls were filled with gilded youth of the place, smartened up and attempting to appear most reckless dogs ; for to enchant the ladies and win their smiles in Harbin, you must be devil-me-care above your fellows. Behind them sat a class of 166 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. more humble persons, la petite bourgeoisie of Harbin, which in day-time concerns itself with minor trade, and in the evening is too worn to look anything but tired. In the gallery were booted gods, smelling most persistently of leather, and accompanied by their women-kind, who, gay with coloured handker- chiefs tied over their heads, chatted incessantly. The audience was good-humoured to a degree, and intensely enthusiastic, for your Russian has generally the best heart in the world, and is only eccentric be- cause he is the creature of a Government which is intent on arresting his civilisation and natural de- velopment. The play was not very interesting to me, and was punctuated by huge intervals, during which one sat outside and gazed at open-air jugglers, or listened to a military band. On the promenades there was always the same crowd slowly circling round and round, and raising pillars of dust. Soon after eleven the play was over, and the curtain fell on actors and actresses clothed in last century fashions. Straight-fronted corsets and bell-shaped skirts have not progressed as far as Harbin yet. The clothing is still of the fashion of the early nineties, and half-forgotten photographs come back to one. The hour when the real business of the night com- mences was now fast approaching, for all the cafes- chantants and tingle-tangle shows only open their doors shortly before twelve o'clock, and the theatre plays merely because you have to do something be- tween nine and midnight, for you can get in all the X HARBIN BY NIGHT 167 bed-time you want in the morning. We slipped into a drosky at the theatre gates for it is not good to wander about Harbin at night on foot. Only a few nights before, fearful screams had been heard in the very centre of one of the main streets, and when morning came it found two dead men lying stark and naked with skulls beaten in. I my- self had seen in the afternoon a ruffianly giant seated on a big cart and chained hand and foot, who was being sent back to Saghalien for life, under an armed escort of six men. He was wanted for half-a-dozen murders, and had been captured that morning in Harbin after the most desperate struggle ; and the young soldiers who guarded him were looking at him with frightened eyes. Harbin is full of criminals and men that are badly wanted, but the Government is too intent on other business to pay any attention to them. When you have seen one of Russia's criminals, you realise that she is not treating them too harshly by condemning them to life-sentences in Saghalien. We were glad when we drew up safely at the doors of the " Golden Anchorite " and heard the scraping of violins. At least there would be some satisfaction in an artistic death. Your Harbin cafe- chantant is a strict reproduction of the singing cafes of other countries a small stage, small tables, and the usual allowance of women, and high-priced drinks de rigueur. But in the matter of drinks they have got things down to a finer point in Harbin. If you are a true man you drink either coffee or champagne and nothing else. Should you be poor, 168 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. you emphasise the fact by ordering coffee, and you need say no more you are classified in your proper category, and given up as hopeless. Are you rich, then you order champagne, and are immediately courted by all. Roederer, extra-sweet, is the measure of a restaurant-keeper's profits. In the morning he calculates his gains by a brief, pregnant query of " How many cases yesterday ? " He multiplies the number given by fifty roubles, and he knows approximately at once what he has gained, for his profits are five pounds a case. Everything else is regarded as unprofitable, and your waiter will not tell you what coffee costs. It is a sweet and primitive system, and fills the average man with envy. Presently the orchestra struck up a gay air, as an invitation to remember where you were. The musicians were clad in yellow flannel trimmed with fantastic designs in red braid, and had blue noses, as a silent protest against the folly of their attire. They imagined they looked like Neapolitan boat- men, and I suppose they were satisfied. After their introduction came a women's chorus, given by the entire strength of the troupe. If there is one thing Russians can do well it is singing, and even in this little one-horse show one heard voices of surprising power and clearness, which were well worth the champagne. Meanwhile the little tables were being rapidly filled up by ladies and gentlemen of various kinds, whose taste in clothes was divine. The most x HARBIN BY NIGHT 169 impossible combinations of colours were to be seen, and Paris and London would have moaned could they have but witnessed the sights. Presently the masculine habitues of the place began to appear. These gentlemen have a mode of life so original that it is worth recounting. They go to bed at eight in the evening, get up at mid- night, put on some scent, and proceed to supper at their favourite resort, staying there till the closing hour, which is about four or five in the morning. Thus Harbin's special requirements are met, and eight hours' sleep obtained in addition, an eminently satisfactory result. I protested with one man against the absurdity of the system, but he quoted back Rome and Romans at me, and said that life in Harbin was so little worth living any- way that debauch was preferable to dulness. Our genial cafe was in the meantime going stronger and stronger, and as the night advanced and the number of dead bottles increased, the pace became more and more rapid. Passions find primitive expression in Harbin, for only a week before an officer had drawn his sword and attempted to slaughter a girl who was engaged in the pleasant task of transferring her affections to another pocket- book. Suicides also punctuate time and relieve monotony. Women drink poisons because other women have charms more potent than theirs, and fall gasping at their lovers' feet with imprecations of Italian fervour. "We have had two suicides this week," whispered a man to me; "who is to i;o MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. be the third?" "Not yourself, I hope," I an- swered. "No," he said, grimly, "I have got beyond that." Life is certainly rapid in Harbin, and somewhat chequered. Long before the final galop began, a mysterious person came up to us and whispered that there was some fun to be had not a verst away a gambling saloon where the limit was the roof of the house. We promptly assented, and walked out. Our guide stepped briskly off the wooden pavement, and took the middle of the street. The hint was significant, and we duly followed, keeping close together and not stopping to look at the moon, which was flooding the streets with a silver light. Our way lay through some of the better streets of the town, but still there were sounds of revelry everywhere. Occasionally we passed drunken wretches lurching along full of vodka, and cursing deeply as they fell over ruts and stones. The doors of cheap drinking- shops, where you can get crazy drunk for a few kopecks, leered at us every few yards, and made us feel sorry night birds. At last we reached our destination. At the back of a vast, barn-like house was a big room, choking with smoke and full of people. In the centre was a roulette wheel, sur- rounded by stacks of paper roubles and a ring of vile faces. No one spoke when we came in, for all were too interested or too far gone. We staked a little, and were careful not to talk of going until we had lost. It was too low and senseless for any man, in spite of champagne fumes and the remote HARBIN BY NIGHT 171 possibility of winning. Soon we had enough of it gave our guide a ten rouble note and abruptly left, some cheerful and the others gloomy. For my part, I understood the meaning of all this so-called gaiety. The Russian house in Man- churia is even less of a home for any one than it is in Russia itself. The Russian builds himself a house in his Far East, but does not occupy it properly. He camps in it with some rattletrap bedding, heats up his stoves, and when he is not sleeping, takes care to remain outside. Can you wonder that he comforts himself with wine, one-day wives, and song ? Can you wonder that things are so bad? He must learn a great deal before he can be taken seriously as a permanency beyond his natural boundaries. He must be taught in the school-room of bitter experience. Looking at these things, I cannot believe in the Russian's permanence in Manchuria. . . . However, I have got a long way from my night in Harbin, and I do not think that I am exactly sorry. CHAPTER XI THE HINDOO WATCHDOG A WORD TO INDIA. IN all the important towns you will find them long- Sikhs and short Sikhs, thin men and fat men, men with bristling beards and men with proudly-curled mustachios ; and finally boy-men on whom the face- hair is but beginning to sprout. Sometimes they are clad in cast-off clothing of English make, above which mountainous turbans of pink or yellow but more often red tower, and fittingly becapping elo- quent heads. More often they have forsaken such tangible signs of the Englishman's faint sovereignty over Indian souls in exile, and appear bravely attired in long Russian boots, baggy trousers, coats embroidered with mock astrakhan, and tall fur caps in a word, veritable Siberiaks, duly assimilated. And in Port Arthur there is even one man he is of the short variety with the bristling beard who on warm summer nights may be seen watching his warehouse in the bright yellow and scarlet of a native regiment, the fleeting souvenir of his former service to the English raj. What an irony of fate a former soldier of the King-Emperor guarding the CH. xi THE HINDOO WATCHDOG- A WORD TO INDIA 173 goods of the traditional enemy on a spot acquired mainly owing to England's weakness ! How they all got there, nobody exactly knows. Even so far north as Manchuria lies, the native of India is at home, for is it not true that wherever the Chinaman is, it is still the inscrutable and immutable East, where all Easterners may congregate, fraternise, and be content? It probably began, however, on a big scale when the Russians poured into Manchuria in 1900, and commerce, as it is understood by people who are simply army-sutlers in gross, accumulated great stores of edibles, drinkables, clothables, and many other things which require diligent watching. The lower-grade Russian, the man who may be hired for three pounds a month even in the expen- sive dream- Empire, was obviously untrustworthy. Having heard that a state of war had existed between him and all Far Easterners for a space, he was pleased to pretend that the peaceful trader's wares were as legitimate loot as any Chinese silver or bronze idols ; so in the most cynical way he stole wherever he could, and was henceforth stamped as impossible so far away from his home. Then Chinese were tried, but the Chinaman is only too human in his own country, and too generally weak with the white man; and when some fierce-looking rascal approached at night and offered the alternatives of comparative wealth for a few short minutes' sleep, or the pressing attentions of a heavy knobbed stick, sleep was promptly feigned and the next day much was missing. 174 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. So the Sikh watchman the well-nigh universal watchman of the Extreme East had to be requisi- tioned, whether the authorities liked it or not. At first the authorities pretended that they did not like it. Then they thought a little and smiled. "All right," they said, " bring your Sikhs, as many as you like and as quickly as you please, and on second thoughts we may even take a few ourselves." You see the Russian powers that be are cunning, very cunning, and they love little experiments, especially little experiments which may forecast big results in some dim future. So the Sikhs duly came, just a few at the beginning and with great hesitation, Sikhs who had blood- brothers at Newchang, where the Englishman is, and where the new thing could be first explained. The newcomers inquired much, talked a great deal, fingered paper roubles with head-shaking doubts, and were not satisfied until this mere paper adorned with the head of the mythical great white Czar was duly exchanged into hard ringing Mexican dollars. Then there was no doubt at all. The money was good, the pay was far higher than in mere China ports of the old type, and there was drink, plenty of drink too, and so cheap ! So the Sikh coming by way of Newchang was duly installed in office at Port Arthur and Dalny, seaports where ships sometimes came in with bronze- coloured men, such as they working the cargo-holds and the engines, and quite ready to chant them in high-pitched voices the news of their older world. XI THE HINDOO WATCHDOG A WORD TO INDIA 175 Letters in time went forth, curious letters with envelopes addressed by friendly Englishmen in bold English characters, to relatives, friends, and ac- quaintances all over the East. " Brother, we are here in the Far North amongst the Russians, and we are not unhappy. It is a land pleasant in summer, with no great heat. In winter the winds are deadly cold, black dust that chokes blows in dense clouds, so that the sky is not seen. We must wear skins. The money, though all paper, is good. Our pay is also high. The Ruski is first hard to meet. Then when he is known we like him better. Food we have in plenty, and much drink. Brothers, we are not unhappy." In this spirit the first letters were written, if English eyes that have seen are true, and as the news spread that respectability is no northern virtue, the headmen were bothered with countless applica- tions. Hopeless drunkards, men once policemen and watchmen in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and further south, mere driftwood until this fresh current caught them, floated mysteriously north and were duly engaged. Followers and renegade soldiers from the last China Expedition likewise heard the news, and packed all the way by rail from Tientsin to Newchang until they were safe in Russian hands. So from the triad of seaports this strange invasion of alien watchmen pushed further and further north until Harbin was reached. Then, as the Russian became more and more familiar, they forgot their halting English and went begging at railway head- 176 MANCHU AND MUSCOVITE CHAP. quarters in fluent speech for posts in smaller places where they might be headmen too. So the faithful Sikh is to-day the watchdog of central and southern Manchuria. He guards countless stacks of vodka at Port Arthur, chests of tea at Dalny, shirtings at Newchang, railway goods at the junctions, shops and stores at Harbin, and nameless places in other spots. Already they are numbered by dozens in the chief towns, and are continually coming. So are all beginnings made. Beware of the tares in time. At first there was some bloodshed and fighting. The low-grade Russian, taught by a cheap-grade literature that these dark men are the traditional enemies, who, officered by white Englishmen, bar the advance south, where an irresistible destiny should have already carried the Czar's eagles, taunted the Sikhs with their colour, called them coolies, and so knives were drawn and heads broken. This was, however, only at the very beginning. Soon the tall Sikh's weakness for strong waters was discovered. Men who have drunk together and become drunk have an odd fellowship for one another. The next day and the day after, and then for all time, they are willing to shake hands and be loving. So the Sikh and the other men from India, by endless drink and endless talk, were won over by the low-class Russian, were pleasantly surprised with the familiarity and the terms of equality on which they were met, and were inwardly delighted to find at last white men who did not verily profess to be their equals, Then the Russian told stories XI THE HINDOO WATCHDOG A WORD TO INDIA 177 of how he was one day coming to liberate all those crushed by England's haughty dominion ; how all Asiatics would rejoice to find themselves governed as they loved, loosely with a great corruption, by which all the cunning ones might become rich, and the people attain an untrammelled liberty, un- dreamed of at present. In this fashion have the King's dusky subjects been reconciled, and to-day the Sikh in Manchuria is happy and content, and sad truth likes the Rus- sian looseness far better than any British strict- ness. For may he not drink and be merry end- lessly ? May he not indulge in unspeakable vices openly, and without fear of punishment ? May he not, in fact, do just as he likes so long as he is obedient, and submits without a murmur ? Already, in most cases, poorly-learnt English is forgotten and the mongrel Russian the lingua franca of the railway is jabbered with much fluency. To all Easterners there is no doubt whatsoever that the Russian idiom, with all its silky softness, its rhythmic sentences, is more facile than hard English. And, likewise, to most Asiatics freedom to indulge in all pleasures without restraint is a tempting bait. . . . So, take note, India! At the Tientsin siding the armed Sikh and the armed Cossack faced each other for the first time with all the traditional hatred that the schools love to speak of gleaming from their eyes, and itched to dash across the narrow rails and have at one another. To-day, in Manchuria, the unarmed Sikh and the peaceful Siberian have mixed, N M- jVITE CH.XJ fraternised, and to their surprise found each other sympathetic in their cap*. Letters have gone forth ; news has traveled fast and far : men have jabbered fmflfiiJy Who knows how far die poison has already gone? Who knows what the resuhs will be? Each day pushes the Indian and Russian frontiers nearer in the Middle East ; in the Farther East die frontiers of