310 THE EAST CHINESE RAILWAY. 



cover a great deal that is of interest, — he, of course, 

 cannot visit the things which are of real interest, such 

 as fortifications, &c., — and finding the miserable shanties 

 which served for hotels a trial to both mind and body, 

 I soon shook the dust of its streets from my feet, and 

 steamed across the water to the treaty port of Chifu, 

 on the opposite shore of the gulf 



There is one thing, I think, which cannot fail to strike 

 the traveller in Manchuria, and that is the dispropor- 

 tionately small return which has so far accrued to E-ussia 

 for her vast expenditure in that country. The engineer 

 in charge of the construction of Russian railways in 

 Manchuria informed Mr Miller, the United States 

 consul at Niuchwang, that £27,000,000 had been ex- 

 pended in railway construction alone ; and when we add 

 to this the cost of fortifications and construction in Port 

 Arthur, Dalni, Kharbin, &c., — it is said that bribes to 

 the extent of 2,000,000 taels (roughly, £288,600) were 

 administered in obtaining the lease of Port Arthur, — 

 and the expenditure involved in keeping large numbers 

 of troops in the country, the disbursement so far must 

 have amounted to anything from 50 to 100 millions. 

 And what has she received in return ? An increased 

 power of dictation in the affairs of China perhaps, but 

 in addition a naval base which, though superior in some 

 respects to a more northern port, is admittedly far from 

 ideal — a commercial port which has been aptly described 

 as still-born ; and, to crown all, a war which, whatever 

 be its final issue, can never surely be anything but 

 disastrous to a country in the present stage of financial • 

 and economic development of Russia. It is, in fact, the 

 unexpectedly resolute action of Japan, following upon 

 the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which has seriously upset 

 the calculations of Russian statesmen, and which must 

 have a strong modifying efiect upon the whole trend of 



