MUKDEN, THE MANCHU HOME, AND ITS 

 GREAT ART MUSEUM 



By Eliza R. Scidmore 



Author OF " China — The Long-Lived Empire," " Jinrikisha Days in Japan," 

 "Winter India," "Java — the Garden op the East," etc. 



MANCHURIA is a country as 

 large as Texas or as large as 

 France, but the Manchuria that 

 the world knows — and it has only known 

 it for these fifteen ' }-ears — is a little 

 stretch of seacoast, the Liaotai\ Penin- 

 sula, and the valley of the Liao River, 

 the latter a fertile region some 30 miles 

 wide and 900 miles long. 



From the time when Shunche, the 

 Manchu chief, was invited in through 

 the "First In-Going-Gate in the World" 

 to assist the rebels in their revolt against 

 the INIing emperor — and the INIanchus 

 ousted him and sat down upon the 

 Peking throne themselves for 250 

 years — nothing ever happened in Man- 

 ■churia until the Japan-China war, the 

 Boxer outbreak, and war again put it in 

 the forefront of the world's interest. It 

 promises to hold the stage for another 

 decade or two, and is a storm center of 

 Avorld politics. 



China has done next to nothing to de- 

 velop or defend these three eastern prov- 

 inces beyond the Great Wall, wholly 

 outside of the eighteen provinces of 

 China proper, although, as the early 

 home of the Manchu rulers. Manchuria 

 should have been the chief jewel in her 

 cap. All has been impermanence and 

 change in Manchuria during these fif- 

 teen years of stress and storm, and the 

 rapid change of officials, from viceroy 

 to lowest minion, has been the only pol- 

 icy of the distracted INIanchus at Peking. 



manchuria and korea are overrun 

 with tourists 



Since the war, travel has followed in 

 the steps of the victorious army, and 

 General Kuroki was unconscious ad- 

 A^ance agent of an army of tourists-;— a 



forerunner of scores of independent ex- 

 peditions in search of excitement, the 

 picturesque and the unexpected — some- 

 thing never seen before. The grand de- 

 tour from the grand tour of the world 

 now is — from Japan across the narrow 

 straits to Fusan, in Korea ; thence by 

 train to Seoul ; and from Seoul to the 

 Yalu River, and on to Mukden, precisely 

 following in Kuroki's footsteps. There 

 is an American standard-gauge railway, 

 with American cars, locomotives, and 

 rails across all of Korea, and he travels 

 in comfort to the Yalu's banks. Those 

 historic banks are lined with the rafts 

 of timber floated down from the head- 

 waters of the Yalu, and are about to be 

 linked with a great railway bridge. 



From Antung, on the Manchurian 

 bank, a toy railway, a Decauville tram 

 line, of two-foot gauge only, traverses 

 the 180 miles of rough, mountainous 

 country to Mukden. This is the famous 

 Antung-Mukden Railway, with wJiich 

 yellow journals filled their frenzied col- 

 umns in 1909, between the adjournment 

 of the tariff: Congress and the discovery 

 of the North Pole. After Doctor Cook 

 came home, Antung-Mukden affairs 

 were forgotten, and only by fits and 

 starts did the yellow journals declare 

 that the peace of the world and the 

 rights of an army of American mer- 

 chants and miners were imperiled by the 

 Antung-Mukden convention concluded 

 between China and Japan. That has 

 since been shown to be a simple and in- 

 nocuous arrangement between the two 

 governments directly concerned, and 

 officially declared so by our Department 

 of State. 



This comical little railway was laid by 

 General Kuroki's troops to bring up their 



