MUKDEN, THE MANCHU HOME 



295 



to Tairen, and to Vladivostock as well, 

 and foreign shipment only represents the 

 development of the province since the 

 last war. 



The new tenants, or rather the old 

 tenants, on their return cleaned and 

 tidied Port Arthur, paved the streets, and 

 made the place a model of sanitation and 

 order. Every wreck has been raised and 

 sold, every bit of scrap iron dredged up 

 from the harbor, every fragment of the 

 dead interred with honor. 



Port Arthur afifords a day or two of 

 the most tragic sight-seeing one can en- 

 dure. A good carriage road connects all 

 the dismantled forts and another leads to 

 the Two Hundred and Three Meter Hill, 

 the world's most awful slaughter-ground. 

 A great mortuary temple has been built 

 to the spirits of the dead on the high hill 

 facing the harbor entrance, and also a 

 great column to their memory, built with 

 the granite blocks taken from the block- 

 ading ships which Hirose and his fellows 

 sunk at the harbor entrance — that bal- 

 lasting of their ships with their own 

 tombstones the last word of the wonder- 

 ful Japanese prearrangement. 



At Tairen one meets the butterfly crest 

 of the South Manchurian Railway, and 

 thence northward "the company" is all 

 in all. The letter M, whose loops are 

 suggestive of a butterfly's wings (the 

 butterfly being one of the Chinese sym- 

 bols for good luck, long life, and immor- 

 tality, and a favorite art motif), and the 

 profile of a cross-section of a rail, greatly 

 resembling the Chinese character for in- 

 dustry, compose a monogram that greatly 

 delights the Chinese eye and mind. One 

 soon gets bewitched with this butterfly 

 crest of the South Manchurian Railway, 

 as he sees it on every locomotive, car, 

 and piece of railway property, on the 

 uniforms of employees, even to the pat- 

 terns of the kimonos and neck-folds of 

 the little waitresses at the railway hotels. 



BUILT OF AMERICAN STEEL RAILS AND 



EQUIPPED WITH AMERICAN CARS 



AND LOCOMOTIVES 



The railway, 440 miles long, without 

 a single tunnel, was a mere track, without 



bridges or rolling stock, when the Japa- 

 nese acquired it as almost the only prize 

 of the war. They floated a loan of 

 $100,000,000 at 5 per cent and double- 

 tracked the road with steel rails from 

 Pittsburgh, equipped it with Baldwin loco- 

 motives from Philadelphia, Pullman cars 

 from Chicago, and spent many more mil- 

 lions in the purchase of railway materials 

 in America, as they are again about to 

 do for the Antung-Mukden Railway. 

 Beside paying 5 per cent interest on this 

 loan and 6 per cent on the stock, the 

 South Manchurian Railway reaps a sur- 

 plus each year. Receipts are increasing 

 by leaps and bounds, partly owing to the 

 wonderful bean trade and to the opening 

 and working of more and more coal 

 mines — coal that is said to be second 

 only to Cardifif in quality. 



Because of its Pullman sleepers and 

 dining-cars, and its long day coaches, 

 American travelers have only words of 

 praise for the railway, and European 

 travelers sneers and open complaints. 

 The Russians and Belgians loudly jeered 

 at the Pullman cars, with their great ex- 

 panse of glass windows, and said that 

 they would never do in a IManchurian 

 winter, being ignorant of just how many 

 hundreds of such glass coaches daily 

 traverse our most northern and western 

 States and all parts of Canada through 

 the blizzard season. The Japanese have 

 also introduced th3 American baggage 

 check into Manchuria ; but, as the con- 

 necting railway across to Tientsin and 

 Peking is of British ancestry, and the 

 Trans-Siberian is a law to itself, the ex- 

 cellent example is not likely to spread. 



When I checked my trunk from Tai- 

 ren to Mukden, I held on to the check 

 and the South Manchurian Railway held 

 on to the trunk until I was ready to take 

 train on to Peking. Then the trunk was 

 tossed into an open truck, and third-class 

 passengers roosted on it like so many 

 chickens, any one of whom might have 

 carried it ofif at any way station. 



This British-built railway has dining- 

 cars, a little less splendid than the Pull- 

 man-descended ones on the South Man- 

 churian Railway, and the Chinese, with 



