MOUKDEN
The mountain effects as you near Moukden, are every day finer. The august abysses and the tremendous onward sweep of the track, the seemingly impossible turns and cavernous leaps are all indescribable!
As you near the city of Moukden you see a saddle-shaped height to which the contending armies of the last war climbed and fought.
On one height you also see a shaft commemorative of the Japanese dead. All is prophetic of what is beyond.
Moukden is at the heart of China with Port Arthur and Harbin about equally distant. A strongly fortified place, a strategic point of China life and politics and of a value well known to her friends and her enemies!
Pekin is but two days away and the stone wall of wonderful fame but twenty hours, and what means more than all to this traveler, we are but one night’s ride from Port Arthur, over a good road which is being double tracked and is to be furnished shortly with first class American cars!
Moukden is built on a vast plain and has a horizon line worthy of the plains of Dakota. A wall of truly Chinese dimensions encloses the traffic which goes on with the usual Chinese volubility. A wide and new boulevard is being made by the Japanese, running from the station to the ancient city. This has a modern look, but not so what passes along it! Such a motley array of human clothes and shapes!
It is indeed a Vanity Fair. The huge Manchurians with a “devil may care” air. The Japanese looking anxious and uneasy at so much to be done.