II
AT NING-HIA
Oct. 3, 1900.
In the gulf of Petchili on the beach at Ning-Hia, lighted by the rising sun. Here are sloops, tugs, whalers, junks, their prows in the sand, landing soldiers and war supplies at the foot of an immense fort whose guns are silent. On this shore there is a confusion and a babel such as has been seen in no other epoch of history. From these boats where so many people are disembarking, float pell-mell all the flags of Europe.
The shore is wooded with birches and willows, and in the distance mountains with strange outlines raise their peaks to the clear sky. There are only northern trees, showing that the winters in this country are cold, and yet the morning sun is already burning; the far-off peaks are magnificently violet, the sun shines as in Provence. Standing about among the sacks of earth collected for the erection of hasty defences, are all kinds of people. There are Cossacks, Austrians, Germans, English midshipmen, alongside of our armed sailors; little Japanese soldiers, with a surprisingly good military bearing in their new European uniforms; fair ladies of the Russian Red-Cross Society, busy unpacking material for the ambulances; and Bersaglieri from Naples, who have put their cock-feathers onto colonial caps.
There is something about these mountains in this sunshine, in this limpid air, that recalls the shores of the Mediterranean on autumn mornings. Not far away an old gray structure rises among the trees, twisted, crooked, bristling with dragons and monsters. It is a pagoda. The interminable line of ramparts which winds about and finally loses itself behind the summits of the mountains in the distance, is the Great Wall of China, which forms the boundary of Manchuria.
The soldiers who disembark barefooted in the sand, gaily calling out to one another in all tongues, seem to be the sort who are easily amused. What they are doing to-day is called "a peaceful capture," and it seems more like a celebration of universal fusion, of universal peace, yet not far from here, in the vicinity of Tien-Tsin and of Pekin, the country is in ruins and is strewn with the dead.
