as modern and solid as the one on the Yalu. It is over the Taitze River near Penhsihu. This bridge took from October, 1910, until September of the following year to complete and cost more than 350,000 yen. All this tunneling and bridging in the reconstruction of the line was trying and expensive. The work involved in it gives a more definite and eloquent picture of this section of mountainous Manchuria than anything else. And all this engineering work shortened the line by no less than eighteen miles. The Express sped on. From a corner of the Pullman sleeper-for the South Manchuria is an all-American-equipped line from the heavy steel rails to the locomotives and Pullman carsa few seats ahead of us rose an exclamation: "Yabakei!-the Yabakei of Manchuria !" Now whenever a Japanese traveler explodes with a shrill shout of "Yabakei!" he is trying to tell the world -and he doesn't care particularly who hears him-precisely what Americans mean when they thrill over the mention of the sunset's colors in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, of the splendors of the Yosemite, of the orchestra of the sky, the peaks and mountain streams of the Canadian Rockies. We had long since turned our backs on the heights of Five Dragons' Back, which the Chinese call Wulungpei. We were in the purple twilight of the Changpai range. The exclamation of the fellow traveler was not a whit too boisterous. All the way to the western mouth of the Taling Tunnel, nearly 150 miles, the line is one continuous crescendo of scenic exclamations. The crystal flow of Hsi-ho and of the River Tsao now thunders by in an eternal series of snowy volcanoes, and then suddenly, as the Express takes a turn, it dallies in turquoise pools, a hundred feet down a precipice, on which the mountain breezes whirl in their elfin dance and tread out an ever-melting brocade. Fairy Land-for fifty-five miles from Lienshankuan to Chiaotou, nothing less! So we climbed till we made the Fensui range. A tunnel of 1,914 feet pierces it. Just out of it is Chichiapu. It stands 1,262 feet above sea level and is the highest point on the Antung-Mukden line. This Fensui range divides the Yalu basin from the plain of the Liao. All the streams on the western slope of the range find their way into the Gulf of Liaotung, while their sisters on the eastern slope sing their way, with the Yalu, into the Yellow Sea. Just out of Lienshankuan the fog-veiled outline of five peaks greets the traveler. They are the historic Motienling, sacred to the memory of the two greatest wars Japan has fought-the Chinese and the Russian wars. But after all, the one real peroration of scenic Manchuria is Tiaoyutai. It is a Titan of an up-standing rock crowned by an ancient temple called Puchissu. A long, long series of stone steps leading up to the temple seems to come out of the clouds. They lead to the red walls of the temple. The picture is not of the earth. One instinctively closes his eyes at the sight. For nowhere in the world but in a dream does a mortal behold anything quite as ethereal as that. Out of the Taling Tunnel, as we passed the town of Yaochienhutun, a little over 143 miles from Antung, we saw open ahead of us a sight which never fails to hold an islander like the Japanese spellbound. A group of American tourists sat across the aisle from us looking out of the window. Kaoliang sprouts had not come up: miles and miles of level fields looked as smooth as a truck garden and raced away to the rim of the sunset horizon. "Why," said one of the Americans, "here is our dear old Kansas." |