commanded by the towering heights which look down on the Korean Straits, so that no guns could bombard a beleaguered fleet from out at sea as Togo has repeatedly done at Port Arthur. Inland, mountain range succeeds mountain range, mile after mile, making an approach from the land side sheer annihilation. Between Port Arthur and Masampo there is no comparison possible. The first is full of faults, whilst the second is peerless and flawless, and intrenched here a Japanese garrison could defy the entire world for years. It is easy to understand the Russian intrigue.

The moral is clear. The great Far Eastern war has given birth to a second Dardanelles through which no hostile Russian or other fleet will ever be allowed to pass by the Japanese- except one. With Sasebo and the fortified Japanese coast on one side, and the big island of Tsushima in the very centre of the channel, the Korean Straits, although one hundred miles broad, become a Japanese gateway almost as safe and as secure (with the greatly enlarged post-bellum fleet which will be seen) as the Straits of Shimonoseki themselves. With Fusan an important commercial port, boasting of perhaps thirty or forty thousand Japanese inhabitants, and the Pacific Railway terminus for the continent of Asia, as it will be when the Fusan-Seoul-Wiju Railway is carried across Southern Manchuria to Liaoyang; with a fast flowing tide of passengers and trade passing across the Korean Straits, and with Masampo

VOL. I-2 K

ceded to Japan and standing alert like an armed sentinel, the problem of the heel of the Korean boot which has been perplexing diplomats for long years past will be definitely solved. No matter what happens elsewhere, Japan will now be sure that the arrow which has pointed so long at her heart has its barb removed and hurled away, and that the bow which was to discharge this venomous dart is damaged beyond hope of repair.

CHAPTER XXI

FROM FUSAN TO SEOUL BY RAIL

Two or three miles to the east of Fusan is the railway terminus. As is the case with all Far Eastern railways in their earlier stages, it is you who have to accommodate the railway by searching it out along weary roads, and not the railway which comes to you. Later on, when trade and traffic justify it, the railway may condescend to push its stations a little nearer to where they are wanted; but in the initial stages a Russian-like indifference to your comfort is shown, and you must trudge through dust and dirt to the proud iron-horse.

The Seoul-Fusan Railway Company, officially known as the Keifu Railway, has the head office of its southern section at the Fusan terminus in a white European building, curiously unlike the rest of Fusan. You are received by a manager in a black coat, who belongs to another world, and does not identify himself with the town, the locality, its people, or its aspirations. He is there for a specific object, and his own world is too crowded for any time to be left to look at any others. It is the same

with all railway companies all over the new Far East: a syndicate is formed, a big concession is obtained, and then men come in black coats from one of the chief cities of the world. Half get into khaki coats and push up-country with the rail advance, whilst the staff merely remain in their black clothes, run up hasty offices at the termini, remain for a space working frantically in a life apart from the ordinary life of the place, and then, as soon as the construction is completed, all repack their portmanteaus and bags and disappear in their sober clothes: flitting phantoms that have impressed an image of the West indelibly on a tiny portion of the East-phantoms knowing as little of the country when they leave as when they came, simply because the business of fitting iron rails neatly together over hill, river, and dale is very arduous, and leaves no time to look at the landscape.

The Japanese manager of the southern section was as other men engaged in this business very busy, more polite than his European prototypes, and eternally worried over the slow progress of the construction parties. But in spite of this his answers were very satisfactory. Yes, I could go forward at once, to-morrow at seven in the morning if I liked, and here was my travelling schedule; fifty miles by regular passenger train, thirty by ballast train, and 768 by construction train. Then a halt and 18.6 miles over a break on pony-back; then more weary miles by construction, ballast, and regular trains until the Korean capital would heave in sight