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bowed heads their praise of heroic guardian ghosts? Did my countrymen break into transports of exultation memorializing the victories that crowned the towering heights of Phenix Peak? I watched carefully, but I could not see the remotest sign of anything like a halleluiah. Instead, these fellow travelers of mine, these men of Nippon, talked of the weather-of the same conversation-making weather that any of the business people of New York fall back on when they make their appearances at their offices every morning. One merchant breathed not less than 5,000 words on the how and why of the year's bad business conditions in Japan, and he did not let up a minute all the time we were passing through the hallowed ground.

All this Antung-Mukden Line over which we were making our way into the heart of Manchuria was once a light military railway. It was built by engineers' corps of Kuroki's army as it fought its way on to Mukden over the Changpai range in the summer of 1904. After the war the line was turned over to the South Manchuria Railway with the command that it must be rebuilt from end to end so that it would make part of a great international highway joining Tokyo with Peking and, in connection with the Trans-Siberian, with the capitals of Europe. It was a herculean task. As it stood, it was a temporary line of two feet six inches gauge 188 miles long, stretching from Antung on the Manchurian bank of the River Yalu to the ancient capital city of the Manchus. The work commenced in August of 1909 and was completed in October of 1911. Really it was one of the great engineering feats in the Far East. No less than twenty-four tunnels were driven through various branches of the Changpai mountain range. The longest one was through Fuchinling and measured 4,884 feet. In all 205 bridges were built to carry the line over the streams and canyons. The longest one is an iron bridge,

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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 cars— a 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."

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