Throughout Manchuria the Eastern Chinese Railway, following the lead of the Russo-Chinese bank and of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, has undertaken other work than transporting passengers and goods; through it the Russian Government has been exploiting the territory, trading, and deriving revenue from the direct development of the natural resources of the country. Another change is the increase of military establishments along the railway route. The greatest is at Fu-li-ahdé, where the line crosses the Nonni, below Tsitsikar. Here the Russians have large barracks, extensive fortifications and a military colony. Everywhere, too, block-houses were in course of erection. The intention was to have them all along the route within three miles of each other. Up to the present time those finished are closest together between Pogranichnaya and Harbin, and on the branch line between Harbin and Port Arthur. The first to be erected were near large native towns, but the chain is almost complete now. They are of one type: a two-storied building, capable of accommodating a hundred men. A compound is surrounded by a high wall, with two round towers, looped for musketry, diagonally opposite each other, and so commanding all four walls of the quadrangle. Another point: there are two qualities of brick in common use throughout Manchuria, red and blue, the blue being the more durable. The station buildings are mostly of red brick, the military quarters and block-houses mostly of the blue variety. Stone is freely used in districts where it is easily obtainable in quantities suited to building purposes. Harbin has grown almost beyond recognition. Old Harbin, still the administrative and military centre, has changed but little, and is, if possible, rowdier and more blatantly banal than formerly; but the New Town, China Town, Lower Harbin, the Sungari Pristan, and the Middle Town, now contain massed buildings of fine proportions, where but four years ago, there was only an uncultivated plain, and all indicate the growing wealth and increased trade of the commercial capital of the new Manchuria. In this district many square miles of arable land are under cultivation, and the wheat grown is milled in the vicinity. So enormous is the supply that I met an agent travelling to Singapore and India, in the hope of finding there a market for some of the surplus from the Harbin district. As the 1904 crops have been properly harvested, and by this date probably are milled also, the Russian army in Manchuria ought not next year to be short of its staple food. The wealth derived at little cost of labour from the land is so enormous that the inhabitants are already comparatively rich. Prices are high. My travelling companion, the Jew merchant, informed me that he could journey to Moscow, buy what be needed there at retail prices in the shops, take them to Harbin, and not only defray the cost of his journey from the profits, but secure a satisfactory surplus.