Harbin is one of the coldest towns in Manchuria, and there the snow lies deep for months. Port Arthur is 607 miles to the south by railway, and in a different climate. The line crosses the Sungari for the second time at Da-la-Chiao, about seventy miles from the great bridge at Harbin. Tehling is forty miles north of Mukden; the Chinese town of 10,000 inhabitants is some miles from the railway station and Russian settlement, for in almost every instance the line has been constructed through unoccupied, but not uncultivated, country on the flat plain west of the hill range. Fengtien province is densely populated, and the flat land is carefully tilled by the industrious, thrifty Chinese. There is little snow, and it lies but a short time on the plains, where all through the winter the winds raise great clouds of dust from the village roads thronged with carts hauling produce to the railway stations and ports. The hills and the hill passes hold the snow, and a winter campaign there would entail many hardships, but on the plain, in the cold bracing air with a frozen surface giving a passable road everywhere, fighting might be continued with fewer delays from climatic changes than in the summer season with its frequent heavy rains. The south and west gates of Mukden are only about two miles from the railway station and barracks; the Imperial Tombs are between the city and the line, although the latter now runs direct, the détour originally constructed having been abandoned since 1901. Mukden, 275 miles from Port Arthur, is a quadrangular city, about four square miles in extent. The outer wall is of mud, the middle wall of earth faced with brick, and fifty feet in height; the inner wall has red gates and corresponds to the Forbidden City of Peking, being the administrative and executive centre with the old Royal Palace, the residence of the Tartar General and that of the Russian Commissary. The town is more generally and more densely populated than is Peking and its inhabitants must number nearly a million. There is, or was, a Russian hotel and restaurant in the town, having four small and very dirty, ill-furnished rooms for travellers. The Chinese inns were better, and the _Green Dragon_ near the East Gate became the headquarters of the newspaper correspondents. The mission stations are near the Bund, on the Hun-khé river, and, as elsewhere in China, are the finest residences in the town. The Russians never maintained a large garrison within the town, but had sentries and guards at each gate and at the Russian establishments, with Cossack and infantry patrols of the streets. The gates were closed at sundown.