Just before sundown on Saturday, February 5, I entered Mukden by the south gate, in a covered Peking cart drawn by three tired mules. That day I had travelled over forty miles across country, arriving by way of Ma-tsian-tsia, and it was my intention to remain in the city over Sunday and continue my journey towards Kirin as early in the week as circumstances allowed. I put up at the Russian guest-house--a dreary, dirty building. That same evening, tired though I was by the constant jolting of the springless vehicles in which I had been lying, sitting, squatting and tumbling--mostly tumbling--for fourteen consecutive hours, I started out to make inquiries as to the Russian troops quartered there and their exact location. I learned also that Mr. Bennet Burleigh and other war correspondents had been in the town very recently. I noticed that the Sikh watchmen--and there were many of them in Mukden--invariably saluted me, although they never acknowledged any of the Russian civilians. As I was wearing Russian clothes, from fur cap to high boots and overshoes, and had on me enough Russian leather to proclaim my presence for half a _li_ around, the Englishman must have been sticking out of me very prominently somewhere, or the Sikhs have a special faculty for recognizing people of the only race for which they have any regard. That same evening the news of the departure of the Russian and Japanese Ministers had been sent to Manchuria, but no one in Mukden knew of it. The only news current of the world’s affairs was derived from Harbin and Port Arthur journals, neither of them well informed and both two days old by the time they reached Mukden. The next morning I was astir early. I went through and round the town, interviewed British, American and foreign missionaries, all of whom, though they thought war probable, did not believe it to be imminent. Some had been warned by their consuls to send the women and children into China, and to be prepared for an outbreak of hostilities themselves. The news promulgated from the Russo-Chinese Bank was of a reassuring character: war, if war there should be, was still apparently for future months.