They are all well armed, mostly with modern German magazine rifles. They lead a wild, free life, preying on those villagers who will not employ them, upon well-to-do native travellers and traders, and most of all upon the Russians, for a Hunghus is as proud of having slain a Russian soldier as an American Indian was of a Sioux scalp. For Chinamen they may be considered brave, that is to say, when they are superior in numbers, about five to one,--they will attack openly Russians conveying cattle, and they are sufficiently daring to make night attacks on villages known to be harbouring Chinese who favour their foes. In no circumstances would they make such attacks as the Japanese have made at Port Arthur, Tashichiao and Liaoyang. The Russian political agent to Mongolia, a Siberian named Gromov, whom I met in Harbin and at Port Arthur, has been trying through his Mongolian acquaintances to win over some of these Chinese hill men of the north to the Russian side, but apparently without any success. The bandits attacked Tehling, got away with some stores, and set fire to more, but in my opinion their finest recorded exploit is their successful attack on the Russian gunboat _Sivouch_, which, in order to escape the Japanese, went up the Liao to Estahbien on high spring tides. The _Sivouch_, an old vessel of 943 tons register, steamed down to Liao bar when H.M.S. _Espiègle_ arrived from Chenwantao to render assistance to British residents, and, according to the Chinese version current, drove the British warship away. The Hunghuses attacked by night, firing upon her at short range from the high _kowliang_ growing on the banks, and from behind the many embankments made in that district to keep flood-water off the land. Each night the attack became more serious; the rifle bullets pierced the ship’s sides, and she was then blown up and sunk by her crew, who escaped by way of old Newchwang to Liaoyang. When the Japanese, three days later, sent their gunboat up the river to engage her, they found only a newspaper correspondent in possession, and with him a number of Chinese soldiers intended for her protection. The Japanese arrested the correspondent, and gave him a passage on their vessel down the river, but not before he had managed to acquire and secrete the gilded Imperial Eagle from her bows as a souvenir of his excursion. The homes of these hill men are up in the mountain fastnesses, to which there are only rough paths up which their sturdy Mongolian ponies will scramble at a fair pace. Many of their leaders ride on donkeys, and Wang, one of the smartest, when last I met him, was riding a fine dark brown jackass, which, he informed me, he would not exchange for any pony in the country. In Manchuria and North China the richest men ride mules, and ordinarily a good saddle mule is worth more money than a pony of equal quality.