Within the limit of five degrees the earth offers no stranger contrasts than those of Japan, Korea, and China. The fairy who watched over the birth of Japan was of dainty form; Korea had a slut for godmother, and China an opulent dame. Japan is a land for the poet who sings in dithyrambics; Korea calls for the scavenger; while China would gladden the eye of the farmer. But the contrast goes deeper than the soil. The people have differences more manifest. In Japan is a race new-born--a brave, hardy, energetic race, with the assurance and vanity of untried youth inspired with a boundless patriotism. Koreans walk their dung heaps in winding sheets like corpses looking for an undertaker. Life has gone out of them, and nothing remains save dirt and decay. Cross the Yalu and you have journeyed on the magic carpet so wonderful is the change. Here is a fine, healthy, vigorous people, instead of a moribund; here industry takes the seat of lethargy; here is pride of race which awaits only the awakening voice of patriotism. Strangers in all countries are apt to form hasty conclusions, and to pronounce very decided opinions on insecure basis. But war is a good crucible in which to sift all character. Its terrors and surprises; its privations and sacrifices bring into instant and bold relief the qualities of a people. You have not to grope for them in metaphysical darkness. They stand out before you by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire. The people of Manchuria, whether Manchu or Chinese, have proved themselves men. They are the victims of war who have not the satisfaction of shouldering a rifle; yet they stood firm and received the victor without cringing and the vanquished without insult. When I rode into Antung two days after the passage of the Yalu the town had a holiday aspect. The streets were filled with people, above whose bare heads and black pigtails towered posts that looked like glorified Venetian masts. They are flat boards, thirty feet high, stained a dull black and covered with ideographs in relief. Near the top is a disc of tin that catches the rays of the sun and shines with the fierce light of the dragon’s eye. The ideographs are in gold, and live and talk as only Chinese letters live and talk among all the written characters of the world. Standing in rows a few paces from the doors these glittering boards proclaim the merits of Wang Fungtsao’s merchandise and Yuan Siekai’s skill as a builder of Pekin carts; but to the stranger they are more than sign posts; they are monuments the brilliance and magnificence of which are stars in the drab dulness of a Chinese town.