Next morning we resumed our march along the bank of an affluent of the river Tsao, which stream the Imperial Pekin Road follows northward to the Mou-tien-ling pass. The country is mountainous and the river winds among hills clothed with emerald green woods. A plain brought us to Kao-li-men, where the mountains converge to form a broad pass guarded by a conical hill. Kao-li-men is known as the Gate of Korea and through this pass ran the willow palisade which marked the Chinese possessions in Manchuria when the Ming dynasty occupied the throne. This palisade, which for two hundred and ninety miles is still the frontier of Manchuria, enclosed the fringe of the Western coast of the Gulf of Liao-tung, and the valley of the Lower Liao river, reaching its most Northerly point at Wei-yuan-pu-men, eighty miles to the North of Mukden, on the Imperial Pekin Road. Bending South-east and South from this gate the palisade ran through Kao-li-men and rested its flank on the Yellow Sea. The country within the pale was formerly known as Liao-tung and Liao-hsi, that is, the territory East and West of the Liao river. I am told that the gates and traces of the fence exist to this day, but I looked in vain. The only evidence I could discover was in the termination of the name Kao-li-men, for “men” means “gate.” Outside the pale, inhabiting the mountains and forests, were clans, half Mongol, half Tungusian--a race of mighty hunters who lived by the chase. As many of the names of places show, a great part of the Southern province of Manchuria was at one time Korean. When we crossed the Yalu there was a report that the Russians would make a determined stand at Kao-li-men. The country is well adapted to defensive tactics. An enemy advancing from the South must pass over open ground and through defiles commanded on both sides by hills, and the approach to the Gate of Korea is dominated by a semi-circular range. The strategic weakness of the position--like that held by the Russians on the Yalu--was the want of lateral lines of communication, and the fact that the Pekin Road, which is the only communication to the North, is open to flank attack. However, it was clear that the Russians had contemplated holding this pass. The roads in the neighbourhood of Kao-li-men were entrenched, and the trenches were deep and better made than the primitive death traps on the Yalu. But they had evidently changed their minds and fallen back upon Liao-yang, a position of greater strength and strategic importance. Our progress to Feng-hoang-cheng was accordingly uninterrupted, and we rode leisurely along the bank of the river, over cultivated plains and in the shadow of green hills.