After war was declared on 1st August, 1894, things grew worse rapidly. As Japan had full command of the sea, all Chinese troops sent to Korea were compelled to march through Manchuria, and undisciplined hordes of Manchu soldiers from Kirin, Tsitsihar, and other northern cities poured through Mukden at the rate of 1,000 a day, having distinguished themselves on the southern march by seizing on whatever they could get hold of, riotously occupying inns without payment, beating the innkeepers, and wrecking Christian chapels, not from anti-Christian but from anti-foreign feeling. Their hatred of foreigners culminated at Liau-yang, 40 miles from Mukden, when Manchu soldiers, after wrecking the Christian chapel, beat Mr. Wylie, a Scotch missionary, to death, and attacked the chief magistrate for his friendliness to the “foreign devils.” Anti-foreign feeling rose rapidly in Mukden. The servants of foreigners, and even the hospital assistants, were insulted in the town, and the wildest rumors concerning foreigners were spread and believed. The friendly authorities, who took the safety of the three mission families into serious consideration, requested them to give up their usual journeys into the interior, and to avoid going into the city or outside the walls. Next the “street chapels” were closed, the native Christians, a large body, being very apprehensive for their own safety, being regarded as “one with the foreigners,” who, unfortunately, were generally supposed to be “the same as the Japanese.” [Illustration: GATE OF VICTORY, MUKDEN.] The perils of the roads increased. Not a cart or animal was to be seen near them. The great inns were closed or had their shutters wrecked, and the villages and farms were deserted. All tracks converging on Mukden were thronged with troops, not marching, but straggling along anyhow, every tenth man carrying a great silk banner, but few were armed with modern weapons. I saw several regiments of fine physique without a rifle among them! In some, gingalls were carried by two men each, others were armed with antique muzzle-loading muskets, very rusty, or with long matchlocks, and some carried only spears, or bayonets fixed on red poles. All were equipped with such umbrellas and fans as I saw some time later in the ditches of the bloody field of Phyöng-yang. It was nothing but murder to send thousands of men so armed to meet the Japanese with their deadly Murata rifles, and the men knew it, for when they happened to see a foreigner they made such remarks as, “This is one of the devils for whom we are going to be shot,” and when a large party of them, in attempting to make a forcible entry into the Governor-General’s palace, were threatened by the guard with being shot, the reply was, “We are going to be shot in Korea, we may as well be shot here.”