I was detained there for three days while arrangements for my southern journey were being made, and during that time the Chief of Police, who spoke French, took me to several Korean villages. So far as I saw and heard, the whole agricultural population of the neighborhood is Korean, and is in a very prosperous condition. There, and down to the Korean frontier, most of these settlers are doing well, and some of them are growing rich as contractors for the supply of meat and grain to the Russian forces. At this they have beaten their Chinese neighbors, and they actually go into Chinese Manchuria, buy up lean cattle, and fatten them for beef. To those who have only seen the Koreans in Korea, such a statement will be hardly credible. Yet it does not stand alone, for I have it on the best authority that the Korean settlers near Khabaroffka have competed so successfully with the Chinese in market gardening that the supplying that city with vegetables is now entirely in their hands! The Russian _tarantass_ is one of the most uncouth of civilized vehicles--all that can be said of it is that it suits the roads, which in that region are execrable. On two sets of stout wheels and axles, attached to each other by long solid timbers, a long shallow box is secured, with one, two, or even three boards, cushioned or not, “roped” across it for seats. It may be drawn by either two or three horses abreast, one in the shafts and one or two outside, each with the most slender attachment to the vehicle, and his head held down and inwards by a tight strap. This outer animal is trained to a showy gallop, which never slackens even though the shaft horse may keep up a decorous trot. The _tarantass_ has no springs, and, going at a gallop, bumps and bounces over all obstacles, holes, hillocks, ruts and streams being alike to it. The _tarantass_ of the Chief of Police made nothing of the obstacles on the road to Yantchihe, where we were to hear of a Korean interpreter. The level country, narrowing into a valley bordered by fine mountains, is of deep, rich black soil, and grows almost all cereals and roots. All the crops were gathered in and the land was neatly ploughed. Korean hamlets with houses of a very superior class to those in Korea were sprinkled over the country. At one of the largest villages, where 140 families were settled on 750 acres of rich land, we called at several of the peasant farmers’ houses, and were made very welcome, even the women coming out to welcome the official with an air of decided pleasure. The farmers had changed the timid, suspicious, or cringing manner which is characteristic of them to a great extent at home, for an air of frankness and manly independence which was most pleasing.