In the year 1898, a Vladivostok merchant named Briner obtained from the Korean Government, upon extremely favourable terms, a concession for a timber company that should have authority to exploit the great forest wealth of the upper Ya-lu River.[107] As Briner was a promoter and speculator who had little means and less influence, he was unable to organize a company, and in 1902 he sold his concession to Alexander Mikhailovich Bezobrazoff, another Russian promoter and speculator, who had held the rank of State Councillor in the Tsar’s Civil Service, and who was high in the favour of some of the Grand Dukes in St. Petersburg. Bezobrazoff, who seems to have been a most fluent and persuasive talker, as well as a man of fine presence, soon interested his Grand Ducal friends in the fabulous wealth of the Far East generally, and in the extraordinary value of the Korean timber concession especially. They all took shares in his enterprise, and one of them, with a view to getting the strongest possible support for it, presented him to the Tsar. Bezobrazoff made an extraordinarily favourable impression upon Nicholas II., and in the course of a few months acquired an influence over him that nothing afterward seemed able to shake. That the Tsar became financially interested in Bezobrazoff’s timber company is certain; and it is currently reported in St. Petersburg that the Emperor and the Empress Dowager together put into the enterprise several million roubles. This report may, or may not, be trustworthy; but the appended telegram (No. 5), sent by Rear-Admiral Abaza, of the Tsar’s suite, to Bezobrazoff in November, 1903, indicates that the Emperor was interested in the Ya-lu enterprise to the extent, at least, of the two million roubles mentioned. Bezobrazoff’s “Company,” in fact, seems to have consisted of the Tsar, the Grand Dukes, certain favoured noblemen of the Court, Viceroy Alexeieff probably, and the Empress Dowager possibly. Bezobrazoff had made them all see golden visions of wealth to be amassed, power to be attained, and glory to be won, in the Far East, for themselves and the Fatherland. It was this known influence of Bezobrazoff with the Tsar that made “everybody” in the Far East “afraid of him”; that enabled him to enlist in the service of the timber company even officers of the Russian General Staff; that caused Alexeieff to respond to his call for troops to garrison Feng-huang-cheng and Sha-ho-tzu; and that finally changed Russia’s policy in the Far East, and stopped the withdrawal of troops from Southern Manchuria. General Kuropatkin says that the Russian evacuation of the province of Mukden “was suddenly stopped by an order of Admiral Alexeieff, whose reasons for taking such action have not to this day been sufficiently cleared up.” The following telegram from Lieutenant-Colonel Madridoff, of the Russian General Staff, to Rear-Admiral Abaza, the Tsar’s personal representative in St. Petersburg, may throw some light on the subject: