Unsatisfactory as the Manchurian Agreement of April 8, 1902, appeared to Great Britain and Japan, they refrained from entering any protest against its conclusion. They probably preferred the imperfect obligation the Convention imposed upon the contracting parties to an indefinite prolongation of the dangerous conditions which had prevailed. What remained for them and for China was to watch the conduct of Russia in Manchuria and test her veracity according to their own interpretations of the Agreement. In the mean time, the questions which had existed between China and the Powers were being one after another disposed of; the distribution of the indemnities was finally agreed upon on June 14, the Provisional Government of Tien-tsin by the Powers came to an end on August 15, and the rendition of the city to the Chinese authorities was accomplished. The date set for the evacuation of the southwest of the Sheng-king Province up to the Liao River, October 8, drew on, and the evacuation took place. The Tartar General Tsêng-chi had received an Imperial mandate to take over from the hands of the Russians the specified territory and its railways, even before the middle of September,[429] and, on October 28, Prince Ching was able to state to Sir Ernest Satow: “Their Excellencies the Minister Superintendent of Northern Ports and the Military Governor of Mukden have now severally reported by telegram that all the railways outside the Great Wall have been handed back, and that the southwest portion of the Mukden (Sheng-king) Province as far as the Liao River has been completely evacuated by Russian troops.”[430] But what was evacuation? Some troops may have been sent to European Russia, others to different stations in Siberia, including the strategically important Nikolsk, near the eastern border of Manchuria, and still others to Mongolia, where Russian forces were reported to have suddenly increased, until in December they were said to have numbered about 27,000.[431] No small number were also transferred to Port Arthur[432] and Vladivostok.[433] It was, however, alleged by several observers that the main part of the so-called evacuation meant nothing more than the transferring of Russian troops from Chinese towns and settlements to the rapidly developing Russian settlements and quarters within Manchuria. It was reported from various sources[434] that along the 2326 versts of the railroads there were about eighty so-called depots, each two to five square miles in extent, which had been marked out as the sites of new Russian settlements, and in many cases as stations of the railway guards. The most important line, connecting Port Arthur with Harbin, was studded with such depots at every fifteen or twenty miles. In many of these depots were to be seen extensive barracks built of brick, one at Liao-yang, for example, being capable of holding 3000 men, and another at Mukden, in the building of which bricks of the wall of the Chinese Temple of Earth were