We have so far seen enough of Korean diplomacy to comprehend something of the Russian method of furthering her influence over Korea, and of the manner in which Japan struggled to safeguard her fast increasing interests[556] in the peninsula and to maintain the terms of the Russian agreements of 1896 and 1898. We have, however, reserved up to this point the latest and most important question of the timber concession upon the northern frontier. In no other matter had the characteristic method of Russian diplomacy excited more apprehension in Korea and Japan, for nothing could better illustrate the close connection, in the Muscovite policy, of Manchuria and North Korea—a connection which appeared to threaten at once the integrity of the two adjoining Empires and the safety of Japan—than the Yong-am-po incident which arose in April, 1903, in relation to the timber concession. The contract[557] for this concession dated so far back as August 28, 1896, when the Korean King was a guest at the Russian Legation. It had secured for a Russian merchant at Vladivostok the right to organize a Korean lumber company (Article 1), having a monopoly for twenty years of the forestry enterprise round the Mu-san region upon the Tumên River and also on the Uinung Island in Japan Sea (Article 2). The work, in order to be valid, had to be begun within one year after the signature of the agreement (Article 15). Only when work in these two regions should have been under way, the company might, within five years[558] from the same date, start a similar exploitation along the Yalu River (Article 2).[559] Accordingly, the Russian syndicate undertook to fell trees at Mu-san in 1897 and again in 1898,[560] though never on a large scale.[561] On the Uinung Island, however, where good timber had nearly been exhausted after many years of cutting by the Japanese, the Russians had at no time made a serious attempt to exploit it. Under these circumstances, the right of the Russians to exploit forests upon the Yalu so late as 1903 was at least not clear.[562] Nevertheless, the extensive public works at Port Arthur and Dalny and on the railways had created so great a demand for timber, that the Chinese woodmen were cutting trees along the foot of the Long White Mountains and sending them downstream to An-tung, where alone the traffic annually aggregated the sum of 1,500,000 _taels_.[563] The Russians now seemed to have planned to exploit both sides of the Yalu, and they would not have caused trouble, had they employed legitimate means to accomplish their ends. On the Manchurian side, finding that a foreigner could not get a timber concession from the Chinese authorities, they used the name of a leader of the mounted bandits whom a Russian military officer had befriended, and, after securing a concession, employed those bandits in felling trees.[564] In regard to the Korean side of the river, after nearly seven years’ inactivity since the grant of the concession, M.