MOUKDEN
Themountain effects as you near Moukden, are every day finer. The august abysses and the tremendous onward sweep of the track, the seemingly impossible turns and cavernous leaps are all indescribable!
As you near the city of Moukden you see a saddle-shaped height to which the contending armies of the last war climbed and fought.
On one height you also see a shaft commemorative of the Japanese dead. All is prophetic of what is beyond.
Moukden is at the heart of China with Port Arthur and Harbin about equally distant. A strongly fortified place, a strategic point of China life and politics and of a value well known to her friends and her enemies!
Pekin is but two days away and the stone wall of wonderful fame but twenty hours, and what means more than all to this traveler, we are but one night’s ride from Port Arthur, over a good road which is being double tracked and is to be furnished shortly with first class American cars!
Moukden is built on a vast plain and has a horizon line worthy of the plains of Dakota. A wall of truly Chinese dimensions encloses the traffic which goes on with the usual Chinese volubility. A wide and new boulevard is being made by the Japanese, running from the station to the ancient city. This has a modern look, but not so what passes along it! Such a motley array of human clothes and shapes!
It is indeed a Vanity Fair. The huge Manchurians with a “devil may care” air. The Japanese looking anxious anduneasy at so much to be done.
The ox carts with strange passengers inside them! The jinrickshas with their Chinese runners with more “devil may care manners”! The street hucksters, the few Europeans and the rich natives with their coolies, the stir of one of the busiest cities of the East and one of the most original, that all makes Moukden!
The recruits are exercising out in front of the American consulate and raw they are, but quick, and the military steps are fast becoming familiar to them.
An ancient pagoda surely contemporary with David is on this street: this Parisian boulevard of Moukden, and much we wondered at its stone form of concrete and its top of bronze, a crescent and ball!
Around the unique buildings of the consulate extends the plain, by turns dusty or muddy, according to the season.
Our delight was the moonlight on the consulate! The court so imposing, with its grotesque animals and its Chinese queerness! The rare old Chinese windows and at evening time, the watchman “beating the fish,” sounding a rattle to warn away all intruders!
The especial beauty of a real oriental house and furnishings; this one, set in the heart of China, has as delightful a flavor as one may meet.
The tombs of the Emperors of the Manchu dynasty, the men rather, who founded the reigning house, are of fitting elaborateness. They too, like the palaces of Seoul, are falling to decay.
The one I went to see on a chilly autumn afternoon, was set in a park of considerable dimensions guarded by the ever faithful stone dogs. These faithful animals have keptthe palaces intact and the sleepers in their tombs for centuries!
We watched the old stern-faced tho not unkindly woods-men cutting the winter fodder in the over-grown grounds. They work while the emperors sleep and how much more impressive they are!
A huge gate as usual meets us at the entrance to the enclosure; indeed, two gates.
The tomb itself or rather the shrine before the tomb is approached by two stately avenues, where the dogs are relieved of their lonely watch by two horses, two dromedaries and two elephants!
In a pagoda we saw the mammoth sea horse and on his back the memorial tablet written in characters none but a scholar’s spectacles could decipher!
The gate with its marvelous locks, certainly antedating Pharoah, opens and we gaze at its ornaments of dragons’ heads, a sort of mask, as we enter, to the central court, where we look up at the walls and mount them to get the view and see the four corner towers of brilliant workmanship and colors.
Descending, we approach the central shrine by steps of very fine sculpture and artistic form and are told by our retinue of attendants that curiosity can go no farther nor veneration for that matter, as the key is lost!
The grave itself is beyond all this stone and wood arabesque; it is without the wall, a simple heap, or mound of earth!
“Dust to dust,” after all, poor old Manchurian warrior of long ago!
But as it is autumn in the park, we gathered the redberries and the men ornamented the jinrickshas with them and we ride home across the plain in a glory of red that out lasts all. The sun is a perfect disk magnified by the perspective of the plain into a gigantic size, worthy of Manchuria, and there is the Japanese flag! May it bring better days to this land of toil and patience! That is the heart’s wish for this colossal country of Manchuria!
Over the mountains sky high, over the plains of Moukden, over more mountains, and you approach the city of Dalny. There seems a stupendous realization of Nature in it all, the scene is perfect. Dalny, to use a histrionic term again, is the “curtain raiser” of Port Arthur.
The war cloud seems still hovering over it. If you are accustomed to the birthplaces of national significance you feel it in the air. The place has a somber air. Built to be a pillar of Russia’s all conquering power, it was to pass in a few years in an awful avalanche of disaster to another!
Across these streets men fought their way and others fled in terror!
There are places where nothing would astonish you. No miracle but would seem possible, because a miracle has been. Such a place is Dalny. There are spots of our earth sanctified by the sublimest emotions possible to our human nature, above this mortal passing of days: such is Dalny! Such is Port Arthur!
At Waterloo, at the Plains of Marathon, on the battle fields where all our race rose in an hour to another epoch of its stupendous destiny, what can be said! What is not felt!
At the entrance of these streets you feel it is other ground, you tread softly for immortal valor is there before you. Youhave thoughts of pride; a pride that wells as a gushing stream, to your heart. Yea, here men were conquerors, not over a mortal foe, but over Death and Self. The deadly enemies of men!
When there has been said this word to fate, “you cannot rob me,” then all the hearts of men leap to that height and we are for a moment deified. O glory to the heroes of that hour.
Russians or Japanese! All were in that sublime sense conquerors! All shall be forever victors, enshrined in our memory, where we worship the undying splendor of the soul!
Moon of harvests and of toil she slowly mounts the aged Chinese Sky,A sky of fairness, alabaster, ivory, like an antique shrineOf ancient lineage and proud, her charm mingled of the mellow mystery of joy and tears;In glory young, though old in years.Glories indeed have been, an emperor sleeps within a tombForgotten with the sigh, men breathed in his domain,Nature and life rebuilt from death to radiant dreams,Who notes the Past, as tolls the silver chime new hours?Night speaks and light still streams;Around her future like her rays, is mystery,But as days die, new days begin, of history far mightier:Great light appears across Time’s pageant, lighting to grander victory;Victory deathless as moonbeams, and Love builds temples through all glooms.