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2 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
country, which not only greatly contributed to give
us a clear understanding of the military events,
but also opened our eyes to the magnitude of the
stake for which Russia was fighting, and to the
large amount of work, brains, and money which she
had invested in her new colony.
We landed, as I have said, in Dalny. I had
been there before, but only for a day, when
journeying from China vm Siberia to Europe, and
had had little time or opportunity for studying this
unique and most interesting place. We stayed
there now for five or six days, and though half the
town was in ruins and nothing remained of the
former gay and busy life, I obtained a much fuller
impression of what Russia had invested in this
place. For here, at last, she had acquired an
open, ice-free port, an outlet for the immense
realm which she had built up in Northern Asia.
Sprung full-grown into life in shorter time than
any American mushroom city ;
created in one
man’s brain and built by a word from his mouth ;
a few Chinese fishermen’s huts one year, a
chaos of scaffoldings and bricks and mortar the
next year or two, and before the end of the third
year a fine-looking town with well-laid-out streets,
excellently metalled, with gardens and parks,
water-works and electric light, snug, cosy-looking
villas and monumental public buildings, two good
hotels and a cathedral, docks and piers and
granite-bounded wharves ;
a beautiful town,
teeming with life, a completely Western city in
the wilderness of the rocks and hills of far-away
Kuang-tung ;
a rush into life, an artificially forced
growth, quicker than any history can relate, and
then stagnation and a standstill,—such is the
history of Dalny, unique in the annals of the
world, of Dalny, the “ far-away place.”
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