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204 Korean Government, who threatened M. Pavloff with the rupture of relations if the settlement were not at once withdrawn. M. Pavloff, however, defended the existence of the lumber camp under powers obtained from the Forest Concession of 1896, which, in actuality, had not been re-affirmed at the moment. Early in the next month, June, the magistrate at Yong-chyön reported that another party of Russians had arrived at Yong-an-po, including in all three Russian women, thirty-six men, two hundred Chinese, and many horses. These were reinforced in July by three women and sixty men, for the most part carrying rifles and swords, and who, also, at once bought houses and land.

The action of these people has assumed a specific direction. A few, as though anxious to give colour to their existence as a lumber settlement and in defiance of orders from the Korean local officials, while quite exceeding the clauses of the concession proper, persisted in felling trees on the areas of a prohibited reserve. Meantime the remainder of the party, by no means idle, began the construction of a bund on the Yalu extending over a distance of twenty-one miles, a light railway being laid down for the purpose. In addition to this work developments of a more permanent character were taken in hand; stone buildings appeared, a factory was constructed, and extensive defensive measures adopted. To confirm these indications of Russian occupation of the Yalu reaches, a body of seventy soldiers crossed the river at Cho-san, a second party of eighty men coming over at Pyök-tong. The Russians then proceeded to bring these various scattered "lumber" settlements into communication, for this purpose erecting a telegraph line between Wi-ju and Yong-an-po. This line, however, the Koreans at once cut down, whereupon the Russians began to lay a submarine cable from Yong-an-po round the coast