Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/58

 CHAPTER IV

INTO THE FOREST

N returning to Harbin I found a despatch from the General Staff containing the announcement that I had been honoured with the Cross of St. Stanislaus and offering me the post of Chemical Expert to the General Staff. But in addition to this pleasing news the letter also communicated to me orders, in the execution of which I nearly lost my life. The Staff directed me to organize on a big scale the manufacture of charcoal for use in the military workshops, inasmuch as there was no coke factory anywhere in the Manchurian territory. A special timber concession was set aside for my purposes.

Almost parallel to the course of the Sungari the forest-covered range of Chang-Kuan-Tsai Lan, which is one of the southern spurs of the Little Khingans, runs in a northeasterly direction. In the vast forests on the southern slope of this range, near the small station of Udzimi on the Chinese Eastern Railway, lay the concession which had been put at my disposal.

On the day of receiving my orders I went immediately to visit the territory of my future activities and to plan out roughly their course. Udzimi consisted only of a very small station building for the telegraph office and the administration staff and of a long brick barracks, which afforded housing for the railway hands and some Cossacks. Immediately behind these station buildings 46