Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/60

48 that it was far from safe for a well-dressed individual to frequent certain sections of the town, where hunghutze bands, operating in the neighbourhood of Harbin, often had their headquarters or, at least, lodged spies and scouts. At this period of the Russo-Japanese War the place gave the appearance of just a huge village with only the flags above the Yamen to accord to it the more formidable status of an important seat of the local government. However squalid in appearance, it was in reality a centre of great commercial activity and of considerable political importance. When I returned to it sixteen years later, in the summer of 1921 after my escape from Mongolia, I could hardly recognize the former town. Fourstoried buildings, streets of well-built shops, theatres, the imposing residence of the local Taotai, temples, great warehouses and all the other attributes of a great town were there even to droskies, automobiles and rickshaws.

I had been given the address of a Chinese merchant, Tung Ho Shan, who provided the Railway Administration with the labourers it required. Finding him in his shop, I quickly arranged with him for the despatch to Udzimi on the very next morning of three hundred wood-cutters. When, in response to his caution to me never to engage labourers except through him, I smiled a bit ironically, he gravely warned me:

"Don't think it is just a question of profit for me! Far from that. When I supply you with labourers, I send you only such men as are personally known to us or to other reliable firms and for whose character we can vouch. If you engage men at random, you may easily be employing hunghutzes and may have endless trouble with them."

Having arranged with Tung Ho Shan that I should be in Udzimi two days after the men had already been