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 CHAPTER V

A DRAMA OF THE CHARCOAL OVENS

Y trip to Harbin with my plans for the railroad and for the big brick oven kept me in town two weeks. Kazik telegraphed regularly his reports on the work, from which I knew that the undertaking was steadily expanding, that about forty Ural ovens were already in operation, turning out thirty tons of charcoal daily, that the staff and labourers were in their quarters and that work on the railway had been commenced, as twelve miles of old rails, an old locomotive and ten flat cars had already arrived.

On my return to Udzimi I was delighted to be able to ride out to Ho Lin on our own branch line, in spite of the fact that the locomotive, running on the unballasted track, rattled in every part and proceeded very gingerly. On nearing the river, I did not recognize Ho Lin, for a new village stood beside and dominated the old one. There were the long thatched buildings for Chinese quarters, my own house with its tall, protruding stove-pipe chimneys and a veranda over which the men had trailed a transplanted Manchurian hop vine, and stores and warehouses with coal, commissariat supplies and tools all about them, while in the distance smoked the lines of ovens built by my assistants. The Manchurian jungle, this dense thicket of tree-trunks and bushes, bound together in defence of its solitude with Virginia creeper, 53