road was terribly bad, again crossing over ridges fifteen hundred to two thousand feet in height, passing over heavy
bogs and morasses, and through forests of pine, birch, and oak.
On November 5 we struck the Turnen river, which we had expected to find a fine stream, like the Sungari near Kirin ;
but it proved to be only about a hundred yards wide, and not deep enough to cover the rocks and boulders, which showed up everywhere. No doubt it is fuller in the summer, but it can at no season be navigable, as it was at one time supposed to be.
Hunchun we found to be simply a garrison town. There were here about three thousand troops, and the small town there was served for little else than to supply their wants. But we discovered in it a number of European articles which had been imported from the Russian station close by. Clocks, sweets, soap, canned fruits, and many other luxuries were to be obtained here, and at a very reasonable price. We bought a can of Singapore pineapples for a shilling.
Hunchun is situated in a plain at the foot of some low hills, and round it in the direction of the Russians—here only ten miles distant—are some strong forts mounted with heavy Krupp guns. I was sufficiently astonished to see these Krupp guns at Sansing, to which place they could have been brought from Kirin by water, and between Kirin and the coast there are only comparatively low hills ; but how the Chinese could possibly have managed to drag these enormous guns over the range upon range which separate Hunchun from Kirin, and through all the morasses and forests we had seen on the way, puzzled me much. Mr. James found that they had placed the guns on gigantic sledges, and then brought them over in the depth of winter, when the ground and bogs and everything else were frozen hard. Yet even then they must have had extraordinary difficulty for in winter in these parts the snowfall is very heavy ; and these guns at Hunchun
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