s "new country," the prefecture in
which Chengchiatun lies being originally purely Mongol territory on
which Chinese squatted in such numbers that it was necessary to erect
the ordinary Chinese civil administration. Thirty or forty miles due
west of the town cultivation practically ceases; and then nothing meets
the eye but the rolling grasslands of Mongolia, with their sparse
encampments of nomad horsemen and shepherds which stretch so
monotonously into the infinities of High Asia.

The region is strategically important because the trade-routes converge
there from the growing marts of the Taonanfu administration, which is
the extreme westernly limit of Chinese authority in the Mongolian
borderland. A rich exchange in hides, furs, skins, cattle and foodstuffs
has given this frontier town from year to year an increasing importance
in the eyes of the Chinese who are fully aware of the dangers of a
laissez aller policy and are determined to protect the rights they have
acquired by pre-emption. The fact that notorious Mongol brigand-chiefs,
such as the famous Babachapu who was allied to the Manchu Restoration
Party and who was said to have been subsidized by the Japanese Military
Party, had been making Chengchiatun one of their objectives, brought
concern early in 1916 to the Moukden Governor, the energetic General
Chang Tso-lin, who in order to cope with the danger promptly established
a military cordon round the district, with a relatively large reserve
based on Chengchiatun, drawn from the 28th Army Division. A certain
amount of desultory fighting months before any one had heard of the town
had given Chengchiatun the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the
Japanese began military manoeuvres in the district with various
scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway
zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to
be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that
dangerous developments might be expected--particularly as a body of
Japanese infantry was billeted right in the centre of the town.

On the 13th August a Japanese civilian at Chengchiatun--there is a small
Japanese trading community there--approached a Chinese boy who was
selling fish. On the boy refusing to sell at the price offered him, the
Japanese caught hold of him and started beating him. A Chinese soldier
of the 28th Division who was passing intervened; and a scuffle commenced
in which ot