[1] Documents throwing light upon the action of Admiral Alexeieff will be found at the end of General Kuropatkin's historical narrative, although they are not a part thereof. These documents will also explain the important part that State Councillor Bezobrazoff played in the Far East, and indicate the source of his extraordinary power.[2] A town on the road from Mukden and Liao-yang to the mouth of the Yalu River in northern Korea.[3]Mounted Manchurian bandits.[4]The Russian minister in China.[5]The Russian minister in Korea.[6] The documents at the end of General Kuropatkin's narrative will explain why an officer as powerful even as the Minister of War might be supposed to fear Bezobrazoff—a retired official of the civil service who, personally, had no importance whatever.[7] In June, 1903, there was a good deal of friction between the employees of the Bezobrazoff company and those of a Japanese-Chinese syndicate which had obtained from the Korean Government, in March, a timber concession in this same region. Two Chinese were shot by the Russians, and the rafts of the syndicate were seized. Balasheff's dispatch probably referred to this or some similar incident, and the Captain Bodisco to whom it was addressed was probably an officer in the service of the Bezobrazoff company on the Yalu.—G. K.[8] "Osvobozhdenie," No. 75, Stuttgart, August 19, N. S., 1905. No question has ever been raised, I think, with regard to the authenticity of these letters and telegrams; but if there were any doubt of it, such doubt would be removed by a comparison of them with General Kuropatkin's history.—G. K.[9] Asakawa, who seems to have investigated this matter carefully, says that the original contract for this concession dated as far back as August 26, 1896, when the Korean king was living in the Russian legation at Seoul as a refugee.—"The Russo-Japanese Conflict," by K. Asakawa, London, 1905, p. 289.[10] The italics are my own.—G. K.[11] Since I wrote this, a friend has supplied the quotation, but as I know no Latin, less Greek, and the least possible amount of bad French, I cannot answer for its correctness! "Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?"[12]The Ford of Weeping.