5th August.
In the "Journal of the Royal United Service Institution" for May last, there is xn article with the above title by Col. C. E. de la Poor Beresford, p.s., lately British Military Attache at Sv. Petersburg. It is only a brief sketch, but it has the advantage of giving the impressions of a British soldier of experience, and a short notice of it will not be amiss at the present time, when the attention of the world is concentrated on Port Arthur.
Colonel Beresford begins with a short history of the Manchus which We may pass over, und a brief note of the geography of the three provinees, Heilungchiang. Kirin, and Shengking. The first is the most northern ani the most inhospitable, and produces the bravest men, "It is a land of wind-swept uplands, of babbling streams, of great forests, Like Caledonia, it is stern and wild. It produces gold, timber, hides, and cattle." Kirin is a land of woods and mountains, much of it almost impassable. "Its lakes teem with fish, In the hills are bear, boar, deer, the argus-eyed pheasant, cock, snipe, ete, The lowlands produce maize, millet, beans, rice, tobacco, hemp, and apples, whilst gold and coal are found in the mountains." The southern province Shengking of which Mukden is the capital is the smallest and the best. What he saw of it filled Colonel Beresford with admiration almost ecstatic. "Blest by a good climate, with a short very cold win'er, and rainy spring, a sun-flooded summer and autumn, it produces every thing that the heart of man can desire. Its wooded hills are stocked with game, and in their recesses are found gold, silver, iron, and coal. Its fine rivers, Liao, Hun, Dalin, and Yalu, are full of fish and carry wuch traffic. Its fields are covered with maize, melons, corn, and luscious grasses. Its homesteads, with their thick walls and harns, resemble those of Hampshire. Tia cities, their high pagodas embowered.in trees, and surrounded castellated walls, woo you like Cologneor Canterbury in the distance so aimed which wissed the coal-yard from the level plain.". i would fall into the' basin, the dock-After a brief account of the Trans-' ard,: the Sarétoff Restaurant, the j Siberian Railway, which is not very uso-Chinese Bank, and the ship-enthusiastic, and concludes with the! ping. Port Arthur, ina word, is a statement that " ballast, ballast, bal-cramped harbour, with a bad en-last, is what is. urgently needed all! trance, a small dockyard, and only: along the line," Colonel Beresford one dry dock." assures us that it is a-most useful Not the least interesting thing in Strategical factor in the present cam-Col. Beresford's paper is his referotice paign; and accepts the statement to the Hunghutse, as to whose doings that has been made to him, that in he was rather sceptical until, on his the last three months of 1903 and in way home, he met at Tiehling: one January 1904, 240,000 men have Pavel Alexéivitch Tumanoff, a lieu-moved into Manchuria. If so, where tenant in the East Siberian Rifles, are they? And where are all the who gave him a description of a men who are supposed to have been recent brush with the Red-beards moved in since the Ist of February, atthe rate of 2,000 a day? And "These poor devils of Hunghutso," said he, "whom we call brigands, are simply the former owners of the soil, russia made a mistake in. arousing Colonel Beresford considers that who, having become dispossessed Japan's irritation before her com-everything they had during the campaign munications were complete. of 1900, now rove the country, living on Of the fortifications of Port the inhabitants.. Whenever they can see Arthur Col. Beresford speaks very chance they attack the railway line. At first they did a lot of harm, but now highly. Every hill on the land side we have 50,000 strai (guards), they don't has its fort, and the sea front is bother us much. You seo the lino of admirably protected. The protec-ills there to the east, towards' Corea, tion to the gunners and guns, too, is just beyond the coal mines you passod at very effective. The commonica-Faihé? Well, we hoard at Harbin that tions between the baric s are safe these people were gathering there, so General Alexeieff, the admiral's cousin, from search by enfilaae by their you know, who commands our brigade of trace; and the communications be-Rifles, the 5th, sent my company down defences and the dockyard, the artil-tween all ts of the outlying post-haste. Wo arrived on the evening of the 7th. On the morning of the 8th, lery park, the old town, and the just as we wore preparing tea, we saw a new town are excellent macadamized cloud of dust, and the gleam' of lances out there towards the hills. I formed a roads, safe from fire. Space fails half-company up in line lying down at Col. Beresford to dilate on the enor-6 paces interval, with a section in the mous stores of ammunition, prostation in reserve. My left flank was visions, and forage that have been resting on the Chaihé stream there, and collected at Port Arthur. "There! on my right was a section in the huts by can be no doubt," he says, " that! the trees, a little to the rear, On came the Hunghutse on their little ponies, whoever attempts to take Port) waving red pointed banners, their lances Arthur will have an excessively diffi-glittering, shouting loudly. It really was cult task. The garrison probably pity to shoot them, they came on so now stands at about 20,000 men, gallantly and rode so well! When-a,0ut with, say, 10,000 sailors. And it 600 yards off, I let them have a volley and would be well for our readers to take then ordered independent firing. You know what that moans with smokeless the testimony of an eye-witness, and powder. In twenty minutes the -Hung-believe that, contrary to some of the huts were in full flight, about fifty of reports of our Press, the quality of them were killed, many drowned trying these troops is quite first class." to swim the Chaihé, and the plain was After a description of the harbour covered with riderless ponies. A fow of Port Arthur, its batteries, its managed to get in on the left flank, and speared three of my poor fellows. "One limited facilities, and its many dis-is dead, and another will never soo advantages, Colonel Beresford dwells Métushka Volga again; I think the third particularly on the exposed situation will recover. It isn't the attacks we of the stock of Cardiff coal. He mind; they are rather fun. But one says: "An enemy knowing its never knows when we mayn't be ordered bearings might destroy or knock it off by train to some infernal hole, and about ito th2 basin and harbour by we can't call our lives -our own, 80 con-Alexeieff." A stantly are we kept.on the trot by long-range fire. All the projectiles
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.