THE CHINO-JAPANESE WAR, 1894—95 584 yard are at the north end, between twohills,the more easterly of which looks out on the sea. A rocky promontory shelters the lower part of the harbour from the sea. On this promontory, on the eastern hill near the town,at the base of this hill,and on another hill still further east stand the sea forts.

This easternhill is the end of asickle-shaped range ofheights, with pointed summits running inland, and forming an outlying rampart tothe town on the northandnorth-east. Each hill-top next few days,occurring as it did on the eveof Oyama's approach toPortArthur. Buthappily for tlae Japanese, whatever encouragement it gave to their enemies was counterbalanced by the result of another engagement on November 20th. On that day Oyama, who had marched from Ta-lien-wan on the 17th, hadconcentrated his armyin front of the advanced forts of Port Arthur. The Chinese attempted a sortie in force against his outposts, but they weredriven back to the forts by a well-directed fare of VIEW OF PORT ARTHUR.

artillery, leaving more than a hundred dead on the ground.

is crowned with a fort. In the following narrative this range will be spoken of as the "northern ridge." West of the town, andcompleting the line of its landward defences, is another hill, steep sided, broad topped, a small table land, with a couple ofsummits rising above itsgeneral level. This is the hill of I-tzu-shan (literally, the " Chair Hill "). It is crowned with three forts, and as its summit is the highest landnear the Port, they overlook and can take inreverse the landforts on the inner part of the northern ridge. Thehillof I-tzu-shan is thus the keyof Port Arthur. Once inpossession of a besieger, tlae forts on thenearer summits of the northern The country round Port Arthur is a mass of rockyhills with steep sides,running up now into isolated pointed summits,nowinto narrowridges or table lands of no great width. In order to understand the story of the battle fought on November 21st, tlae accompanying plan should be examined in connection with the following description, which,however,only deals with the leading features of the position without going into technical details. It will be seen that tlae harbour lies north-east and south-west in the line ofits greatestlength. The town and dock-