The Japanese were attempting to turn the Russian army of occupation out of Manchuria by forcing them north along the line of the Eastern Chinese Railway between Harbin and Port Arthur. The line between Mukden and the Kwan-tung peninsula, runs over the flat plain on the west of the chain of rocky mountains, some 4,000 feet high. West of the railway is the sea and the river Liao and its tributaries, the Hun-ho, Sha-ho and Tai-tsu. At the end of June the Japanese had a strong force investing Port Arthur, they had established themselves in the northern portion of the Kwan-tung peninsula and after the battle of Telissu the Russians evacuated all the “neutral zone,” intended as a buffer for Port Arthur, and were just north of that boundary, which extends from Kaiping on the west, up the Tuntai Valley and down the Ta-yang-ho to its port on the Yellow Sea. The Japanese first army under General Kuroki was following the old main road from the Yalu River at Antung, to Liaoyang, with a depôt at Feng-huang-cheng, from which a road to the north-east leads east of Motienling to the Liao Valley, then west to Liaoyang and north-west to Mukden. This first army was already holding the pass on the north road and the Motienling Pass. The Takushan army followed the road to Haicheng, and at Hsiu-yen sent a force west to keep in touch with the second army under General Oku whose headquarters were at Kaiping. The Japanese plan of campaign was by frontal attacks to drive the Russians back north along the railway, and, by flank attacks through the hill passes to the north of wherever the frontal attack was made, induce the Russians to withdraw from opposing the frontal attack. General Kuropatkin had fortified Liaoyang and all the approaches thereto from the north-east, east, and south. On the south-west he had the Russian defences at Newchwang. Tashichiao junction, where the branch line from Newchwang joins the main line, is a station nearly midway between Haicheng and Kaiping, each being about twenty miles distant, and the town a few miles east in the mountains, and Newchwang sixteen miles west. If the Newchwang-Tashichiao railway were continued eastward for one hundred miles it would reach Feng-huang-cheng, and almost parallel with that supposed line there is a cart road to Haicheng from the east. At the end of June, General Kuropatkin, having then about 200,000 men free for the operations, determined upon an offensive movement south. At that time the Japanese were awaiting more men for the second army before advancing further north, and the Takushan army was driving the Russians back towards Tashichiao. On June 27, the Japanese first army occupied one Feng-shui-ling, east of Motienling, and the Takushan army another Feng-shui-ling in the Tapien-ling pass, thirty miles west of Motienling. [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF TASHICHIAO.]