The Hunghus towns and villages are surrounded with a low wall, have gates, and small forts with jingals at frequent intervals, commanding all the approaches. It is one of the ordinances of China that even every village must have its surrounding wall. Though this fence may be of mud and only a few feet high, without gates, and used as a promenade in muddy weather, it nevertheless exists. In some of the villages on the plain the walls also have forts; these forts have cannon about as large and very much of the shape of an old blunderbus barrel. And there is always a diminutive flag over the fort, whose walls and moat, or trench, there is not a correspondent’s waler could not jump easily, and a clever horse would jump both in and out of the fort, as an Irish horse jumps a stone wall. The forts are just such toys as enterprising boys make on the sea-beach for their amusement, and of no greater military importance. The strength of the Hunghuses lies in their bravery; they do not fear their own countrymen; of foreigners they have a wholesome dread. The Russians were so uneducated they knew not what to do, nor what to want. Ordinarily you could pass through their lines with ease. When it was difficult, or the correspondent too lazy, a Chinaman was employed. One I sent into the fort to see what was being done there, to find out how many guns were in position and what they were. He was an educated man, but passed in as a coolie, and as a coolie was detained until he had done a day’s work with the others. There was a spy who wished to get plans of the fort and of the fortifications around it. He stayed in a Chinese village near by, went in and out and about; hid when necessary in the hollows where Chinese coffins have fallen in on the corpses, and when hard pressed he came back to Yingkow. The authorities, aided by their English secretary, were after him there, but it did not suit the correspondents to have one who had posed as of their profession to be caught thus red-handed. He was hidden among Chinese in a riverside village, and as the train was searched for him every morning, he had to get underneath one of the cars before dawn, and hang on to the gear there until the train reached the next station.