This was the position when I crossed the Tai-tsu and came to the General and his Staff on a bold eminence crowned by the walls of a city from which had long vanished every trace of human habitation. We were at Kakuanton, about fifteen miles east of Liao-yang. In front of us, across a broad plain dotted with groves and hamlets and brown with the giant stalks of ripe millet and Indian corn, rose a long low hill with a conical peak in the centre. This was Manjuyama--the scene of a bloody struggle. On the left, divided from Manjuyama by a narrow valley, ran a lofty range of mountains, and far away to the right another range with five peaks, at the Northern extremity of which was the Russian coal mine connected with the city by a railway. These positions were in the hands of the enemy, who had strengthened them with trenches, and had joined Manjuyama with the mountains on our left by a deep trench so that men might move from one position to another unseen. In the plain beyond the Northern spur of Manjuyama were posted two Russian field batteries, and, concealed in a ravine in front of the mountain on our left, was another battery. The range on our right was also trenched, but was not so strongly held as on our front and left, where the enemy’s force was four and a half divisions. The capture of Manjuyama must be the first step in our advance and the attempt was made at once. Three batteries of field guns opened a cannonade from our front and soon came under the enemy’s fire from the plain beyond. The range of the Russian guns was fairly accurate, and to an observer at a distance must have appeared to do great damage. But from our position we could see that the direction was invariably wrong, and never changed even by accident. Hundreds upon hundreds of shrapnel burst to the right of the Japanese batteries and made the air hum with the hail of their bullets, yet at the end of the day only one man was killed and seven were wounded. Our guns gave no heed to the enemy’s artillery, but turned their energies to Kuropatkin’s Eye, where the Russians showed themselves boldly on the sky-line. Again and again the slope was swept with shrapnel and common shell that drove the men from the trenches and sent them hot-footed to the shelter of the crest. Reinforcements came from the mountain on our left, moving unseen along the trench to Manjuyama and appearing on the slope and summit in long dark lines. They had to pass through an inferno. Every foot of the hill was flecked with tiny white clouds of shrapnel, and threw up showers of black earth from common shell charged with a terrible explosive. It seemed madness to face such a fire, yet the Russians came and went and moved along the summit and disappeared behind the conical peak as though proof against shot and shell. Meanwhile, our infantry were making ready for a desperate enterprise. We saw them moving forward in front of the guns--line after line, in close formation.