The tidal wave of war that swept us over the Yalu left us stranded on a hill side in Manchuria. Upon the slope of the hill was outspread a forest of green boughs, in the shade of which we pitched our tents and awaited the next move in the big game. It was a sequestered nook, where the moist earth feeds a plenteous crop of weeds and clothes with verdure the tiny mounds under which generations of Manchus sleep the sleep that knows not waking. Among the silent memorials of the dead we made bowers of pine branch and oak leaf, and wreathed them with snowy hawthorn and scented lilac. At dewy dawn we woke to the song of thrush and call of cuckoo, and at nightfall we were lulled to sleep by the breath of the wind sighing through the woods like the murmur of the lonely sea. From our cool covert we looked upon a valley embraced by copse-clad hills and a mountain that towers like a bastion above the plain. Feng-hoang--“Phœnix”--is the name of the mountain and fits it well, for this sheer rock with furrowed face and razor crest was born of fire. Along the valley winds the river--a strand of blue in a web of brown and gold. It was a scene of vernal loveliness. When the sun flooded valley and hill with gold, the brown earth turned to deep amber, and the groves shone like emeralds. Under the lambent moon the landscape was a silver shield embossed with hills and dark tree tops and a mountain seamed with black ravines. But it was in storm that the scene was grandest. Then the riven clouds dyed the valley and slopes with deep shades of amber and brown, and the hills were veiled with mist like white robed giants lifting proud heads into infinite space. In the shadow of our sylvan retreat stands a temple--a low roofed building without size or distinction, dedicated to the worship of Buddha--and across the plain rise the crenelated walls of the city. The husbandman was at work in the valley turning over the rich brown soil with a primitive plough drawn by ox and mule yoked together or sowing the furrows with millet dropped from a wooden scoop and trodden into the soil by the foot of one who comes after. Patches of vivid green showed where the seed had already begun to sprout, and where in a few weeks would arise a forest of tangled corn twelve feet high, through which Cossack and cavalry might strive in vain.