should not be allowed to leave, but be taken prisoners. The admiral, however, had so high an estimate of Ting's personality and service to his country and so deep a sympathy with his difficult position that he insisted that Ting's request should be cheerfully granted. In his reply, therefore, Itō again advised Ting, for the sake of his own safety and of the future good of China, to become Japan's guest, agreed to release all the men on parole, and declined to accept the proposed guarantee by the British commander as unnecessary, for Itō rested confidence in Ting's honor as a soldier. The admiral also sent a present to Ting and Commander Liu of the _Ting-yuen_. The next morning Ching again visited the _Matsushima_, this time with the Chinese flag at half-mast, and brought a reply from Ting, who, Ching sorrowfully announced, had declined to accept Itō's present, and, with Liu and Commander Chang of the Liu-kung Island, had committed suicide. All the arrangements regarding the capitulation were then made with the utmost honor to the deceased admiral, and his body was taken ashore in one of the captured Chinese cruisers. The soldiers in the army and navy who were released on parole aggregated 5124 men. The Japanese flag was hoisted on the surrendered battleship _Chen-yuen_, cruisers _Ping-yuen_, _Tsi-yuen_, and _Kwang-ping_, and six gunboats. With this pathetic fall of Wei-hai-Wei the Japanese navy completely annihilated the Northern Chinese Fleet, and gained an absolute control of the Gulf of Pechili. Admiral Itō returned to Hiroshima on March 3. With the expulsion of the Chinese from Korea and the capture of Port Arthur and Wei-hai-Wei, Japan had accomplished the major part of the work which she had proposed to herself. The remainder of the story of the war may be briefly told. Hai-cheng was taken by the Third Division (of the First Army Corps) on December 13, and the Chinese made in January and February three unsuccessful attempts to retake this important walled city. The First Division (of the Second Army Corps) advanced from Kin-chow on February 10 toward Ying-kow, or the treaty port of "Niu-chwang," while the First Army Corps in two bodies pressed northward and then westward with the town of Niu-chwang as its objective point, whence it intended to join the First Division at Ying-kau. Niu-chwang was seized on March 4 after a sanguinary fight on the streets in which more than 1880 Chinese lost their lives. Two days later, the First Division captured Ying-kau without the coöperation of the First Army Corps and with no effective resistance from the enemy. The two armies then joined in the cannonading of Tien-chwang-tai on the other side of the Liao River, which was razed to the ground in order to prevent the Chinese from returning to it. Toward the end of March a column of Japanese troops seized the Pescadore Islands near Formosa.