yards of the main positions while the fire from the howitzers finally silenced the great forts of Urlungshan and Shunshusan. But these successes, though considerable, were insufficient to make a really serious breach in the main lines of the defence, as long as the great forts on the west--Antszshan and Etseshan--held out, and forthwith the Japanese attack was diverted to the latter of those two strongholds. Meanwhile, the heavy and incessant fire directed on the harbor and the town had been most destructive. The naval repairing works had to be abandoned, and both the old and the new Chinese towns were rendered uninhabitable where their buildings were not razed to the ground or consumed by the fires started by the bursting shells. [Sidenote: Devices of the Besiegers] For the first time in history a fortress constructed according to the latest principles of military science, and defended by modern long-range artillery, was being besieged; and like the old walled cities of the 17th and 18th centuries, its defences could only be overcome by sap and mine and parallel. So much the assailants had learnt to their cost in their earlier and futile attempts at taking the place by storm. The exigencies of these operations led to the adoption of many ingenious devices by the forces on both sides--such, for instance, as a steel bullet-proof shield to protect the pioneer engaged in cutting wire entanglements; and the deadly grenade charged with dynamite, flung into the enemy's trenches by the hand or by means of wooden mortars bound with bamboo. At first the Japanese had chosen the night time for their assaults, but this plan had to be abandoned owing to the effective employment by the Russians of searchlights and star shells, the former having the effect not only of exposing the assaulting troops to the fire of the defenders, but blinding them in their advance on their objective. Throughout the siege the defenders had shown not only indomitable courage, but inexhaustible resource, and in spite of all the discouragement which the steady and inexorable advance of the Japanese might have been supposed to inflict, they continued equal to every demand on their fortitude. From time to time supplies reached them by means of blockade-runners, but this was but a precarious and inadequate means of replenishing the stores on which such a long and severe strain had been made. And yet, in spite of all rumors to the effect that ammunition was running short, the great guns continued to hurl their defiance at the Japanese artillery, and never in any single instance was the defence weakened by a failure of powder and shot. Though the Russians had failed to foresee many things which the course of the war has proved to have been fairly obvious, no one can pretend that they failed to equip their great stronghold in the Far East in a manner worthy of its claim to rank as "the Gibraltar of the East." After nearly six months of close investment and almost