Reaching the railway, we proceeded along it in the direction of the Wall. The country between it and us was flat and cultivated, though at its foot lay a strip of waste ground. To our left ran a rough road leading out, through the same gap as the line, towards some forts to the north. Along it, behind three sturdy little ponies harnessed abreast, sped a Russian _troiscka_, driven by a Cossack and containing two white‐coated officers. Arrived at the inner face of the Wall, we climbed its sloping side and found ourselves on a broad and bush‐grown rampart. We were twenty or thirty feet above the ground. The outer face of this ancient fortification, which was begun in B.C. 241, was in a better state of preservation than the inner; though in places it bore little resemblance to a wall. From the ruins of an old bastion we had a splendid view of the surrounding country. Before us a level plain stretched away to the horizon, broken by the ugly outlines of forts or patched with cultivated fields and small woods. To the right the Great Wall ran to the cliffs above the sea, which sparkled in the distance under a brilliant sun. On its bosom lay the ponderous bulks of a number of Japanese warships; for their fleet had arrived unexpectedly at Shanhaikwan the night before. The Russian dinner‐party, which Lieutenant Kell had attended the previous evening, had been given in the open air, on the cliffs over the sea. The numerous guests, nearly all officers of the Czar, could look out over the blue water as they smoked the cigarettes with which every Russian meal is punctuated. While the feast was proceeding merrily trails of smoke, heralding the approach of a fleet, appeared on the horizon. The Russian officers gazed in surprise as the ships came into view, and wonder was expressed as to their nationality and the purpose of their coming. In those troublous times, when national jealousies were rife, no one knew that war might not suddenly break out among the so‐called Allies; and Slav, Teuton, Frank, and Briton might be called on without a day’s warning to range themselves in hostile camps. So something like consternation fell upon the dinner‐party when the approaching ships were seen to be the Japanese fleet. For the relations between Russia and Japan were very strained at the time; and all present at the table wondered if the unexpected arrival of this powerful squadron meant that the rupture had come. But no hostile signs were made by the ships; and, with the motto of the trooper all the world over— “Why, soldiers, why Should we be melancholy, boys, Whose business ’tis to die?” the interrupted revelry was renewed.