Although the correspondent of the _Bulletin_ was not aware of the fact when he started on his eventful journey northward, active hostilities had already begun at the front. The two immense armies, as we have seen, lay entrenched, facing each other, in lines extending, nearly one hundred miles from east to west, across the railroad south of Moukden, the ancient capital of the Manchus. While the Japanese had thrown up temporary earthworks here and there, and of course had taken advantage of the configuration of the ground to secure their positions against surprise, as well as to afford shelter for their troops against the inclemency of the Manchurian winter, the Russians were far more strongly fortified and were determined to hold their ground. Railroad trains, running between Moukden and Harbin, their great military base, supplied them with constantly renewed stores of ammunition, food, and clothing, and, moreover, removed the sick and wounded from the front and filled their places with fresh recruits as fast as they arrived from the west over the Trans-Siberian route. Such was the situation when Field Marshal Oyama, having kept his vast armies under perfect discipline all winter, and replaced the losses incurred at Liaoyang, determined to move on the enemy, who, refreshed and confident, awaited behind their ramparts the advance of the Japanese. Exactly the same tactics were employed as at Liaoyang. The ends of the hundred-mile frontal line struck heavily, and bent the Russian bar of steel inward at both extremities. The attack began on February 20th, and four days later the Japanese were in possession of a strong Russian position at the village of Tsinketchen, far to the east of Moukden. At the same time the Japanese left wing began its march on Sinmintin, at the western end of the line. The Russians, out-flanked, fell back. The extremities of the two wings would doubtless have been effectively reinforced had not the crafty Oyama delivered a simultaneous assault upon the very centre at Putiloff, or "Lone-Tree Hill," to use the name that soon became familiar to newspaper readers all over the globe. A furious artillery fire was opened upon this hill by the Japanese. It was taken and retaken. The scenes that had horrified the world at Port Arthur and Liaoyang were repeated. Assault after assault was delivered, but for a week the devoted band of Muscovites held that little acre of ground on the hill-top, while regiment after regiment of the soldiers of Nippon melted away before the terrific fire from the fortress. It was like wading up streams of molten lava, to fight a volcano in full eruption. The Russians were never driven from the hill by direct assault; but Kouropatkin, seeing his wings bent inward and backward farther and farther, and his front once more assuming the terrible horse-shoe shape, reluctantly gave orders to his brave men to withdraw from Putiloff and fall back on the line of the railroad.