120 WATCH-TOWER AND TARTAR HORSEMEX. 
On the 12t]i of September we landed on a j)ro- 
jecting point, marked on the charts as an island, on 
the eastern side of the Gulf of Liau-tung, about 
forty miles north of Hulu-Shan Bay. On lea\dng 
the boat near the rocky Cape Vansittart, which is 
separated from the mainland by a flat sandy neek, 
we apj)roached a rounded knoll, on the summit of 
which was a square watch-tower with Tartar horse- 
men grouped picturesquely around it ; a scene my 
artist friend Bedwell was desirous of sketching, 
O 
In the distance were the angular cold gray peaks 
and ridges of a barren mountain range, with here 
and there little rivers running down their sides, 
gleaming like quicksilver as the sun shone on the 
water-courses and little winding sti-eams. At the 
base of these lifeless granite masses stretched a 
level j)lain, green and fertile, where little straggling 
hamlets of low flat-topped mud houses were snugly 
sheltered in long groves of trees. To this succeeded 
a sterile sandy belt, with a chain of freshwater 
ponds, shallow and full of weeds, and with muddy 
open spaces between them — the natural resort of 
