3888 CHINO-JAPANESE WAR. 
bodies in the whole line of land defence. The mixture of rifles, guns 
and ammunition was perfectly astounding. As an example, in one 
small work (the one in which the magazine was blown up), which was 
30 yards square inside, there were the following pieces of ordnance :— 
Two 8-inch mortars, one 12 c.m. Krupp siege gun, one quick-firing 
Chinese gun of 1-inch calibre of the Hotchkiss pattern, onc 8 c.m. gun 
marked “ Merton Danzig,” one 9 c.m. Krupp field gun, and one smooth- 
bore bronze howitzer of about 44-inch calibre. 
We found Mauser rifles, Dreyse rifles, Remington rifles, Martini- 
Henry rifles, Schulhof rifles, Snider rifles, muzzle-loading muskets and 
the “two-men weapons,” of which the Chinese think so much, which 
are carried by two men and have a l-inch bore; and in 50 yards 
of entrenchment we came upon four different sorts of rifle am- 
munition. But the most extraordinary and the saddest instance 
of want of arrangement that I saw was a dead Chinaman lying 
by himself surrounded by the latest magazine rifle ammunition and at 
his side a tower musket. 
The arrival of the British fleet on the 25th was a very great event 
for us, for the officers of the flagship most liberally supplied our wants 
in the way of food, which had never been fully satisfied since we landed, 
as, you will remember, we had left our baggage behind. On the Ist 
December we went back to Talienwan by sea and then marched 
to Kinchou, where Marshal Oyama established his head-quarters. Here 
we remained for 50 days—spending our time chiefly in trying to keep 
out the cold. I have here a blanket great-coat which was issued to 
the Japanese soldiers at that time. It is an ordinary coat made 
of a blanket material with a fur collarand hood and a pair of mits. 
These were issued to all the Japanese soldiers and were obtained by 
public subscription in Japan. 
At Kinchou the inhabitants were all quite ready to sell what they 
could, eggs, fish, chickens and things of that sort, and it was rather 
curious to see the Japanese bargaining with them: they could not 
speak the language but could always make themselves understood by 
writing or making signs, as many of the Chinese characters and 
Japanese characters are the same. 
All the European and American newspaper correspondents left 
for Japan after Port Arthur; but an American, Mr. Smith, and 
two Frenchmen came over to Kinchou towards the end of December. 
They arrived one evening and we gave them what we could for 
dinner and saw them round to their quarters afterwards. But the 
_next morning the two Frenchmen arrived looking thoroughly ill 
and saying that Mr. Smith was still worse and unable to get up. 
We began to wonder whether we had poisoned them or not ; but it 
appeared that they had gone to sleep with a particular kind of noxious 
fuel burning in their rooms, which had really very nearly killed them. 
There had been several cases of the same thing amongst the Japanese 
soldiers, and stringent orders were therefore issued on the subject. 
We had a very festive Christmas dinner—and sat down, a party of 
10 including the Marshal, in a room nine feet six inches square. The 
band was very kindly sent to play to us and towards midnight we got 
