and open redoubts or walled camps.

Such is, or was, Port Arthur, and when we remember how the Turks held
Plevna, an open town until the earthworks were hastily thrown up round
it, for months against all the force Russia could bring against it,
one cannot but feel amazement that a place so powerful should so
easily have fallen. Properly defended, it should be unreducible by
anything but famine. The coast defences are impregnable, and those
inland, though more susceptible of attack, should not fall before
anything short of overwhelming superiority of force. I should like to
have seen the 20,000 men whom the Japanese led against it take that
fortress in forty-eight hours from Osman Pacha's army. The Mikado's
generals, however, had formed a perfectly just estimate of their own
powers as against those of the enemy. In fact, a third of their force
could have taken Port Arthur from the ridiculous soldiers who held it.

The garrison in ordinary times amounts to 7000 men, but before the
Japanese attack it had been increased to nearly 20,000. This is
inadequate; 30,000 men at least should occupy the fortress in time of
war, and 40,000 would not in my opinion be too many.

The chief man in the place when I was there was the Taotai, or
governor, Kung, a brother, I have heard, of the Ambassador to England.
His office, I believe, is civil; the military chiefs were Generals
Tsung and Ju. The soldiers, who appeared to range about everywhere
pretty much at their own discretion, were an uncouth, rough lot, with
very little of the smartness of dress and bearing which we associate
with the military character. Everywhere was a most portentous display
of banners, as if the sacrilegious foot of a foeman could not be set
on any spot rendered sacred by the dragon flag. The town presented a