our village. M I would give anything to know. Russia going purposely to fasten a quarrel on China in order to extend the area of the war and to give an excuse for the seizure of Turkestan, Mongolia and even, perhaps, Peking? " There was nothing unlikely in this. England would cheerfully have done it in the grand old days before she had got tired of land-grabbing. But what an international sin! The stupendous nature of the crime appalled and fascinated me. It brought back memories of the Tsar Peter and of Frederick the Great. " I am now," said I to myself, " about to see the initiation of a movement compared to which the Russo-Japanese war is as nothing. I must therefore move heaven and earth for permission to accompany this raid."
The day before we started was the Russian Christmas Day, which, like good Christians, we observed.by eating "kootia" and "varenookha" and by holding high revel. Strangely enough, it was in the midst of this revel that I first heard of the fall of Port Arthur. Colonel Orloff had ridden in, late at night, and his first words, uttered in a low tone to a brother officer, were " Port Arthur is fallen, is fallen." But few of the officers and none of the men knew it until weeks had elapsed.
Mishchenko had with him, in addition to his twelve regiments of dragoons and Cossacks, twenty-two cannon, that is almost three batteries. Two of these batteries fired melanite, the rest shrapnel. All of them were, of course, horse batteries, six horses pulling each gun. There were, besides, four Maxims with the Daghestan regiment, but these useful little guns were never, I think, used during the advance southward. We marched in three columns. The right column, which consisted of the Primorsky, Nerjinsky and [Chernigovsky Dragoons and the Frontier Guards, was commanded by General Samsonoff, and until the main force reached the Taitsze it traversed the west bank of the Liao-ho.
The central column consisted of the Zaiba'ikal Cossacks, that is, of the Verkhnyudinsky and Chitinsky regiments, and of the Ural Cossacks. It was commanded by General Abramoff, the leader of the Ural Cossacks, and General Mishchenko accompanied it.
The left column consisted of the Don Cossacks and of the Caucasian brigade. It was under the command of General Tyeleschoff and was followed by the Zaiba'ikal battery, the soldiers of which bear in front of their black busbies a metallic scroll commemorating their bravery during the Boxer troubles. Besides, there was the mounted infantry, a fine body of men who should alone have carried Yinkow station on January 12. As is pretty well known, each Russian regiment of foot has attached to it about one hundred cavalrymen. As, under the conditions which then prevailed at the front, these horsemen were unnecessary there, they were all drafted for the time being into Mishchenko's detachment, which therefore amounted in all to some 7500 men. From this force different parties were from time to time detached for the purpose of cutting the railway, but of this hereafter. The four Maxims went with the Daghestan regiment of the Caucasian brigade, but it was not the Caucasians who were supposed to work these guns. Trained men had been brought from St. Petersburg for that purpose. They were under the command of Captain Chaplin, a promising young officer who had served in the artillery at Warsaw, but who was unfortunately the first man to fall on the occasion of thi< expedition.