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IN ALL 'apanese towns coolies are employed to draw the native two-wheel carriages, or jinrickshaws. They keep up a dog

trot, and sometimes a pretty lively pace for hours without apparent exhaustion.

(71)

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DURING several of the Japanese bombardments of Port Arthur by the blockading fleet, the swift cruisers of the Russian squadron.
advanced toward the enemy beyond the outer harbor, but not beyond the protection of the fortress guns. The warships of Japan
would then disappear for a time, and those of Russia return to the harbor, covered in midwinter with a respectable layer of ice. (40).

THE JAPS PUTTING ON THEIR WAR PAINT.

IN A few hours from the recall of the Japanese minister from St. Petersburg, and the issuing of passports to the Russian minister at Tokyo, virtually the entire Japanese Navy was in war paint. The picture shows the painters at work.

(43)

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immediately commanded him to answer the Japanese challenge with armed force.

"Making known this, our decision, we, with unshaken faith in the Almighty, and with a firm expectation of and reliance upon the unanimous willingness of all our loyal subjects to stand with us in defense of the fatherland, ask God's blessing upon our stalwart land and naval forces.

"Given at St. Petersburg, Jan. 27, 1904 A. 9, 1904), and in the tenth year of our reign. hand of his imperial majesty,

D. (new calendar, Feb.
Written in full by the
NICHOLAS."

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CHAPTER III.

ECHOES OF THE FIRST SHOT.

Russian Disaster at Chemulpo-Heroism of the Russians-Brave Men CheeredBlown Up with Dead on Board-How Russians Were Trapped-Russian Transport Accidentally Destroyed-Blunders!. Blunders! More Blunders!

E

VEN while the guns at Port Arthur were booming forth defiance and death in the first day of the war, the circle of strife was widening and the spirit of warfare was reaching with greedy hands for victims in all directions. After having conducted the most successful torpedo flotilla attack in the history of modern warfare, the Japanese fleet of sixteen vessels returned to Port Arthur in the forenoon of the next day and renewed the bombardment, as already recited. In that action four more Russian vessels were struck, adding the first class battleship Poltava and the cruisers Diana, Askold, and Novik to the list of cripples in the confused and demoralized Russian fleet, which had already suffered serious injury to the Retvizan and Cesarevitch, both battleships, and the cruiser Pallada.

RUSSIAN DISASTER AT CHEMULPO.

On that same day the cruising warships of the Mikado bottled up two isolated units of the Czar's navy and forced them to disastrous battle at Chemulpo, on the Korean coast, three hundred miles south and east as the crow flies. Throughout the entire Korean peninsula detachments of the Japanese army were being landed under cover of the action at Port Arthur and with the knowledge that the Russian

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