west
coast of the peninsula. The distance from the port of Fusan to the
Yalu River is four hundred miles, in round numbers, and the roads are
very bad throughout the whole country. Hence the advance of the
Japanese, which was made in a leisurely manner with the utmost
circumspection and attention to detail, involved so much time that
April had drawn to its close before the troops deployed on the banks
of the Yalu. They consisted of three divisions constituting an army
corps, and each division had a ration-strength of 19,000 men with a
combatant strength of 14,000 sabres and rifles and thirty-six
field-guns. It may be assumed, therefore, that when the Japanese
First Army under General (afterwards Count) Kuroki reached the Yalu,
it had a fighting-strength of between forty and fifty thousand men.
There had practically been no collision during the interval of the
advance from the southern extremity of the peninsula to its northern
boundary. It is true that, on March 28th, a squadron of Cossacks
attempted to surprise the Japanese cavalry at Chong-ju, but the essay
proved a failure, and the Cossacks were driven back upon Wiju, which
they evacuated without any further struggle.

The Russian plan of operations did not originally contemplate a
serious stand at the Yalu. The idea was to retire gradually, drawing
the Japanese into Manchuria towards the railway, and engaging them in
the exceedingly difficult country crowned by the Motien Mountains.
But at the last moment General Kuropatkin, Russian commander-in-chief
in Manchuria, issued orders to General Sassulitch, commander of the
Second Siberian Army Corps, to hold the line of the Yalu with all his
strength. Sassulitch could muster for this purpose only five
regiments and one battalion of infantry; forty field-guns; eight
machine-guns, and some Cossacks--twenty thousand combatants,
approximately. Kuroki disposed his troops so that their front
extended some twenty miles along the Yalu, the centre being at
Kiuliencheng, a walled town standing about 180 feet above the river.
From this point southward, the right, or Manchurian, bank has a
considerable command over the left, and at Kiuliencheng a tributary
stream, called the Ai, joins the main river, "which thenceforth
widens from 4000 to 7000 yards and runs in three channels between the
islands and the mainland. The central channel is navigable by small
craft, and the other channels are fordable waist-deep. The Ai River
is also f