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132 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
in between the foot-hills, behind the approaching
saps. The nature of the ground made it every-
where possible to find sheltered places for such a
purpose, where the troops could live screened
from the view of the enemy in comparative safety,
though the Russians occasionally sent shells into
places where they thought it likely the Japanese
had established encampments. We had some
few of them flying about our own camp, and some
“ humming birds,” splinters of shell or shrapnel,
struck within a few feet of our tents and were
picked up burning hot. But, as I have said,
these places were fairly safe, and accidents were
comparatively few. The camps were, as a rule,
built on the back slopes of some hill, and it had
in many cases been necessary to terrace the hill-
side from top to bottom to make room for the
tents and the shelters. But the Japanese under-
stand this kind of work—have not they laid out
half of their owm country in terraces ? They cut
out and build up, and they construct quite decent
roads or broad pathways which zigzag along a
fairly easy gradient from terrace to terrace right
up to the tops of hills which, without these roads,
would often be nearly insurmountable. Even the
horses were taken up here, and, especially at the
headquarters of the ist Division, it was quite
interesting to see them stabled on small balcony-
like terraces, holding two or three horses each,
nearly at the top of the hill, with their backs to a
perpendicular wall cut out in the hill-side, and
looking down over a perpendicular precipice into
the valley below.
It was, of course, only for the staff officers’
horses that such elaborate arrangements were
made. All the artillery and commissariat horses
were kept in camps which were spread all over
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