position by assault
after they had signally failed to hold it in the face of attack.
Nevertheless, finding it intolerable, alike to their prestige and to
their sense of camaraderie, to take no measure in behalf of the great
fortress and its thirty thousand defenders, they determined to march
at once to its assistance. To that end celerity was all important,
and on June 14th, that is to say, only eighteen days after the battle
of Kinchou, a Russian army of some thirty-five thousand combatants,
under the command of General Baron Stackelberg, moving down the
railway to recover Kinchou and Nanshan, came into collision with the
Japanese and fought the battle of Telissu. The Russian general,
clinging always to the railway, advanced with such a restricted front
that the Japanese, under General Oku, outflanked him, and he was
driven back with a loss of about ten thousand, killed and wounded,
fourteen guns, and four hundred prisoners.

NAVAL INCIDENTS

On June 15th, the very day after the Telissu victory, the Japanese
met their only naval catastrophe. While their fleet was watching the
enemy off Port Arthur, the battleships Hatsuse and Yashima struck
mines and sank immediately. Moreover, on the same day, the cruisers
Kasuga and Yoshino collided in a dense fog, and the latter vessel was
sent to the bottom. As the Japanese possessed only six battle-ships,
the loss of two was a serious blow, and might have emboldened the
Russians to despatch a squadron from the Baltic to take the earliest
possible advantage of this incident. Foreseeing this, the Japanese
took care to conceal the loss of the Hatsuse and Yashima, and the
fact did not become known until after the battle of Tsushima, a year
later, when the Russian fleet had been practically annihilated.

Meanwhile, the Russian squadron at Vladivostok had accomplished
little. This squadron consisted originally of three armoured
cruisers, Gromovoi, Rossia, and Rurik, with one protected cruiser,
Bogatyr. But the last-named ship ran on a rock near Vladivostok and
became a total wreck in the middle of May, a month marked by many
heavy losses. These cruisers made several excursions into the Sea of
Japan, sinking or capturing a few Japanese merchantmen, and cleverly
evading a Japanese squadron under Admiral Kamimura, detailed to watch
them. But their only achievement of practical importance was the
destruction of two large Japanese transports, the Hitachi Maru and
the Sado Maru. In achie