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Description
This Manchu farmer's field is some three miles north of Port Arthur, over behind two ranges of hills. The balloons are for reconnoitering the country, ascending high enough to overlook the Russian forts, the town, and the harbor where the Russian fleet lies under the protecting guns of Golden Hill. Camps of the various divisions of the investing army are stationed at various points near here, sheltered by high hills from Russian observation and from them detachments are sent out, one after another, to dig trenches in the slopes below the Russian forts, and to advance through the trenches for concerted attacks on the all-but unconquerable defenses. Those gleams of white among the trees in the distance at the right are house walls in a Manchu village. Though the hills hereabouts are barren and desolate, the valleys like this are excellent farming land. All through the Fort Arthur Campaign the Japanese have made various uses of grain like that in the field yonder. Tall stalks of corn and millet, either growing or set up in artificially supported rows and stacks, serve as screens behind which files of infantry can creep rapidly and invisibly up to a vantage point. Such grain stalks are continually used to mask trenches and earth tunnels, disguising the work of the Japanese sappers. On the other hand, the tangles stalks of a ravaged field like this have, many a time, after a battle, formed a hopeless labyrinth, hiding wounded men from the comrades who were searching for them and imprisoning many a poor fellow alone in his dying agonies. A wide shot of two military balloons, one airborne and the other grounded, over/in a Chinese agricultural field. According to William C. Darrah in The World of Stereographs, at the turn of the century publishing company Underwood and Underwood began manufacturing series of stereographs in boxed sets, which were frequently paired with descriptive guide-books. Underwood and Underwood published 300 stereographs of the Russo-Japanese War, 100 of which were sold as a boxed set. Darrah notes that the "detailed depiction of military technology" was a primary focus of Russo-Japanese War stereographs published by the Underwood and Underwood, H.C. White, the U. S. Stereograph Company, Keystone companies. (Darrah, Stereo Views: 187). Parts of Notes of Travel, No. 19, copyright, 1905, by Underwood and Underwood.
Type
image
Format
Black & white photographic stereograph. image/jpeg
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