Journeying farther east improvements are visible all along the route. The Southern Ussuri district of the Primorski territory has been developed. Nikolskoe has become an important military centre. Barracks to accommodate 20,000 men are in course of construction, and more land has been brought under cultivation. Vladivostok has grown and improved; it possesses a new cathedral, many new government buildings, three theatres and several additions to its business streets. Additional barracks have also been erected at Vladivostok, and its importance has increased rather than diminished since it ceased to be a free port. There is no lack of amusement, gaiety, and “life” at Vladivostok, but the port has an appreciable commerce which gives it staidness and stability. It is not entirely a naval station as Port Arthur was, nor so absolutely in the hands of the naval and military commandants. It has a severe climate; in January it was painfully cold and out of doors life scarcely enjoyable. The harbour was frozen over solid, with the exception of the track kept open by the daily voyages of the Danish ice-breaker, _Nadejni_. The _Rossia_, _Rurik_, and _Gromoboi_, lay alongside the ice, gangways from the ships’ sides giving access thereto. The Cardiff steam coal from the British colliers, then discharging in port, was being carted across the ice to the cruisers. The defences of the fortress had not been materially strengthened. Several new batteries had been prepared, for the most part on the land side, and they face the east, but the guns for them were lying at the harbour level, and those in the new forts were not mounted. On board the men-of-war, even in the dockyards, and on shore there was a general slackness. In the depth of winter, Vladivostok is not one of the busiest ports in the world. New Year festivities rather than war were uppermost in the minds of the society people to whom the existence of forts and batteries assured security apart from the apparently impenetrable barrier of the ice-girt coast. I learned that Vladivostok had not in hand at that time sufficient supplies to feed the garrison and inhabitants for a fortnight. They were dependent upon the stores and granaries in the neighbourhood of Nikolskoe, four to five hours distant by railway. In short, the defences of the place were so incomplete, and its resources so shallow, that I quite believed a Japanese Intelligence officer when he told me they could capture the port in a week. The Russian military authorities were so slack and so confident in the strength of their fortress that when a Japanese squadron made a surprise visit in March, the guns still lay at the foot of the new forts, batteries were unmanned, and thus but a very feeble reply could be made to the Japanese bombardment, which, fortunately for Vladivostok, was not heavy, and damaged principally the Linevich fort.