The buildings, called hotels, available for travellers were as primitive as Siberian inns. Nikobadze’s in the New Town consisted of a series of half a dozen cottages, with small suites of rooms let out to residents; in the Old Town of a couple of rows of cubicles in a dingy Chinese house, which were also occupied by residents, but occasionally a furnished room was to be had there. The hotel of the town was Efimoff’s, a one-storied quadrangular building of about twenty-four rooms, of which more than half looked into a courtyard, filled with old packing-cases and miscellaneous effects. Each room was about ten feet by eight; the furniture consisted of a truckle or camp bedstead--no bedding--a small deal table covered with a dirty cloth, and a chair of bent-wood. An old packing case on end, with the lid hinged, formed the washstand; there was a small enamelled basin, a jug of water occasionally, an old petroleum tin served the double purpose of a slop-pail, and the ewer for fresh water. There was no mirror, no picture, rarely an ikon in the sacred corner, and a few wire nails knocked into the whitewashed wall constituted clothes-stand and hat-pegs. The door fastened with a hasp and padlock outside. Upon extra payment one might obtain the loan of a pillow, bed linen and a dirty coverlet. If the occupant wanted anything, he went into the corridor and shouted “Boika,” and in the fulness of time a Chinese coolie, speaking pidgin Russian, would call upon the ‘number,’ and, for an inducement, supply hot water, or a tumbler of weak and very greasy tea. The rent was three roubles a day, and, in peace time even, it was a combination of favour and luck which secured for the stranger this inadequate accommodation. There were other houses, known as hotels, ‘numbers,’ and furnished rooms, which provided superior accommodation at the same price, and there were houses which catered for travellers and new-comers by granting lodging at extortionate prices, fixed by the owners’ judgment of his guests’ ability to pay. Usually therefore European tourists made a short stay at Port Arthur, and business men most frequently resided in the private houses of their friends. The chief restaurant was Nikobadze’s in the New Town, where excellent meals were served at moderate prices, and the furniture, decorations, and appointments were clean. At the restaurant in the Old Town there was scanty accommodation, inferior cooking, and less appetizing food. The commercial restaurant, much frequented by naval officers, was the Saratov, on the Bund, rough, ready, thoroughly Russian and the only establishment of its kind. There was no café; the only liquor shops were used solely by the _nijni chin_--soldiers, sailors, and dock hands--so but for private hospitality the stranger would have found time drag heavily during the long hours between meals.