Private houses 600 Orthodox church 1 Synagogue 1 Mosques 5 Schools 3 Military hospital 1 together with district administrative offices similar to those established at Kazalinsk. The water-supply is drawn from the Syr Daria by means of wells. There are no hotels. The town revenue is only 12,350 roubles; although the importation of various goods from Russia into the Perovski district represents an annual sum of 2,900,000 roubles. With the advent of the Central Asian railway the commercial importance of Perovski, once a point through which caravans destined for Orenburg or Tashkent passed, waned. Now its trade is dependent upon the numerous Tartars and Ural Cossacks who have settled there. The place is unhealthy, and the settlement is affected by the malaria arising from the marshes which surround it. In spring and summer the lagoons swarm with myriads of mosquitoes and horse-flies; so great is the plague that the Kirghiz together with their flocks and herds after wintering along the Syr Daria beat a hurried retreat into the steppe, driven off by the tiresome insects. Many months elapse before the nomads return; it is not until the cold weather has set in that they appear in any numbers. Quite close to Perovski there are two immigrant villages--Alexandrovski and Novo Astrakhanski--erected in 1895, where the inhabitants are occupied with cattle-farming and the sale of hay in winter time to the Kirghiz. The district possesses nothing save a pastoral population and a small settlement of 200 souls at Djulek. This place, formerly a fortress founded in 1861 and now half destroyed by the floods of the Syr Daria, contains the administrative offices of the commissioner of the section, with a postal and telegraphic bureau and a native school. To the south of Djulek there is Skobelevski, another small village founded by immigrants in 1895 and containing some fifty-six houses. It is watered by the Tchilli arik. Skobelevski is rapidly developing into a trade-mart, the source of its good fortune being contained in the advantageous position which it fills in the steppe. Throughout this region, plots of land with a good quality soil and well watered have been granted to colonists.