Food was abundant, and it can never be maintained that the garrison was on the edge of starvation. Some figures put this contention out of court. There were in Port Arthur at the time of surrender--1,422,000 lbs. of flour, 4,400 lbs. of barley, 176,000 lbs. of crushed wheat, 2,970 lbs. of rice, 30,800 lbs. of mealie meal or maize, 132,000 lbs. of biscuit, 77,000 lbs. of corned beef, 770,000 lbs. of salt, 44,000 lbs. of sugar, 1,375,000 lbs. of beans, 1,900 horses in fine condition, and 50,000 roubles in cash. In the naval depôt were five hundred tons of biscuit, 250 tons of new flour--brought one month before by the “King Arthur”--400 tons of flour of earlier import, 40 tons of sugar, 2 tons of butter, some barrels of salt beef, 75,000 tons of Cardiff coal, 15,000 tons of briquette coal, and 55,000 tons of Japanese coal. There was an almost inexhaustible store of vodka, beer, champagne and other wines--“too great a store,” was the significant comment of a Russian admiral. Tobacco, cigars and cigarettes were in abundance. No private stores were commandeered, and civilians who had foresight or money suffered no privation--fresh beef, pork, poultry and other luxuries being obtainable at a price. The poor, for the most part, lived on black bread and tea--a diet not less nutritious than that of the Japanese soldiers, and one to which the Russian peasant and soldier is well accustomed. There was no lack of water, and vegetables alone were wanting. The civilian population, which included five hundred women and children, looked in good health, and readily admitted that they had suffered little or nothing from disease or scarcity of supplies. Only seventy-five, including Chinese, had been killed or wounded by shell fire--about one-third of the number of civilians injured by casual shell fire in Ladysmith. It is due to the garrison also to state that every officer with whom I spoke made no pretence of having suffered from failure of food supplies. When a Russian officer admits so much you may rest content that he lived in comparative comfort. The men who marched to Pigeon Bay and thence to the railway station showed no signs of starvation. Many had just been discharged from hospital, and nine thousand five hundred had been almost continuously on duty in the forts. Yet they were able to march nearly twenty miles and to bivouack in the open. I could not help contrasting their appearance with that of the garrison in Ladysmith during the last days of the siege. When Sir George White sent a few companies of picked men to try and cut off the retreating Boers, the men were able to walk only three or four miles and had to be carried back to Ladysmith.