Departure of the expedition--Arrival at Korsakovsk--Condition of convict station--Freedom allowed prisoners, most of whom are murderers--Wreck of the steamer and loss of outfit--Gold lace and life-preservers--Return to Korsakovsk--Russian table manners--The Russian's naïve attitude toward bathing--Some results of the intermarriage of criminals--How Yankee shrewdness saved some confiscated photographs--Pleasant sensations on being shaved by a murderer--Predominance of American goods. At six o'clock in the afternoon of July 22, 1898, the Governor-general with his wife and suite, resplendent in gold lace and buttons, came aboard in the rain. The anchor was heaved up and we pointed southward toward the open sea, which is reached by way of a passage from half a mile to three miles wide and twelve miles long. The shore on either side bristles with armaments which, together with the narrowness of the passage, make Vladivostok entirely impregnable from the sea. There is a story, however, which the Russians never like to hear. One morning, after a night of dense fog, as the sun cleared away the mist, four big British men-of-war were found anchored within two hundred yards of the city, and could have blown it skyward without a shot from the batteries, being safe from the line of fire. Since then big guns have been mounted to cover the inner harbor. Reaching open water, we turned to the northeast and set our course toward the southern point of the island of Saghalien, for the Governor-general was to inspect the convict station of Korsakovsk. Three days of uneventful steaming at ten knots an hour brought the shores of Saghalien above the horizon. We saw a long, curved beach backed by low-lying hills covered with fields and woodland. As the place could boast no harbor, we dropped anchor in the open roadstead a mile from shore. Our whistle had long since waked to life an asthmatic little steam-launch, which soon came alongside. We forthwith invaded her stuffy little cabin and she waddled shoreward.