Naval it is also. There are ships of war in and out of commission, a brand-new admiralty, a navy yard, a floating dock, a magnificent dry dock, only just completed, and a naval clubhouse, which is one of the finest buildings in Wladivostok. No matter that Nature closes the harbor from Christmas to the end of March! Science has won the victory, and the port has been kept open for the last two winters by means of a powerful ice-breaker and the services of the troops in towing the blocks of ice out to sea. Large steamers of the “Volunteer Fleet” leave Odessa and Wladivostok monthly or fortnightly. As the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Wladivostok aspires to be what she surely will be--at once the Gibraltar and Odessa of the Far East, one of the most important of commercial emporiums, as the “distributing point” for the commerce of that vast area of prolific country which lies south of the Amur. Possibly a branch line to Port Shestakoff in Ham-gyöng Do may enable the Government to dispense with the services of the ice-breaker! The progress of the city is remarkable. The site, then a forest, was only surveyed in 1860. In 1863 many of the trees were felled and some shanties were erected. Later than that a tiger was shot on the site of the new Government House, and a man leaving two horses to be shod outside the smithy had them both devoured by tigers. Gradually the big oaks and pines were cleared away, and wooden houses were slowly added, until 1872, when the removal of the naval establishment of 60 men from Nicolaeffk on the Amur to the new settlement gave it a decided start. In 1878 it had a population of 1,400. In 1897 its estimated civil population was 25,000, including 3,000 Koreans, who have their own settlement a mile from the city, and are its draymen and porters, and 2,000 Chinese. The latter keep most of the shops, and have obtained a monopoly of the business in meat, fish, game, fruit, vegetables, and other perishable commodities, their guild being strong enough to squeeze the Russians out of the trade in these articles, which are sold in four large wooden buildings by the harbor known as the “Bazar.” There are some good Japanese shops, but the Japanese are usually domestic servants at high wages, and after a few years return to enjoy their savings in their own country. A naturalized German is the only British subject, and my host and his family are the only Americans. The capital has two subsidized and two independent lines of steamers, 700 families of Russian assisted emigrants enter Primorsk annually, each head of a household being required to be the possessor of 600 roubles (£60), and from 8,000 to 10,000 Chinese from the Shan-tung province arrive every spring to fulfil labor contracts, returning to China in December, carrying out of the country from 25 to 50 dollars each, convict labor from the penal settlement of Saghalien having been abandoned as impracticable.