The noble Amur, with its forest-covered shores, is navigable for 1,000 miles, and already 50 merchant steamers ply upon it, and its great tributary the Ussuri can be navigated to within 120 miles of Wladivostok. The great basin of the Ussuri, it is estimated, could support five million people, and from Khabaroffka to the Tu-men, it is considered by experts that the land could sustain from 20 to 40 to the square mile, while at present the population of the Amur and Ussuri provinces is only ⁴⁄₅ths of a man to the square mile! Grass, timber, water, coal, minerals, a soil as rich as the prairies of Illinois, and a climate not only favorable to agriculture but to human health, all await the settler, and the broad, unoccupied, and fertile lands which Russian Manchuria offers are clamoring for inhabitants. To set against these advantages there are the frozen waterways and the ice-bound harbor. It is utterly impossible that an increasing population will content itself without an outlet for its produce. A port on the Pacific open all the year is fast becoming as much a commercial as a political necessity, and doubtless the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad four years hence will settle the question (if it has not been settled before) and doom the policy which has shut Russia up in regions of “thick ribbed ice” to utter extinction. In the Maritime Province, Russia is steadily and solidly laying the foundations of a new empire which she purposes to make as nearly as possible a homogeneous one. “No foreigner need apply”! The emigrants, who are going out at the rate of from 700 to 1,000 families a year, are of a good class. Emigration is fostered in two ways. By the first, the Government grants assisted passages to heads of families who are possessed of 600 roubles (about £60 at present), which are deposited with a Government official at Odessa, and are repaid to the emigrant on landing at Wladivostok. The industry and thrift represented by this sum indicate a large proportion of the best class of settlers. Under the second arrangement, families possessed of little capital or none receive free passages. On arriving, emigrants of both classes are lodged in excellent emigrant barracks, and can buy the necessary agricultural implements at cost price from a Government depôt, advice as to the purchase being thrown in. Each family receives a free allotment of from 200 to 300 acres of arable land, and a loan of 600 roubles, to be repaid without interest in thirty-two years, the young male colonists being exempted from military service for the same period. Already much of the land along the line as far as the Ussuri has been allotted, and houses are rapidly springing up, and there is nothing to prevent this fine country from being peopled up to the Amur, the rivers Sungacha and Ussuri, which form the boundary of Russia from the Hanka Lake to Khabaroffka, giving a natural protection from Chinese brigandage. In addition to direct emigration, large numbers of