The advantages offered by the island of Saghalien as a place for penal settlement were very early impressed upon Russian prison administrators. They were rather sentimental than physical, for the island was perhaps as unsuitable for human habitation as any place on the face of the globe. The climate was uncongenial, and worse even than its latitude indicated. Alexandrovsk, the chief town, is in the same latitude as Brighton in England, and yet its mean annual temperature is just below freezing point. No sea current wafted any warmth northward from Chinese waters. On the contrary, a bitterly cold stream swept its eastern coast, issuing from the ice-bound sea of Okhotsk, and the western shores of this narrow elongated island are, so to speak, under an immense refrigerator, the snowy mountain tracts of Siberia, separated from it by only a narrow and shallow channel. Sparse sunlight pierced through the heavy clouds and fogs that enveloped this inhospitable land. The milder season was too brief to allow of great success in the germination of crops, and the long, low valleys between the mountains were too damp and marshy to favour agriculture. Dense forests clothed a large portion of the island, containing poor trees of inferior, stunted growth, with comparatively valueless wood. A scant population of degenerate tribes eked out a wretched existence as fishermen and seal hunters. Few settlers came to it from China or Japan. The report of experts definitely decided against Saghalien as an agricultural colony. The soil forbade all hope of raising grain to support those who worked it. Food must be imported to maintain life; cattle breeding might succeed, but with difficulty, and fish must remain the staple diet. One source of natural wealth which might be developed was the coal fields, in which the island was supposed to be rich, but the quality of the coal was inferior to the Australian and very much below that of Newcastle and Cardiff. Mr. Hawes, a later traveller (1903), contests this, however, and describes the coal as a good lignite, superior to the Japanese as a steam coal, and says it commands a higher price. As an article of commerce, it suffers from the difficulties of lading for export. There is not a single harbour on the whole circumference of the island, and approach is often hindered by want of beacons and constantly prevailing fogs.