time it is governed by a military régime, whose administration is concentrated in the hands of a Governor, invariably a general in the army. Of the 670,000 inhabitants, one-third are natives, one-third peasants, or inhabitants of its gloomy little towns, and the other third consists of Cossacks, who are only distinguishable from the peasants by wearing a yellow band on their caps and trousers. Instead of paying taxes, they have to submit to certain military obligations. Although they are Cossacks by name and by race, they possess none of the brilliant military qualities which distinguish their European kinsmen. The two territories annexed by Russia in 1858 at the expense of China, the Province of the Amur, and the southern portion of the Littoral Province—the only one which is of the least value—are scarcely inhabited, and were even less peopled at the time of the arrival of the Russians, when they possessed not more than 10,000 Manchus, and about as many natives, engaged in hunting and fishing, and belonging to several declining tribes. The Manchus have remained and are prospering; the other tribes are gradually passing away. Some 20,000 or 30,000 Korean and Chinese emigrants have settled in the neighbourhood of Vladivostok. The Russian immigration, however, forms at least five-sixths of the 112,000 inhabitants of the Province of the Amur, and more than two-thirds of the 214,000 of the coast province, of whom 30,000 natives live in the Arctic regions, where the whites leave them in peace. The newly-acquired Chinese territory includes at least 140,000 Russians out of the 175,000 inhabitants. It must, however, be remembered that this remarkable majority is mainly due to the concentration of troops which has taken place since the Chino-Japanese War, which so profoundly modified the political condition of the Far East. The following table is formed from official sources—chiefly from the census taken on January 28, 1897, and marks the area and the total population of the nine Siberian provinces: