This carelessness, lack of knowledge or suspicion, with a total lack of belief on the part of the Russian officers, that the "little monkey men" would ever dare attack, is in my opinion the chief cause of the comparatively quick fall of Port Arthur. For even with the incompleted defenses the place was tremendously strong. Everywhere I could see the most elaborate plans incomplete. For instance, as I wandered through the hills seeking my botanical specimens, I found that the chain of forts on the hills of the Quang Tong peninsula south and west of Dalny, were totally unfinished and that the Kuan Ling section of the Port Arthur and Dalny railway was not even adequately protected from capture by a hostile force. The lack of adequate supervision and the general slovenliness prevailing made it easy for me to go about unchallenged. I mixed freely with officers and men. The expenditure of a few rubles on _vodka_, in the case of the men, and the never-rejected invitation on the part of most officers to join in a jamboree, made me a very popular figure indeed. Through them I learned that the provisions of Port Arthur were in a most deplorable state. To use but one instance: Out of 1,420,000 pounds of flour, nearly one-half was bad with sour cords, which caused part of the enormous amount of sickness even then prevailing in the Port Arthur garrison. During the war forty-five per cent. of the troops were incapacitated because of unsanitary food. I found 600,000 pounds of maize were wormy and over 700,000 pounds of corned beef were putrid. Women and wine, however, abounded. Never in any place--and I know all the gayest and fastest places on earth--have I seen, comparatively speaking, such an enormous amount of wine in stock, or such a number of demi-mondaines assembled. Most of the officers had private harems. I often sat in the Casino and watched the officers of the First Tomsk Regiment, the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Siberian Rides practicing with their newly supplied Mauser-pistols on tables loaded with bottles containing the most costly vintage wines and cognacs. At such times the place literally ran ankle deep in wine. There were over sixty gambling houses and dancing halls supporting more than a thousand _filles de joie_. In fact, the general intemperance was such that on the night of Admiral Togo's attack more than half the complement of the Russian fleet was ashore, dead drunk, in honor of one of the tutelary Russian saints.