uncared-for appearance. We could discover no Russian hotel or inn of any description, and had to put up at a Chinese inn. There were two Russian and four Chinese shops. The latter were the best, and were about equal to a second-rate -Parsee shop in an Indian cantonment. The barracks and cottages of the married officers and men were very small, and whitewashed, and extremely cold and dreary in appearance. The whole place, barracks, shops, church, and everything, was not so large, and certainly not so well built, as the barracks of my regiment in India. The absence of life, too, was particularly striking. In the afternoon, at any rate, we expected to see the officers and their wives coming out for some sort of amusement and exercise. But nobody appeared. The officers seem to spend their spare time in smoking, drinking, and playing cards ; and the wives, I conclude, in looking on, for there did not appear to be much else for them to do.
There was a hill just by the town, and of course we climbed it. We afterwards met the commissaire again, and he told us that he had often heard that it was characteristic of Englishmen that whenever they saw a hill they immediately craved to go up it, and he was immensely tickled at hearing we actually had climbed this hill. He said he had scarcely known a single Russian in the place ascend it ; but here, directly an Englishman arrives, he immediately proceeds to do so. From the top we obtained a view over Possiet Bay, on which this little station of Novo-kievsk is situated, and on the opposite side of the water, about two miles distant, we could make out the small settlement of Possiet, consisting of thirty or forty houses.
On descending the hill, we found a squad of recruits hard at work drilling. They carried a knapsack and the great-coat in a roll round it and over the body. They were being taught to march with the leg kept very stiff and straight, and a smart little adjutant was dancing about up and down the line, every
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