The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-04-24
WINTER IN vLApIvosToK.
The City Like Unto Black World
 Frozen Stiff.


 A Herhage Edwards in Black and White. writes interestingly of winter conditions in Vladiyostok, Russia's big naval station in the Far East. and upon which station Japan has eager designs:
 Imagine a black world frozen stiff" says the writer, "and that is Vladivos- tok in winter. Wherever water once flowed in bay or harbor, a wide, gray white road now runs. and these are the only two colors in a wide. still world. There are no trees. The large forests, of which the old travellers wrote, have long since been cut down for fuel. and the immediate hills behind the town are all bare as a mans hand. Once behind these hills the endless rolling plain be- gins. which is Siberia.
 Directly summer Is over, all the wealth of flowers which for five short months have simply rio.ed in the land. go black, die out the earth freezes stiff. Winter has come, and black and stiff the world remains. Tn Vladivostok there Is little sncw: sometimes a gray dust. more Ike powdered ice than snow. blows over the land, but for the most part 1t is a black, not a white, world of frost And in its way 1t is more impressive. The earth freezes deep, many feet down. and is hard as iron. The whole harbor turns a kind Of dull gray; that. too, Is frozen deep. To keep any sort of channel open, tho powerful ice-breaker has to go through its work twice a day. Twelve hours of an ordinary winters day is often suffi- clent to block the passage. And all this ia a town in the same parallel of Mar seilles.
 ''To those who havo never experienced 1t. real arctic cold is almost lnconceiv- able. They cannot grasp the difference Lo far Afft dAtnraAa If fRnat, it remains to them merely one of num- bers Indeed, when onco the winter has gone it is sometimes 6ifflcult to remem- Der how cold 1t was; but during tho four severe winter months themselves it Is very solid and serious fact. Every night you go to sleep remembering. if you are new to such things, that failure of the furnace which heats the house means death; you might wake first to know you were frozen or you might net In the poorer houses the tnh9b4tants sleep on tn, stoves, and the weak ones often die. Drunkenness here is often attended with a swift retribution. which does not in the least prevent it; and every day people are taken up frozen from the guttsrs, the spirits which is In them only hastening the freezing, so that the carts which are always sent round to pick up the sailors wien the crews of the men-ofwar e=e ashore have to do their work quickly. In the summertime. when there is not the same need for hurry. the men often lie about in gutters until the afternoon. The word 'gutters' Is used simply to deslg- nate a certain part of the roadway; gut ters, as such, do not exist.
 The drunkenness among all classes of Russians is simply appalling; officers think nothing of taking a tumblerful of raw whisky as a modest 'bitters' before din ner
 When the wind is not blowing the cold Is endurable, though five fur-llned over coats a'e not at all an extraordinary amount of winter wrap. You wear, of course. fur boots. fur gloves, fur caps Women have their skirts and bodices