The latest and most important news from the prosperous Siberian centre, Chita, is that the students of the local seminary have been forbidden to read the local papers. The local Press revenges itself in two words—" Comment superfluous.""
Trade in Vladivostock.
Viadivostock sent a deputation to the Viceroy on Sist October to complain about the way Port Arthur is ruining them by its free trade. The Viceroy told them that the people of Port Arthur would probably be sending him a deputa~ tion with the same story a few years hence. His Excellency probably meant that a natural reaction to the present building mania is sure to set in ere in the near future. The money market has Tost its fluidity in consequence of all the cash available being sunk in houses and note put by for a rainy day, and what oveurred in Hongkong in 1849 (when the cost. of administration in that colony was £950,000 a year and the receipts not above £12,000) is pretty certain to occur here also. In fact all the leading business men here are, I think, unanimous on that point.
Speaking of Hongkong, the Russians are displaying the same anxiety for the afforestation of their new ea decidedly bare-looking acquisition which we once displayed in Hongkong and: I think they could not do better than examine the system of afforestation which has wrought such a complete transformation on the once bare hills of the southern island. To make Officers Well-read.
The Russian General Staff has, according to the "Beri Wed," taken a singular step for the purpose of enabling poor officers to keep abreast with the times in regard to general and professional litera-tue. It has made an arrangement by which such officers can obtain any book they like from the army, book store without having to pay for it unfit after the lapse of one year The Russo-Chinese Bank.
'According to the "Vostochny Vyestneck," the tranter of the director of the local' branch of the Russo-Chinese Bank, Mr. A. A. Maslennikoff, to the directorship of the bank in Port Arthur (decided pon it is said in consequence of the desire to establish in the city wherein resides the Viooroy, the representative of the Emperor in the Far East, a representative bank) is, it appears, postponed, in view of the fact that the branch at Port Arthur is not quite independent, being subordinate to the Shanghai branch of the bank, a condition of affairs which Mr. Maslennikoff finds undesirable and injurious.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.