Note 4 — PART I. JAPAN AND THE PACIFIC.

“The preciousness of Saghalien in the eye of the Russians, however, does not lie so much in its coal beds, its promise of future harvests, its use as a penal colony, or its six hundred miles of length, but in its situation commanding the northern entrance to the sea of Japan, and guarding, like a huge breakwater, the mouth of the great river Amoor” (John Geddie, F.R.G.S., “The Russian Empire,” p. 484).