where oaks have a diameter of one sagene [over six feet]. Some other
examples of gigantic vegetation are marvelous. We have seen them
before in tropical America. What a wonderful future this place can
have with prehistoric forests and the most splendid harbors in the
world! ... It is appropriate that the best port here is called Vladivostok
[“Power in the East”], because it will be home to our navy in the
Pacific, and the beginning of Russian influence over a vast ocean
territory.The Chinese knew this country as the shuhai, or “forest sea.” It may
have been marvelous to contemplate from the deck of a ship, but on the
ground, it took a savage toll on humans and animals alike. When you
weren’t battling arctic cold, or worrying about tigers, there were insects
on a scale that is hard to imagine. Sir Henry Evan Murchison James, a
member of the Royal Geographical Society and no stranger to jungles or
arthropods, was astounded: “There are several kinds,” he wrote in 1887,^3
one striped yellow and black, like a giant wasp; and the rapidity with
which they can pierce a mule’s tough hide is inconceivable. In a few
moments, before one could go to its assistance, I have seen a wretched
beast streaming with blood.... When we went to bed or when marching
in the early morning, and at meals we enveloped ourselves with
smoke.... If there be a time when life is not worth living, I should say
it was summer in the forests of Manchuria.More than one poor soul has been bound to a tree here and consigned to a
hideous death from insect bites, and even Yuri Trush has used this
method to make stubborn poachers more compliant.
Once considered part of Outer Manchuria, Primorye, or Primorskii Krai,
is Russia’s southeasternmost territory; it is the man-made container for