“The area around these harbors is covered with lush sub-tropical forests, woven by lianes,” he enthused in a St. Petersburg newspaper, 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
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