The Reserve consists of all soldiers passed from the regular army according to the conditions on which they joined. In peace, cadres of ninety-six line and one Guards battalion are kept up; on mobilization there are twenty-four Reserve infantry divisions, each of sixteen battalions, five Guards, and ninety-six independent battalions available; making a grand total of four hundred and eighty-five battalions.

There are six reserve artillery brigades of six batteries each. Each division is made into a battery on mobilization, making a total of one hundred and forty-four batteries on a war footing.

The Ersatz correspond to our depots, each regiment and artillery brigade having an Ersatz battalion, squadron, or battery permanently stationed in one of the thirteen military districts, from which it is fed in time of war.

Fortress and local troops consist of fifty battalions of fortress artillery, which are distributed for duty in the fifteen principal fortresses. In European Russia there are six local battalions, one hundred and four local detachments.

In the Caucasus, three local battalions, forty escort detachments. In Turkestan, three local battalions, twenty local detachments, which may probably have been considerably increased during the past two years.

In Siberia, six local battalions, thirty-seven escort detachments, forty-three local detachments; making the total about sixty thousand local troops.

The instructional troops consist of a battalion of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and a battery of field (two mountain guns) and one of horse artillery, at St. Petersburg.

A company is stationed at Tiflis for instruction among the troops of the Caucasus; a company of engineers for teaching electricity and the use of torpedoes.

Special corps include the general staff of the army, pensioners, the gendarmerie, disciplinary battalions, to which are sent bad characters sentenced by the military courts, etc.

The chief command is vested in the Czar, immediately under whom are the Minister of War and General Staff. These control the General Governors of the thirteen military districts and the chief Attaman of the Cossacks, who are respectively responsible for their commands. Each of these commanders is assisted by a military council and staff. Each General Governor is responsible also for producing and forwarding to their regiments all men on furlough, and called out from the Reserve, on mobilization. The Opoltchenié corresponds to the German Landsturm, and includes all men between twenty and thirty years of age who do not belong to the regular army, navy, or reserve.

The militia is insignificant, although fifteen battalions were raised during the Russo-Turkish war.

The Russian soldier, with the exception of the Household Cavalry and Cossacks, is clothed in a dark green double-breasted tunic, with trousers tucked into long boots. He wears cotton bandages instead of socks. The infantry soldiers carry the Berdan rifle and bayonet, a small proportion of intrenching tools, and their tentes d'abri, in addition to their kit-bag and ammunition.

Dragoons are also armed with the long Berdan.

The artillery is admirable; they as well as the cavalry, having the privilege, from the nature of the country, of being able to perform extended operations wherever they are stationed during the summer. Large camps and manoeuvres are annually held at Krasnoe Selo and the surrounding country. The horses are admirably broken, the artillery horses being driven in snaffle-bridles, and with pole draught.

The Horse Artillery of the Guard gallop over rough ground with the greatest dash. All officers are allowed one horse in peace and two in war, by the government. The guns, many of which are Krupp,though of late the Russian government has been making the same gun, -are admirably served, and though the light and heavy field batteries both fire a heavy projectile with a fair initial velocity, the carriage seems able to bear the shock of discharge, and be easily moved by the little horses. The system of equitation is excellent; not only the school for riding-masters at St. Petersburg, which lasts for six years, and sends annually between forty and fifty riding-masters to regiments, but also the school of equitation for officers and non-commissioned officers. This school receives an officer and a non-commissioned officer from nearly every cavalry regiment. The course lasts for one year. On joining, an unbroken remount is handed over to each. The entire training of the horse is taught, and to such perfection is this training brought, that after a few months horse and man will not only go through a double or single ride with great precision, but the horses are taught to follow, to lie down, and rise with the rider mounted. Most of the class can perform many tricks of horsemanship, and vault on and off at a gallop, take fences, etc.

Steeple-chases are compulsory among the officers of the horse and field artillery and cavalry regiments.

In order that the reader may easily compute from the above remarks the strength of any portion of any army corps, it must be borne in mind that a regiment of cavalry consists of six squadrons. Each squadron will have sixty-four files divided in four sections. The establishment of a line cavalry regiment is in peace—

2 The troops are also annually practiced in the "tir de guerre." A force of all arms advances against an enemy represented by dummy figures. Real shell and ball ammunition are used. The ambulances and surgical appliances are practically tested, as a certain number of men are ordered to fall down as if wounded, on which they are immediately tended and carried off with every semblance of reality.

The strength of a company of infantry is three officers and one hundred and eleven rank and file on a peace, four officers and two hundred and forty rank and file on a war footing.

A battery of light or heavy field artillery on a war footing is six officers, two hundred and thirty-six non-commissioned officers and

men.

To recapitulate the whole strength of this enormous and theoreti cally perfect machine in round numbers,

Of these, about forty thousand men, thirteen thousand horses, and ninety guns are stationed in Turkestan.

W. L. DAVIDSON, Capt. R.H.A.

(A Member of the Foreign Staff attending the Russian Manœuvres of 1884.)

SAMOA AND THE SAMOANS.

(Concluded from page 342.)

Ir was my good fortune to visit the Samoan Islands in the U. S. S. Alaska," in 1880. We had been ordered to leave Peru and proceed direct to Pago-Pago, to superintend the unloading of two thousand tons of coal sent out from the United States, the government having decided to establish a coaling-station in this harbor, and thus maintain the rights which it had previously acquired by treaty.

Although there several weeks, the time never hung heavy on our hands. The novelty of the scenery, the kind and ingenuous hospitality of the natives, and one's routine of duty, made the time pass pleasantly and quickly.

The arrival of a ship, especially a man-of-war, was a great and unusual event to our friends at Pago-Pago. It is a custom among the natives, on such an arrival, for each one to select a "friend"-" flen" they call it from among the officers or crew. Both parties having agreed to this arrangement, the "friendship" commences. Your native "friend" looks out for you whenever you go on shore; carries you on his back from boat to beach at times when otherwise you would have to wade; makes you various little presents of fruit and "curios;" invites you up to his hut to drink cocoanut milk,-in short, pays you the thousand little attentions of "friendship." In return, when he comes on board ship, you are expected to make him some present, such as a fish-hook, a small piece of looking-glass, a colored handkerchief, tobacco, a candle, etc.,-in fact, almost anything is welcome,—and, if he sees anything which he particularly covets, he is not always backward in asking for it.

Your "friend" becomes very jealous if he find out that you have taken another "flen,"-that you are "double banked," to use a nautical expression, and many a fierce squabble took place among the natives on this account. One of my "friends" was a little chit of a girl about ten years old, Sefanga by name. Her father was on my visiting-list of "friends," but she was the one who usually represented the family on board ship and brought the tribute of friendship. What a bright-eyed little witch she was! Full of mischief; and, if

not closely watched, could purloin anything lying around loose as well as the most accomplished pickpocket. I will say this much for her, however, that her family were not "missonallies," and perhaps did not have that strict idea of meum and tuum which a well-brought-up "missonally" should have. Every morning the natives would flock to the ship in their canoes about breakfast-hour, bringing fruit and other articles for sale. Sefanga found out which was the air-port leading into my state-room, and nearly every morning I would be awakened by a shrill little voice crying out, "Where's Fleggy?"-which was as near as she could come to my name-and on looking up, I would see two black, laughing, mischievous eyes peering through the port, and in the port itself perhaps a bunch of bananas, or a cocoanut or pineapple, or that greatest of all Samoan delicacies, a roasted wild-pigeon, wrapped up in clean green leaves.

A ludicrous incident happened to me just before we left the island, which illustrates one of the trials of "friendship." I had with me a silk umbrella which I had often carried on shore when it rained. Unfortunately, it was the only one I had. It was the object of admiration and I the object of envy of all the natives.

I happened to stroll one rainy day to the hut of Sefanga's father to have a chat in pigeon Samoan-English, and to buy, if possible, some of his chickens for the mess. As I entered the hut, I saw on the ground in the middle of the floor what I took to be a pile of calicocloth. I was about to seat myself on it, as a preferable seat to any that I saw around, when "Hi, pickaninny! pickaninny !" from his wife, who was seated at the other end of the hut, caused me to sheer off in time and land myself alongside of the suspicious-looking bundle. Sure enough, on inspection I found it contained a little brown pickaninny, about four weeks old, wrapped up in its mother's lava-lava.1

Feeling somewhat relieved at my narrow escape from such a stern predicament, I began on the chicken question. But he said he did not wish to sell his chickens, and after a few futile attempts to strike a bargain, I noticed that he was continually looking at my umbrella. At last he could stand it no longer. "S'pose me look," he said; whereupon I handed him the umbrella for his inspection. He turned it all around, opened it, and sat under it with evident admiration, both for the umbrella and himself. It was raining hard outside; he was dressed in his usual style,—a simple breech-cloth about his loins. He got up, went outside, and stood under the open umbrella in the rain. His haughty bearing, the dignified manner in which he strutted about in front of the hut, was a study. It was lucky for his friends that none of them passed by at the time; he certainly would have given them the cut direct, as being beneath his notice.

1 The lava-lava is the cloth which the native women wrap around their loins. It reaches to the knees, and is usually the only costume they wear.