ceased, and everybody is
armed for war.

* * * * *

Word has just reached us that the American sailors who were imprisoned
for nearly two years in Siberia were safely landed in San Francisco on
the 4th of June.

After the Russians had succeeded in deceiving the American naval
officers, as we told you on page 361 of THE GREAT ROUND WORLD, the
sailors gave themselves up for lost.

Their friends in California, however, appealed to our Minister in
Russia, and on the 20th of last March an order for their release was
sent to the prison.

The sailors lost no time in leaving Siberia, and making their way home
to their own country.

* * * * *

Southern California has just been celebrating its annual flower
festival. These occasions are so interesting that you would probably
like to hear about them.

The flowers of California are beautiful beyond description, and grow in
masses that would astonish Eastern eyes. Roses, lilies, daisies,
poppies, grow on every side--the cultivated garden flowers growing in
the same profusion that our wild flowers do.

The Californians are naturally very proud of their flowers, and when
President Harrison was making his trip to the West in 1891, the people
of the State very sensibly concluded that in his progress from the East
he had seen every kind of flag decoration that the mind could suggest,
but that flowers such as they could show him would be a novelty to him.

The people of Santa Barbara therefore decided to hold a flower carnival
in their city as a welcome to the President when he visited them.

Arches forty feet high were stretched across the principal streets, and
decorated with flowers of all kinds. Some were all of roses, some of
palms and pampas grass, some of wild flowers, and some of the wonderful
yellow Californian poppy. From these arches hung festoons of
marguerites, wistaria, orange and lemon blossoms, the streets being
canopied with flowers.

The festivities were all of a floral character, winding up with a flower
dance, in which forty-eight young ladies of the city took part, each
representing a different flower. Their dresses were fashioned and
colored like the flowers they represented, and were covered with bunches
of the real flowers.

After the young girls had danced for a few moments a number of young men
dressed as bees joined the dance, and a few moments later a score of
little children as but