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Darkness put an end to sight-seeing, and so we hastened to the steamer, followed by a large crowd of natives. We took three or four Manjour merchants as passengers to Blagoveshchensk. One of them spent the evening in our cabin, but would neither drink alcoholic beverages nor smoke. This appeared rather odd among a people who smoke persistently and continually.
Frequently he brought the soup tureen before arranging the table, and it took him some time to learn the disadvantage of this practice. Leaving Blagoveshchensk the country continued level near the river, but the mountains gradually approached it and on the south bank they came to the water fifteen or twenty miles above Sakhalin-Oula.
"I speak," said the doctor, "German with my wife, Swedish to the housemaid, Russian to my other servants, French with some of the officers, English with occasional travelers, and a little Chinese and Manjour with the natives over the river." Blagoveshchensk has a pretty situation, and I should greatly prefer it to Nicolayevsk for permanent habitation.
Russian emigration presses eastward, and seeks the rising, as ours the setting sun. During my stay at Blagoveshchensk the governor invited me to assist at a gazelle hunt. At nine o'clock on the day appointed we assembled at the house of the chief of staff. I breakfasted before going there, but it was necessary to discuss the coming hunt over a second breakfast.
Prices are high, nearly double those of Nicolayevsk, and the stocks of goods on hand are neither large nor well selected. Officers complained to me of combinations among the merchants to maintain prices at an exorbitant scale. I staid four days at Blagoveshchensk, and as the season was growing late was quite anxious to depart.
In their enterprise and mode of dealing they were much like the Jews of Europe and America, which may account for their being called Manjours. Once a month during the full moon they come to Blagoveshchensk and open a fair, which continues seven days. They sell flour, buckwheat, beans, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and other edible articles.
A priest and an officer who were passengers on the steamer from Blagoveshchensk arrived while we were getting on board the ferry-boat. They had been greatly delayed on the way from Stratensk, and waited two days to cross the Nercha. The Selenga was full of ice, some cakes being larger than the platform of our boat.
I fired, and the governor fired, but the only effect was to quicken the speed of our game. I never knew a gazelle to run faster. Three weeks later I saw a beast greatly resembling him running on a meadow a thousand miles from Blagoveshchensk. Whether it was the same or another I will not attempt to say.
On the north the plain was wider, but it terminated about forty miles above Blagoveshchensk, a series of low hills taking its place. The first day we ran twenty-five or thirty versts before sunset. The river was less than a mile wide, and the volume of water sensibly diminished above the Zeya.
During my stay at Chetah a party was organized to hunt gazelles. There were ten or fifteen officers and about twenty Cossacks, as at Blagoveshchensk. Up to the day of the excursion the weather was delightful, but it suddenly changed to a cloudy sky, a high wind, and a freezing temperature. The scene of action was a range of hills five or six miles from town.
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