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He probably saw through the little game they were attempting to play on him and determined to beat them at it. History does not say whether the pie was pork, mutton, or anything else. Possibly the curs of Albazin may have entered into its composition. Above Albazin the Amoor steadily narrows; the hills are more rugged; the trees less luxuriant; the meadows fewer, and the islands less extensive.
When I landed at Albazin, Captain Porotof, superintendent of the Russian settlements between that point and Komarskoi, guided me through the ruins. The present village of Albazin is inside the line of Chinese works, and the church occupies the interior of the old fort. All the lines of intrenchment and siege can be easily seen, the fort being distinctly visible from the river.
But when the Chinese evacuated Albazin the Russians returned there with characteristic obstinacy, and Kanghi, becoming anxious at the increasing activity of Galdan, accepted the overtures of the Russian authorities in Siberia, who, in 1688, sent the son of the Governor-general of Eastern Siberia to Pekin to negotiate a peace.
I had no opportunity to inspect one of these establishments, but presume my description of the one at Mihalofski will answer for all. The youths were as noisy as school-boys everywhere, and when out of restraint indulged in the same hilarity as if born on the banks of the Hudson or the Thames. At noon on the 14th we stopped at Albazin to leave passengers and take wood.
Up to this point Taoukwang's only experience of the pretensions of the foreign powers had been the Amherst mission, in the time of his father, which had ended so ignominiously, and the Russian mission which arrived at Pekin every ten years to recruit the Russian college there, and to pay the descendants of the garrison of Albazin the sum allotted by the czar for their support.
The wretched Moslem prince hastened therefore to deliver the keys of the city, and of the fortresses of the Albazin and the Alhambra, into the hands of Ferdinand.
The crowns of the kingdoms of Kazan and Astrachan point to the overthrow of Tartar power in Europe, while the throne of Poland symbolizes the westward course of the Muscovite star of empire. There are flags borne or captured in Russia's victories, from the storming of Kazan and the defence of Albazin down to the suppression of Polish revolt.
The Russians had built a fort at Albazin, on the upper course of that river, and the Chinese army located in the Khalka country, considering its proximity a menace to their own security, attacked it in overwhelming force. Albazin was taken, and those of the garrison who fell into the hands of the Chinese were carried off to Pekin, where their descendants still reside as a distinct Russian colony.
Captain Anossoff is the brother of my companion across the Pacific, and has seen ten years service in Eastern Siberia. Most of that time he has passed on the Amoor and its tributary streams. In many places he found rich deposits of gold, the last and best being on the Oldoi river, about a hundred miles north of Albazin. A ton of earth yielded six hundred dollars worth of gold.
It is related that when organizing his expedition he forcibly seized this priest and kept him under guard during the journey to the Amoor. The Chinese twice besieged Albazin, once with eighteen thousand men, and afterward with nearly double that number. The Russians resisted a long time, and were only driven from the Amoor by the famous treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689.
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