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Updated: June 22, 2025
More boats have been lost there from carelessness or ignorance than from accidents really unavoidable. The Amoor is much like what the Mississippi would be with all its snags removed and its channel made permanent. While among the islands I saw a small flotilla of boats in line across a channel, and after watching them through a glass discovered they were hauling a net.
We stopped at Gorbitza, near the mouth of the Gorbitza river, that formerly separated Russia and China and was the boundary up to 1854. Above this point the villages had an appearance of respectable age not perceptible in the settlements along the Amoor. Ten or twelve miles from our wooding place we met ice coming out of the Chorney river, but it gave us no inconvenience.
This town is at the entrance of Keezee lake, and next to Nicolayevsk is the oldest Russian settlement on the lower Amoor. It was founded by the Russian American Company in the same year with Nicolayevsk, and was a trading post until the military occupation of the river.
Russia appears in earnest about the development of the Manjourian coast, and is making many efforts for that object. The telegraph is completed from Nicolayevsk to the new seaport, and a post route has been established along the Ousuree. From San Francisco to the mouth of the Amoor I did not see a wheeled vehicle, with the exception of a hand cart and a dog wagon.
The natives are of Tunguze origin, like those of the lower Amoor, and subsist mainly upon fish. The Russians have settlements at Cape Dui, where there is excellent coal in veins eighteen feet thick and quite near the coast. Russia desired the entire island, but the Japanese positively refuse to negotiate.
Its object was the control of trade on the Amoor and its tributaries, and the general development of commerce in Northern Asia. It began operations in 1858, but was unfortunate from the beginning. In 1859 it sent out three ships, two of which were lost between De Castries and Nicolayevsk. Each of them had valuable cargoes, and the iron and machinery for two river steamers.
In the Maritime Province the settlers are generally of the civilian or peasant class, while in the Amoor Province they are mostly Cossacks. The latter depend more upon themselves than the former, and I was told that this was one cause of their prosperity. Many peasants in the Maritime Province do not raise enough flour for their own use, and rely upon government when there is a deficiency.
New Selenginsk, which has a great deal of antiquity in its appearance, is a small town with a few good houses, a well built church, and commodious barracks. During the troubles between China and Russia concerning the early occupation of the Amoor and encroachments on the Celestial frontier, Selenginsk was an important spot. It was often threatened by the Chinese, and sustained a siege in 1687.
They are hardy and reliable laborers, and live on the most amicable terms with the Russians. Before the opening of the Amoor the carrying trade from Yakutsk to Ohotsk was in their hands. As many as forty thousand horses used to pass annually between the two points, nearly all of them owned and driven by Yakuts.
Within two weeks there had been much trouble with the chefs de cuisine, and every housekeeper was in deep grief. Servants are the universal discomfort from the banks of the Hudson to those of the Amoor. Man to be happy must return to the primitive stages of society before cooks and housemaids were invented. The hills around Nicolayevsk are covered with forests of small pines.
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