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The portion first visible included the telegraph office and storehouses, near which a small steamer was at anchor. A Manjour trading boat was at the bank, its crew resting on shore; a piece of canvas had been spread on the ground and the men were lounging upon it.
In the dim light of morning I saw some houses at the junction of the rivers, and learned they were formerly the quarters of a Manjour guard. Until 1864 a military force, with two or three war junks, was kept at the mouth of the Songaree to prevent Russian boats ascending. Mr. Maximowicz, the naturalist, endeavored in 1859 to explore the river as far as the mouth of the Nonni.
While returning from the bank one of the men in the skiff broke an oar and fell overboard, which obliged us to back the steamer nearly half a mile down the river to pick him up. The unlucky individual was arrayed in the only suit of clothes he possessed, and was hung up to dry in the engine room. A mile above this landing place we passed two Manjour boats ascending the stream.
The chimneys were on the outside like those of the Goldees already described, and the roofs of the houses were thatched with straw. The Manjour villages are noticeable for the gardens in and around them. Each house that I saw had a vegetable garden that appeared well cultivated. In the corner of nearly every garden I observed a small building like a sentry box.
He had a boat about twenty-five feet long by eight wide, with a single mast carrying a square sail. His boat was full of boxes and bales and had a crew of four men. A small skiff was towed astern and another alongside. These Manjour merchants are quite enterprising, and engage in traffic for small profits and large risks when better terms are not attainable.
From this ancient navy yard the villages stretched in a nearly continuous line along the southern bank, and were quite frequent on the northern one. We saw three Manjour women picking berries on the Russian shore. One carried a baby over her shoulders much after the manner of the American Indians. These women wore garments of blue cotton shaped much like the gowns of the Russian peasants.
Above this rock, which appears like a sentinel, the valley is wider and the stream flows among many islands. We saw just below this rock a Manjour boat tied to the shore, the crew breakfasting near a fire and the captain smoking in apparent unconcern at a little distance. On the opposite bank there was a Chinese custom-house and military station.
I passed an hour with the post commander, who had just received a pile of papers only two months from St. Petersburg, the mail having arrived the day before. The steamer Telegraph lay at the landing when we arrived; among her passengers was a Manjour merchant, who possessed an intelligent face, quite in contrast with the sleepy Gilyaks.
Almost all Russians who possess any education, are familiar with at least one language beside their own. Very often I found a person conversant with two foreign languages, and it was no unusual thing to find one speaking three. I knew a young officer at Irkutsk who spoke German, French, English, and Swedish, and had a very fair smattering of Chinese, Manjour, and Japanese.
"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.
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