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Updated: May 14, 2025
Before the Russian occupation all the trade of the lower Amoor was in Manjour hands. Boats annually descended from San-Sin and Igoon bringing supplies for native use. Sometimes a merchant would spend five or six months making his round journey. The merchants visited the villages on the route and bargained their goods for furs.
One gentleman told me: "Every Manjour trader that brings anything here pays a tax of twenty to fifty per cent, for permission to cross the river. We pay now a third more for what we purchase than when we first settled here. The merchants complain of the restriction, and sometimes, though rarely, manage to evade it.
Occasionally a Manjour comes to me offering an article twenty or thirty per cent, below his usual price, explaining that he smuggled it and requesting me not to expose him." I asked if the taxation was made by the Chinese government, and was answered in the negative. "Thee police of Igoon and Sakhalin-Oula regulate the whole matter.
There was an annual fair at the Gilyak village of Pul, below Mariensk, and this was made the center of commerce. The fair lasted ten days, and during that time Pul was a miniature Nijne Novgorod. Manjour and Chinese merchants met Japanese from the island of Sakhalin, Tunguse from the coast of the Ohotsk Sea, and others from, the head waters of the Zeya and Amgoon.
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.
Ropes and nets are made from hemp and the common sting nettle, the latter being preferred. The nettle-stalks are soaked in water and then dried and pounded till the fibres separate. Ropes and cords are equal to those of civilized manufacture, though sometimes not quite as smooth. Thread for sewing and embroidery comes from China, and is purchased of Manjour traders.
Twenty men could be lodged there to throw arrows, hot water, or Chinese perfumery on the invading foe. A Manjour acquaintance of our captain invited us to visit his house. We entered through the kitchen, where there was a man frying a kind of 'twisted doughnut' in vegetable oil. The flour he used was ground in the Manjour mills, and lacked the fineness of European or American flour.
Along the Chinese shore I frequently saw clumsy carts moving at a snail-like pace between the villages. Each cart had its wheels fixed on an axle that generally turned with them. Frequently there was a lack of grease, and the screeching of the vehicle was rather unpleasant to tender nerves. Near the village we met a Manjour boat, evidently the property of a merchant.
On entering, one found himself in a kind of ante-room, separated from the main apartment by a pink curtain. This curtain has religious inscriptions in Chinese and Manjour. In the inner apartment there are pictures of Chinese deities, with a few hideous idols carved in wood. A table in front of the pictures receives the offerings of worshippers.
Though his passport was correct, the Manjour guard ordered him to stop, and when he insisted upon proceeding the Celestial raised his matchlock. Maximowicz exhibited a rifle and revolver and forced a passage. He was not molested until within forty miles of San-Sin, when the natives came out with flails, but prudently held aloof on seeing the firearms in the boat.
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