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Updated: July 21, 2025
The village was small and the houses were far from palatial. The inhabitants live by agriculture in summer, sending their produce to Nicolayevsk, and by supplying horses for the postal service in winter. I observed here and at other villages an example of Russian economy. Not able to purchase whole panes of window glass the peasants use fragments of glass of any shape they can get.
Twelve miles from the landing is the end of Lake Keezee, which opens into the Amoor a hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. It was formerly the custom to send couriers by way of Lake Keezee and the Amoor to Nicolayevsk to notify consigners and officials of the arrival of ships. Now the telegraph is in operation and supercedes the courier.
The gayety of Russian cities in winter and summer is largely due to the number of private vehicles in constant motion through the streets. I arranged to ascend the Amoor on the steamer Ingodah, which was appointed to start on the eighteenth of September. My friend Anossoff remained at Nicolayevsk during the winter, instead of proceeding to Irkutsk as I had fondly hoped.
Nicolayevsk was founded in 1853 in the interest of the Russian government, but nominally as a trading post of the Russian American Company. Very soon it became a military post, and its importance increased with the commencement of hostilities between Russia and the Western powers in 1854.
At Nicolayevsk the Amoor is about a mile and a half wide, with a depth of twenty to thirty-five feet in the channel. I asked a resident what he thought the average rapidity of the current in front of the town. "When you look at it or float with it," said he, "I think it is about three and a half miles. If you go against it you find it not an inch less than five miles."
Foundries were established, fortifications built, warehouses erected, and docks laid out from time to time, until the place has attained a respectable size. Its population in 1866 was about five thousand, with plenty of houses for all residents. Nicolayevsk is emphatically a government town, five-sixths of the inhabitants being directly or indirectly in the emperor's employ.
Just a year earlier I descended the Saint Lawrence from Lake Ontario to Quebec. I saw nothing on the great Canadian river that equaled the scenery of my first day's voyage on the Amoor. Soon after leaving Nicolayevsk we met several loads of hay floating with the current to a market at the town.
Not wishing to return empty-handed we purchased two geese a few hundred yards from the village, and assumed an air of great dignity as we approached the boat. We subsequently ascertained that the same geese were offered to the steward for half the price we paid. Just above Petrovsky we passed the steamer Amoor, which left Nicolayevsk a week before us with three barges in tow.
I boxed it carefully and sent it to Nicolayevsk for shipment to America. The Ispravnik controlled the district between Habarofka and Sofyesk on both banks of the river, his power extending over native and Russian alike. He said that this part of the Amoor valley was very fertile, the yield of wheat and rye being fifteen times the seed.
Cattle were fed with hay carried on board, or were turned ashore at night to graze. Some rafts were entirely laden with cattle on their way to market or for government use at Nicolayevsk. This is the most economical mode of transportation, as the cattle feed themselves on shore at night, and the rafts float with the current by day.
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