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Updated: May 29, 2025
Tea and cigars opened the way to a slow fire of conversation. I spoke in French with Borasdine, who rendered my words in Russian to the governor's interpreter. The principal remarks were that we were mutually enchanted to see each other, and that I was delighted at my visit to Igoon and Sakhalin-Oula.
After this the Chinese governor spoke of my visit to Sakhalin-Oula, and said I was the first American he ever met in his province. "How did I come from America," he asked, "and how far had I traveled to reach Blagoveshchensk?" The interpreter named the distance and said I came to the Amoor in a ship connected with the telegraph service. "When would the telegraph be finished?"
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.
We landed from, the steamer's boat and ascended the bank to the village. Several fat old Manjours eyed us closely and answered with great brevity our various questions. Sakhalin-Oula stretches more than a mile along the bank, but extends only a few rods back from the river. Practically it consists of a single street, which is quite narrow in several places.
The Russians said there was often a variation of three or four degrees in the temperature of the two banks, the Chinese one being the milder. Timber for both Chinese and Russian use is cut in the forests up the Amoor and rafted down. Sakhalin-Oula abounded in vegetable gardens, which supplied the market of Blagoveshchensk.
Frequently he brought the soup tureen before arranging the table, and it took him some time to learn the disadvantage of this practice. Leaving Blagoveshchensk the country continued level near the river, but the mountains gradually approached it and on the south bank they came to the water fifteen or twenty miles above Sakhalin-Oula.
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