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I will try to put all I want to know in thirty words, and you must try and keep strictly to the pattern. The gad-flies bite. GORBITSA, June 20, 1890. Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch! I wrote you this as I approached Gorbitsa, one of the Cossack settlements on the banks of the Shilka, a tributary of the Amur. This is where I have got to. I am sailing down the Amur.
"Just around that point," said the first officer of the Korsackoff as he directed his finger toward a headland on the Chinese shore, "you will see the mouth of the Argoon on the left and the Shilka on the right; wait a moment, it is not quite time yet." When we rounded the promontory dawn had grown to daylight, and the mountains on the south bank of the Argoon came into view.
Now I am sitting in a first-class cabin, and feel as though I were in Europe. I feel in the mood one is in after passing an examination. A whistle! that's Gorbitsa. The banks of the Shilka are picturesque like stage scenes but, alas! there is something oppressive in this complete absence of human beings. It is like a cage without a bird. June 21, 1890.
In that year two wooden boats, the Shilka and the Argoon, were constructed on the Shilka river, preparatory to the grand expedition of General Mouravieff. Their timber was cut in the forests of the Shilka, and their engines were constructed at Petrovsky-Zavod. The Argoon was the first to descend, leaving Shilikinsk on the 27th of May, 1854, and bringing the Governor General and his staff.
As I shivered on the steamer's bridge, my breath congealing on my beard, and the hills beyond the Amoor and Argoon white with the early snow of winter, I could not see why the Celestials call their land the 'Central Flowery Kingdom. The Shilka has a current flowing four or five miles an hour. The average speed of the Korsackoff in ascending was about four miles.
Some of his early battles were fought in its valley. The Shilka is formed by the Onon and Ingodah, that rise in the region north of the head waters of the Kerolun. From the sources of the Onon to Oust-Strelka is a distance of seven hundred and fifty miles. There are many gold mines along this river, and the whole mountain chain is known to be rich in minerals.
Including its tributaries on both sides and at its formation, the Amoor as it flows into the Gulf of Tartary drains a territory of 766,000 square miles. There is a little island just below the point of land extending between the two rivers. As we approached it the steamer turned to the right and proceeded up the Shilka, leaving the Amoor behind us.
From Habarofka it was to follow the north bank of the Amoor to the Shilka, to join the line from Irkutsk and St. Petersburg. Arrangements have been made recently to lay a cable from Posyet to Hakodadi in Japan, and thence to Shanghae and other parts of China.
As it was Sunday no work was in progress, and there were but few teams in motion anywhere. The roads were such that no one would travel for pleasure, and the first day of the week is not used for business journeys. From the top of a hill I looked into the wide and beautiful valley of the Nertcha, which enters the Shilka from the north.
The Russians were thus firmly established, and the development of the country has progressed peacefully since that period. As the Argoon from its mouth to Lake Kerolun forms the boundary between the empires I lost sight of China when we entered the Shilka.