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We frequently met rafts with men and horses descending to supply the post stations, or bound on hunting excursions. I was told that the hunters float down the river on rafts and then make long circuits by land to their points of departure. The Siberian squirrel is very abundant in the mountains north of the Shilka, and his fur is an important article of commerce.
But what is stranger still is that the bottle of brandy Kuvshinnikov gave me has not been broken, and that the brandy is still in it, every drop of it. I have vowed not to uncork it except on the shore of the Pacific. I am sailing down the Shilka, which runs into the Amur at the Pokrovskaya Stanitsa. The river is not broader than the Psyol, it is even narrower.
Nerchinsk formerly stood at the junction of the Nertcha and Shilka, on the banks of both rivers, but the repeated damage from floods caused its removal. Even on its present site it is not entirely safe from inundation, the lower part of the town having been twice under water and in danger of being washed away.
The lower part of the Shilka has very little agricultural land, and the only settlements are the stations kept by a few Cossacks, who cut wood for the steamers and supply horses to the post and travelers in winter. The first night after leaving the Amoor there was a picturesque scene at our wooding station.
It was accompanied by fifty barges and a great many rafts loaded with military forces to occupy the Amoor, and with provisions for the Pacific fleet. The Shilka descended a few months later. She was running in 1866, but the Argoon, the pioneer, existed less than a decade. In 1866 there were twenty-two steamers on the Amoor, all but four belonging to the government.
A few minutes later I saw the defile of the Shilka. Between the streams the mountains narrowed and came to a point a mile above the meeting of the waters. It is on the Argoon side of the delta and contains but a few houses. I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled in the cold atmosphere that the inhabitants were endeavoring to make themselves comfortable.
Dated on the 14th of November, 1860, it says: "Henceforth the eastern frontier between the two empires shall commence from the junction of the rivers Shilka and Argoon, and will follow the course of the River Amoor to the junction of the river Ousuree with the latter.
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