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Far away to the east, on the great Amur River, which is the boundary between the Amur province and Manchuria, as well as in the coast province of Ussuri, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, occur tigers and panthers. The most valuable animals, the furs of which constitute one of the resources of Siberia, are the sable, the ermine, and the grey squirrel.
Good Christians, what am I to do till the 20th? How am I to dispose of myself? The journey to Sryetensk will only take five or six days. I have greatly altered the route of my journey. I must have a look at the Ussuri region. At Vladivostok I shall bathe in the sea and eat oysters. Everything is as green as with you, even the oaks are out.
How it was accomplished it is needless to say; but China reluctantly agreed that there should be for a time a joint occupation of this strip, and, in 1859, needing Russia's friendship, it was unconditionally bestowed. The "Ussuri Region" was now transformed into the "Maritime Provinces of Siberia," and the Russian Empire, by the stroke of a pen, had moved ten degrees toward the south.
Lastly, in 1860, while the Anglo-French forces were entering Pekin, Russia obtained without a blow the cession of the region south of the Amur and east of the Ussuri, stretching along the coast to the Corean frontier. And thus was completed the reduction of the whole of North Asia, a territory of itself alone far more extensive than the European continent.
It did not seem wise at this time to ask such a privilege, the patience of China being already strained by the matter of the Ussuri strip, that much-harassed country being also suspicious of the railroad itself. So with consummate tact Russia proceeded to build the road from the two extremities, leaving this gap to be adjusted by time and circumstances. She had not to wait long.
Quarrels ensued over the boundaries and, finding resistance hopeless, the Chinese ceded to Russia all the land on the left bank of the Amur as far as the mouth of the Ussuri and on both its banks below that river.
From the mouth of the Amur to the frontier of Korea there was a strip of territory lying between the sea on the east and the Ussuri river on the west, which to the Russian mind, at that time, seemed an ideal possession.
The eastern slice of Manchuria, which now had become the "Maritime Province of Siberia," was a pleasant morsel, six hundred miles long. Who could tell what might happen? China was in an unstable condition. Her integrity was threatened. England, France and Germany, quickly following Russia's lead in the Ussuri strip, had already wrung privileges from her.
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