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Updated: June 1, 2025
Employ'd wooding, cutting, and making of Brooms, there being a Shrub here very fit for that purpose; and as I intended to sail in the morning some hands were employ'd picking of Sellery to take to Sea with us.
The business of wooding and watering having been completed on the 30th, and the ship being ready for the sea, the point now to be determined was, what rout should be pursued in returning home, that would be of most advantage to the public service. Upon this subject the lieutenant thought proper to take the opinion of his officers.
He said they were divided into three watches, each working four hours at a time, and all hands liable to be called, when wooding, or landing, or taking on freight, to assist the deck-hands. They were paid now but thirty dollars a month ordinarily forty, and sometimes sixty and board. He was a sailor bred. This boat-life was harder than seafaring, but the pay was better, and the trips were short.
Another bay was discovered on the 18th, in which there was good anchorage, with great convenience for wooding and watering, and which they called Schapenham's bay, after the name of their vice-admiral. This island appears to have been named after admiral Le Hermite.
Of course, we had plenty of room in the hold, since no ship would carry herself full of casks of oil; but I doubt whether, if we had borne a "Plimsoll's mark," it would not have been totally submerged, so deep did we lie. Wooding and watering came next a different affair to our casual exercises in those directions before.
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.
By and by we come to two little girls keeping cows, and I saw one of them very pretty, so I had a mind to make her ask my blessing, and telling her that I was her godfather, she asked me innocently whether I was not Ned Wooding, and I said that I was, so she kneeled down and very simply called, "Pray, godfather, pray to God to bless me," which made us very merry, and I gave her twopence.
From this day till Monday 14th we were employ'd wooding and watering, being frequently interrupted by heavy rains.
By dint of constant wooding I contrived to warm mine; but my Italian friends always avoided its vicinity when they came to see me, and most amusingly regarded my determination to be comfortable as part of the eccentricity inseparable from the Anglo-Saxon character. I daresay they would not trifle with winter, thus, if they knew him in his northern moods.
We stopped at Gorbitza, near the mouth of the Gorbitza river, that formerly separated Russia and China and was the boundary up to 1854. Above this point the villages had an appearance of respectable age not perceptible in the settlements along the Amoor. Ten or twelve miles from our wooding place we met ice coming out of the Chorney river, but it gave us no inconvenience.
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