If I knew the Emperor of China I should counsel him to open his oblique eyes.  If he does not he may find the conduct of the Igoon police a serious affair for his dominions.  Russia, like Oliver Twist, desires more.  When the opportunity comes she will quietly take possession of Manjouria and hold both banks of the Amoor.  If the treaty of 1860 continues to be violated the Governor General of Eastern Siberia will have an excellent excuse for taking the district of Igoon and all it contains under his powerful protection.

On the day I reached Blagoveshchensk I saw an emigrant camp near the town.  The emigrants had just landed from the rafts with which they descended the Amoor.  They came from Astrachan, near the mouth of the Volga, more than five thousand miles away, and had been two years on their travels.  They came with wagons to the head waters of the Amoor, and there built rafts, on which they loaded everything, including wagons and teams, and floated to their destination.  I did not find their wagons as convenient as our own, though doubtless they are better adapted to the road.

The Russian wagon had a semi-circular body, as if a long hogshead were divided lengthwise and the half of it mounted on wheels, with the open part uppermost.  There was a covering of coarse cloth over a light framework, lower and less wide than our army wagons.  Household goods fill the wagons, and the emigrants walk for the most part during all their land journey.

I spent a few minutes at the camp near the town, and found the picture much like what I saw years ago beyond the Mississippi.  Men were busy with their cattle and securing them for the night; one boy was bringing water from the river, and another gathering fuel for the fire; a young woman was preparing supper, and an older one endeavored, under shelter of the wagon-cover, to put a crying child to sleep.

Westward our star of empire takes its way.  Russian emigration presses eastward, and seeks the rising, as ours the setting sun.

[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE—­TOWARDS THE SUN]

CHAPTER XIX.

During my stay at Blagoveshchensk the governor invited me to assist at a gazelle hunt.

At nine o’clock on the day appointed we assembled at the house of the chief of staff.  I breakfasted before going there, but it was necessary to discuss the coming hunt over a second breakfast.  Six or eight ladies were of the party, and the affair had the general appearance of a picnic.  The governor seated me in his carriage at the side of Madame Pedeshenk, and we led the company to the field of expected slaughter.