Passing Cape Pronge and looking up the river, a background of hills and mountains made a fine landscape with beautiful lights and shadows from the afternoon sun.  The channel is marked with stakes and buoys and with beacons along the shore.  The pilots when steering frequently turned their backs to the bow of the steamer and watched the beacons over the stern.  As we approached Nicolayevsk there was a mirage that made the ships in port appear as if anchored in the town itself.

We passed Chinyrack, the fortress that guards the river, and is surrounded, as if for concealment, with a grove of trees.  Along the bank above Chinyrack there are warehouses of various kinds, all belonging to government.  Soon after dark we anchored before the town, and below several other vessels.  My sea travel was ended till I should reach Atlantic waters.

CHAPTER X.

At Nicolayevsk it is half a mile from the anchorage to the shore.  A sand spit projects from the lower end of the town and furnishes a site for government workshops and foundries.  Above this tongue of land the water is shallow and allows only light draft and flat bottomed boats to come to the piers.  All sea-going vessels remain, in midstream, where they are discharged by lighters.  There is deeper water both above and below the town, and I was told that a change of site had been meditated.  The selection of the spot where Nicolayevsk stands was owing to the advantages of the sand spit as a protection to river boats.

After dining on the Morje we went on shore, and landed at a flight of wooden steps in the side of a pier.  The piers of Nicolayevsk are constructed with ‘cribs’ about twenty feet apart and strong timbers connecting them.  The flooring was about six feet above water, and wide enough for two teams to pass.

Turning to the left at the end of the pier, we found a plank sidewalk ascending a sloping road in the hillside.  The pier reminded me of Boston or New York, but it lacked the huge warehouses and cheerful hackmen to render the similarity complete.  “This is Natchez, Mississippi,” I said as we moved up the hill, “and this is Cairo, Illinois,” as my feet struck the plank sidewalk.  The sloping road came to an end sooner than at Natchez, and the sidewalk did not reveal any pitfalls like those in Cairo a few years ago.  The bluff where the city stands is about fifty feet high, and the ascent of the road so gentle that one must be very weak to find it fatiguing.  The officers who came on shore with me went to the club rooms to pass the evening.  I sought the residence of Mr. H.G.O.  Chase, the Commercial Agent of the United States, and representative of the house of Boardman.  I found him living very comfortably in bachelor quarters that contained a library and other luxuries of civilization.  In his sitting-room there was a map of the Russian empire and one of Boston, and there were lithographs and steel engravings, exhibiting the good taste of the owner.