Sakhalin-Oula stretches more than a mile along the bank, but extends only a few rods back from the river.  Practically it consists of a single street, which is quite narrow in several places.  The houses are like those of Igoon, with frames of logs and coverings of boards, or with log walls plastered with mud.  The windows of stores and dwellings are of lattice work covered with oiled paper, glass being rarely used.

The roofs of the buildings were covered with thatch of wheat straw several inches thick, that must offer excellent facilities for taking fire.  Probably the character of this thatch accounts for the chimneys rising ten or fifteen feet from, the buildings.  I saw several men arranging one of these roofs.  On a foundation of poles they laid bundles of straw, overlapping them as we overlap shingles, and cutting the boards to allow the straw to spread evenly.  This kind of covering must be renewed every two or three years.  Several thatches were very much decayed, and in one of them there was a fair growth of grass.  The village was embowered in trees in contrast to the Russian shore where the only trees were those in the park.  I endeavored to ascertain the cause of this difference, but could not.  The Russians said there was often a variation of three or four degrees in the temperature of the two banks, the Chinese one being the milder.  Timber for both Chinese and Russian use is cut in the forests up the Amoor and rafted down.

Sakhalin-Oula abounded in vegetable gardens, which supplied the market of Blagoveshchensk.  The number of shops both there and at Igoon led me to consider the Manjours a population of shop-keepers.  Dr. Snider said they brought him everything for ordinary table use, and would contract to furnish at less than the regular price, any article sold by the Russian merchants.  In their enterprise and mode of dealing they were much like the Jews of Europe and America, which may account for their being called Manjours.  Once a month during the full moon they come to Blagoveshchensk and open a fair, which continues seven days.  They sell flour, buckwheat, beans, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and other edible articles.  The Russians usually purchase a month’s supply at these times, but when they wish anything out of the fair season the Manjours are ready to furnish it.

We walked along a narrow street, less muddy than the streets of Igoon, and passed several cattle yards enclosed with high fences, like California corrals.  In one yard there were cattle and horses, so densely packed that they could not kick freely.  Groups of natives stared at us while smoking their little pipes, and doubtless wondered why we came there.  Several eyed me closely and asked my companions who and what I could be.  The explanation that I was American conveyed no information, as very few of them ever heard of the land of the free and the former home of the slave.