I think the gazelle we killed was identical with the antelope of our western plains.  He had a skin of the same color and a white tail, that retreating flag-of-truce so familiar to our overland emigrants.  His feet, head, and body were shaped like the antelope’s, and his eye had that liquid tenderness so often observed in the agile rover near the foot of the Rocky Mountains.  Gazelles abound through the Amoor valley to within a hundred miles of the sea-coast.  Many are killed every autumn and winter in the valley of the Zeya and along the middle Amoor.  The flesh is eaten and the skin used for winter coats and similar articles.

The commerce of Blagoveshchensk is in the hands of half a dozen merchants, one French, one German, and the rest Russian.  The Amoor company before its affairs were ended kept there one of its principal stores, which was bought, with stock and good will, by the company’s clerk.  The wants of the officers, soldiers, and civilians in the town and its vicinity are sufficient to create a good local trade.  Prices are high, nearly double those of Nicolayevsk, and the stocks of goods on hand are neither large nor well selected.  Officers complained to me of combinations among the merchants to maintain prices at an exorbitant scale.

I staid four days at Blagoveshchensk, and as the season was growing late was quite anxious to depart.  The days were charming, corresponding to our Indian Summer, and the nights cool and frosty.  The passenger on our steamer from Igoon said ice would be running in the river in twenty-five days unless the season should be unusually mild.  Russians and Chinese were preparing for cold weather, and I wished to do the same farther westward.  Borasdine contemplated a land journey in case we were delayed more than five days.  The Korsackoff was the only steamer to ascend the river, and she was waiting for the Constantine to bring her a barge.  On the evening of the 5th October the governor informed me the Korsackoff would start on the next day, barge or no barge.  This was cheering, and I celebrated the occasion by boiling myself in a Russian bath.

I look upon the bath as one of the blessings of Russia.  At the end of a journey, when one is sore and stiff in the joints, it is an effectual medicine.  After it the patient sleeps soundly, and rises in the morning thoroughly invigorated.  Too much bathing deadens the complexion and enfeebles the body, but a judicious amount is beneficial.  It is the Russian custom, not always observed, to bathe once a week.  The injury from the bath is in consequence of too high temperature of steam and water, causing a severe shock to the system.  Taken properly the bath has no bad effects, and will cure rheumatism, some forms of neuralgia, and several other acute diseases.

The bath-house is a building of two, and generally three, rooms.  In the outer room you undress, and your chelavek, or servant, does the same.  If there is but another room you are led directly into it, and find a hot fire in a large stove.  There is a cauldron of hot water and a barrel of cold water close at hand.  The tools of the operator are a bucket, two or three basins, a bar of soap, a switch of birch boughs, and a bunch of matting.  If there are three apartments the second is only an ante-room, not very warm and calculated to prepare you for the last and hottest of all.