The second day from Blagoveshchensk we were where the Amoor flows twenty-five versts around a peninsula only one verst wide.  Just above this, at the village of Korsackoff, was the foot of another bend of twenty-eight versts with a width of three.  Borasdine and I proposed walking and hunting across the last neck of land, but the lateness of the hour forbade the excursion, as we did not wish to pass the night on shore, and it was doubtful if the boat could double the point before dark.  We should have crossed the first peninsula had it not been in Chinese territory.  To prevent possible intrusion the Celestials have a guard-house at the bend.

At the guard-house we could see half a dozen soldiers with matchlocks and lances.  There was a low house fifteen or twenty feet square and daubed with mud according to the Chinese custom.  There was a quantity of rubbish on the ground, and a couple of horses were standing ready saddled near it.  Fifty feet from the house was a building like a sentry-box, with two flag-staffs before it; it was the temple where the soldiers worshipped according to the ceremonies of their faith.  I have been much with the army in my own country, but never saw a military post of two buildings where one structure was a chapel.

Above the village of Kazakavitch, at the upper extremity of the bend, there was some picturesque scenery.  On one side there were precipitous cliffs two or three hundred feet high, and on the other a meadow or plateau with hills in the background.  The villages on this part of the river are generally built twenty or thirty feet above high water mark.  They have the same military precision that is observed below the Zeya, and each has a bath house set in the bank.  Frequently we found these bath houses in operation, and on one occasion two boys came out clad in the elegant costume of the Greek Slave, without her fetters.  They gazed at the boat with perfect sang froid, the thermometer being just above freezing point.  The scene reminded me of the careless manners of the natives at Panama.

Opposite Komarskoi the cliffs on the Chinese shore are perpendicular, and continue so for several miles.  At their base there is a strong current, where we met a raft descending nearly five miles an hour.  In going against the stream our pilots did not seek the edge of the river like their brethren of the Mississippi, but faced the current in the center.  Possibly they thought a middle course the safest, and remembered the fate of the celebrated youth who took a short route when he drove the sun.

Two miles above the settlement is Cape Komara, a perpendicular or slightly overhanging rock of dark granite three hundred feet high.  Nothing but a worm or an insect could climb its face, and a fall from its top into the river would not be desirable.  The Russians have erected a large cross upon the summit, visible for some distance up and down the river.  Above this rock, which appears like a sentinel, the valley is wider and the stream flows among many islands.