The first night after leaving the Amoor there was a picturesque scene at our wooding station.  The mountains were revealed by the setting moon, and their outline against the sky was sharply defined.  We had a large fire of pine boughs burning on the shore, and its bright flames lighted both sides of the river.  The boatmen in their sheepskin coats and hats walked slowly to and fro, and gave animation to the picture.  While I wrote my journal the horses above me danced as though frolicking over a hornet’s nest, and reduced sentimental thoughts to a minimum.  To render the subject more interesting two officers and the priest grew noisy over a triple game of cards and a bottle of vodki.  I wrote in my overcoat, as the thermometer was at 30 deg. with no fire in the cabin.

We frequently met rafts with men and horses descending to supply the post stations, or bound on hunting excursions.  I was told that the hunters float down the river on rafts and then make long circuits by land to their points of departure.  The Siberian squirrel is very abundant in the mountains north of the Shilka, and his fur is an important article of commerce.

We stopped at Gorbitza, near the mouth of the Gorbitza river, that formerly separated Russia and China and was the boundary up to 1854.

Above this point the villages had an appearance of respectable age not perceptible in the settlements along the Amoor.  Ten or twelve miles from our wooding place we met ice coming out of the Chorney river, but it gave us no inconvenience.  The valley became wider and the hills less abrupt, while the villages had an air of irregularity more pleasing than the military precision on the Amoor.  I saw many dwellings on which decay’s effacing fingers were busy.  The telegraph posts were fixed above Gorbitza, but the wires had not been strung.

There were many haystacks at the villages, and I could see droves of cattle and sheep on the cleared hills.  At one landing I found a man preparing his house for winter by calking the seams with moss.  Under the eaves of another house there were many birds that resembled American swallows.  I could not say whether they were migratory or not, but if the former they were making their northern stay a late one.  Their twitterings reminded me of the time when I used to go at nightfall, ‘when the swallows homeward fly,’ and listen to the music without melody as the birds exchanged their greetings, told their loves, and gossipped of their adventures.

[Illustration:  PREPARING FOR WINTER.]

Just at sunset we reached Shilikinsk, a town stretching nearly two miles along the river, on a plateau thirty feet high.  We stopped in the morning where there was abundance of wood, but only took enough to carry us to Shilikinsk.  There was a lady in the case.  Our first officer had a feminine acquaintance at the town, and accordingly wished to stop for wood, and, if possible, to pass the night there.  His plan failed, as no wood could be discovered at Shilikinsk, though our loving mate scanned every part of the bank.  We had enough fuel to take us a few miles farther, where we found wood and remained for the night.  The disappointed swain pocketed his chagrin and solaced himself by playing the agreeable to a lady passenger.