The ordinary residents at the mouth of Ghijiga river were the pilot and his family, with three or four Cossacks to row boats on the bay.  The natives of the vicinity came there occasionally, but none were permanent citizens.  The arrival of the Variag and Clara Bell gave unusual activity to the settlement, and the Ispravnik might have returned a large population had he imitated the practice of those western towns that take their census during the stay of a railway train or a steamboat.  There was once, according to a rural historian, an aspiring politician in Tennessee who wanted to go to Congress.  There were not inhabitants enough in his district to send him, and so he placed a couple of his friends at the railway station to take the names of passengers as they visited the refreshment saloon and entered or left the depot.  In a short time the requisite constituency was secured and sworn to, so that the aspirant for official honor accomplished the wish of his heart.

[Illustration:  LIGHT-HOUSE AT GHIJIGA.]

The light-house on the promontory is a hexagonal edifice ten feet in diameter and height; it is of logs and has a flat top covered with dirt, whereon to kindle a fire.  The interior is entered by a low door, and I found it floored with two sticks of wood and a mud puddle.  One could reach the top by climbing a sloping pole notched like an American fence-post.  The pilot resides at the foot of the bluff, and is expected to visit this beacon daily.  A cannon, old enough to have served at Pultawa, stands near the light-house, in a condition of utter helplessness.

The houses were furnished quite primitively.  Beds were of bearskins and blankets, and the floor was the only bedstead.  There were rustic tables of hewn boards, and benches without backs.  In a storehouse there was a Fairbanks’ scale, somewhat worn and rusty, and I found a tuneless melodeon from Boston and a coffee mill from New York.

The town of Ghijiga is on the bank of the river, twelve miles from the light-house, and the route thither was overland or by water, at one’s choice.  Overland there was a footpath crossing a hill and a wet tundra.  The journey by water was upon the Ghijiga river; five versts of rowing and thirteen of towing by men or dogs.  As it was impossible to hire a horse, I repudiated the overland route altogether, and tried a brief journey on the river, but could not reach the town and return in time for certain engagements.  Ghijiga has a population of less than three hundred, and closely resembles Petropavlovsk.  Two or three foreign merchants go there annually with goods to exchange for furs which the Russian traders gather.  The inhabitants are Russians or half breeds, the former predominating.  The half breeds are said to possess all the vices of both races with the virtues of neither.