The mail is always in charge of a postillion, who is generally a Cossack, and his duty is much like that of a mail agent in other countries.  He delivers and receives the sacks of matter at the post offices, and guards them on the road.  During our voyage on the Ingodah there was no supervision over the mail bags after they were deposited in our cabin.  I passed many hours in their companionship, and if Borasdine and I had chosen to rifle them we could have done so at our leisure.  Possibly an escape from the penalties of the law would have been less easy.

Our cook was an elderly personage, with thin hair, a yellow beard, and a much neglected toilet.  On the first morning I saw him at his ablutions, and was not altogether pleased with his manner.  He took a half-tumbler of water in his mouth and then squirted the fluid over his hands, rubbing them meanwhile with invisible soap.  He was quite skillful, but I could never relish his dinners if I had seen him any time within six hours.  His general appearance was that of having slept in a gutter without being shaken afterwards.

The day of our departure from Nicolayevsk was like the best of our Indian summer.  There was but little wind, the faintest breath coming now and then from the hills on the southern bank.  The air was of a genial warmth, the sky free from clouds and only faintly dimmed with the haze around the horizon.  The forest was in the mellow tints of autumn, and the wide expanse of foliferous trees, dotted at frequent intervals with the evergreen pine, rivalled the October hues of our New England landscape.  Hills and low mountains rose on both banks of the river and made a beautiful picture.  The hills, covered with forest from base to summit, sloped gently to the water’s edge or retreated here and there behind bits of green meadow.  In the distance was a background of blue mountains glowing in sunshine or dark in shadow, and varying in outline as we moved slowly along.  The river was ruffled only by the ripples of the current or the motion of our boat through the water.  Just a year earlier I descended the Saint Lawrence from Lake Ontario to Quebec.  I saw nothing on the great Canadian river that equaled the scenery of my first day’s voyage on the Amoor.

Soon after leaving Nicolayevsk we met several loads of hay floating with the current to a market at the town.  On the meadows along the river the grass is luxuriant, and hay requires only the labor of cutting and curing.  During the day we passed several points where haymaking was in progress.  Cutting was performed with an instrument resembling the short scythe used in America for cutting bushes.  After it was dried, the hay was brought to the river bank on dray-like carts.  An American hay wagon would have accomplished twice as much, with equal labor.