The Goldees do not engage in agriculture as a business.  Now and then there was a small garden, but it was of very little importance.  Since the Russian occupation the natives have changed their allegiance from China to the ‘White Czar,’ as they call the Muscovite emperor.  Formerly they were much oppressed by the Manjour officials, who displayed great rapacity in collecting tribute.  It was no unusual occurrence for a native to be tied up and whipped to compel him to bring out all his treasures.  The Goldees call the Manjours ‘rats,’ in consequence of their greediness and destructive powers.

The Goldees are superior to the Gilyaks in numbers and intelligence, and the Manjours of Igoon and vicinity are in turn superior to the Goldees.  The Chinese are more civilized than the Manjours, and call the latter ‘dogs.’  The Manjours take revenge by applying the epithet to the Goldees, and these transfer it to Mangoons and Gilyaks.  The Mangoons are not in large numbers, and live along the river between the Gilyaks and Goldees.  Many of the Russian officials include them with the latter, and the captain of the Ingodah was almost unaware of their existence.

A peculiar kind of fence employed by the Russian settlers on this part of the Amoor attracted my attention.  Stakes were driven into the ground a foot apart and seven feet high.  Willow sticks were then woven between these stakes in a sort of basket work.  The fence was impervious to any thing larger than a rat, and no sensible man would attempt climbing it, unless pursued by a bull or a sheriff, as the upper ends of the sticks were very sharp and about as convenient to sit upon as a row of harrow-teeth.

It reminded me of a fence in an American village where I once lived, that an enterprising fruit-grower had put around his orchard,—­a structure of upright pickets, and each picket armed with a nail in the top.  One night four individuals bent on stealing apples, were confronted by the owner and a bull-dog and forced to surrender or leap the fence.  Three of them were “treed” by the dog; the fourth sprang over the fence, but left the seat of his trousers and the rear section of his shirt, the latter bearing in indelible ink the name of the wearer.  The circumstantial evidence was so strong against him that he did not attempt an alibi, and he was unable to sit down for nearly a fortnight.

[Illustration:  TAIL PIECE—­THE NET]

CHAPTER XIV.

I took the first opportunity to enter a Goldee house and study the customs of the people.  A Goldee dwelling for permanent habitation has four walls and a roof.  The sides and ends are of hewn boards or small poles made into a close fence, which is generally double and has a space six or eight inches wide filled with grass and leaves.  Inside and out the dwelling is plastered with mud, and the roofs are thatch or bark held in place by poles and stones.  Sometimes they are entirely of poles.  The doors are of hewn plank, and can be fastened on the inside.