shared with his Russian
servant the labor of steering. The next night he was robbed again, and
the robbers, angry at finding so little to steal, did not leave him
his boat. After much difficulty he reached a native village and
procured an old skiff. With this he finished his journey unmolested.

There were fifteen or twenty deck passengers, a fair proportion being
women and children. Among the latter was a black eyed girl of fifteen,
in a calico dress and wearing a shawl pinned around a pretty face. On
Sunday morning she appeared in neat apparel and was evidently desirous
of being seen. There were two old men dressed in coarse cloth of a
'butternut' hue, that reminded me of Arkansas and Tennessee. The
morning we started one of them was seated on the deck counting a pile
of copper coin with great care. Two, three, four times he told it off,
piece by piece, and then folded it carefully in the corner of his
kerchief. In all he had less than a rouble, but he preserved it as if
it were a million.

[Illustration: CASH ACCOUNT.]

The baggage of the deck passengers consisted of boxes and household
furniture in general, not omitting the ever-present samovar. This
baggage was piled on the deck and was the reclining place of its
owners by day. In the night they had the privilege of the after cabin,
where they slept on the seats and floor.

'Wooding up' was not performed with American alacrity. To bring the
steamer to land she was anchored thirty feet from shore, and two men
in a skiff carried a line to the bank and made it fast. With this line
and the anchor the boat was warped within ten feet of the shore,
another line keeping the stern in position. An ordinary plank a foot
wide made the connection with the solid earth. These boats have no
guards and cannot overhang the land like our Western craft. Wood was
generally piled fifty, a hundred, or five hundred feet from the
landing place, wherever most convenient to the owner. No one seems to
think of placing it near the water's edge as with us; they told me
that this had been done formerly, and the freshets had carried the
wood away. The peasants, warned by their loss, are determined to keep
on the safe side.

When all was ready the deck hands went very leisurely to work. Each
carried a piece of rope which he looped around a few sticks of wood as
a boy secures his bundle of school books. The rope was then slung upon
the shoulder, the wood hanging over the back of the carrier a