ured. The offal from the fish creates an unpleasant stench and no
effort is made to clear it away. The natives and their dogs do not
consider the scent disagreeable and have no occasion to consult the
tastes or smell of others. The first time I visited one of their
fish-curing places I thought of the western city that had, after a
freshet, 'forty-five distinct and different odors beside several wards
to hear from.'

Above Mariensk the Amoor valley is often ten or twenty miles wide,
enclosing whole labyrinths of islands, some of great extent. These
islands are generally well out of water and not liable to overflow.
Very few have the temporary appearance of the islands of the lower
Mississippi. Here and there were small islands of slight elevation and
covered with cottonwoods, precisely like those growing between Memphis
and Cairo.

[Illustration: GILYAK WOMAN.]

The banks of this part of the Amoor do not wash like the alluvial
lands along the Mississippi and Missouri, but are more like the shores
of the Ohio. They are generally covered with grass or bushes down to
the edge of the water. There are no shifting sand-bars to perplex the
pilot, but the channel remains with little change from year to year. I
saw very little drift wood and heard no mention of snags. The general
features of the scenery were much like those below Mihalofski. The
numerous islands and the labyrinth of channels often permit boats to
pass each other without their captains knowing it. One day we saw a
faint line of smoke across an island three or four miles wide;
watching it closely I found it was in motion and evidently came from
a descending steamboat. On another occasion we missed in these
channels a boat our captain was desirous of hailing. Once while
General Monravieff was ascending the river he was passed by a courier
who was bringing him important despatches.

[Illustration: NIGHT SCENE--GROUP OF PEASANTS]

The pilot steers with a chart of the river before him, and relies
partly upon his experience and partly upon the delineated route.
Sometimes channels used at high water are not navigable when the river
is low, and some are favorable for descent but not for ascent. In
general the pilotage is far more facile than on the Mississippi, and
accidents are not frequent.

The peasants always came to the bank where we stopped, no matter what
the hour. At one place where we took wood at night there was a
picturesque group of twenty-five or thir