dinner we retired to the balcony for prosaic tea drinking
and a poetical study of the glories of an autumn sunset behind the
hills of Manjouria.

There was no hotel in the town, and I had wondered where I should
lodge. Before I had been half an hour on shore, I was invited by Dr.
Snider, the surgeon in chief of the province, to make my home at his
house. The doctor spoke English fluently, and told me he learned it
from a young American at Ayan several years before. He was ten years
in government service at Ayan, and met there many of my countrymen.
Once he contemplated emigrating to New Bedford at the urgent
solicitation of a whaling captain who frequently came to the Ohotsk
sea.

Dr. Snider was from the German provinces of Russia, and his wife, a
sister of Admiral Fulyelm, was born in Sweden. They usually conversed
in German but addressed their children in Russian. They had a Swedish
housemaid who spoke her own language in the family and only used
Russian when she could not do otherwise. Madame Snider told me her
children spoke Swedish and Russian with ease, and understood German
very well. They intended having a French or English governess in
course of time.

"I speak," said the doctor, "German with my wife, Swedish to the
housemaid, Russian to my other servants, French with some of the
officers, English with occasional travelers, and a little Chinese and
Manjour with the natives over the river."

Blagoveshchensk has a pretty situation, and I should greatly prefer it
to Nicolayevsk for permanent habitation. In the middle of the Amoor
valley and at the mouth of the Zeya, its commercial advantages are
good and its importance increases every year. It was founded in 1858
by General Mouravieff, but did not receive any population worthy of
mention until after the treaty of Igoon in 1860. The government
buildings are large and well constructed, logs being the material in
almost universal use for making walls. A large unfinished house for
the telegraph was pointed out to me, and several warehouses were in
process of erection.

Late one afternoon the captain of the steamer Korsackoff invited me to
visit Sakhalin-Oula-Hotun (city of the black river) on the opposite
shore. Though called a city it cannot justly claim more than two
thousand inhabitants. There was a crowd on the bank similar to the one
at Igoon, most of the women and girls standing with their arms folded
in their sleeves. Several were seated close to the wa