ory repeats itself! Compare this with the conduct of certain
Treasury officials along the Mississippi during our late war. The
cases were exactly parallel. The government scandalized, trade
restricted, and merchants plundered, to fill the pockets of rapacious
officers! I began to think the Mongol more like the Anglo-Saxon than
ethnologists believe, and found an additional argument for the unity
of the human race.

If I knew the Emperor of China I should counsel him to open his
oblique eyes. If he does not he may find the conduct of the Igoon
police a serious affair for his dominions. Russia, like Oliver Twist,
desires more. When the opportunity comes she will quietly take
possession of Manjouria and hold both banks of the Amoor. If the
treaty of 1860 continues to be violated the Governor General of
Eastern Siberia will have an excellent excuse for taking the district
of Igoon and all it contains under his powerful protection.

On the day I reached Blagoveshchensk I saw an emigrant camp near the
town. The emigrants had just landed from the rafts with which they
descended the Amoor. They came from Astrachan, near the mouth of the
Volga, more than five thousand miles away, and had been two years on
their travels. They came with wagons to the head waters of the Amoor,
and there built rafts, on which they loaded everything, including
wagons and teams, and floated to their destination. I did not find
their wagons as convenient as our own, though doubtless they are
better adapted to the road.

The Russian wagon had a semi-circular body, as if a long hogshead were
divided lengthwise and the half of it mounted on wheels, with the open
part uppermost. There was a covering of coarse cloth over a light
framework, lower and less wide than our army wagons. Household goods
fill the wagons, and the emigrants walk for the most part during all
their land journey.

I spent a few minutes at the camp near the town, and found the picture
much like what I saw years ago beyond the Mississippi. Men were busy
with their cattle and securing them for the night; one boy was
bringing water from the river, and another gathering fuel for the
fire; a young woman was preparing supper, and an older one endeavored,
under shelter of the wagon-cover, to put a crying child to sleep.

Westward our star of empire takes its way. Russian emigration presses
eastward, and seeks the rising, as ours the setting sun.

[Illustration: TAIL PIECE--TOWARDS THE SUN