ank. Half a dozen
wolfish dogs were standing ready to breakfast as soon as the
slaughtering was over. A Cossack officer in a picturesque costume
stood on the bank near the boat. He wore an embroidered coat of
sheepskin, the wool inside, a shaggy cap of coal-black wool, and a
pair of fur-topped boots. All his garments were new and well fitting,
and contrasted greatly with the greasy and long used coats of the
Cossacks on the boat. Sheepskin garments can look more repulsive than
cloth ones with equal wearing. Age can wither and custom stale their
infinite variety.

Winding among the mountains and cliffs that enclose the valley we
reached in the evening a village four miles below the head of the
Amoor. I rose at daybreak on the 17th to make my adieus to the river.
The morning was clear and frosty, and the stars were twinkling in the
sky, save in the east where the blush of dawn was visible. The hills
were faintly touched with a little snow that had fallen during the
night. The trunks of the birches rose like ghosts among the pines and
larches of the forest, while craggy rocks pushed out here and there
like battlements of a fortress. The pawing steamer with her mane of
stars breasted the current with her prow bearing directly toward the
west.

"Just around that point," said the first officer of the Korsackoff as
he directed his finger toward a headland on the Chinese shore, "you
will see the mouth of the Argoon on the left and the Shilka on the
right;--wait a moment, it is not quite time yet."

When we rounded the promontory dawn had grown to daylight, and the
mountains on the south bank of the Argoon came into view. A few
minutes later I saw the defile of the Shilka. Between the streams the
mountains narrowed and came to a point a mile above the meeting of the
waters. On the delta below the mountains is the Russian village and
Cossack post of Oust-Strelka (Arrow Mouth,) situated in Latitude 53 deg.
19' 45" North, and Longitude 121 deg. 50' 7" East. It is on the Argoon
side of the delta and contains but a few houses. I knew by the smoke
that so gracefully curled in the cold atmosphere that the inhabitants
were endeavoring to make themselves comfortable.

The Amoor is formed by the union of these rivers, just as the Ohio is
formed by the Allegheny and Monongahela. Geographers generally admit
that the parent stream of a river is the one whose source is farthest
from the junction. The Argoon flows from the lake Koulon, wh