private
carriages. The vehicle was open, its floor quite low, and the wheels
small. We had two horses, one between the shafts and wearing the
inevitable yoke. The other was outside, and attached to an iron
single-tree over the forward wheel. Three horses can be driven abreast
on this kind of carriage.

The shaft horse trotted, while the other galloped, holding his head
very low and turned outward. This is due to a check rein, which keeps
him in a position hardly natural. The orthodox mode in Russia is to
have the shaft horse trotting while the other runs as described; the
difference in the motion gives an attractive and dashy appearance to
the turnout. Existence would be incomplete to a Russian without an
equipage, and if he cannot own one he keeps it on hire. The gayety of
Russian cities in winter and summer is largely due to the number of
private vehicles in constant motion through the streets.

[Illustration: TAIL PIECE--NATIVE WOMAN]

CHAPTER XI.

I arranged to ascend the Amoor on the steamer Ingodah, which was
appointed to start on the eighteenth of September. My friend Anossoff
remained at Nicolayevsk during the winter, instead of proceeding to
Irkutsk as I had fondly hoped. I found a _compagnon du voyage_ in
Captain Borasdine, of General Korsackoff's staff. In a drenching rain
on the afternoon of the seventeenth, we carried our baggage to the
Ingodah, which lay half a mile from shore. We reached the steamer
after about twenty minutes pulling in a whale-boat and shipping a
barrel of water through the carelessness of an oarsman.

At Nicolayevsk the Amoor is about a mile and a half wide, with a depth
of twenty to thirty-five feet in the channel. I asked a resident what
he thought the average rapidity of the current in front of the town.

"When you look at it or float with it," said he, "I think it is about
three and a half miles. If you go against it you find it not an inch
less than five miles."

The rowers had no light task to stem the rapid stream, and I think it
was about like the Mississippi at Memphis.

The boat was to leave early in the morning. I took a farewell dinner
with Mr. Chase, and at ten o'clock received a note from Borasdine
announcing his readiness to go to the steamer. Anossoff, Chase, and
half a dozen others assembled to see us off, and after waking the
echoes and watchmen on the pier, we secured a skiff and reached the
Ingodah. The rain was over, and stars were peeping through