“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 occasional loop-holes in the clouds.

[Illustration:  SEEING OFF.]

‘Seeing off’ consumed much time and more champagne.  As we left the house I observed Chase and Anossoff each putting a bottle in his pocket, and remarking the excellent character of their ballast.  From the quantity that revealed itself afterward the two bottles must have multiplied, or other persons in the party were equally provided.  To send off a friend in Russia requires an amount of health-drinking rarely witnessed in New York or Boston.  If the journey is by land the wayfarer is escorted a short distance on his route, sometimes to the edge of the town, and sometimes to the first station.  Adieus are uttered over champagne, tea, lunch—­and champagne.  It was nearly daybreak when our friends gave us the last hand-shake and went over the side.  Watching till their boat disappeared in the gloom, I sought the cabin, and found the table covered with a beggarly array of empty bottles and a confused mass of fragmentary edibles.  I retired to sleep, while the cabin boy cleared away the wreck.

The sun rose before our captain.  When I followed their example we were still at anchor and our boilers cold as a refusal to a beggar.  Late in the morning the captain appeared; about nine o’clock fire was kindled in the furnace, and a little past ten we were under way.  As our anchor rose and the wheel began to move, most of the deck passengers turned in the direction of the church and devoutly made the sign of the cross.  As we slowly stemmed the current the houses of Nicolayevsk and the shipping in its front, the smoking foundries, and the pine-covered hills, faded from view, and with my face to the westward I was fairly afloat on the Amoor.

The Ingodah was a plain, unvarnished boat, a hundred and ten feet long, and about fifteen feet beam.  Her hull was of boiler iron, her bottom flat, and her prow sharp and perpendicular.  Her iron, wood work, and engines were brought in a sailing ship to the Amoor and there put together.  She had two cabins forward and one aft, all below deck.  There was a small hold for storing baggage and freight, but the most of the latter was piled on deck.  The pilot house was over the forward cabin, and contained a large wheel, two men, and a chart of the river.  The rudder was about the size of a barn door, and required the strength of two men to control it.  Had she ever refused to obey her helm she would have shown an example of remarkable obstinacy.